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Ship Interiors, Exploration and Foundry Lite...
sirsitsalot
Member Posts: 2,803 Arc User
I had a thought about how two elements that have been abandoned might be brought back and given purpose in the contect of the games current "Aliance" narrative.
Inasmuch as the original exploration system sucked, it did provide gameplay that served two purposes. The first being that it gave players relatively short gameplay missions that were varied enough that it was a good way to log on, pass time playing and doing what the second thing it provided: gathering resources in quantities that were only limited by how much time the player spent exploring.
While I would prefer to see an entirely new exploration system rolled out, I realize that this will not happen due to development manpower constraints more than anything else. Nevertheless, I feel that it would be good to have a gameplay loop that gives players an option as to how they want to spend their time.
One thing I would eliminate from the exploration system is the empty exploration star cluster maps. You'd still go to the Star Cluster location on the galactic map to begin exploring. But instead of loading into a vast empty map that was so easy for people to get lost in
the player loads into his ship's interior map. In the ready room, sitting down at your desk you would be able to bring up a mission planning interface, so you can narrow down the type of scenarios you want to experience. The more scenarios you select, the shorter the "travel time between missions. So if you are looking for only missions where you fly around a space map and scan five anomalies to get resources, then there could be upwards of ten minutes between missions. But they would be guaranteed to only be that type of mission. Perfect for those who just want to be gatherers... Now the travel time is based on the warp factor you set when initiating "travel" The 10 minutes would be at warp 1. You could increase to up to your ship's maximum warp at a dilithium cost deducted from your ship's reserves. The dilithium refinement interface would present a new option to deposit or withdraw reserves. The idea of the reserve pool is to ensure that using dilithium to cut travel time won't consume any dilithium that the player has not specifically allocated for this purpose. But it does add a dilithium sink to the game in the form of convenience.
When the travel is completed, the mission parameters begin. First, would be the mission briefing (if applicable). We go to the conference lounge and sit at the table, and then the appropriate bridge officers present the objectives.. Next, the approach step happens, where (if applicable) the ship enters orbital space to approach the destination. There may or may not be hostiles, depending on the mission parameters. If this is just the scan five anomalies in an orbital space map, then completing this phase will complete the mission, and you return to the ship interior. If the mission has a ground phase, the deployment step begins. The selected bridge officers will either go to the transporter room or the shuttle bay (whichever makes sense for the scenario. This is where the players will load into the actual ground map to do whatever the mission requires. Once completed, the away team either returns to the shuttle craft or beams out. If there is another space component to the mission, this is where it will go. Maybe after that it ends, or maybe the mission continues with an optional secondary objective where the ship warps out and then warps into another space component, where something else can happen. Once all mission components are completed, the player is returned to the ship interior in whatever deployment room they left from...
There is no sector space while exploring. Exploration is a loop vontained within its own virtual space.
When the player is done exploring, the return to X sector button can be pressed, and the player loads back into normal sector space. Using this option whil in an exploration mission would abort that mission.
So with this concept, we bring back exploration. We give ship interiors a use, and we add an optional convenience-based dilithium sink.
One thing that could be added to exploration would be rendezvous missions. These would be where players meet another ship and must beam over for a ground component that takes place on-board that ship. This would be a great way to "advertise" C-store ships and interiors by letting players see what they are like. A space component to a rendezvous might involve the player serving as a support for the other ship to carry out its objective, where hostiles will target that ship before they target the player, and the player must draw their fire. This will allow players to see the other ship perform in space gameplay.
The newest ships made available for purchase would be ideal to add to the rendezvous mission pool.
What about multiplayer exploration?
A five person group like normal would be formed in regular sector space. The group leafer would be whose ship interior everyone loads into. Dummy clones of the other players ships would be visible out the windows of the ship. and a new exterior visual option would switch to a camera view showing the player ships in formation, with warp starlines active while traveling to the next destination.
Now about Foundry Lite... This would be where custom exploration missions can be created, but NOT using a map editor. It would entirely use all pre-existing assets, but the "author" would get to decide the flow of the mission objectives. These would be added to the pool of exploration missions that everyone can experience. So technically it is not UGC in the context that Foundry originally was, but it does allowan exploration session to be custyom-tailored for what the player is seeking to achieve. A mission component would never be something as simple as activate a console to create the mission. There would me much more to it than that. That might be what ENDs the mission, or advances it to the next step, but that would not be the only thing that a player would need to do.. It would work like this:
Mission start: Space component
Travel a specific path through asteroids (with hostiles)
Approach destination
Begin ground component
Approach ground destination along a specific path (with hostiles)
Enter second ground map (installation interior)
Collect data from several consoles to find access code to door to final level (with hostiles)
Access the final console to get mission objective (with hostiles)
(with hostiles) turns on all encounters for that component. The component option without that flag will have a random chance of activating encounters at each point.
