True, the addition of a T6 token in the epic tab of the phoenix store would be a nice touch for those who have all the ships from their original events, and it would not really upset the balance since people go for years without seeing a single epic phoenix token. My guess is that it would probably be one of those single-character unlock T6 tokens they had out a while back in the cstore though if they did.
0
rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,660Community Moderator
What I'd like to see in 2024 is some method of creating a Random TFO (ground or space) that draws from an array of backdrops and setpieces and procedurally generated stuff to create random encounters that aren't just the same every time.
Hate to say it but it couldn't really handle procedurally generated patrols when whe had Exploration Clusters. There were times enemies would spawn underground and effectively lock you out of completing objectives because it was "Kill 5 enemy groups".
I don't think procedural generation is viable for that with STO.
I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something CRAZY happens again?!
The nut who actually ground out many packs. The resident forum voice of reason (I HAZ FORUM REP! YAY!)
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite colored text = mod mode
What I'd like to see in 2024 is some method of creating a Random TFO (ground or space) that draws from an array of backdrops and setpieces and procedurally generated stuff to create random encounters that aren't just the same every time.
Hate to say it but it couldn't really handle procedurally generated patrols when whe had Exploration Clusters. There were times enemies would spawn underground and effectively lock you out of completing objectives because it was "Kill 5 enemy groups".
I don't think procedural generation is viable for that with STO.
And from what I've heard even when it did work, it was so cut and paste that the missions made sometimes 0 sense and it was clear the missions where just "fill the blank" without any regards to the results making sense.
EDIT:the problem with procedural generation for STO is that you'd have to do a lot of work to block paths that made no sense with Star Trek and that work would probably not be worth the cost.
0
rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,660Community Moderator
I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something CRAZY happens again?!
The nut who actually ground out many packs. The resident forum voice of reason (I HAZ FORUM REP! YAY!)
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite colored text = mod mode
And from what I've heard even when it did work, it was so cut and paste that the missions made sometimes 0 sense and it was clear the missions where just "fill the blank" without any regards to the results making sense.
I always thought the procedurally generated missions made far more sense than "fight magically spawning waves of enemies on a timer for X minutes" that is so common with a lot of the nouveau content these days. I think that these missions allowed many players to experience the same magical sense of exploration as first depicted by Captain Kirk, Spock, Bones, and Scotty in the original series of Star Trek.
Third Borg Dynasty
Compared to the often over-hyped, frenetic, and long winded "heroes" in some of the more recent missions I think the Third Borg Dynasty offered a very appealing interaction with the Star Trek universe. All that was really known about them was through interacting with them via exploration. This allowed players to create their own internal dialogue and back story with them that was only limited by their imagination. It's no wonder that the Third Borg Dynasty was such a powerful experience for so many.
Yeah, the old exploration system wasn't really that bad. Sure, some of it made little sense, but at least it was random content.
And we have so much sillyness in the game nowadays, that I'm not really sure whether the Borg Dynasty is that crazy. I mean, is it really that much worse than using space mushrooms to travel everywhere instantly or being able to summon Sompek Lightning everywhere (without hurting a nearby ally even!) ?
Let's not pretend that STO (or Star Trek in general indeed) is supposed to make much sense. Most of it is more fantasy than hard sci-fi anyway.
Let this Third Borg Dynasty be(e) a precursor to our Borg, created by a crazy beekeeper (with a British accent) who genetically modified them to take revenge against Monsanto before they escaped to space. I mean, why not?
0
rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,660Community Moderator
Except that the "random" content was generally random "scan 5 gubbins" or "kill 5 groups". While it did make a few non combat missions... it was still kinda bland.
I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something CRAZY happens again?!
The nut who actually ground out many packs. The resident forum voice of reason (I HAZ FORUM REP! YAY!)
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite colored text = mod mode
Star Trek was never hard sci-fi in the first place, hard and soft refer to the type of science the story primarily deals with.
"Hard" means the story focuses on the technology and other empirical, directly measurable "hard" sciences, (sometimes to the point where plot and characters are almost irrelevant), and often (in novels) steps away from the plot and goes on for pages about how something works before taking up the actual story again.
