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Top 9 Unintuitive Features that would assist exploration
leviathan99
Member Posts: 7,747 Arc User
1. Gravity.
I've gotten baffled looks by this before and STO has several representations of gravity. From the physx engine to low gravity ground environments to Gravity Well III in space.
One observation I have had regarding MMOs in general but distinguishing good exploration in a game from bad: does going up a hill feel like more effort than going down one?
Even some MMOs simulate this by having a destination be perilous to get to... and easier to get back from but NOT so easy as simply pressing a button.
2. Environmental Peril
If the only thing that can actually harm you is weapons fire, it has the tendency to make the game center on weapons fire. Any problem looks like a nail when all you have as a hammer.
If the environment can't kill you, every problem has to be solved with weapons.
That said, if the environment can ONLY kill you, what you have is a platform game. What's even more essential is that the environment can influence you. Can you swim in water? Does cold make you shiver (or by comparison does having a cold resistance make someone stand out as oddly unaffected and faster moving?)? Does wind slow you down or knock you back?
3. Travel and Death
Is death a travel shortcut? Is it a time sink? Can jumping into death speed up or slow down your progress? Can you simply change instances?
If the answer to any of these things is "yes", you have some problems with how meaningful your travel is. Absolutely, let someone move to a graveyard or a city quickly... at a cost. Otherwise, your position is your position. No jetpacks or transporters or respawning in new location except as a reward for having mastered the terrain or an emergency "penalty" option.
4. Stamina and Food
Does food matter? Does water? Does temperature? If not, you have fewer excuses to engage with your environment. These things don't necessarily need to matter for the player but they should matter for those traveling with the player, providing an Oregon Trail dynamic to contend with.
5. Shuttles as a means of zone transition
If we're attempting to convey the scope of an area, one option for conveying the size of a zone might be to use shuttles for "orbital space" similar to sector space as a map screen option but also as a taxi mechanism. Arrive at a shuttle. Switch to shuttle view. Pick a landing spot. Resume ground mode. Possibly including shuttle combat as a travel obstacle.
You can of course assign people zone based shuttles. Or you could have shuttle signal points that launch into a mapscreen which loads with a very quick, skippable cutscene of the player's shuttle landing at the point and pausing for a second before launching into the sky over the region. Then when a landing point is secured, we see a cutscene of the shuttle circling for a landing and flying off.
6. Character animations
If you're interacting with your environment and environment is the big challenge, movement in the environment needs to be believable. Take a look at how games have characters turn in place and compare that to real people turning at your office. Do they shuffle with their feet while a motionless upper torso turns in a smooth arc? Or do their feet dig into the ground and they turn in steps. If the character turns like a real person then the ground beneath them seems more real.
7. Emotional State of NPCs
Is morale important? Confidence? Can an enemy be aggravated? Intimidated? Not only does this influence better game AI but if physical regions of zone can be set to have flavors and these influence the NPCs' behavior, it sells the environment. So maybe you have feat map volumes, fatigue map volumes, etc. And these could be set to be faction triggered so that an enemy moves proudly in their home camp while an ally might show fear or vice versa.
8. Vocal Chatter
Best not handled as pop-up windows, chatter doesn't advance the action but makes it believable. I understand issues with BO voices and therefore rather than propose a complete reintroduction of that, I say let NPCs friend and foe do the bulk of the outright talking but that BOffs and Captains should be given a voice on the ground that is tailor selectable. But limit it to grunts, panting, and screams. That's more all purpose and doesn't constrict the imagination as to how characters talk but it does enhance the feeling of both combat and environmental movement.
9. Musical Cues
If both area and area interaction have dynamic music cues (which this game engine supports) it helps for conveying mood. And exploration is all about areas having mood.
I've gotten baffled looks by this before and STO has several representations of gravity. From the physx engine to low gravity ground environments to Gravity Well III in space.
One observation I have had regarding MMOs in general but distinguishing good exploration in a game from bad: does going up a hill feel like more effort than going down one?
Even some MMOs simulate this by having a destination be perilous to get to... and easier to get back from but NOT so easy as simply pressing a button.
2. Environmental Peril
If the only thing that can actually harm you is weapons fire, it has the tendency to make the game center on weapons fire. Any problem looks like a nail when all you have as a hammer.
