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Bring back random exploration missions?
boggis
Member Posts: 11 Arc User
Am I the only one who would like to see a return of the random nebular exploration missions?
I mean, in an updated way. If the devs would put in the resources worth of otherwise one or two seasons we surely could have a nice new system that would provide a lot of replayability in the long run.
I mean, in an updated way. If the devs would put in the resources worth of otherwise one or two seasons we surely could have a nice new system that would provide a lot of replayability in the long run.
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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And lol @ the devs putting "one or two seasons" worth of resources on one sidequest.
Member Access Denied Armada!
My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
Third. Its the Third Borg Dynasty.
If STO had the resources of WoW then sure, put team C and the student interns on it.
Oops, well, it is an updated version.
For a game with 'play with a crew' as a selling point, there is a lot of times and missions the crew seems to get completely lost on.
Member Access Denied Armada!
My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
I would do the objectives (like exploding all the tribble hills)...then run around the ground maps to look at the geography. I can do the same on those Foundry missions. ONLY, I can do it in SPACE in Foundry missions as well a ground. There are pretty interesting....all the combinations real people come up with instead of spit out by random.
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
quiet often i do encounter some bugs, not very good ones. it made my away team vanished or fell under, or pathing blocked, and rarely had hostiles keep shooting me thru the walls and they are untargetable.
> I would recommend that Foundry authors be allowed to enter missions for 'Exploration'.....
It may already exist...But who can tell with that search in there.
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
I mean that specific parameters be set for exploration missions by the development team who then reviews the mission submitted by the foundry author before accepting it as an exploration mission. When your captain flies to one of the specific exploration nodes the list of available missions for that node simply offers you the next one on the list.
Parameters might include:
15 to 30 minute playtime
Explore new worlds, seek out new life and new civilization
Be an individual stand-alone episode not requiring other episodes before or after to complete the story
Everyone knows the foundry search is less than effective. I'm not advocating more of that. I'm advocating the developers make use of the talent pool the foundry has generated to create content for the game.
Second for including Foundry with any exploration revamp. It would help alleviate the inevitable grind from short-form randomization of whatever kind Cryptic likely uses for exploration tasks. Also it would allow players to fill in whatever kind of content they feel is lacking in the system. Ex. story driven episodes (which Cryptic may not be able to make themselves to adequately populate the system.)
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
Plus, sadly, where is the incentive for them. Do they want to mix user created content with their own content? You would think they could have done it by now.
I don't think anything in this STO program is that flexible.
They would have to come up with an entirely different way to use the program...kinda like DOFFing Chain Assignments with video game missions connected to them. It may take less programming time to only add "exploration" mission to the Mission highlights already in the game.
Mission highlight system set up where you can fly by location and it contains a list of Foundry missions connected by the authors to that "door". It is definitely not tracking each and every person who flew by and where the were in the progression of that list. It is always the same static list, even if you already completed the mission. At least, it is on the KDF side...I don't even get out to sector on my Feds.
I am not even sure Foundry missions have a flag that would tell the program it is one YOU have done before?
(Which reminds me I have to get more of those ViL Challenge missions done this weekend)
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
It's a self-adjusting problem. Missions appropriate to exploration clusters tend to make it out of review and appear in the top 3 system. The minimum Cryptic would need to do is just open up whatever point of contact there is for a revamped exploration system as a Foundry door. Community can take care of the rest. If Cryptic wanted to go further, they could take a look at the tag system and search filter (potentially applying to the top 3 system as well, so the results there can also be filtered [helping players organically find what they're looking for].) But, as stated that's not what they would need to do (at minimum) to involve the Foundry with exploration 2.0.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
The occasional Foundry Spotlight?
Kael's also been playing through the ViL challenge missions too. Devs certainly wouldn't be able to vet all Foundry content going into an exploration system (that would just be spotlighting via another means) but I think the suggestion that they would ever need to do that just to include Foundry with new exploration is itself unrealistic.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
What a waste that would be. But not sure with the current Foundry, it can be stopped???
