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Possibility of a physical game guide
c0mp
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Now I know the game is over 13 years old now, and new ships, features and episodes are being added all the time. Hell even the meta changes on a regular basis. But what does the community think of the possibility of a hardback/paperback game guide covering the basics like character creation, ship stats, even some official sliders for some great custom characters (or beloved legacy characters), really just wanting the official release of the uniform colours for ALL factions.
The books could also give us some interesting kitbash ships using the F2P ships and in the addendum the premium ships.
It could give us some basic ground and space builds for new players or returning players, the possibilities are quite frankly endless.
Now I know there are the 'unofficial' 2 set series of books by DarkMom Consortium, but I was hoping for something official by Gearbox/Arc.
If an official game guide was released, what would you like to see in it, and more importantly would you buy it?
The floor is open ladies and gents.
The books could also give us some interesting kitbash ships using the F2P ships and in the addendum the premium ships.
It could give us some basic ground and space builds for new players or returning players, the possibilities are quite frankly endless.
Now I know there are the 'unofficial' 2 set series of books by DarkMom Consortium, but I was hoping for something official by Gearbox/Arc.
If an official game guide was released, what would you like to see in it, and more importantly would you buy it?
The floor is open ladies and gents.
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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I understand the need for the wiki, but some of us just like to have something physical in our hands, whether that is a physical copy of a game, movie or album or a game guide/walkthrough.
I believe that if created by the devs or by an author who worked with the devs, endorsed by STO to make it official, and gave the readers tips, secrets and build ideas, along with ship stats to make choosing a ship easier I think it would sell.
A decent quality hardback with artwork and including some of the ideas I have outlined would appeal to new and old player alike. They could even throw in a one time code for a unique ship (created just for the guide) with every copy and inflate the price to compensate for the ship cost.
Without the ship, book cost could be £29.99
With the ship code, book cost could be £59.99
And the thing is people would pay, not just for the ship, but for a good quality physical reference book.
Essentially only things you can assume to remember even remotely constant are so basic that they're essentially a fundamental part of the game or IP but also so basic and/or broad you're probably not gonna gain much by having a physical guide about them.
Things like endgame builds shift way too often to be able to be made into a guide that didn't either cost too much due way too frequent editions or become outdated by the time you can get your hands on it.
Few issues:
1. What's the market to publish this for? STO is an old game without a massive audience.
2. What's the guide going to have for content?
3. What devs are going to work on it?
4. How much content isn't going to get made because they're working/collaborating on this project?
5. What can this do that the wiki can't?
A personal preference isn't necessarily worth a *massive* undertaking like this. STO is huge. It has a wide variety of systems that all need to be itemized, dozens upon dozens of elaborate story missions, zones, patrols, characters, items, traits, ships, ect. ect. And the moment it's printed it's obsolete because STO is an *evolving* game with dozens of new ships per year and at least 3 new episodes. This is why electronic reference material has become so useful for online games. Physical media has stern limitations on what you can do with it per updates (which is why physical game guides have died off, wiki's have become the default for gamers even for content like Elden Ring). Other forms of physical material still exist for games (collectables are a huge market) but this particular niche is extinct because the physicality isn't worth the bare inconvenience and lack of utility over wikis. Back in the 00's gamer guides were a thing but even by STO's launch they were on their way out as internet access became more universal. Hell even the reference guide I had for FF9 (PS1) was hybrid physical/online.
The STO Wiki has done a phenomenal job capturing this detail but that's been a project that's required *years* of work made more manageable because a chunk was iteratively developed with new content. Starting that off now is likely a couple years of work from a small team with notable trade-offs in what that time is going to come at the expense of (as you can't magic up more freetime for anyone in the team to collaborate at this. It's a zero-sum game). Or you're going to have to pay someone new to take on that work and catalog all that content (to avoid lifting the work already put in by the wiki team) and that's not going to be cheap (ie. this has to make bank to justify itself and nothing from the industry suggests it would).
The long and the short of it is that it's not happening, odds are precisely 0%. The closest you're likely ever to get is printing out the wiki yourself, organizing it, and finding some way to bind that nicely. If you want a more reasonable ask, try an *artbook*. There's plenty of content to supply there between in-game screenshots and concept art; none of the inherent issues in trying to make a static guide for a dynamic game; actual utility in gathering that work all together vs. letting it sit across myriad blog posts, twitter threads, and bits of online media; a much broader audience to reach out to for viability; and likely interest from the likes of Thomas and Kael.
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The new wiki is much less craptastic than Fandom with their 10 autoplay videos and 15 ad popups. Try: https://stowiki.net/wiki/Main_Page and see if it helps.
Me, I've stopped buying any paper books and use a kindle and iPad instead. My newspaper is now delivered on time every morning instead of only most of the time, and I've stopped running out of shelf and closet space to pile the new mountain of books I buy every year.
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Given infinite resources Cryptic might be able to gather enough info for a monthly updated guide but even then there would be no profit, printing things isn't cheap and that's ignoring other costs like shipping.
The thing is that (and I'm sure Darkblade will agree) that for builds worth having guides on you can't just print the list of items/traits/so on... the person who made the build has, how you use the build matters just as much if not more as the build itself.
You could probably give me a build made by a top DPS and my DPS might not improve that much or might even become worse since I most likely wouldn't know how to play with that build and unless it just happened to match my preferred playstyle I wouldn't be using said build to the optimal efficiency.
Now this makes a lot of sense. But I was thinking more along the lines of the old Fallout game guides that give you a 'basic' build to start working off and to build upon. I wasn't thinking about meta builds or min-maxing, it was more along the lines of basic F2P builds that can be a good springboard to better builds.
As for the uniforms, this is my biggest bug bear with the Wiki, there are LOADS of uniforms covered for the Federation side, nut for the Klingons and Romulans not so much. I was sort of hoping for some official clarification on uniform colours and pieces.
The same goes for the 'official' canon ship colours, materials and windows.
Finally I was hoping for a full chapter on some character sliders that you could adopt for your own captain. Maybe not the established characters what with having to pay for their likeness. But some cool characters that the devs/authors come up with.