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Money making idea: Complete crew customization
captainhunter1
Member Posts: 1,627 Arc User
How about this for a money making idea: Putting the access to total Crew Customization up for sale on the C-Store.
By Crew Customization I mean giving Captain's total and complete control over how their crew, ALL their crew, appears in-game (not just Bridge Officers).
Lets start off with the most obvious problem: shipboard NPC crew members.
We have been asking for a long time to be able to assign ship NPCs a 'ship's uniform' - something that more closely matches our Bridge Officer's uniforms...or not, if that's the Captain's choice. Why not start out with a 'Crew Customization' interface based on the Duty Officer interface, but with a 'Ship Uniform' option that would allow us to chose standard duty uniforms for all our NPC crew members. This window would be much like the Fleet Uniform window and include the ability to have different uniforms for all branches (tac, sci, eng) and genders (male, female, other).
Add to that a Duty Officer-like interface to let us use the same drop down customization menus we are used to seeing there so we could completely customize our crew any way we like. Want an all Andorian crew? No problem, just put a checkmark next to 'Andorian' on the Species dropdown menu. Want only Klingons and Gorn NPCs on your KDF ship - and none of those pesky Letheans or Orions? Just click the boxes next to 'Klingon' and 'Gorn'. Don't care what your crew is made up of race-wise? Just leave the default 'Mixed' button checked. This goes for all other aspects too. Want an all Female or Male crew? Just check the appropriate boxes on the drop down menu. So on and so forth.
This interface would also tie-in and fix so many other areas of player customization requests. For example: Are you a tac officer and can't stand that random group of no-bodies that beam down when you call your ship for a security team? Or how about that medic that just beamed in from using that Hypo? Well now they will beam down with your ship's specified customization (uniform, race, gender, etc.) to make them stand out from those other captain's security detail or medics that also beamed down right next to you in that TFO.
Next would be something we already have (some) control over: Bridge Officers.
Yes, we can customize their appearance (which is terrific BTW), but when it comes to assignment stations onboard our ships, that is done automatically and somewhat randomly. How about the ability to 'place' them at any station we wanted on our bridge - or anywhere else in the ships interior? By using something like the DOff 'Department Head' interface, we could assign Bridge Officers to any command station on the ship. Want your Head Engineer to be at the warp core on the Engineering Deck instead of on the Bridge? No problem, just assign him that station through the drop down menu. Tired of that no name NPC hogging up the Conn when your hand picked Bridge Officer helmsman stands idly somewhere else (or even nowhere to be seen on the Bridge at all?). Again, the drop down station menu puts him/her/it right where you want them. And this placement ability would not only be for the special 'away team' officers you have...this would be for ALL Bridge Officers currently on active duty (ALL those in your BOff list on the left side of your character sheet window). The number of station assignment drop down menus automatically increases as you gain new BOff slots, whether you have them filled or not.
Another customization option in the interface: DOff usage.
It would be cool to use unique DOffs as part of your crew as well. Maybe not to the extent of BOffs, but maybe as part of the random crowds you pass on your ship. These would include 'named' DOffs such as 'Helna' or 'Law'. This could be as simple as a checkbox labeled, 'Use unique Duty Officers in crew' (Although I'm not sure how difficult this would be to implement as there is currently no established way to pick them out individually like there is for BOffs.)
This C-Store Crew Customization idea seems like a huge win-win-win situation:
1. It follows Star Trek canon (even as far back as TOS, crewmen and crewwomen wore different uniforms (pants and dresses), they also had all one race crews (all Human on the Enterprise (minus BOff Spock - lol) and all Vulcans on the Intrepid)).
2. Cryptic gets a terrific way for making a lot of additional money (a C-store item that will certainly produce a lot of sales).
3. The playerbase gets something we've wanted for a long time (control over those NPCs that seem like strangers wandering around onboard or beaming down from our own ships).
So how about it talented Cryptic folks? Here's a great way to make money AND make the players happy.
By Crew Customization I mean giving Captain's total and complete control over how their crew, ALL their crew, appears in-game (not just Bridge Officers).
Lets start off with the most obvious problem: shipboard NPC crew members.
We have been asking for a long time to be able to assign ship NPCs a 'ship's uniform' - something that more closely matches our Bridge Officer's uniforms...or not, if that's the Captain's choice. Why not start out with a 'Crew Customization' interface based on the Duty Officer interface, but with a 'Ship Uniform' option that would allow us to chose standard duty uniforms for all our NPC crew members. This window would be much like the Fleet Uniform window and include the ability to have different uniforms for all branches (tac, sci, eng) and genders (male, female, other).