Scattered throughout the maps, either space or ground, would be little points of interest where players can find random resource components. Nodes will randomly be active or inactive, but half of them will always be active, thus ensuring that no matter how many times a player actually gets that specific map, where the components are located will never be the exact same, meaning to get them all, the player would need to pretty much eplore the entire map to look for them. There could also be a variety of hazard nodes located next to each resource node that are given the same treatment where half of them will always be active, but which ones would be random. These would be common to the maps and treated separately from the actual mission objective.
Exploration mission rewards would be some dilithium (based on how many mission components are involved, and whether or not those components had hostile encounters. And there would be a random meta-resource reward as well... Whether a mission is custom built or the product of strictly random component chaining, these random factors would still apply.
Spending RD at the initial ready room could make it possible to choose a specific meta resource to guarantee it will be received from the next mission.
Meta resources would factor into actual endgame objectives, this making exploration a viable gameplay option. It would ideally not be the only way to get those components. Just a way to get more of them if the player is willing to put in the time.
I talk about my ideas for a endgame meta system elsewhere. But suffice to say it is something meant to involve everyone who plays the game, no matter how they choose to play it..
I'm going to leave this here for discussion.
Inasmuch as the original exploration system sucked, it did provide gameplay that served two purposes. The first being that it gave players relatively short gameplay missions that were varied enough that it was a good way to log on, pass time playing and doing what the second thing it provided: gathering resources in quantities that were only limited by how much time the player spent exploring.
While I would prefer to see an entirely new exploration system rolled out, I realize that this will not happen due to development manpower constraints more than anything else. Nevertheless, I feel that it would be good to have a gameplay loop that gives players an option as to how they want to spend their time.
One thing I would eliminate from the exploration system is the empty exploration star cluster maps. You'd still go to the Star Cluster location on the galactic map to begin exploring. But instead of loading into a vast empty map that was so easy for people to get lost in
the player loads into his ship's interior map. In the ready room, sitting down at your desk you would be able to bring up a mission planning interface, so you can narrow down the type of scenarios you want to experience. The more scenarios you select, the shorter the "travel time between missions. So if you are looking for only missions where you fly around a space map and scan five anomalies to get resources, then there could be upwards of ten minutes between missions. But they would be guaranteed to only be that type of mission. Perfect for those who just want to be gatherers... Now the travel time is based on the warp factor you set when initiating "travel" The 10 minutes would be at warp 1. You could increase to up to your ship's maximum warp at a dilithium cost deducted from your ship's reserves. The dilithium refinement interface would present a new option to deposit or withdraw reserves. The idea of the reserve pool is to ensure that using dilithium to cut travel time won't consume any dilithium that the player has not specifically allocated for this purpose. But it does add a dilithium sink to the game in the form of convenience.When the travel is completed, the mission parameters begin. First, would be the mission briefing (if applicable). We go to the conference lounge and sit at the table, and then the appropriate bridge officers present the objectives.. Next, the approach step happens, where (if applicable) the ship enters orbital space to approach the destination. There may or may not be hostiles, depending on the mission parameters. If this is just the scan five anomalies in an orbital space map, then completing this phase will complete the mission, and you return to the ship interior. If the mission has a ground phase, the deployment step begins. The selected bridge officers will either go to the transporter room or the shuttle bay (whichever makes sense for the scenario. This is where the players will load into the actual ground map to do whatever the mission requires. Once completed, the away team either returns to the shuttle craft or beams out. If there is another space component to the mission, this is where it will go. Maybe after that it ends, or maybe the mission continues with an optional secondary objective where the ship warps out and then warps into another space component, where something else can happen. Once all mission components are completed, the player is returned to the ship interior in whatever deployment room they left from...
There is no sector space while exploring. Exploration is a loop vontained within its own virtual space.
When the player is done exploring, the return to X sector button can be pressed, and the player loads back into normal sector space. Using this option whil in an exploration mission would abort that mission.