Trek started out as soft sci-fi, which is sci-fi that concentrates on the "soft" sciences that are qualitative and can only be indirectly measured by methods like subjective analysis (in other words mainly but not limited to social and behavioral sciences), but the movie era injected a lot of Star Wars/Buck Rodgers/etc. style unscientific space opera which TNG inherited and which continued to build up in subsequent spinoffs and shove the soft sci-fi aside more and more until it hit the breaking point in DSC and CBS realized they were losing too many of the traditional Trek fans and so the two newest (SNW, and odd as it sounds, Prodigy) seem to be trying to move back towards soft sci-fi again.
Anyway, the game engine probably does not handle procedural scenario generation well since it was originally designed for superhero stories in a fixed city location and heavily modified (with a very short deadline, btw) to handle Trek. That kind of adaptation leads to a lot of kludges (especially when rushed like it was) which cause a lot of difficulties down the road when trying to add new major features like that.
They may not even be able to put the old exploration cluster system back in at all, something since then could have eliminated whatever that old code hooked into, or some aspect of it may have depended on a quirk of an older compiler that will not handle the modern version of the game, or any number of other snags that happen when working with ancient code. Usually, it is easier to write something new from scratch than to try and put the old code back in, and I doubt they have enough coders left to make that practical.
"Anyway, the game engine probably does not handle procedural scenario generation well since it was originally designed for superhero stories in a fixed city location"
Actually, City of Heroes has a lot of locations: outdoors, cave systems, Oranbega, fortresses etc. And it actually generates tons of missions on the fly, with varying targets, opponents, objectives, placement and other things. It's not the engine. Just because something was done poorly the first time they took a casual attempt at it, doesn't imply it necessarily must and can only be done poorly.
But yes, coders is the issue. City of Heroes is still running, still using the Foundry (or Architect system, as it was originally called), and still being maintained... because they have devs who understand the the original code. NCSoft has even recently given the Homecoming team an official license.
Cryptic has been held back for too long because they appear to have lost touch with the workings of their original code base. There's only so long they can keep editing the same set of templates over and over again.
In terms of gameplay, the only thing I'd really like to see is kinetics toned down a little. Obviously I'm not saying it shouldn't be a threat, far from it, but I think it a bit much for a single mine explosion to be able to down a tricked-out full hull/shields Vengeance-class dreadnought, as happened to me on one occasion.
I swim through a sea of stars. . . .
0
rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,660Community Moderator
In terms of gameplay, the only thing I'd really like to see is kinetics toned down a little. Obviously I'm not saying it shouldn't be a threat, far from it, but I think it a bit much for a single mine explosion to be able to down a tricked-out full hull/shields Vengeance-class dreadnought, as happened to me on one occasion.
Normal mines shouldn't do that.
Were you getting ganked by Vaadwaur Tricobalt Mines or something?
I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something CRAZY happens again?!
The nut who actually ground out many packs. The resident forum voice of reason (I HAZ FORUM REP! YAY!)
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite colored text = mod mode
In terms of gameplay, the only thing I'd really like to see is kinetics toned down a little. Obviously I'm not saying it shouldn't be a threat, far from it, but I think it a bit much for a single mine explosion to be able to down a tricked-out full hull/shields Vengeance-class dreadnought, as happened to me on one occasion.
Normal mines shouldn't do that.
Were you getting ganked by Vaadwaur Tricobalt Mines or something?
If memory serves, I was running Azure Nebula Rescue at the time.
I swim through a sea of stars. . . .
0
rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,660Community Moderator
I... don't think Tholians use mines at all. I know that they have some nasty Kinetic if you get webbed, but that's easy to evade. If its the big Web ball, just FAW the web nodes until you can escape. If its the Tarantula's Web Cannon, it gives you a pretty good warning to get out of the cone in front of it with the spin up time and visuals.
I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something CRAZY happens again?!
The nut who actually ground out many packs. The resident forum voice of reason (I HAZ FORUM REP! YAY!)
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite colored text = mod mode
I... don't think Tholians use mines at all. I know that they have some nasty Kinetic if you get webbed, but that's easy to evade. If its the big Web ball, just FAW the web nodes until you can escape. If its the Tarantula's Web Cannon, it gives you a pretty good warning to get out of the cone in front of it with the spin up time and visuals.
Definitely wasn't the web cannon. It's been years, so my memory is a bit fuzzy, but I am certain of that much.
Star Trek was never hard sci-fi in the first place, hard and soft refer to the type of science the story primarily deals with.
"Hard" means the story focuses on the technology and other empirical, directly measurable "hard" sciences, (sometimes to the point where plot and characters are almost irrelevant), and often (in novels) steps away from the plot and goes on for pages about how something works before taking up the actual story again.