Add to that a Duty Officer-like interface to let us use the same drop down customization menus we are used to seeing there so we could completely customize our crew any way we like. Want an all Andorian crew? No problem, just put a checkmark next to 'Andorian' on the Species dropdown menu. Want only Klingons and Gorn NPCs on your KDF ship - and none of those pesky Letheans or Orions? Just click the boxes next to 'Klingon' and 'Gorn'. Don't care what your crew is made up of race-wise? Just leave the default 'Mixed' button checked. This goes for all other aspects too. Want an all Female or Male crew? Just check the appropriate boxes on the drop down menu. So on and so forth.
This interface would also tie-in and fix so many other areas of player customization requests. For example: Are you a tac officer and can't stand that random group of no-bodies that beam down when you call your ship for a security team? Or how about that medic that just beamed in from using that Hypo? Well now they will beam down with your ship's specified customization (uniform, race, gender, etc.) to make them stand out from those other captain's security detail or medics that also beamed down right next to you in that TFO.
Next would be something we already have (some) control over: Bridge Officers.
Yes, we can customize their appearance (which is terrific BTW), but when it comes to assignment stations onboard our ships, that is done automatically and somewhat randomly. How about the ability to 'place' them at any station we wanted on our bridge - or anywhere else in the ships interior? By using something like the DOff 'Department Head' interface, we could assign Bridge Officers to any command station on the ship. Want your Head Engineer to be at the warp core on the Engineering Deck instead of on the Bridge? No problem, just assign him that station through the drop down menu. Tired of that no name NPC hogging up the Conn when your hand picked Bridge Officer helmsman stands idly somewhere else (or even nowhere to be seen on the Bridge at all?). Again, the drop down station menu puts him/her/it right where you want them. And this placement ability would not only be for the special 'away team' officers you have...this would be for ALL Bridge Officers currently on active duty (ALL those in your BOff list on the left side of your character sheet window). The number of station assignment drop down menus automatically increases as you gain new BOff slots, whether you have them filled or not.
Another customization option in the interface: DOff usage.
It would be cool to use unique DOffs as part of your crew as well. Maybe not to the extent of BOffs, but maybe as part of the random crowds you pass on your ship. These would include 'named' DOffs such as 'Helna' or 'Law'. This could be as simple as a checkbox labeled, 'Use unique Duty Officers in crew' (Although I'm not sure how difficult this would be to implement as there is currently no established way to pick them out individually like there is for BOffs.)
This C-Store Crew Customization idea seems like a huge win-win-win situation:
1. It follows Star Trek canon (even as far back as TOS, crewmen and crewwomen wore different uniforms (pants and dresses), they also had all one race crews (all Human on the Enterprise (minus BOff Spock - lol) and all Vulcans on the Intrepid)).
2. Cryptic gets a terrific way for making a lot of additional money (a C-store item that will certainly produce a lot of sales).
3. The playerbase gets something we've wanted for a long time (control over those NPCs that seem like strangers wandering around onboard or beaming down from our own ships).
So how about it talented Cryptic folks? Here's a great way to make money AND make the players happy.
My consolidated list of game improvements for STO:
arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline/#/discussion/1203368/pve-content-a-list-of-gamewide-polishing-pass-suggestions
arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline/#/discussion/1203368/pve-content-a-list-of-gamewide-polishing-pass-suggestions
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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This discussion has been closed.
Comments
We've had other "make ships your stronghold" threads, but that isn't happening in the foreseeable future either.
A tiny minority of us willing to pay zen for the features isn't enough to support spending the developer resources
In the stronghold threads we discussed paying for the ability to have one or more "ship interior slots" than can be linked to ships in place of a normal stock interior. The slot would come with the database storage needed to store a set of customizations.
That scheme also addresses the requests for replacing the tiny lock box and lobi ship interiors with more complete ones.
Cryptic could follow other MMOs like SWTOR and charge for adding luxuries to your ship-stronghold like exchange access and a mail terminal (for grabbing attachments).
Unfortunately this would be a major development effort that probably wouldn't pay for itself.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
F.C.T. #10-11 don't apply, so why?
It's a perfectly reasonable request, even if it will probably never happen.
That said.. I would still love to see it happen.
Would it be easy to implement? No.
Would it make money hand over fist? No
It would be difficult to implement with very little potential ROI.
There are enough people like me, though, that I think the addition of crew customization would add a layer of income to the team's revenue, and a layer of fun to player immersion.
> F.C.T. #10-11 don't apply, so why?
>
> It's a perfectly reasonable request, even if it will probably never happen.
It is reasonable but you know /Reasons.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
If there's a cost effective way to do this and people are willing to pay for it then yes I think Cryptic would be stupid to not do it, but only Cryptic themselves can judge if it's worth the resources to develop it as only they have the full picture of things.
Being able to see my characters friends and colleagues doing their jobs instead of random no one would be great, being able to make sure my crew obeys the ship's dress code is imho a NEEDED adjustment. Just that one little change would improve immersion everytime you stepped aboard ship.
I would pay to unlock such customization options, but they need to be tied to ship, (someone with numerous ships might have numerous dress codes afterall, each ship is a culture on to itself).