I do think and hope that they will increase the slots by at laset 2 when the 2 additional factions are added. What is the point of adding the factions AT ALL if they don't increase the slots. By that point, everyone will have their 2 slots filled with a Klingon and a Federation character and they're not going to delete either one to play as Cardassian or Romulan.
Those of us who pre-ordered and paid for a lifetime subscription will even have all slots full as we will most likely have the following:
Federation character
Liberated Borg
Joined Trill
Klingon faction character
Well I geuss they have to increase the slots by 2 or NOBODY will be playing in the Cardassian or Romulan factions and they wasted all their time developing those factions...
I very much doubt they have anything going for another faction much less two. Expansion as previously touted content is my guess which will increase slots and provide one faction extra.
First they need to finish the first part of the game they made and make it a rich rewarding experience.
The problem with guild wars system is that it is not very sustainable for a true mmo. You have to cross your fingers that the company makes enough from the previous expansion to fund the next one and constantly keep getting new people to buy the game. With a subscription model you have a constant and more predictable funding stream. CCP is so secure with its subscription model they allow you to buy game time with in game currency and all expansions are free. If things did go south with new member numbers all cryptic has to do is keep above the critical number to sustain operations, and no matter the subscription numbers they can keep improving the game.
The problem with guild wars system is that it is not very sustainable for a true mmo. You have to cross your fingers that the company makes enough from the previous expansion to fund the next one and constantly keep getting new people to buy the game. With a subscription model you have a constant and more predictable funding stream. CCP is so secure with its subscription model they allow you to buy game time with in game currency and all expansions are free. If things did go south with new member numbers all cryptic has to do is keep above the critical number to sustain operations, and no matter the subscription numbers they can keep improving the game.
Guild Wars is more of a coop online game not an MMO which can be said with this game. Guild Wars 2 is a different story and if you had doubts about them making money well that should erase it .
You won't get anymore free character slots...why? because why give them free when they can charge extra cash for them?
this is the going to be the biggest problem with this games development, because they didn't make this game for your or anyone elses enjoyment, they made it to make money. which is why every decision they make in regards to the game will be put in proroity of what they can financially profit off most the first (along with anything important like game breaking bug fixes/exploits etc), and follow on down the list from most profitable to least profitable.
im going to make a prediction that for the next year (apart from the things they have announced) they will develop new races + content for those and then release each one as a paid expansion, and also add a big non-combat paid expansion.
Like I said, the number of variables per character is maybe a 1000 or so. If you consider that each ship has what, 5 parts that can be changed, that is an insignificant amount of data. Same with costume and appearance, that's maybe 50 variables or even 100. Each item is a slotlocation, character and an item id. Even if you assume there are 10 000 variables (way way too much) and each uses 100 bytes (most of these variables are integers, so 4 or 8 bytes or so), even that greatly exaggerated estimate would mean that you have only 1 Mb of data per character (in reality is probably more in the 10-15 k range), or 1 million characters fitting on my own hard drive.
Either way, storage space is not the reason, this is a business decision and not a development limitation.
Because Atari is backing cryptic and Atari is very adept at picking your pocket..so to speak.
Atari does not give a rats hindquarters about you or cryptic...they will play thier money grubbing games until cryptic croaks and Atari just does not care.:mad:
What I like to know is how the h___ did Cryptic end up with Atari. Atari! Of all companies. I mean they were the main company that brought the video game crash back in the early 80's when they rushed E.T to the market to cash in on the E.T. craze. It was the worst pile of TRIBBLE that was ever made. They ended up dumping huge surplus in the landfill somewhere in New Mexico. This had a lasting affect. They tried to get back into the console market and compete with Nintendo and Sega, but noone wanted to develope for them becuase they didn't trust them anymore. If I'm not mistaken, some foriegn company bought them about a year or two ago. That company should have died a long time ago. LOL
Anyway here is a link if anyone is interested in reading about it.
Because Atari is backing cryptic and Atari is very adept at picking your pocket..so to speak.
