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Exploration is one but what other "keystones of Trek" do you want to see more of?
rosetyler51
Member Posts: 1,631 Arc User
Title!
For me it is the ship and crew. You don't need to go full SWTOR (no one should ever go fill SWTOR) but I loved the Romulan starter missions because they gave better reasons for these people to be flying with you than you open a box from the lobi store/c-store/bought for dil.
For ships, there is a few things I think Picard got right and the feeling he have Stargazer is one of them. Knowing everything wrong with it part of me screams to buy the MVAE, name it after my old advanced escort and go flying around like I did back in the old days before I got my bugship and dread.
So yes. I know the odds of my two keystones of Trek will most likely never make it into STO but what about you.
For me it is the ship and crew. You don't need to go full SWTOR (no one should ever go fill SWTOR) but I loved the Romulan starter missions because they gave better reasons for these people to be flying with you than you open a box from the lobi store/c-store/bought for dil.
For ships, there is a few things I think Picard got right and the feeling he have Stargazer is one of them. Knowing everything wrong with it part of me screams to buy the MVAE, name it after my old advanced escort and go flying around like I did back in the old days before I got my bugship and dread.
So yes. I know the odds of my two keystones of Trek will most likely never make it into STO but what about you.
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Nothing wrong with that. You want to fly that, go right ahead.
In canon, you rarely if ever saw them actually "exploring." Once in awhile it might serve as the lead for a plot, but that's about it.
Most of what you consider "exploring" always came after the exploration was actually done, ie once they had settled on a particular location to investigate.
I'd prefer to see more/better mystery-based FEs.
If I had to add a "keystone" to this list, it would be that some of Trek's best episodes started with or revolved around a mystery.
Give me something film noir, not whatever that junk was the series' kept trying to peddle by the late-90s and into ENT.
I'm having trouble envisioning this. Could you provide an example?
That'd be nice, and more diplomacy, or options to disable ships rather then destroy.
I think the first 2 can still be delivered. But most stories currently try to serve the metaplot, and while that can be interesting - it's not enough.
Agreed. It should make a difference whether you destroy the Ferengi ship in "Operation Gamma", kill Hassan in "the Undying" or let them live. Some kind of reputation (good or bad) that gives you access to certain places, mission and gear depending on your descisions.
Multiple choice in missions without any real consequences for your game is useless.
I destroyed the Ferengi ship; now I can't access (content
That stuff is best left for a single player game, in my opinion.
As someone who has played SWTOR, I agree.
Taking the other course might get you points in something else, but ultimately you accumulate enough Diplomacy by other means to unlock the options anyway.
The system exists in the game already, it's just being shockingly under-utilized. It could be expanded to include other options for other Commendation types, as well. Presumably. If the devs thought it was worth the effort.
I'd like to see more of this sort of thing, anyway. (Like, for example, in the now-deleted "Friend of my Enemy" mission, maybe you could have had a range of different options open up if your Medical or Scientific commendation rank was high enough - or you might gain Medical or Science XP from that mission... I'm just thinking aloud here, I suppose. But the principle's sound.)
e.g. You're playing a Tactical officer and in the course of a mission you come across a task that requires a Science or Engineering officer to complete. As the game stands now, you would have to re-do the mission with either a Science officer character or an Engineering officer character. What I would propose (and I think it has been suggested before) would be to allow a qualified boff on the away team perform the task that the character is not qualified to perform.
You mean backstories for ships and crew, right? There are people who swap ships a lot. Regarding the crew, the crew mechanic is so broken, does anyone care about their crew outside of their bridge officers? Or is that what you're talking about...just the BOs.
I get that it's not entirely that sexy, or relevant in an MMO where we discuss the validity of DPS over everything else, and we look for the most efficient way to kill everything in sight.
But I'd like to see missions where there were multiple outcomes, with varying degrees of rewards based on the direction you choose. Combat receives the lowest, police actions mid valued, with diplomatic solutions having the best rewards over time.
And I don't want it to be cut and dry. I want intrigue, guile, and perhaps a bit of evil behiind-the-scenes 'House of Cards' style game play.
