There are a lot of games that focus on big ships, but in those you're a pilot, not the navigator of a Star class vessel. And STO has it's share of "hysterically fast fighters", from Escorts to Fighters to Shuttles and more. Mentioning this just means you either haven't or don't want to or don't know how to use them. And Cannons "can only fire forward like cold-war-era warplanes."
Unfortunately, STO's big ships are not realistically big. Several of those other games you're referring to with this line actually give you that 'larger than life' feel you'd get from big ships, whereas STO gives us tinker-toys. The biggest issue here is that STO has no concept of true-scale.
Yes, it has shuttles, you can compare them to old style fighters in that respect - even though they come with a 360-degree weapon pre equipped. But I wouldn't put Escorts into the same category. They are more fighter-y that your average dreadnaught, but still quite a bit away from what I'd consider a dog fighting vessel.
And about the size: (a) it is not STO, but Star Trek in general which has a certain set up for the sizes ships do have. The "larger than life" ships just aren't a mainstay of the franchise. And (b) what do you mean by "realistically" big? Super ships like in Star Wars or EVE don't seem realistic at all to me, having gazillions of crew for a mission in which they are needed, too much mass per surface area to be efficient at fighting. I don't see that as realistic. Fun: certainly yes, but not realistic in my opinion. I may well be wrong about how large ships from real spacefaring people will get, but apart from colony ships or troop transports, maybe, very maybe transport ships, I'd think that even many of the Star Trek ships are already on the larger side of what's sensible.
Now, for a game rule of fun may easily trump that, but realistic I wouldn't say.
My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
Other MMOs would not last this long with the amounts of bugs.
Possibly because the players annoyed by the bugs would leave those bugged games instead of playing on to continue being annoyed by them and telling the world about it. Hint: if you, who is annoyed by Defera Ground (one map in hundreds) are still sticking around, the players who just don't bother about Defera - or play it "as is" - will stick around, too. And then the game will last.
People will stick around for a game if it has stuff they enjoy, and then many will be able to endure the bugs for the stuff they like. Look at a game like "Gothic 3", which was virtually unplayable in large swathes, yet got a fan following who worked their backsides off to make mods to fix the bugs. The latter of course isn't a possibility for an MMO.
Either way, it doesn't matter, since, as has been said by others, the opinion refers to the F2P model, which has nothing to do with the amount of in game bugs at all - you have the benefit of obviously having misread, unlike some other poster.
My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
There are a lot of games that focus on big ships, but in those you're a pilot, not the navigator of a Star class vessel. And STO has it's share of "hysterically fast fighters", from Escorts to Fighters to Shuttles and more. Mentioning this just means you either haven't or don't want to or don't know how to use them. And Cannons "can only fire forward like cold-war-era warplanes."
Unfortunately, STO's big ships are not realistically big. Several of those other games you're referring to with this line actually give you that 'larger than life' feel you'd get from big ships, whereas STO gives us tinker-toys. The biggest issue here is that STO has no concept of true-scale.
Yes, it has shuttles, you can compare them to old style fighters in that respect - even though they come with a 360-degree weapon pre equipped. But I wouldn't put Escorts into the same category. They are more fighter-y that your average dreadnaught, but still quite a bit away from what I'd consider a dog fighting vessel.
And about the size: (a) it is not STO, but Star Trek in general which has a certain set up for the sizes ships do have. The "larger than life" ships just aren't a mainstay of the franchise. And (b) what do you mean by "realistically" big? Super ships like in Star Wars or EVE don't seem realistic at all to me, having gazillions of crew for a mission in which they are needed, too much mass per surface area to be efficient at fighting. I don't see that as realistic. Fun: certainly yes, but not realistic in my opinion. I may well be wrong about how large ships from real spacefaring people will get, but apart from colony ships or troop transports, maybe, very maybe transport ships, I'd think that even many of the Star Trek ships are already on the larger side of what's sensible.
Now, for a game rule of fun may easily trump that, but realistic I wouldn't say.
