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Would STO have been better if...
kjwashington
Member Posts: 2,529 Arc User
... they had limited the number of abilities that you could use? Let us not forget the term k.i.s.s. (keep it simple, stupid). Now I'm not going to ask that Cryptic try to change the game at this point, since I'm sure it would be impossible. I just want people to voice their opinions on the matter of how ludicrously over-complicated the devs made the ability system in the game.
I want everyone to look at their in-game trays and count how many abilities that you use regularly. I now want you to try to remember how regularly the ships in Star Trek used these abilities, if at all. Most people I know have both trays completely full (though they may not use every ability). This is the only MMO I've played, but I find it hard to believe that other games are anywhere near this complicated when it comes to how many abilities you have at your disposal.
Honestly, I would have kept it as four abilities max. One default for your ship class (not changeable)*, one default for your ship (changeable), and two or three as your choice. This way you can use w,a,s,d for movement, and your abilities would be 1,2,3,4.
*I made the ship class ability not changeable, because I wanted to emphasize that the ship classes should stick to their roles. For example, a science ship would have maybe extend shields as the ship class ability, and a BoP would have it's battlecloack as this ability.
I want everyone to look at their in-game trays and count how many abilities that you use regularly. I now want you to try to remember how regularly the ships in Star Trek used these abilities, if at all. Most people I know have both trays completely full (though they may not use every ability). This is the only MMO I've played, but I find it hard to believe that other games are anywhere near this complicated when it comes to how many abilities you have at your disposal.
Honestly, I would have kept it as four abilities max. One default for your ship class (not changeable)*, one default for your ship (changeable), and two or three as your choice. This way you can use w,a,s,d for movement, and your abilities would be 1,2,3,4.
*I made the ship class ability not changeable, because I wanted to emphasize that the ship classes should stick to their roles. For example, a science ship would have maybe extend shields as the ship class ability, and a BoP would have it's battlecloack as this ability.
Support 90 degree arc limitation on BFaW! Save our ships from looking like flying disco balls of dumb!
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We come in peace, SHOOT TO KILL!
But depending on my ship... I either have only a couple empty slots or they are all filled up.
hmm I'll have to try that out, thanks.
That'll never change, especially not now. It would be nice to have a more simplified game where there wasn't so much going on, but then some people would get bored I guess. As it presently stands, those who wish to keep it basic can do so, by sticking with traditional weaponry and consoles, and using basic abilities or traits. Those that wish for that little bit more have the ability to do so.
Please take note that You do not speak for Me on any subject. Just because you can't process the game doesn't mean that anyone else can not do it either.
You can have SIX trays. Three that are horizontal, and three that are vertical. Plus all the extra LCARS that go with specialty ships, like the Romulans have, Federation Cruisers and Science ships, Klingon Carriers etc.
im pretty sure he didnt say he was speaking on your behalf.. he even went as far to say this is the only mmo he plays and sets the bar for his knowledge there... these types of posts have no room in a healthy discussion...
now that that is over.. i agree, the general trend of abilities and power trays when sto was being released and built was downsizing. i now in wow of past, and rift, that the sheer number of abilities was tedious and hard to control.. remember, we are not only supposed to use abilities, but also keep track of where we are on the screen, usually keep track of where others are on the screen, and keep track of whats going on around you..( ie, what is the npc your fighting doing..)
when the game released, it wasnt that bad, sure, you had all the boff abilities, but you didnt have much else.. now with all these special consoles, and rep stuff, and all the other junk cryptic has overpopulated the game with, its nuts to try and keep track.. i am a veteran mmo gamer, i have played lots of mmo's and usually rank pretty good, not the best, but im no slouch either.. and this game has one of the worst ability and power tray set ups..
firstly, the customization of power trays is atrocious, its a pain to set keybinds, its a pain to use keybinds. and half the time you log in and everything you set up, is cleared out anyways.. lol...
secondly, cryptic for some odd reason got it stuck in their head that introducing mass abilities was an answer to the content crisis.. /facepalm.. it was not.. shure some people may like it, but it makes the game rather hard to play.. . last i checked i shouldnt need a job at nasa to be able to play a game..
more so, i agree with the guy who stated that sto should have a system like nw... i generally hate nw, but the way they limit you on abilities is awesome... it really makes you think about when you use what.. in this game, you can go into pvp, or pve for that matter, and counter every single crowd control, or counter every ability that is thrown at you, and you dont have to worry about cool downs, cause there is at least three other abilities that can back up the ability you just used..
its like my stance on torpedoes.. you should only have a set amount of torpedoes to throw at peeps, and when you exhaust them, they are gone till you are able to replenish them... abilities should be treated the same way, this game makes it so all you have to do is mash buttons without thinking... i want to think damnit.. lol.. i want consequenses for not using my combos right, orusing an ability when i shouldnt have. when i play an instance, i literally fly around in circles and mash space bar and click abilities, and im usually second in dmg.. pretty lame if you ask me.
i think a good answer to the over use of abilities is limiting how many abilities you can slot per ability family.. ie, if you have a break hold, say attack pattern omega, and you slot that, than you shouldnt be able to slot polorize hull, or any of the other 40 million abilities that break holds.. its even worse now that they made the infinatly bad decision to give us a device that cuts the cool down of abilities in half.. (sure it doesnt work on everything, but come on...
another good example of cryptic going overboard with sto is traitts.. jesus, my fleet just unlocked the ability to get extra traitts from the research center.. so what, in two years will we have two or three more traitts added.. its cryptics inability to sway away from power creep. for some reason they love it...