I am doing those ViL Foundry Challenge missions....I have to say: LESS map changes in Foundry missions the better!!!! Map changes in Foundry takes a long time and draws everything out. I lost track of the story on one of them.
Spreading out the objectives around the map does make things more interesting for me...because it is "hunting around"...and one can take different paths, integrating "looking around" with the mission. And inside buildings/ships going from room to corridor to room....whether or not there are objectives in all those locations.
Those things make it feel like exploring. But it must take a lot of time to do with the Foundry program.
Definitely, having a person put things together on a map is much nicer than the random ones.
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
I don't see any value in separating the two for the sake of just being able to say "Cryptic, build it all yourself!" That's very limiting to the type of exploration we can have in STO. Are folks wanting something like vanilla No Man's Sky or exploration in the style of episodes of Star Trek (where it's background to thoughtful narrative and drama) with tremendous variation in how much "investigating the unknown" featured in the narrative (some episodes were about the unknown, others about the human reaction to the unknown, and others were about human personal relations [with the unknown as window dressing.]) I have seen people make suggestions regarding both under the same umbrella topic. This is the problem in developing for an ideal, everyone has their own interpretation and for a developer to make good on exploration their system needs flexibility. If the Foundry can contribute, by all means let it contribute. We gain nothing through isolation.
I think these points are go-to advice for any foundry mission; frequent and unnecessary map transitions, vaguely defined objectives, and not making effective use of map space are detrimental to any Foundry mission and it is the responsibility of Foundry authors to learn how to effectively build for their audience and their expectations (both through feedback but also looking at STO missions, analogous content in other games, and other Foundry missions to critically assess how best to approach their stuff.)
As for populating exploration 2.0 with appropriate missions: one thing we could do is run a few Foundry challenges for exploration areas to build a roster of missions under some guidance that could set a strong baseline for how to best approach exploration in this venue. Couple that with a revamped set of tutorial videos and web guides for new authors to help improve the general standard of mission creation by new authors (Cryptic's interested in generally improving STO guides, and Roundtable would certainly be willing to produce the stuff as it relates to the Foundry.)
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
On the other hand, actual exploration would have the player on a large unknown map for the purpose of finding something interesting to study and/or collect. Because this is a videogame, we may assume there would be something interesting to find in every area, even though in reality that would not always be the case. This could in theory be done with procedural generation, though I wouldn't know about STO in particular. But the old "exploration" system certainly wasn't this, because the maps were not unknown and the player was not there to find anything, just to shoot and/or click on whatever they were told to shoot and/or click.
But consider, we just had an episode which briefly disabled the minimap and it drew immediate complaints about how "frustrating" it is if the game goes even a moment without constantly telling you exactly where to go and what to do. And we know that's the kind of player Cryptic likes to please...so really, what are the odds they'd even want to add content where players had to actually think for themselves all the time?
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
Seeing is believing. I'll believe that there will be an exploration system when I see it in game.
Had my hopes up with some new Exploration content, but had it completely ruined with babysitting another race's exploration and the eventual massacres. The Mirrors and Smoke mission where we landed on the Kentari planet was the closest to Exploration that we have had in a while. A completely new planet and alien race that didn't have everyone wanting to kill our away team.
Procedurally generated Star Trek exploration content is far too different from other space games like No Man's Sky and Star Citizen. Star Trek exploration has always been about the story rather than scanning unique planets, spacial anomalies, rocks, plants, and animals. We would need an extremely powerful AI that creates personal stories for procedurally generated Star Trek exploration.
I absolutely agree that the old exploration system was sub-par to say the least. With bringing back I was more thinking of something in the spirit of exploring new (randomly or procedurally generated) systems. Maybe getting a personal but sharable exploration map generated by a solid and substantial system.
While the missions generated by this will probably never be on the same level as manually generated ones I would love to have some smaller bite-sized missions to delve into for a quick game. The existing patrol missions are of a nice length in comparison.
While there are great foundry missions out there, many of them tend to be longer in duration and for a quick round of STO in the evening I often don't want to search through tons of foundry missions.