So with this concept, we bring back exploration. We give ship interiors a use, and we add an optional convenience-based dilithium sink.
One thing that could be added to exploration would be rendezvous missions. These would be where players meet another ship and must beam over for a ground component that takes place on-board that ship. This would be a great way to "advertise" C-store ships and interiors by letting players see what they are like. A space component to a rendezvous might involve the player serving as a support for the other ship to carry out its objective, where hostiles will target that ship before they target the player, and the player must draw their fire. This will allow players to see the other ship perform in space gameplay.
The newest ships made available for purchase would be ideal to add to the rendezvous mission pool.
What about multiplayer exploration?
A five person group like normal would be formed in regular sector space. The group leafer would be whose ship interior everyone loads into. Dummy clones of the other players ships would be visible out the windows of the ship. and a new exterior visual option would switch to a camera view showing the player ships in formation, with warp starlines active while traveling to the next destination.
Now about Foundry Lite... This would be where custom exploration missions can be created, but NOT using a map editor. It would entirely use all pre-existing assets, but the "author" would get to decide the flow of the mission objectives. These would be added to the pool of exploration missions that everyone can experience. So technically it is not UGC in the context that Foundry originally was, but it does allowan exploration session to be custyom-tailored for what the player is seeking to achieve. A mission component would never be something as simple as activate a console to create the mission. There would me much more to it than that. That might be what ENDs the mission, or advances it to the next step, but that would not be the only thing that a player would need to do.. It would work like this:
Mission start: Space component
Travel a specific path through asteroids (with hostiles)
Approach destination
Begin ground component
Approach ground destination along a specific path (with hostiles)
Enter second ground map (installation interior)
Collect data from several consoles to find access code to door to final level (with hostiles)
Access the final console to get mission objective (with hostiles)
(with hostiles) turns on all encounters for that component. The component option without that flag will have a random chance of activating encounters at each point.
Scattered throughout the maps, either space or ground, would be little points of interest where players can find random resource components. Nodes will randomly be active or inactive, but half of them will always be active, thus ensuring that no matter how many times a player actually gets that specific map, where the components are located will never be the exact same, meaning to get them all, the player would need to pretty much eplore the entire map to look for them. There could also be a variety of hazard nodes located next to each resource node that are given the same treatment where half of them will always be active, but which ones would be random. These would be common to the maps and treated separately from the actual mission objective.
Exploration mission rewards would be some dilithium (based on how many mission components are involved, and whether or not those components had hostile encounters. And there would be a random meta-resource reward as well... Whether a mission is custom built or the product of strictly random component chaining, these random factors would still apply.
Spending RD at the initial ready room could make it possible to choose a specific meta resource to guarantee it will be received from the next mission.
Meta resources would factor into actual endgame objectives, this making exploration a viable gameplay option. It would ideally not be the only way to get those components. Just a way to get more of them if the player is willing to put in the time.
I talk about my ideas for a endgame meta system elsewhere. But suffice to say it is something meant to involve everyone who plays the game, no matter how they choose to play it..
I'm going to leave this here for discussion.
"There can be no meeting of the minds between two parties
if both parties are not willing to meet in the middle."
-Ambassador Samuel J. Stone
if both parties are not willing to meet in the middle."
-Ambassador Samuel J. Stone
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
0
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
This could be fun for the first few times, but then I'd see most players going back to patrols and TFOs for a quick action fix.
Mats are dirt-cheap on the exchange and free through admiralty so resource gathering seems pointless.
Foundry Lite:
I wish the foundry still existed, but any new user content authoring system is going to be a huge effort, even a Lite one. Needing to support 500 casual authors is a lot harder than a few company employees who can be given less controlled access and who can talk directly to the programmers.
User-created content hosted by the game company is also a headache because of the need for moderation, and for policing it for exploits. The old foundry was used for a number of exploits to get things without doing the normal amount of effort.
Or just once in a while play one to break out of the treadmill. Still giggling when I think of that KDF mission that was as lame and unheroic as it get till the character retells (effectively replays) the mission in the Qo'noS bar and it becomes a wild and epic tale.
edit. *sigh* Old man rambling :P
These days I break out of the treadmill by playing something else. Or nothing. Mostly nothing...
Oh, God, yes! That was hilarious!
summary, please?
Those are the fundamentals of STO, and it is not going to evolve past that or introduce any radically different form of gameplay at this point; it just isn't (for a lot of different reasons).