I love complex games because I love learning their mechanics and exploiting them.
The OP is effectively requesting that Cryptic dumb down the game... for the sake of it being dumb. Let me be the first to say:
HELL NO.
On the other hand, Ground only allows you to use something like 9 or 10 abilities max (your kit plus your natives ones).
While I appreciate the KISS approach in context, I don't think it would work in this game for space combat. It's the complexities of space combat in this game that make it really interesting. Otherwise, you'd end up with the kind of mess than was SWTOR's space combat, which was terribad.
Also note that changing space combat to KISS would mean a complete reworking of, well, everything. The game is currently balanced with that complexity in mind.
On my main, I've got 3 rows flled, + a 4th half filled.
There are a ton of abilities...lol
+Batts, + RnR + + Rep Abilities... It is a lot of abilities.
Way back I only ever had like 2.5 rows filled.
That's DR power creep at work :P
And then people like bikes that are actually nice to ride.
Some people think more buttons is better.
Some people like a usable UI.
lol, there is complex, then there is rediculous.. sto's space combat is rediculous.. there is so much bloat.. its not just about complexity, its also about playability.. right now, everyone can counter everything, because of the bloat in abilities especially after dr..
im not saying they need to dumb down say boff abilities or anything, what they need to do is stop adding tons of new abilities all at once. each time a new ship comes out, more than half the time it has some stupid console that grants yet another ability.. just release the ship.. save the special abilities for iconic abilities, say like the riker manuever and the picard manuever.
when you develop a game, you want to have balance (something im pretty sure cryptic employees cant even pronounce lol.) right now, if i get tractor beamed, i can get out of it automatically, and then, if another player or npc tractor beams me, i have yet another get out of jail free card for it.. further more, there is no consequence to the timing inwhicn i use abilities..
you jump into this convo, and cry about not wanting it to loose complxity, well my friend, that happened a long time ago... literally, there is nothing complex about the system now.. i think only being able to use a set amount of skills would make the game more complex as you have to choose which ones to use, and create a balance of dps, and surviveability, and further more be johnny on the spot on your timing to use said abilities..
you claim limiting skills will make the game less complex, well my friend, with all the bloat, there is no way to mess up when using these abilities anymore. to be honest, the system we have now is the easiest system on the mmo market, and the most over bloated..
Also, fewer abilities don't necessarily make a better game, and vice-versa.
As for me, the only "complaint" I have about the abilities is how easy it is to create things that were either life-threatening or hard-to-come-with in the shows, and how easy it is to counter them, not how many there are in the game.
So STO would be better if the game was never made? I'm guessing it could be worst.
If you can bind it to space bar and see no significant performance loss in a fight, it ought to be a power you can automate, IMHO.
Energy Management
We have an energy management system in the game. And we have 4 powers that provide a buff to an energy system. And a power that removes power from one system to add it to the other, which can be augmented to also lower your cooldowns on powers.
For some reason, the major purpose of the energy system seems to be to put weapon power to maximum and focus the rest on either shields or aux, or to put aux on maximum and put the rest on shields.
And then we pop those buffs to boost whatever power we're interested in. We mostly use that other power to reduce cooldowns and would otherwise ignore that power. (and now that there are so many other ways to reduce cooldowns, that power is almost irrelevant again.)
Why, for the love of Q, don't we play around with the energy settings more durnig active play?
The reason of course are the special mechanics in how powers work - if you don't max out weapon power as energy weapon damage user, you're doing it wrong. There is never a reason to lower your weapon power if you're shooting guns, you can't get any meaningful comparable benefits in putting your power anywhere else.
If the different power levels were more equal in value, then we might be able to actually ditch 4-5 powers from the game, because all the "fun" energy management would just be done with the existing dials.
(Of course, we still want something called "emergency power" somewhere in our game system, because it's a cool canonical expression that we just need in a Trek game.. But it might work differently)
Another Example:
Doubling up on POwers
The whole global and shared cooldown system exists because we can double up on bridge officer skills. We could design a system where this doubling up is neither neccessary nor possible. We could, while we're at it, also remove most of the ranks of skills and create a flat hierarchy.
Does it really matter whether you equip APO III, CSV II, TS II and TT I on an escort or CSV III or APO III, TT II and TS I on an Escort? It does now, of course (no one needs Tactical Team II), but mostly it means that one of these two builds is better than the other. That is not really a meaningful choice, since it's not situational. Equipping APB instead of APO, that is likely to be a meaningful choice, since there are definitely scenarios where you'd like to have APB and scenarios where you'd like to have APO.
This alone could probably mean that you'd be able to reduce your powers in your speciality from 7 to 4 easily.