Trek started out as soft sci-fi, which is sci-fi that concentrates on the "soft" sciences that are qualitative and can only be indirectly measured by methods like subjective analysis (in other words mainly but not limited to social and behavioral sciences), but the movie era injected a lot of Star Wars/Buck Rodgers/etc. style unscientific space opera which TNG inherited and which continued to build up in subsequent spinoffs and shove the soft sci-fi aside more and more until it hit the breaking point in DSC and CBS realized they were losing too many of the traditional Trek fans and so the two newest (SNW, and odd as it sounds, Prodigy) seem to be trying to move back towards soft sci-fi again.
Anyway, the game engine probably does not handle procedural scenario generation well since it was originally designed for superhero stories in a fixed city location and heavily modified (with a very short deadline, btw) to handle Trek. That kind of adaptation leads to a lot of kludges (especially when rushed like it was) which cause a lot of difficulties down the road when trying to add new major features like that.
They may not even be able to put the old exploration cluster system back in at all, something since then could have eliminated whatever that old code hooked into, or some aspect of it may have depended on a quirk of an older compiler that will not handle the modern version of the game, or any number of other snags that happen when working with ancient code. Usually, it is easier to write something new from scratch than to try and put the old code back in, and I doubt they have enough coders left to make that practical.
Phoenixc is correct, however I think the traditional Trek fans came back when they released Lower Decks, it was the first animated series to be considered Canon, it's a good series and it respected the source material, which is something you don't see nowadays.
1. I'd like to see a captain race change token. Seeing as we can purchase and fly any ship on any character, I'm sure changing your toons race shouldnt pose too much of a problem. Even if you made it single use per character only, for a C-store cost, I'd be tickled pink.
2. Acquiring and opening an Infinty Lockbox ship on one character opens that ship to other characters on the account to purchase through the C-store for a cost.
I figure these will never happen, but I can only dream.
more episodes like midnight, which was a good blend of storytelling and combat, though i think ther e should have been consequences for the choices made, Survivor, which was a decent puzzle game, Sunrise, signs and portent
We Need BERETS in the tailor
0
rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,660Community Moderator
Well... the issue with STO is that you can replay missions, and the narrative is relatively rigid. So having consequences for choices, that would cause divergence, are not as viable across multiple story missions. At best you're probably looking at something like Where Angels Fear to Tread, where you can choose to destroy the Tal Shiar ship or not because of the Borg tech they got.
I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something CRAZY happens again?!
The nut who actually ground out many packs. The resident forum voice of reason (I HAZ FORUM REP! YAY!)
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite colored text = mod mode
Well... the issue with STO is that you can replay missions, and the narrative is relatively rigid. So having consequences for choices, that would cause divergence, are not as viable across multiple story missions. At best you're probably looking at something like Where Angels Fear to Tread, where you can choose to destroy the Tal Shiar ship or not because of the Borg tech they got.
I think the issue there is the common one with narrative multiplayer games, galaxy would look like a very different place based on your choices and that means heavily splitting the player base or making only an illusion of choice, it's a limit of gendre not STO itself.
EDIT:and before anyone brings up Baldur's Gate 3, it's a totally different beast narrative wise, BG3 is a single player game that can be played Co-op so there's ever only 1 narrative running at a time, while STO even currently has as many narratives as there's players even if the differences between those narratives are minor.
Honestly, I think it's time they did something Romulan-centric.
From which era? TOS, Next Gen, STO Republic or Picard era?
STO Republic. I could be misremembering, but I don't think there's been much if any story focusing on the Republic since before Victory is Life launched.
Yes, I'm that Askray@Batbayer in game. Yes, I still play. No, I don't care. Former Community Moderator, Former SSR DJ, Now Full time father to two kids, Husband, Retail Worker. Tiktok: @Askray Facebook: Askray113
0
rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,660Community Moderator
STO Republic. I could be misremembering, but I don't think there's been much if any story focusing on the Republic since before Victory is Life launched.
Well there is Legacy of Romulus, where Romulans were first introduced.
I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something CRAZY happens again?!
The nut who actually ground out many packs. The resident forum voice of reason (I HAZ FORUM REP! YAY!)
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite colored text = mod mode
STO Republic. I could be misremembering, but I don't think there's been much if any story focusing on the Republic since before Victory is Life launched.
Well there is Legacy of Romulus, where Romulans were first introduced.