Atari does not give a rats hindquarters about you or cryptic...they will play thier money grubbing games until cryptic croaks and Atari just does not care.:mad:
To be perfectly honest. THIS! More THIS! And a side salad of THIS.
If I knew this was an Atari published game I'd not have brought the damn thing. I've had a belly fully of them with Test Drive: Unlimited (which wasn't developed by Atari despite it's devs being Atari's internal team), whilst looking for support on their forums (which, despite making use of Atari's IP and (C) images, wasn't anything to do with Atari/Infogrames). And despite asking, plain, easy to follow questions such as "Why is the installer not asking for a serial number?" and "Why does it always crash after playing the three video's?" I was banned by an Atari employee (who wasn't an Atari employee despite having an Atari logo under their name)... for negative opinions of the product.
Atari. You'll find them sucking the sweat from a dead donkey's private parts. Alegedly.
What I like to know is how the h___ did Cryptic end up with Atari. Atari! Of all companies. I mean they were the main company that brought the video game crash back in the early 80's when they rushed E.T to the market to cash in on the E.T. craze. It was the worst pile of TRIBBLE that was ever made. They ended up dumping huge surplus in the landfill somewhere in New Mexico. This had a lasting affect. They tried to get back into the console market and compete with Nintendo and Sega, but noone wanted to develope for them becuase they didn't trust them anymore. If I'm not mistaken, some foriegn company bought them about a year or two ago. That company should have died a long time ago. LOL
Anyway here is a link if anyone is interested in reading about it.
I'll tell you what, instancing is OBVIOUS in this game when it doesnt have to be.
The judicious use of a few more cut scenes, voice overs, and some smart use of predictive caching on the client side could have made the transition from, say, sector space to a system nearly transparent or at least in keeping with the StarTrek IP. In the time it takes to play a quick cut animation and have a voice say ("Were approaching the TRIBBLE system now captain")... you'd be int he instance and not necessarily care.
I think budget and timing has kept Cryptic from doing just this.
If Atari kills this game or its pleasure for me, I think I shall weep tears of blood before committing sepuku. That or I'll go on a 4 hour binge at the Old Country Buffet.
So you think polygon count and a seamless world are somehow related ?
This is not even close to correct. And either way, although I like STO a lot, there is no way that the ground surroundings are even close to the quality of the scenery in WoW.
Absolutely. Instancing has an opportunity to offer better visual effects. Now, whether they take advantage of it is another question. Even though it is on your PC. Imagine this: On YOUR PC, what has the opportunity for better visual effects and graphics? An entire city landscaped in a seamless world, or placing your character in a single, isntanced room in that entire city? Compare the graphics of Grand Theft Auto, for example, to Silent Hill: The Room. Silent Hill: The Room has far better graphics because each insance between loading screens is much smaller. Grand Theft Auto is a giant instance, which decreases the ability to have high-graphics.
In a logical sense, you could compare it to taking an HD photo of a single pine tree, as opposed to an entire mountainside. In the first single tree photo, you can see the bark, the individual pine needles, the make-up of the ground cover around its base. In the latter example, of the entire hillside, you would only see changes in shades of color and shadows.
The point is, when you isolate things to a smaller frame, whether that be a photo or an instance in a game, you are going to have better detail, or at least in the gaming world, a better opportunity to programatically offer up higher detail. Opportunity being the operative word.
The space combat would look atrocious if this was a seamless world. The way it is, with instancing, the space combat is pretty awesome, I must say.
And, if you love WoW so much, why the F*** are you here? IMO, WoW sucks the big one. The graphics are cartoonish, and the pastels in the scenery are overblown. The gameplay sucks and the "i'm better than you" mentality of the great majority of the players is yawn-inspiring. Star Trek Online offers a realistic look into the space and science-type world of where it is themed. The player base seems to be a bit more forgiving and friendly to one another than a lot of online games I play. And, if you are a WoW fanboy, please return to your game of love. Star Trek fans do not need your "dungeons & dragons, I got a bigger stick than you" mentality around.