"If words were water, the humans would drown us all"
But, a space nurse alone isn't enough, and neither are the shields or the 2-piece Adapted MACO bonus.
"Meaningful decisions" is probably outside the capability of the genre, as I elaborate on below.
But what's the reality of the "Diplomacy" option? One extra chat option which serves to bypass some other content.
Without the diplomatic option branching off into some sort of (even mildly) complex content, it just doesn't seem like a wise decision to pursue.
Just look at SWTOR, where you could often do something similar.
Light Side option: let the guy live (though you may never see him again, except in the background of your final class-specific mission).
Dark Side option: kill him, either with a single click by accepting that choice, or by engaging in a sub-60s fight.
Third option (because there was always a third option): a lite version of the light/dark option, based on the context of the mission.
They can't have meaningful impact on gameplay because it creates a huge number of plot discrepancies they need to resolve for later stories; in essence, this is the "you may never see him again, except in the background of your final class-specific mission" result I mention above.
Meaningful decisions also set the stage for additional problems, which I have already brought up earlier. There may be some high level mission that I really want to complete (for RP or min-max purposes), but a decision I made back at level 3 has the consequence of preventing me from even accessing the high level mission.
It would be difficult and time consuming to develop a quest hierarchy that both provides the diversity of options and consequences needed to make "meaningful choices" worth implementing, without constantly running into the headaches of huge plot discrepancies and unintended consequences stemming from uninformed decisions.
The two demands on such a system are contradictory, and the middle ground is extremely narrow. And, the closer they aim for that middle ground, the more time it will take to develop.
2) OP you actually stole the two that i would have put in hehe. Exploration obviously...but the very first time I first heard about Star Trek Online, before i even did any research on it i pictured myself taking control of a crewman or officer and walking around a ship (with other players) doing all the mundane stuff. I actually saw a quote in someones signature one time that was said by one of the lead devs and he stated "people dont want to play STO and stand at a console pushing buttons" or something to that effect. When i read that i kinda raised my hand up a bit and said to myself uhhh...i kinda do.
In other words, it's so broken it needs to be redesigned entirely.
Seducing alien women.
Spock and even data did it.
Not everything you see on the internet is true - Abraham Lincoln
Occidere populo et effercio confractus
Though completely redesigning it is an option.
A) Finding something weird, or someone weird, out in space, and having to deal with them.
C) (More rarely outside of DS9) The hero ship, or members of its crew, getting caught up in a battle with a known and established enemy, or has to help an established ally deal with something.
Then think about what we have in this game as far as episodes. Basically, fight this, fight that, do a little exploring on the side, avoid this fight because it would TRIBBLE everyone over, talk to this guy here, and then get back to fighting things.
Generally, what I want to see is a system that allows for certain types of on-ship events. While I understand that there are challenges associated with this, most having to do with how long it takes the modeling team to do anything, it seems that there are decent interior assets for every single ship in this game besides maybe the Tholian, Voth and Cardassian vessels, and some specialty ships like the Breen ones and the Samsar. Surely the existence of hallway parts and rooms that already work nicely would make the amount of time spent modeling stuff significantly less? Aside from that, all that needs to be done is that certain "points" for, say, broken technology to fix, zombified crew members, alien boarding parties, or whatever else is part of the event, to appear, along with a few places for certain NPC contacts to appear and the like. Then, event types can be converted into sequences and the engine can, to some extent, randomize the characters and elements within reason.
For example, for a basic event type about the ship being attacked by alien parasites, the mission might begin with anything from a bridge officer suddenly falling unconscious at his/her post, to your operations officer informing you that cases of a mysterious sickness are occurring all over the ship, to you being asked to come to, say, Main Engineering, and being attacked by zombified crew members on the way there. Then, you would (always) report to sickbay, where you would somehow assist the CMO in discovering the cause of what happened. Afterwards, the possibilities would branch out again - You could discover that the parasites were created by an alien race testing the limits of your crew's immune systems, or perhaps just the Tal'Shiar, or that they came from a starbase your ship had recently docked at to re-supply. In the end, you might find yourself in a (ray-)gunfight with a squadron of Tal'Shiar operatives in your mess hall, or in the science lab attempting to find the right phased nadion frequency to disable the parasites and render them harmless (probably through some minigame). Based on your effectiveness (How fast you defeated the Tal'Shiar, your minigame score, etc.) you would be rewarded a certain amount of XP/Expertise, Dilithium, and perhaps one or two types of DOff Commendation XP relevant to the type of mission. (In my example, probably Medical and Tactical.)
