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QoL Idea: &Dock feature
lillihenny
Member Posts: 36 Arc User
I was hoping we could have a discussion on map transitions and some steps that could be taken to streamline some of the wait times these impose on the player. Unquestionably, STO needs to partition zones to handle the player load. I have no quarrel with that. The problem that grinds on me is when I face the prospect of sitting before two or more loading screens in quick succession. A common example: heading to Sol to dock at ESD. First you have to zone into Earth orbit *Loading Screen* then dock at ESD *Loading screen*. It seems unnecessarily bothersome to have to zone into orbit just to click the button three seconds later to transition again to where you want to go. My suggestion is for the UI to have some sort of &Dock check box that you may select before clicking the transition button and then it would skip over the exterior space buffer area the player isn't intending to spend any time in.
Worst offenders are the Fleet bases which I've started to collectively call the Loading Screen Adventure Zone. I've taken to hopping from the Research Lab to the Dilithium mine in my daily rounds, because bonus dilithium is too good to pass up. But here's how that adventure goes:
Warp to Research Lab
*Loading screen*
Dock
*Loading screen*
I wander about a little for the daily missions then, this is where things get a bit cruel...
Transfer to Fleet Starbase
*Loading Screen*
Dock
*Loading Screen*
Shuttle to Dilithium Mine
*Loading Screen*
Dock
*Loading Screen*
Put keyboard back together after taking medication to silence my inner angry German kid.
Sometimes the loading screens are quick and sometimes they seem to hang out and chat up the 1% symbol a fair while. It's a bit of a lottery, which is why I don't look forward to facing two or more in succession. The suggested alternative:
Transfer to Fleet Starbase [*]&Dock
*Loading Screen*
Shuttle to Dilithium Mine [*]&Dock
*Loading Screen*
Done. And with much less screaming about Unreal Tournament for some unfathomable reason.
In summary: With an &Dock option cutting the (most of the time) superfluous space vistas out of the loop, the number of loading screens the player has to endure is halved. And the player would still have the option of un-selecting the &Dock check box if they want to go for a fly outside.
Thoughts? Suggestions? Better ideas?
Worst offenders are the Fleet bases which I've started to collectively call the Loading Screen Adventure Zone. I've taken to hopping from the Research Lab to the Dilithium mine in my daily rounds, because bonus dilithium is too good to pass up. But here's how that adventure goes:
Warp to Research Lab
*Loading screen*
Dock
*Loading screen*
I wander about a little for the daily missions then, this is where things get a bit cruel...
Transfer to Fleet Starbase
*Loading Screen*
Dock
*Loading Screen*
Shuttle to Dilithium Mine
*Loading Screen*
Dock
*Loading Screen*
Put keyboard back together after taking medication to silence my inner angry German kid.
Sometimes the loading screens are quick and sometimes they seem to hang out and chat up the 1% symbol a fair while. It's a bit of a lottery, which is why I don't look forward to facing two or more in succession. The suggested alternative:
Transfer to Fleet Starbase [*]&Dock
*Loading Screen*
Shuttle to Dilithium Mine [*]&Dock
*Loading Screen*
Done. And with much less screaming about Unreal Tournament for some unfathomable reason.
In summary: With an &Dock option cutting the (most of the time) superfluous space vistas out of the loop, the number of loading screens the player has to endure is halved. And the player would still have the option of un-selecting the &Dock check box if they want to go for a fly outside.
Thoughts? Suggestions? Better ideas?
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A cutscene of your ship approaching followed by a beam-in.
But, yes, players want to fly around the exterior of a station, sure. Let them do that after they land. Sure, that means two loadscreens for them but they're the ones who want to engage in fluff gameplay, not the average person who enters the sol system 9 times out of 10 to go to ESD. Make it an option from the ESD interior to go to system space but make spawning on ESD the default destination from sector space. Same with Qo'noS. Same with New Romulus. Same with Kobali Prime and Nimbus.
Beyond that, I think what our main starbase needs is a promenade. This should be the default destination rather than the cluttered Ops. I'm not saying to get rid of anything existing from Fleet Starbases but make them all accessible from a turbolift. Make the default destination a promenade with mall style access to most of the fleet holding services.
So you have a Romulan Embassy room with those vendors, a Dilithium Mine transport station, a Delta Spire command room, a Krenim Laboratory, etc. All as shops on the Fleet Starbase promenade which would be the default location spawn for the fleet starbase.
I can imagine that this would be hard to implement, but I have a feeling it would not be impossible in the code.
However, I am afraid that since this would just be a QOL improvement instead of a new shiney feature that would be easily monitored, monetized and metricized, we won't see a feature like this any time soon. Simply said: it would probably take too much time for absolutely zero financial game.
Maybe as a pet project of one of the developers in between, like Hearts and Minds?
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I'm sure your DPS is great, but as Kahless said, "a petaQ with high system mastery is still a petaQ." (Well, he should have said it...!)
If everywhere had an "&dock" button, who would ever be in the system map?
Not arguing one side or the other, just a genuine question.
Might as well... Most systems don't serve a purpose anyways so it would be beneficial in Download time and maintenance.
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One thing I would definitely like to see is for all of the system maps to allow for instant transport to the station/planet once you're loaded in. On some maps, like ESD, you have to manually fly your ship for a bit before you can transfer to the station. On other maps, like Kobali Prime, you can click to beam down without moving your ship. I would like to see all maps function more like Kobali Prime and let me beam down as soon as the map is loaded if I want to rather than making me reposition to do so.