Hmm. Well, as far as 'True Scale' would go, I ment that in the literal sense. How many floors are on each ship? How do they correspond to one another based on that? And how big is a shuttle in retrospect? and so on and so forth. Basic Draft Design. There has to be a basic scale. In Star Trek and STO that scale is the average 6' person. If you were to place a typical aircraft carrier (a small one mind, which is only a little bigger than a skyscraper) against several of the 'big' ships in sto, it would be larger than those ships. So the scale is off.
And Escorts and Shuttles are fair examples, but STO does have a Fighter class of ships as well, although they aren't actually called that, I don't think. Only a couple, though.
I think he has a point with the space and ground gameplay. It's almost 50/50 and the main reason why I keep playing STO. I don't know of any other MMO that has this. SWtoR comes to mind but it is a ground game with optional space combat, it was added on as a after thought and not part of the games core. I really can't think of another (Star Citizen isn't done yet) if anyone knows of one that does it better than STO let me know I'd be very interested.
ok to be fair I haven't played every MMO out there, space travel and sci fi is the thing I like so I cant comment on anything not related to that as I haven't tried it but I have tried just about every MMO that involves what I like and has a free to play option even if only in part.
every one I have tried has failed to meet up to sto's level of excellence in some way be it way too limiting on what you can do as a FTP'er, lack of ground based play, weird method of controlling the ship you are flying and an unrealistic combat system to name but a few points of contention for what I felt I was looking for.
about the only MMO I enjoyed at the start was SWTOR, the ground combat was fun for a while until I realised you were being forced to do missions over the same map area over and over and over and the actual mission that you was on took but a few seconds to complete and the only thing that made it seem longer was traversing the same map repeatedly to get to the point the actual mission took place and to return to your start point to turn in your completed mission for the reward, then when I eventually got to the space travel and combat section it was atrocious.
only sto provided me with a equal amount of ground and space combat and adventuring from the get-go with user friendly controls and a realistic flight method in combat as well as a good selection of missions that took a lot longer to complete then it actually took to get to the part where the mission takes place.
some might say the space combat is not realistic as you cannot fly vertically or upside down but that would put me off as it would be far too disorienting for me so I like that you cant.
sto is also very generous to FTP'ers in as much that there is nothing that is locked behind a pay wall, you can do everything and get almost everything without having to pay real money to get it and even if you never bother to grind for anything in the C-store it is in no way detrimental to your gaming experience.
in fact I enjoyed the game so much as a FTP'er I actually coughed up the cash to buy a lifetime sub.
ok so its a nice bonus that sto is star trek based and I am a big fan but that was in no way a deciding factor in my opinion, if sto was like SWTOR and SWTOR was like sto I would be commenting on a very different forum right now.
the only exception to my choice of MMO to play was world of tanks and I tried it as a work mate played it and we used to play matches together sometimes, it was fun for a while but I soon tired of the monotony of the gameplay.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
[...]If you were to place a typical aircraft carrier (a small one mind, which is only a little bigger than a skyscraper) against several of the 'big' ships in sto, it would be larger than those ships.[...]
its all to do with perspective when you have a large ship on screen the perspective is such that it doesn't fill the whole screen and block your view of the surroundings but I will remind you that even a very large thing looks small from a great distance.
One major thing I don't get with STO is the sense of scale and epic ness in space. The sector map revamp helped a bit with that aspect but something still feels off. And it's not just the maps but the various objects in play as well; ships, planets, asteroids, space debris. It all feels too small.
I know it's not really comparable but in EVE you feel absolutely tiny unless you're in a massive titan or something. The vastness of space in that game makes you feel small and insignificant at first, something STO never really had I feel. Even in the larger space combat in EVE you feel tiny and the rest of the "map" is scaled accordingly.
I'd love STO to redo all the scaling on the models, using a set standard. Use deck sizes and the existing blueprints for a guide. Who cares if a Defiant then looks tiny, that's because it IS tiny compared to a D'D Romulan warbird!
The scale of the ships to each other is pretty much spot on. Shuttle and fighter craft and Deep Space Nine are oversized compared to ships, everything else is pretty much in scale with each other. As long as there is a scale to be established at all. (The Defiant for example is always a point of contention)
The planets, stars and moon are obviously not to scale at all.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
[...]If you were to place a typical aircraft carrier (a small one mind, which is only a little bigger than a skyscraper) against several of the 'big' ships in sto, it would be larger than those ships. [...]