Ideally, after the original systems update new shipboard event types could be added relatively easily, as long as they didn't require new points on each interior map to put things in. (Would require foresight on the part of the systems designer, but doesn't sound like an unattainable goal.) With a system like this in place, bridges and interiors might become desirable again, so Cryptic would have more incentive to sell them, make more occasionally, and fix issues with ones that already exist.
Other than Shipboard Events and of course exploration, I'd like to see the one last missing keystone of Trek - emphasis on faction ships. Hybrids, if necessary, but with Starfleet/KDF/Romulan design principles added to the alien-of-the-season stuff, rather than this spam of alien vessels that are always so much better than anything your faction has to offer. ESD, Qo'noS, and mol'Rihan's space maps look ridiculous when every other player ship is some oddity from the Delta Quadrant or the depths of subspace.
...Additionally, I'd like to see one or two more featured episodes based on getting pulled into some kind of spacial anomaly. Temporal Ambassador was great, and really served to break things up a little; while I don't expect the kind of quality and length of that episode necessarily, something comparable, whether time travel or just weird space stuff, would be nice to see every once in a while. In general, throwing in a few FEs that don't necessarily pertain to the main storyline or topic of the season can never hurt, and makes the game and universe feel a lot more interesting and expansive. (Bring back Saturday's Child!)
"Star Trek: Online" does not have a game engine, which will allow it to deliver a 'modern rpg experience'. After working my way through "SWTOR", I realized that you have to pay for quality. After you work though a three to four months subscription, you will have everything unlocked for Free-to-Play (Preferred). $60-$100 gives you endless rewards.
"Star Trek: Online" should have been designed as an MMORPG, so it can deliver a robust 'Star Trek' experience. As a result of Cryptic focusing on grinding and timegates, the game's mechanics overshadow the 'Star Trek' brand.
Even though 'SWTOR' messed up the Free-to-Play model, the majority of the game preserved the overall brand. No timegates. No 'endless' grinds'. No micro-micro-micro-transactions. 'SWTOR's' c-market and resource requirements don't get in the way of storytelling, roleplaying, and PvP.
When 'SWTOR' and 'STO' first fought for dominance, (before the arrival of STO's reputation system), the winner of the 'Free-to-Play' model was 'STO'.
After 'STO' decided to overly focus on grinding, timegates, and macro-transactions, the winner of 'quality driven' content went to 'SWOTR'.
In order for 'Star Trek: Online' to remain remain 'Star Trek', Cryptic will need to put the brand before the grind. I don't think Cryptic is capable of delivering.
*nub nub*
Shh, Treek. Shh... I promise to log into 'SWOTR' tonight.
*pats Ewok on head and gives her a cookie*
And this is the part where I stop, laugh, and then cry over the fact that I can only play 3 races (2 because are really just humans with really good piecing), the fact that crafting is pretty much alts, exchange, or paying EA.
Ah yes lets not forget the slowed leveling or gear locks that you have to pay to bypass.
Edit:AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Talking about that about game fills me so much pure RAGE. I wanted to like SWTOR and maybe even in some dark dark DARK part of me I still do but when I think about that f2p system just second verse same as the first. And yes I know you are going to say why don't I just pay them but here is the thing. I won't be paying for content, I will be paying to stop the pain and to me I would rather live with that pain than to give the bean counters who thought up that EVIL system another +1 to the scoresheet.
My response was hidden within my original post:
Good things cost money.
Once you subscribe for four months, you can: (1) level you character to the top, (2) unlock important perks, and (3) buy quality items off the c-market. Upon the expiration of your subscription, you can seamlessly work through the story missions. Trick is to level your character through flashpoints. Work on over level 10 class missions for later.