If the environment can't kill you, every problem has to be solved with weapons.
That said, if the environment can ONLY kill you, what you have is a platform game. What's even more essential is that the environment can influence you. Can you swim in water? Does cold make you shiver (or by comparison does having a cold resistance make someone stand out as oddly unaffected and faster moving?)? Does wind slow you down or knock you back?
3. Travel and Death
Is death a travel shortcut? Is it a time sink? Can jumping into death speed up or slow down your progress? Can you simply change instances?
If the answer to any of these things is "yes", you have some problems with how meaningful your travel is. Absolutely, let someone move to a graveyard or a city quickly... at a cost. Otherwise, your position is your position. No jetpacks or transporters or respawning in new location except as a reward for having mastered the terrain or an emergency "penalty" option.
4. Stamina and Food
Does food matter? Does water? Does temperature? If not, you have fewer excuses to engage with your environment. These things don't necessarily need to matter for the player but they should matter for those traveling with the player, providing an Oregon Trail dynamic to contend with.
5. Shuttles as a means of zone transition
If we're attempting to convey the scope of an area, one option for conveying the size of a zone might be to use shuttles for "orbital space" similar to sector space as a map screen option but also as a taxi mechanism. Arrive at a shuttle. Switch to shuttle view. Pick a landing spot. Resume ground mode. Possibly including shuttle combat as a travel obstacle.
You can of course assign people zone based shuttles. Or you could have shuttle signal points that launch into a mapscreen which loads with a very quick, skippable cutscene of the player's shuttle landing at the point and pausing for a second before launching into the sky over the region. Then when a landing point is secured, we see a cutscene of the shuttle circling for a landing and flying off.
6. Character animations
If you're interacting with your environment and environment is the big challenge, movement in the environment needs to be believable. Take a look at how games have characters turn in place and compare that to real people turning at your office. Do they shuffle with their feet while a motionless upper torso turns in a smooth arc? Or do their feet dig into the ground and they turn in steps. If the character turns like a real person then the ground beneath them seems more real.
7. Emotional State of NPCs
Is morale important? Confidence? Can an enemy be aggravated? Intimidated? Not only does this influence better game AI but if physical regions of zone can be set to have flavors and these influence the NPCs' behavior, it sells the environment. So maybe you have feat map volumes, fatigue map volumes, etc. And these could be set to be faction triggered so that an enemy moves proudly in their home camp while an ally might show fear or vice versa.
8. Vocal Chatter
Best not handled as pop-up windows, chatter doesn't advance the action but makes it believable. I understand issues with BO voices and therefore rather than propose a complete reintroduction of that, I say let NPCs friend and foe do the bulk of the outright talking but that BOffs and Captains should be given a voice on the ground that is tailor selectable. But limit it to grunts, panting, and screams. That's more all purpose and doesn't constrict the imagination as to how characters talk but it does enhance the feeling of both combat and environmental movement.
9. Musical Cues
If both area and area interaction have dynamic music cues (which this game engine supports) it helps for conveying mood. And exploration is all about areas having mood.
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
There is ways to explore more. Even using what they have now.
Grapple/Repel - This was introduced into DR. I like doing it. There could be more underground missions. Even a mountain mission. There is a lot of possibility there.
EV suit - How about a walk outside your ship or another station. Even an EV suit battle outside dealing with some threat. Like Picard vs Borg on First Contact. Lots can be done here too.
Flashlight or other lights - How about more dark missions to make use of these. I have the Hirogen type gun with a mounted light. I would love to use that feature more.
Puzzles - Have your ship stuck in something in space. And try to figure it out. Work on a virus that threatens your crew and others.
The sky is the limit on exploration missions if they work on it. Not all about scanning rocks and stuff.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
Because I play far future space games for the realism.
(Not trying to TRIBBLE on you here, just pointing out that you're off on the wrong track, IMO. I don't play for a reality simulator, I play for a gaming experience.)
(Also, calling for 'no transporters' in Star Trek sort of seems like you mostly cut-and-pasted this from some fantasy MMO)
I'm not trying to argue for realism so much as I'm trying to look at it this way:
If you want the game to have an area where exploration is the primary game function, in the sense that combat is the primary game function elsewhere, you need the mechanics to be based around travel rather than shooting things. Otherwise, you have a pointlessly large shooting gallery.