Length of the Jupiter class carrier (Starfleet, STO): 1,466 m
Length of a Nimitz class aircraft carrier (US Navy): 333 m.
One major thing I don't get with STO is the sense of scale and epic ness in space.
The sector map revamp helped a bit with that aspect but something still feels off.
And it's not just the maps but the various objects in play as well; ships, planets, asteroids, space debris. It all feels too small.
I know it's not really comparable but in EVE you feel absolutely tiny unless you're in a massive titan or something. The vastness of space in that game makes you feel small and insignificant at first, something STO never really had I feel. Even in the larger space combat in EVE you feel tiny and the rest of the "map" is scaled accordingly.
I'd love STO to redo all the scaling on the models, using a set standard. Use deck sizes and the existing blueprints for a guide. Who cares if a Defiant then looks tiny, that's because it IS tiny compared to a D'D Romulan warbird!
The scale of the ships to each other is pretty much spot on. Shuttle and fighter craft and Deep Space Nine are oversized compared to ships, everything else is pretty much in scale with each other. As long as there is a scale to be established at all. (The Defiant for example is always a point of contention)
The planets, stars and moon are obviously not to scale at all.
truth. the scale is fine - as long as you don't hold up any ship to another ship or to anything else.
One major thing I don't get with STO is the sense of scale and epic ness in space.
The sector map revamp helped a bit with that aspect but something still feels off.
And it's not just the maps but the various objects in play as well; ships, planets, asteroids, space debris. It all feels too small.
I know it's not really comparable but in EVE you feel absolutely tiny unless you're in a massive titan or something. The vastness of space in that game makes you feel small and insignificant at first, something STO never really had I feel. Even in the larger space combat in EVE you feel tiny and the rest of the "map" is scaled accordingly.
I'd love STO to redo all the scaling on the models, using a set standard. Use deck sizes and the existing blueprints for a guide. Who cares if a Defiant then looks tiny, that's because it IS tiny compared to a D'D Romulan warbird!
I want space to feel massive and terrifying!
so you want it to take you a week or longer to get to many of your mission locations or at least many hours for some of the closer locations even with warp speed travel, this is what you would get if the scale of space travel in sto was in any way what you could consider as realistic.
the thing with the sector space is you are looking on it as real space but its not really meant to represent that, real space you would see if you could look out of a window as you are travelling, sector space is just a representation of space like a larger scale version of the sector map you can put up by clicking on the top right of your mini map and like some maps the items upon it are often not to scale but are merely markers for different focal points on the map.
if sector space was supposed to represent real space you would not be able to view your ships location on the map from the different angles that you do all you would see is the stars whizzing by from a window or on the view screen.
open the video below to get an idea of the kind of thing I am trying to explain.
if the markers on sector space were actually to scale sector space would be so big it would leave no room in the sto for actual game play it would just be too massive or you would have it that most of the markers would be too small to actually see and your ship would be like a dot on that.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
so you want it to take you a week or longer to get to many of your mission locations or at least many hours for some of the closer locations, this is what you would get if the scale of space travel in sto was in any way what you could consider as realistic.
there are an infinite number of ways around the travel time issue: Gates, Boosts, Wormholes, Anomalies, Warp Engines, Zoning areas, etc.
Focusing on travel time just ignores what's he's talking about.
Travel is not even the point or a concern.
Any game that develops true scale will always set things up so that travel isn't a problem.
If it IS a problem, then the company is after something from the player or are very unimaginative and you should play something else.
The concept here is that STO uses tinker-toys and believability (a key part of SciFi) goes right out the window.
He's just trying to explain that, and so far, he seems to be the only one to wrap their mind around what I was talking about.
so you want it to take you a week or longer to get to many of your mission locations or at least many hours for some of the closer locations, this is what you would get if the scale of space travel in sto was in any way what you could consider as realistic.
there are an infinite number of ways around the travel time issue: Gates, Boosts, Wormholes, Anomalies, Warp Engines, Zoning areas, etc.