Eleven years ago, I believe. Since then the Klingons have gotten an admittedly brief civil war arc. I'm just saying that a member of the Alliance should get something new once in a while.
STO Republic. I could be misremembering, but I don't think there's been much if any story focusing on the Republic since before Victory is Life launched.
Well there is Legacy of Romulus, where Romulans were first introduced.
And that pretty much ends with the establishment of mol'Rihan. The Reman quarter is referenced, and its shadowed location shown in a background shot once, but the city itself has never been finished - only the Romulan fleet command center. Be neat to have our efforts there actually pay off.
STO Republic. I could be misremembering, but I don't think there's been much if any story focusing on the Republic since before Victory is Life launched.
Well there is Legacy of Romulus, where Romulans were first introduced.
And that pretty much ends with the establishment of mol'Rihan. The Reman quarter is referenced, and its shadowed location shown in a background shot once, but the city itself has never been finished - only the Romulan fleet command center. Be neat to have our efforts there actually pay off.
Very much this. Moreover, the Romulans are tied with the Klingons as the most important non-Federation aspect of the Star Trek mythos, surpassing the Dominion, the Cardassians, and even the Borg. "Balance of Terror" was one of the deepest episodes of the original series, and the Romulans were the looming threat in TNG (the Borg were too sporadic to really qualify IMO).
From an STO standpoint, I have at base two issues. First, IMO the Republic doesn't really feel like an equal partner the way the Klingons do. Second, the way they're written feels just slightly off. Obviously they have to be nicer than the old Romulan Empire, but in the process they seem to have lost the sneakiness that was so much a part of the Romulan psyche. Essentially they come across as V'tosh ka'tur minus the obvious mental instability.
You're right they don't feel like an equal partner - the klingons don't have access to an entire Dyson Sphere's worth of automated shipyards that they are generously allowing the other major partners of the Khitomer Alliance to use alongside other facilities in the sphere as well.
The Romulan Republic is not an equal partner - they are a SUPERIOR partner, just one whose contributions happen to be more passive and in the background and therefore not well-noticed compared to Klingon or Dominion contributions...which I would like to point out is very in keeping with how the Romulans are portrayed.
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!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
Comments
Hate to say it but it couldn't really handle procedurally generated patrols when whe had Exploration Clusters. There were times enemies would spawn underground and effectively lock you out of completing objectives because it was "Kill 5 enemy groups".
I don't think procedural generation is viable for that with STO.
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
colored text = mod mode
And from what I've heard even when it did work, it was so cut and paste that the missions made sometimes 0 sense and it was clear the missions where just "fill the blank" without any regards to the results making sense.
EDIT:the problem with procedural generation for STO is that you'd have to do a lot of work to block paths that made no sense with Star Trek and that work would probably not be worth the cost.
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
colored text = mod mode
Compared to the often over-hyped, frenetic, and long winded "heroes" in some of the more recent missions I think the Third Borg Dynasty offered a very appealing interaction with the Star Trek universe. All that was really known about them was through interacting with them via exploration. This allowed players to create their own internal dialogue and back story with them that was only limited by their imagination. It's no wonder that the Third Borg Dynasty was such a powerful experience for so many.
And we have so much sillyness in the game nowadays, that I'm not really sure whether the Borg Dynasty is that crazy. I mean, is it really that much worse than using space mushrooms to travel everywhere instantly or being able to summon Sompek Lightning everywhere (without hurting a nearby ally even!) ?
Let's not pretend that STO (or Star Trek in general indeed) is supposed to make much sense. Most of it is more fantasy than hard sci-fi anyway.
Let this Third Borg Dynasty be(e) a precursor to our Borg, created by a crazy beekeeper (with a British accent) who genetically modified them to take revenge against Monsanto before they escaped to space. I mean, why not?
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
colored text = mod mode
"Hard" means the story focuses on the technology and other empirical, directly measurable "hard" sciences, (sometimes to the point where plot and characters are almost irrelevant), and often (in novels) steps away from the plot and goes on for pages about how something works before taking up the actual story again.
Trek started out as soft sci-fi, which is sci-fi that concentrates on the "soft" sciences that are qualitative and can only be indirectly measured by methods like subjective analysis (in other words mainly but not limited to social and behavioral sciences), but the movie era injected a lot of Star Wars/Buck Rodgers/etc. style unscientific space opera which TNG inherited and which continued to build up in subsequent spinoffs and shove the soft sci-fi aside more and more until it hit the breaking point in DSC and CBS realized they were losing too many of the traditional Trek fans and so the two newest (SNW, and odd as it sounds, Prodigy) seem to be trying to move back towards soft sci-fi again.