Star Trek has always been about the human condition for me. It didn't matter if there were phasers and aliens somewhere in the far reaches of space in my opinion we were able to explore ourselves. Where ever the crew of the Enterprise or any other ship that followed went; There they were.
Story missions have taken us places and we have done "stuff" but while enjoyable something is missing. Who is my captain? Who are my other captains and is there anything that distinguishes one from the other in the context of the game? On a few missions my tac captains broke into weapons lockers, My science officers treated a couple people and my engineers averted a warpcore breach. There have been distinctions made by what they are but there is no indication of who they are.
I would like to see more "sidetracks" in missions. I don't think anyone would have any desire to drudge through the catalogue to add such a feature to any of the existing missions but it would have been nice to see more alternatives based upon the "type" of captain involved.
If you were to present the same story scenario to each of the canon captains would the end result be the same? Would the manner in which they got to story's end be the same?
I don't know how you would implement something like this beyond including alternative dialogues and actions at points in missions. Maybe there would be some other objective that might be "unlocked" by having made decisions on a similar type in the past.
I suggest looking at diametrically opposed traits; there would have to be a few sets because good/evil is too cookie cutter. A few I'd suggest;
Authoritarian or Open Bridge
Diplomat or Warrior
Lover or Fighter (maybe just lover at all? Giving someone a line typically advanced the plot for Kirk)
Vengeful or Forgiving
Would any of these affect the greater outcome in a story? Probably not. In the smallest way I would like to see the game pretend to acknowledge that my characters have personalities. Something that suggest input and dissemble the linear journey a bit.
*nods*
Sidequests, companion interaction, human dilemma, etc...
"Star Trek: Online" does not dig deep into cultural philosophy, human anxiety, and social conundrums.
As I said in my original posting, "Star Trek: Online" does not have the necessary game engine.
Cryptic also does not have the right writing staff.
Ok. You are right. As a "modern rpg experience" SWTOR is nice. You really get what you pay for but as a MMORPG? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA SWTOR is the only MMO I have heard of so bad it killed another MMO to get released. Turn the Jedi/Sith classes into one class, rip out a good deal of the pointless parts MMOs need to have, finetune leveling and we got KOTOR 3. The game everyone wanted. Sell the other classes as DLC storylines for at 20 dollars at least. Why did they do they a MMO? One of two reasons. They knew they was flooding the market with RPGs (I would rather hoped to see a Dragon Age or Mass Effect MMO. That could have been a big chance for a lot of world building that players would see the next DA/ME games.) The other one is the one I'm willing to bet is true. They knew KotOR 3 would sell so turn it into a MMO and they have a stream of money to fuel their giant death robot.
...but, you proved my point.
Why did you like the 'Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic' duology?
'SWTOR's' strength is in the story.
When it comes to the 'Star Trek' universe, why are people driven to the franchise?
Science-fiction and... 'story'.
In order for 'Star Trek: Online' to deliver a 'Star Trek' experience, the key focus must shift from grinding to storytelling. Cryptic didn't build 'Star Trek: Online' with the right game engine, nor do they have a talented writing staff.
BioWare has both the engine and writers.
Many of 'Star Trek's' television scripts were written by science-fiction writers, literary professionals, and psychologists. 'Star Trek: TNG' and 'Star Trek: DS9' were written by people who breathed literature, history, psychology, science, etc...
Cryptic breaths reputation systems, fleet holdings, and timegates.
Ow. I have said before pretty much talking about this game make me feel and I'm still talking about it. This is what madness feels like.
Short version. I would rather read a SWTOR book or look at a lets play then play the game. Guess what that means? IT FAILS AS A GAME!
Edit: We are getting off topic, lets please don't.
We are on topic.
You just didn't like my answer.
Within 'Star Trek: Online's' current state, Cryptic cannot deliver on key 'Star Trek' elements. 'Star Trek: Online' lacks the game engine, writers, and creative direction.
Cryptic can deliver 'Star Trek' styled ships; however, they cannot create a 'Star Trek' styled story.