Focusing on travel time just ignores what's he's talking about.
Travel is not even the point or a concern.
Any game that develops true scale will always set things up so that travel isn't a problem.
If it IS a problem, then the company is after something from the player or are very unimaginative and you should play something else.
The concept here is that STO uses tinker-toys and believability (a key part of SciFi) goes right out the window.
He's just trying to explain that, and so far, he seems to be the only one to wrap their mind around what I was talking about.
you forget that we ARE actually using warp travel, or perhaps you would rather they just cut out the warp travel part and sector space altogether and just had transwarp jumping instead.
even at warp speed it often took the crews on the various incarnations of star trek many days to reach a destination as was often discussed in some of the episodes.
like in voyager for example where they stated it would take them 75 years to reach home and even in the seven years the show was running they had still never left the delta quadrant until the last few minutes of the final episode and only then because they made use of the borg Unimatrix.
the thing with sto is IT'S A GAME and as such they have to give you time to play rather then spending all of your time traversing space or cutting the space travel time out altogether.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
true. but the concept of scale was the point, not travel. it makes a big difference on how a game is viewed by players. throwing travel times out there just dilutes the concept or ignores the original intent of the original statement completely.
true. but the concept of scale was the point, not travel.
the trouble is you cant scale the markers in sector space without scaling sector space as well and this is where the problem lies, they had to choose between making sector space so massive that it would take forever to get anywhere or seriously reducing the size of the markers and your ship in sector space or make the compromise they have now, personally I think I prefer it as it is.
the biggest problem is you cant have sector space to scale regardless of what scale that is without making travel time to scale also.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
and I did mention that there are ways around the issue of travel, which is side-stepping the issue of scale. It only takes a little imagination or research to come up with a boat-load of options. Travel Times and Game Scale are two different projects completely.
but as an aside, I'm curious. What exactly IS the point of the current travel setup of STO? Originally this was to help with the overall feel of exploration, but then they pulled out anything to do with that from the game. So other than consuming player time, what is the point of how they have it set up? Honestly? Given, I don't mind it, but it is a time-sink that detracts from the game itself, especially since the Random Encounters system was removed. Everything you do is on a system-by-system basis. So why the crawling around for no point? It is an honest question. Modify this into system zones and use the map as a map instead of a oubliette for players and poof! Most of the issues you're concerned with go up in smoke. Nothing even happens on the map anymore.
I can see both sides of the argument. I just feel that what STO lacks is that sense of awe you got when first starting in a game like EVE where everything felt massive and it almost blew your mind. That's what space games should be like, EPIC, rather than just a fancy point n' click map. And not that long ago games like Morrowind (although not space) didn't have fast travel options apart from paid in-universe options, making even a relatively small map feel huge.
I really don't know how to solve the issue of scale. I just know that plenty of games like EVE, No Mans Sky and a lot of others have been able to create that sense of vastness in their space part, which STO seems to lack. STO could get round travel time with transwarp gates, or wormholes, or any technobabble they wanted and still have things vastly further apart. Maybe it should take you a day or at least a few hours to get from earth to the delta quadrant? Maybe you can skip the journey for a small fee in EC, just like with the tranwarp to mission option.
and I did mention that there are ways around the issue of travel, which is side-stepping the issue of scale. It only takes a little imagination or research to come up with a boat-load of options. Travel Times and Game Scale are two different projects completely.
but whatever method you use you would effectively be cutting out sector space entirely so why have it in the game in the first place if you are going to just use some thing that cuts out the need for it.
Sisko mentioned it would take eight weeks (warp 9.2) to get to Cestus III to see a real baseball game, load up sto and see how long it takes you to get there.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
but whatever method you use you would effectively be cutting out sector space entirely so why have it in the game in the first place if you are going to just use some thing that cuts out the need for it.
You pretty much just restated my very last question. What's the point of it as anything other than a map, since it's entire purpose has been eliminated over time?
but whatever method you use you would effectively be cutting out sector space entirely so why have it in the game in the first place if you are going to just use some thing that cuts out the need for it.