Anyway, the game engine probably does not handle procedural scenario generation well since it was originally designed for superhero stories in a fixed city location and heavily modified (with a very short deadline, btw) to handle Trek. That kind of adaptation leads to a lot of kludges (especially when rushed like it was) which cause a lot of difficulties down the road when trying to add new major features like that.
They may not even be able to put the old exploration cluster system back in at all, something since then could have eliminated whatever that old code hooked into, or some aspect of it may have depended on a quirk of an older compiler that will not handle the modern version of the game, or any number of other snags that happen when working with ancient code. Usually, it is easier to write something new from scratch than to try and put the old code back in, and I doubt they have enough coders left to make that practical.
Actually, City of Heroes has a lot of locations: outdoors, cave systems, Oranbega, fortresses etc. And it actually generates tons of missions on the fly, with varying targets, opponents, objectives, placement and other things. It's not the engine. Just because something was done poorly the first time they took a casual attempt at it, doesn't imply it necessarily must and can only be done poorly.
But yes, coders is the issue. City of Heroes is still running, still using the Foundry (or Architect system, as it was originally called), and still being maintained... because they have devs who understand the the original code. NCSoft has even recently given the Homecoming team an official license.
Cryptic has been held back for too long because they appear to have lost touch with the workings of their original code base. There's only so long they can keep editing the same set of templates over and over again.
Normal mines shouldn't do that.
Were you getting ganked by Vaadwaur Tricobalt Mines or something?
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
colored text = mod mode
If memory serves, I was running Azure Nebula Rescue at the time.
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
colored text = mod mode
Definitely wasn't the web cannon. It's been years, so my memory is a bit fuzzy, but I am certain of that much.
Phoenixc is correct, however I think the traditional Trek fans came back when they released Lower Decks, it was the first animated series to be considered Canon, it's a good series and it respected the source material, which is something you don't see nowadays.
I'd like the option to repack infinity and promo ship into there box and transfer them to other character on the same account.
2. Acquiring and opening an Infinty Lockbox ship on one character opens that ship to other characters on the account to purchase through the C-store for a cost.
I figure these will never happen, but I can only dream.
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
colored text = mod mode
I think the issue there is the common one with narrative multiplayer games, galaxy would look like a very different place based on your choices and that means heavily splitting the player base or making only an illusion of choice, it's a limit of gendre not STO itself.
EDIT:and before anyone brings up Baldur's Gate 3, it's a totally different beast narrative wise, BG3 is a single player game that can be played Co-op so there's ever only 1 narrative running at a time, while STO even currently has as many narratives as there's players even if the differences between those narratives are minor.
STO Republic. I could be misremembering, but I don't think there's been much if any story focusing on the Republic since before Victory is Life launched.
STO in 2024 needs to continue forward...
I will now return to the shadows.
Former Community Moderator, Former SSR DJ, Now Full time father to two kids, Husband, Retail Worker.
Tiktok: @Askray Facebook: Askray113
Well there is Legacy of Romulus, where Romulans were first introduced.
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
colored text = mod mode
Eleven years ago, I believe. Since then the Klingons have gotten an admittedly brief civil war arc. I'm just saying that a member of the Alliance should get something new once in a while.
A wild Askray appeared!
And it's a legendary!
Very much this. Moreover, the Romulans are tied with the Klingons as the most important non-Federation aspect of the Star Trek mythos, surpassing the Dominion, the Cardassians, and even the Borg. "Balance of Terror" was one of the deepest episodes of the original series, and the Romulans were the looming threat in TNG (the Borg were too sporadic to really qualify IMO).
From an STO standpoint, I have at base two issues. First, IMO the Republic doesn't really feel like an equal partner the way the Klingons do. Second, the way they're written feels just slightly off. Obviously they have to be nicer than the old Romulan Empire, but in the process they seem to have lost the sneakiness that was so much a part of the Romulan psyche. Essentially they come across as V'tosh ka'tur minus the obvious mental instability.
That's my two cents.
The Romulan Republic is not an equal partner - they are a SUPERIOR partner, just one whose contributions happen to be more passive and in the background and therefore not well-noticed compared to Klingon or Dominion contributions...which I would like to point out is very in keeping with how the Romulans are portrayed.
#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!"