If exploration is the "combat mechanic" of exploration zones (and it needs to be if you're going to mass produce them) then the mechanics need to center on concerns relevant to exploration.
Consider food. I'm old enough to remember the early rpgs on PCs. The ones that your party would suck back their water or food every time you clunked their block bodies on the screen until it hit zero and they started dying as you plunked them along. That wasn't fun for me. I thought it was stupid. Why couldn't they have gone on half rations or actively conserved their water?
Our source material is Star Trek in whatever flavor we might prefer. There were few occasions when food as a requirement/necessity was worth mentioning. Where away missions are typically intended for short durations crews didn't take picnic lunches with them. Food should only be relevant if it pertains to the story.
I'd like to see more emphaisis placed on interactions and social situations made with NPCS. It would be refreshing to see decisions that had consequences relating to mission outcomes and potential obstacles. More possibilities, less linear outcomes might actual give them more replayability.
Maybe a morality system that defined the characters we have invented that collected stats and determined our captains "type". If you were a Kirk or a Picard would mission option be available that would be triggered because of previous decisions that had been made? I'd view this as similar to story missions that offered a few choices based on a captain's profession. I would like to have seen more of this but built around who our captain's are; Not what their job is.
Commanding Officer: Captain Pyotr Ramonovich Amosov
Dedication Plaque: "Nil Intentatum Reliquit"
Certainly we could make use of or adapt some of your suggestions, but for the level of detail you're talking about, you want another game. Arma III comes to mind as a very detailed game (which is what makes it work). Artemis Bridge Simulator might scratch the itch for a detailed starship command sim, but I haven't actually played it.
Sounds like a first world problem. If the single player game was as dead as PvP it wouldn't need much server at all
singleplayer content cant be dead...antisocial people dont leave the house to allow it to be dead.
Types the person whose "social interaction" this evening consisted of hopping this thread and contributing a snarky server "joke". That's not the funny part. Happy Valentine's Day
assigning Doffs to do exploration missions on the planet where they may die or be captured , you may have to rescue them ect.
Diplomacy
resources...animal vegetable mineral and places to use them
weather.........natural traits help the character and NPCs...cold heat.....give reason for clothing and Eva suits..No bikini on a frozen planet
your ship size ;imits your away teams your duty officers become important there your teams !
Equip your duty officers/away teams
Allow certain classes of ships to land on the planet as a base of opperations or slowly fly around the planet scanning
use shuttles carried by the ships to fly around and land with teams or pick up drop cargo
This is the tip of the iceburg
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
Nothing in STO takes long enough for food to be a factor in the slightest. Excluding the kind of games where a day lasts 24 minutes instead of 24 hours, all games that include a hunger mechanic tend to exaggerate the issue to an absolutely ridiculous degree.
Using shuttles to go from one area to another on a planet could be interesting if there's something to do in the shuttle map (combat, navigating throuh tunnels, etc). If its just flying, waste of time. And you'd need an explanation every time for why they don't just use the transporters.
It probably isn't possible to make your own shuttle land to pick you up in a ground map, it would have to be a generic shuttle. Similar subjects have come up before like why you can't see your own ship parked in ESD and the devs have said thats not possible.
Creating different movement animations based on environment sounds like a royal waste of time.
AI is difficult. I'd be happy if my boffs could manage to run by my side instead of lagging 10m behind, and use their weapons without pausing to think between shots. Giving them emotional states is overkill.
No, I don't want my boffs to blurt out random one-liners during the action, I've played games that do that and it gets old fast. Speech bubbles like some of the social zone NPCs have would be better. With customizable lines, of course.
Yeah, but that's the issue: a single area based around exploration won't be enough to fundamentally change the game. It's a space combat game and unless the devs put an enormous amount of time into making what's basically another game to attach to this one, there won't be enough exploration for people to stick around just for that.
I was absolutely astounded playing a foundry mission the other day when I beamed down to a planet with weaker than usual gravity. I had no idea the game engine could do that. Why are the devs not including this more often? Would be great to have a platforming section on a low gravity world.