You pretty much just restated my very last question. What's the point of it as anything other than a map, since it's entire purpose has been eliminated over time?
don't really get your point there, are you saying cut sector space out of the game altogether, SWTOR used this method for space travel over long distances and if you haven't tried it I can tell you now its not nice and doesn't do anything to improve your impression of the scale of space.
STO could get round travel time with transwarp gates, or wormholes, or any technobabble they wanted and still have things vastly further apart.
Dunno. While Star Trek certainly has its fair share of technobabble, it also has quite a set system what is possible in travel and what not, and how often this appears. While we had some of these (notably the Dyson Sphere Jumps), it's not as if you can add any old fast travel version.
You pretty much just restated my very last question. What's the point of it as anything other than a map, since it's entire purpose has been eliminated over time?
You may have been here longer than me, so mean something different possibly, but every so often I remember seeing random encounters in sector space.
Apart from that the purpose is giving you at least a kind of a feel what is where and how everything is connected. A game "Now you are on Cestus III" "Now on Khitomer" "Now in a galaxy far far away" could just as well be all in one place. If you're here for the gameplay action, it's probably more of a hassle, but apart from that it does add to the feel about where you are. Matter of taste really, just like with the introduction of fast travel in Oblivion compared to the earlier Morrowind.
My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
at the end of the day if you really don't like sector space travel you can go just about anywhere with transwarp now if you are willing to cough up the EC, personally I don't use transwarp even when I can get it for free unless I am pushed for time, I kinda enjoy my little jaunts across sector space.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
I guess this is where the big differrnce between a space sim, like EVE, Elite, NMS and a space arcade game like STO comes into it.
People in STO expect to just have a casual blast at Borg or whomever every so often with a small bit of travel involved. In the other games I lusted the journey is half the fun as you could find all sorts of stuff on the way to a mission. I guess that is where exploration could come to the rescue, make space bigger but add in some reason to travel across it. I wouldn't mind a long haul to Defera if it means I might come across a freighter needing assistance or a rich mineral asteroid to exploit. Give us a reason to have a vast space map, rather than just a glorified travel route planner.
to address @bobbydazlers concern, I've played SWTOR and don't care for their space travel set up, since you don't actually see anything unless you face the window. That could have been dealt with a lot better than they did. It was an epic fail. But you're still focused on the concept of travel, and I'm not. All that's being discussed concerning travel is that there are options - some better than others. I wasn't pointing any out or discussing any of them in particular, since that's an entirely different department.
and yes, @xyquarze, I've been around since the beginning, save for a small absence here and there. Basically, there is a great deal that has been removed from the sector map, all of which had to do with player interactivity with constructs in the game. The so-called 'random encounters' we have now aren't. they are neither random nor an encounter. they're just preset zones with a couple of ships tossed in. You always know where they are and what they'll be, for example. *shrug* but that's just one thing, and there's too much I could cover concerning what's been removed, such that the effort is outside the scope of my energy at the moment. It is easier to just focus on 'what is' rather than 'what was'. but the point was that the original purpose of the map wasn't to burn player time - it was to explore, to encounter, and occasionally to fight the unexpected - three things no longer in the game. just to be clear, i'm not talking about the old exploration cluster system, but the random encounter system and some others.
but this has nothing to do with game scale or travel times... There are ways around the travel issue. If @bobbydazlers thought about it for a while, he could come up with several of his own and even figure out ways for them to be 'epic' and both User- and Game-friendly. but I think he first needs to define his personal views on what he considers 'epic' or 'awe-inspiring' for a player in a star trek or a scifi game. it doesn't really matter.
overall, the map doesn't really serve much of a purpose anymore. the base map (press m) does more than the sector map does now. sad, but true. who's not doing something else while the ship is moving? either you're watching the map or completing some other task. You're most likely not looking around the sector map at all.
I guess this is where the big differrnce between a space sim, like EVE, Elite, NMS and a space arcade game like STO comes into it.
People in STO expect to just have a casual blast at Borg or whomever every so often with a small bit of travel involved. In the other games I lusted the journey is half the fun as you could find all sorts of stuff on the way to a mission. I guess that is where exploration could come to the rescue, make space bigger but add in some reason to travel across it. I wouldn't mind a long haul to Defera if it means I might come across a freighter needing assistance or a rich mineral asteroid to exploit. Give us a reason to have a vast space map, rather than just a glorified travel route planner.