Honestly, I kinda feel you should for fleet holdings. I make similar rounds as the OP, and the long load screens for holdings get really annoying when I'm pressed for time. While I don't mind the system maps at all for the social zones, I'd be happier if I could bypass them for the fleet holdings, since those take so much longer to load than normal.
The Embassy does it right: If you transwarp from your Starbase or Spire, you get put in the shuttlebay. If you take a shuttle to your Base/Spire, you get put in the interior. From there, if you want to visit the system map, to use the transwarp gate or just to roleplay, it's still an option, but if you don't, you just bypassed a needless loadscreen (and I presume generating a new instance that will barely get used server-side).
I don't understand how the Embassy-style transfers didn't become standard for fleet maps, it seems like such a better setup.
LOL my same thoughts. I get tired of the "loading screen", if you do any of the foundry event created by players is the same thing too.
Most unexpectedly, this turned into a flame-fest! Closed it goes!. /sigh What flamefestery is this? pwlaughingtrendy
They could be accessed from the planet, maybe a few daily missions could be added there spinning out of things that happen planetside. Or they could just exist as a screenshot social zone type thing.
As it stands, we're going from one social zone to a second social zone to a third social zone. The closest I can remember to this in other games was for awhile in WoW when I set my hearth to Shattrath so I could go to Stormwind, hearth, and go to Darnassus. As I recall, the devs made a conscious effort to try to get us away from that by adding services to other cities and expanding the game in different directions because "loadscreens aren't fun" and because they wanted us to gather in new environments and wanted the new social zones to work off their financial investment with use.
In particular with the fleet stuff, I tend to string together those in a way that renders sector space just about useless because it's efficient but it means a ton of loadscreens and visiting places that have no real use aside from being pretty. But then when I head back to ESD, well... Really over the whole trip, I notice that docking is completely different from one to the next. Sometimes it's a button, sometimes it's a dialogue, sometimes I move closer to do it, sometimes I don't, sometimes I can warp to another location from an interior, sometimes I can't.
I periodically hear about new players who freak out and get confused by greyed out beam-out options at the Academy.
The dilithium mine space transwarp was broken last I saw and lead back to the dilithium mine space zone but the ground transwarp option works.
When I was a MUD/MUSH admin, we'd go through cleaning up the directional coordinates periodically and trying to discourage redundant rooms. We'd give people room budgets for construction projects and frequently say, "Look. This foyer is just making somebody type a directional coordinate twice. Include the foyer in the house and then you've got an extra room back in your budget that you can do something functional with." I don't think it was ever a storage issue. I think we just saw it as arbitrarily splitting up players and if you're going to have an extra room to split them in, better it be at the end of the map tree where they're actively seeking out being split up than closer to the heart of the map tree where they're looking for signs of social interaction.
Yes, excepting the first time you visit the Delta Quadrant via the introductory mission, going from Beta to Delta via the Dyson Sphere lands you in the Delta Quadrant, but going back from Delta to Beta lands you in the Sphere which means you have to double transition to get where you want.
I also forgot to mention previously that there is one instance I can think of where this feature is, in a way, already in the game. Starfleet Academy gives you the option of beaming directly to the Beta Quadrant if you want to bypass Earth orbit. Hands down my favorite map transfer button in the game, for obvious reasons.
I try to think about under what circumstances do I wind up parked in Earth orbit for a good stretch of time. Usually this is when I'm tinkering with a build - testing the effect of switching in and out different gear, cooling off trasnwarp timers/captain skills before my next run/rehabilitating injured crew, or more rarely when I've warped there but gone afk between transitions to take care of chores in the real world. I do like these social zones as they give you a sense of the game world being nice and populated, and for newcomers an idea of the diversity and scale of the ships all in proximity to one another, so I would never campaign to lose these zones altogether.
It saves us time and removes some wasted load on the servers.
I think not catering to "convenience" shouldn't be confused with clunkiness.
Why load a map where there's literally nothing to do? And why have something like 5 different methods of map transition that require different dialogues and different positioning?
Somebody shouldn't get trapped on Starfleet Academy in their first ten minutes outside the tutorial just because beaming up and down are inconsistent.
Lol, in all seriousness, and non confrontational at all here;
While you might think that there are space zone that may be useless and nothing to do, there are other players in the game who do like those kinds of things. Myself for example, I love using SOL system for nice video shots and screen shots. I also like using it as a space social zone of sorts. There are also those in the role playing community where doing away with the maps, that might not have anything that interests you, but is a big resource for the role playing community to use (Fleet Holding included).
There is also the whole part where SOL system, (or any other system like DS9 and what have you) are systems that you need to sit in to get proper numbers on ship powers and weapons. This is something that is not accurately displayed in sector space.
I totally get where you're coming from with the map loading times, and I'm not entirely sure if that is just a number of people in on the global server or what. There have been times where I've alt tabbed to look at imgur while waiting for a map to load.
One thing that I really, really do agree on is the map transition part between fleet holdings. The Beaming to Embassy is a perfect transition that I wish was kind of spread out with all of the holdings.
As for the skipping the "middle man" we'll call it, maybe an additional option from Sector Space to dock with ESD for example could be viable.
Me personally, I don't see it as a huge QoL issue for me (except for the Fleet Holding bit).
Like I said at the beginning though, not arguing, just my thoughts on the general QoL issue brought up in OP's post.
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