Whenever there is a new Trek MMO in the works (whether it be made by Cryptic or someone else) that is the time to suggest all of these kinds of things and actually have any kind of hope/chance those ideas could be implemented into the game's design.
Note: I'm not saying people can't/shouldn't post threads like this. It's fine. But unfortunately any major ideas outside of a new ship/episode/TFO/patrol aren't really going to happen. I wish they would/could, but alas.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
Hell yes to more story driven content, maybe add more cutscenes while we're at it, I just don't want to get into a shootout every time, Why not resolve missions with diplomacy instead since it's the Starfleet thing to do, pew pew pew is more of a Klingon or Terran thing anyways.
Honestly, I think it has less to do with any of that and more to do with
1: the game is over a decade old and filled with spaghetti code that a lot of the current people care barely work with, and
2: the vision/passion/etc of the actual developers does not change the budget they are given from PWE.
Unfortunately I think those 2 things mean that regardless of how great an idea be or how passionate any developer may be, they are still going to run into a pretty solid brick wall of limitations as far as what they can or can't do.
I honestly don't think STO's old code or STO's budget allows them to pioneer any big new systems, regardless of whether the devs want to or not.
But hey, I would love to be proven wrong!
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
Yep. The UI editor was allegedly done on their own time by a dev back in 2012 or 2014 (I forget) because even then it wouldn't fit into the schedule.
Unless staff decide to throw away their work-life balance and risk burnout, "would be nice" ideas might stay on the back burner forever as the "needed for new story episode or TFO" features take precedence.
We do get random quality of life features out of the blue now and then, it seems like at least one or two a year, but that's an unexpected surprise not a regular occurrence.
I know nothing about Cryptic's work environment over the years, but in general game developers tend to be underpaid and overworked compared to those of us in other industries.
It's rare for management to give developers the extra time on a project to properly document everything as they go. The scheduled release is in two weeks. We need it now! NOW!!!! (Then on to working on the next scheduled update.)
Documenting and re-factoring tens of thousands of lines of existing code is also a huge project. Convincing management to do that instead of creating new content for players is usually going to be futile.
I completely agree we shouldn't be in this mess of a situation. I completely agree they screwed up, dropped, the ball, etc, etc.
But unfortunately that doesn't change the situation. We are still left with a company entangled in their mess of legacy spaghetti code, that has to drop systems they no longer understand, and limited by a budget that apparently doesn't increase just because the game is performing well (instead the money is siphoned off to other PWE games/etc).
So going back to my original reply and point in this thread: I think your ideas are good and wish they could happen, but unfortunately they can't. The best we can hope for is that kind of stuff in the next Trek MMO.
But rather than be depressed that this game can never do those things, I say let's just enjoy it for what it is and can be. One day STO won't be around anymore and we'll look back and remember it fondly. Scratch that. I'm sure we'll have an EMU. And I plan to play whichever server version has the foundry enabled and gives away all of these lockbox ships for free
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
It's fun to dream, but a playable game that's enjoyed by thousands of people is better than a Star Citizen or Battlecruiser 3000AD. Even if you had $350 million you might fall into a Chris Roberts quagmire of spending years on Space Cupholders and Space Coffee Machines.
Ahh, Battlecruiser 3000AD. I remember that. But was Daikatana any better? And remember what a CF Tabula Rasa turned into?
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Yes, I'd probably choose space too. But I wouldn't mislead people that I was making them a great MMO while I was off being a space tourist. Pick one, don't pretend to do both.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Prepare for eternal disillusion. Yes, we want free roaming, visit planets, be diplomats, traders, go on secret personal missions, etc; but, at the end of the day, this, and all other MMO's, necessarily suffer from the same issue: ppl consume content faster than it can be created (by an order of magnitude even). So, repetition and grind are going to be forever with us (unless, say, 50 years from now, a super Ai can generate a true stream of endless, custom missions that actually make sense).
PWE certainly lacks vision, btw. Cryptic had some, until they realized they could get away with no longer making interiors/bridges, and it all became just a blatant cash-grab. There's really only 1 way to keep game quality: which is to keep Cryptic to it. But as soon as the majority here said 'Eh, I don't care about bridges', they knew they had you. And those peeps likely still think it was about just bridges. It isn't. So they took free Endeavor and Admiralty reroll tokens away from you, and everything else you held dear: because they knew they'd get away with it. Yeah, y'all know what you did.
But I'm not bitter or anything.