Once again, you put my thoughts down better than I have.
Comments
Yes, it has shuttles, you can compare them to old style fighters in that respect - even though they come with a 360-degree weapon pre equipped. But I wouldn't put Escorts into the same category. They are more fighter-y that your average dreadnaught, but still quite a bit away from what I'd consider a dog fighting vessel.
And about the size: (a) it is not STO, but Star Trek in general which has a certain set up for the sizes ships do have. The "larger than life" ships just aren't a mainstay of the franchise. And (b) what do you mean by "realistically" big? Super ships like in Star Wars or EVE don't seem realistic at all to me, having gazillions of crew for a mission in which they are needed, too much mass per surface area to be efficient at fighting. I don't see that as realistic. Fun: certainly yes, but not realistic in my opinion. I may well be wrong about how large ships from real spacefaring people will get, but apart from colony ships or troop transports, maybe, very maybe transport ships, I'd think that even many of the Star Trek ships are already on the larger side of what's sensible.
Now, for a game rule of fun may easily trump that, but realistic I wouldn't say.
Possibly because the players annoyed by the bugs would leave those bugged games instead of playing on to continue being annoyed by them and telling the world about it. Hint: if you, who is annoyed by Defera Ground (one map in hundreds) are still sticking around, the players who just don't bother about Defera - or play it "as is" - will stick around, too. And then the game will last.
People will stick around for a game if it has stuff they enjoy, and then many will be able to endure the bugs for the stuff they like. Look at a game like "Gothic 3", which was virtually unplayable in large swathes, yet got a fan following who worked their backsides off to make mods to fix the bugs. The latter of course isn't a possibility for an MMO.
Either way, it doesn't matter, since, as has been said by others, the opinion refers to the F2P model, which has nothing to do with the amount of in game bugs at all - you have the benefit of obviously having misread, unlike some other poster.
Hmm. Well, as far as 'True Scale' would go, I ment that in the literal sense. How many floors are on each ship? How do they correspond to one another based on that? And how big is a shuttle in retrospect? and so on and so forth. Basic Draft Design. There has to be a basic scale. In Star Trek and STO that scale is the average 6' person. If you were to place a typical aircraft carrier (a small one mind, which is only a little bigger than a skyscraper) against several of the 'big' ships in sto, it would be larger than those ships. So the scale is off.
And Escorts and Shuttles are fair examples, but STO does have a Fighter class of ships as well, although they aren't actually called that, I don't think. Only a couple, though.
every one I have tried has failed to meet up to sto's level of excellence in some way be it way too limiting on what you can do as a FTP'er, lack of ground based play, weird method of controlling the ship you are flying and an unrealistic combat system to name but a few points of contention for what I felt I was looking for.
about the only MMO I enjoyed at the start was SWTOR, the ground combat was fun for a while until I realised you were being forced to do missions over the same map area over and over and over and the actual mission that you was on took but a few seconds to complete and the only thing that made it seem longer was traversing the same map repeatedly to get to the point the actual mission took place and to return to your start point to turn in your completed mission for the reward, then when I eventually got to the space travel and combat section it was atrocious.
only sto provided me with a equal amount of ground and space combat and adventuring from the get-go with user friendly controls and a realistic flight method in combat as well as a good selection of missions that took a lot longer to complete then it actually took to get to the part where the mission takes place.
some might say the space combat is not realistic as you cannot fly vertically or upside down but that would put me off as it would be far too disorienting for me so I like that you cant.
sto is also very generous to FTP'ers in as much that there is nothing that is locked behind a pay wall, you can do everything and get almost everything without having to pay real money to get it and even if you never bother to grind for anything in the C-store it is in no way detrimental to your gaming experience.
in fact I enjoyed the game so much as a FTP'er I actually coughed up the cash to buy a lifetime sub.
ok so its a nice bonus that sto is star trek based and I am a big fan but that was in no way a deciding factor in my opinion, if sto was like SWTOR and SWTOR was like sto I would be commenting on a very different forum right now.
the only exception to my choice of MMO to play was world of tanks and I tried it as a work mate played it and we used to play matches together sometimes, it was fun for a while but I soon tired of the monotony of the gameplay.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
its all to do with perspective when you have a large ship on screen the perspective is such that it doesn't fill the whole screen and block your view of the surroundings but I will remind you that even a very large thing looks small from a great distance.
for example
next time you are around ESD try switching to your shuttle and park it next to a large ship to see the relative difference in size.
or just take a look at the size chart here to get an idea of the size of sto ships.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/d8/94/78/d89478f5571acaebe5f582e8ee17f2e9.jpg
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
The sector map revamp helped a bit with that aspect but something still feels off.
And it's not just the maps but the various objects in play as well; ships, planets, asteroids, space debris. It all feels too small.
I know it's not really comparable but in EVE you feel absolutely tiny unless you're in a massive titan or something. The vastness of space in that game makes you feel small and insignificant at first, something STO never really had I feel. Even in the larger space combat in EVE you feel tiny and the rest of the "map" is scaled accordingly.
I'd love STO to redo all the scaling on the models, using a set standard. Use deck sizes and the existing blueprints for a guide. Who cares if a Defiant then looks tiny, that's because it IS tiny compared to a D'D Romulan warbird!
I want space to feel massive and terrifying!
The planets, stars and moon are obviously not to scale at all.
think you just made my point.
my perspective wasn't what I was referring to...
exactly!
truth. the scale is fine - as long as you don't hold up any ship to another ship or to anything else.
so you want it to take you a week or longer to get to many of your mission locations or at least many hours for some of the closer locations even with warp speed travel, this is what you would get if the scale of space travel in sto was in any way what you could consider as realistic.
the thing with the sector space is you are looking on it as real space but its not really meant to represent that, real space you would see if you could look out of a window as you are travelling, sector space is just a representation of space like a larger scale version of the sector map you can put up by clicking on the top right of your mini map and like some maps the items upon it are often not to scale but are merely markers for different focal points on the map.
if sector space was supposed to represent real space you would not be able to view your ships location on the map from the different angles that you do all you would see is the stars whizzing by from a window or on the view screen.
open the video below to get an idea of the kind of thing I am trying to explain.
http://ak5.picdn.net/shutterstock/videos/7186315/preview/stock-footage-vintage-map-of-the-world-with-old-sailing-ship-dolly-shot.mp4
if the markers on sector space were actually to scale sector space would be so big it would leave no room in the sto for actual game play it would just be too massive or you would have it that most of the markers would be too small to actually see and your ship would be like a dot on that.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
there are an infinite number of ways around the travel time issue: Gates, Boosts, Wormholes, Anomalies, Warp Engines, Zoning areas, etc.
Focusing on travel time just ignores what's he's talking about.
Travel is not even the point or a concern.
Any game that develops true scale will always set things up so that travel isn't a problem.
If it IS a problem, then the company is after something from the player or are very unimaginative and you should play something else.
The concept here is that STO uses tinker-toys and believability (a key part of SciFi) goes right out the window.
He's just trying to explain that, and so far, he seems to be the only one to wrap their mind around what I was talking about.
you forget that we ARE actually using warp travel, or perhaps you would rather they just cut out the warp travel part and sector space altogether and just had transwarp jumping instead.
even at warp speed it often took the crews on the various incarnations of star trek many days to reach a destination as was often discussed in some of the episodes.
like in voyager for example where they stated it would take them 75 years to reach home and even in the seven years the show was running they had still never left the delta quadrant until the last few minutes of the final episode and only then because they made use of the borg Unimatrix.
the thing with sto is IT'S A GAME and as such they have to give you time to play rather then spending all of your time traversing space or cutting the space travel time out altogether.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
the trouble is you cant scale the markers in sector space without scaling sector space as well and this is where the problem lies, they had to choose between making sector space so massive that it would take forever to get anywhere or seriously reducing the size of the markers and your ship in sector space or make the compromise they have now, personally I think I prefer it as it is.
the biggest problem is you cant have sector space to scale regardless of what scale that is without making travel time to scale also.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
I just feel that what STO lacks is that sense of awe you got when first starting in a game like EVE where everything felt massive and it almost blew your mind.
That's what space games should be like, EPIC, rather than just a fancy point n' click map.
And not that long ago games like Morrowind (although not space) didn't have fast travel options apart from paid in-universe options, making even a relatively small map feel huge.
I really don't know how to solve the issue of scale. I just know that plenty of games like EVE, No Mans Sky and a lot of others have been able to create that sense of vastness in their space part, which STO seems to lack.
STO could get round travel time with transwarp gates, or wormholes, or any technobabble they wanted and still have things vastly further apart.
Maybe it should take you a day or at least a few hours to get from earth to the delta quadrant? Maybe you can skip the journey for a small fee in EC, just like with the tranwarp to mission option.
but whatever method you use you would effectively be cutting out sector space entirely so why have it in the game in the first place if you are going to just use some thing that cuts out the need for it.
Sisko mentioned it would take eight weeks (warp 9.2) to get to Cestus III to see a real baseball game, load up sto and see how long it takes you to get there.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
You pretty much just restated my very last question. What's the point of it as anything other than a map, since it's entire purpose has been eliminated over time?
don't really get your point there, are you saying cut sector space out of the game altogether, SWTOR used this method for space travel over long distances and if you haven't tried it I can tell you now its not nice and doesn't do anything to improve your impression of the scale of space.
take a look if you think this is better you have a completely different view on what is better then I do.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
Dunno. While Star Trek certainly has its fair share of technobabble, it also has quite a set system what is possible in travel and what not, and how often this appears. While we had some of these (notably the Dyson Sphere Jumps), it's not as if you can add any old fast travel version.
You may have been here longer than me, so mean something different possibly, but every so often I remember seeing random encounters in sector space.
Apart from that the purpose is giving you at least a kind of a feel what is where and how everything is connected. A game "Now you are on Cestus III" "Now on Khitomer" "Now in a galaxy far far away" could just as well be all in one place. If you're here for the gameplay action, it's probably more of a hassle, but apart from that it does add to the feel about where you are. Matter of taste really, just like with the introduction of fast travel in Oblivion compared to the earlier Morrowind.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
People in STO expect to just have a casual blast at Borg or whomever every so often with a small bit of travel involved. In the other games I lusted the journey is half the fun as you could find all sorts of stuff on the way to a mission. I guess that is where exploration could come to the rescue, make space bigger but add in some reason to travel across it. I wouldn't mind a long haul to Defera if it means I might come across a freighter needing assistance or a rich mineral asteroid to exploit. Give us a reason to have a vast space map, rather than just a glorified travel route planner.
and yes, @xyquarze, I've been around since the beginning, save for a small absence here and there. Basically, there is a great deal that has been removed from the sector map, all of which had to do with player interactivity with constructs in the game. The so-called 'random encounters' we have now aren't. they are neither random nor an encounter. they're just preset zones with a couple of ships tossed in. You always know where they are and what they'll be, for example. *shrug* but that's just one thing, and there's too much I could cover concerning what's been removed, such that the effort is outside the scope of my energy at the moment. It is easier to just focus on 'what is' rather than 'what was'. but the point was that the original purpose of the map wasn't to burn player time - it was to explore, to encounter, and occasionally to fight the unexpected - three things no longer in the game. just to be clear, i'm not talking about the old exploration cluster system, but the random encounter system and some others.
but this has nothing to do with game scale or travel times... There are ways around the travel issue. If @bobbydazlers thought about it for a while, he could come up with several of his own and even figure out ways for them to be 'epic' and both User- and Game-friendly. but I think he first needs to define his personal views on what he considers 'epic' or 'awe-inspiring' for a player in a star trek or a scifi game. it doesn't really matter.
overall, the map doesn't really serve much of a purpose anymore. the base map (press m) does more than the sector map does now. sad, but true. who's not doing something else while the ship is moving? either you're watching the map or completing some other task. You're most likely not looking around the sector map at all.
Once again, you put my thoughts down better than I have.