I think people forget who pays their wages.....ie who keeps their companies going. To be quite honest with you the fact of the matter is we are paying customers and as such we have (if united) A hell of a lot of people power over the suits that try to dictate to us how WE shall play a game that WE are paying hard earned money for.
Therefore if there is ANY element of this game that does not meet with our expectations (within reason) then I feel as PAYING CUSTOMERS we should reserve the right to let them know what we think about it and what we want done to have it fixed in order to keep our loyalty and our money.
Aspi your explanation on instancing makes absolutely no sense at all.
You are comparing instancing to being inside a room, this is an incorrect analogy, since an instance has distant background just the same as a seamless world. The only difference in a seamless world is that the "instance" you are in moves with you. Your movement is limited by game mechanics, so the game only ever has to "know" what is within certain bounds to render it. This is all client work, whereas being in an instance is completely server sided.
I'm also not entirely sure why you would assume the STO community to be so much different, when you give a good example of why it isn't yourself. Trust me, any MMO will have elitism in it, especially the ones that offer gear for non-trivial content. Obviously I also wouldn't be here if I didn't love Star Trek.
Also you cannot seriously believe that the Star Trek universe is portrayed realistically in the game ? The game world is lacking 90 % of crucial options for it to be comparable to Star Trek, and the way they made it look (with nebula's all over) does not correspond to reality OR the tv show. If I shoot someone with a phaser he should be gone, yet instead it does 10-15 % damage on a normal shot. A Galaxy class starship cannot divert power to Auxiliary unless it has the proper Bridge Officer ready. Those are all examples of inconsistencies.
That's ok though, they are game mechanics and they are there for a reason, some of them even work very well, but don't call it realistic portrayal.
... Also, WoW's cartoonish art style had "charm" in a weird way. If you didn't see it that's fine, many don't, but it's a trademark Blizzard thing. I liked WoW quite a bit. It had some issues of course, but on the whole I liked it. It's just that I didn't know the lore at all, which matters to me because I enjoy story in games. That's a big draw for me with STO, I actually know many of these obscure things they mention in the episodes.
The tradeoff, in my opinion, was that you played in a heavily instanced, not-so-seamless-and-persistant world. Each area you entered had several instances, and each area had a loading screen. Unlike WoW, where you could pretty much seamlessly travel across the map without loading, and without different instances of the same area to go through to find your friends.
Not sure if you missed this or not but STO is based on a single-shard architecture. Meaning that everyone plays on the SAME server.
Seamless gameplay in a server capped at 8,000, reaching peak only for 4 hours a day, is pretty easy to accomplish. Look at how many servers WoW has though. What if your friend decides to by the game 6 months from now and wants to hook up with you, but can't create a character on your server cause it's full? Single-shard allows you to find all your friends that play the game at any time. It also means that there is only one server to update and maintain.
I personally find it a refreshing idea. They just gotta work out the kinks.
Comments
I very much doubt they have anything going for another faction much less two. Expansion as previously touted content is my guess which will increase slots and provide one faction extra.
First they need to finish the first part of the game they made and make it a rich rewarding experience.
Guild Wars is more of a coop online game not an MMO which can be said with this game. Guild Wars 2 is a different story and if you had doubts about them making money well that should erase it
this is the going to be the biggest problem with this games development, because they didn't make this game for your or anyone elses enjoyment, they made it to make money. which is why every decision they make in regards to the game will be put in proroity of what they can financially profit off most the first (along with anything important like game breaking bug fixes/exploits etc), and follow on down the list from most profitable to least profitable.
im going to make a prediction that for the next year (apart from the things they have announced) they will develop new races + content for those and then release each one as a paid expansion, and also add a big non-combat paid expansion.
Either way, storage space is not the reason, this is a business decision and not a development limitation.
What I like to know is how the h___ did Cryptic end up with Atari. Atari! Of all companies. I mean they were the main company that brought the video game crash back in the early 80's when they rushed E.T to the market to cash in on the E.T. craze. It was the worst pile of TRIBBLE that was ever made. They ended up dumping huge surplus in the landfill somewhere in New Mexico. This had a lasting affect. They tried to get back into the console market and compete with Nintendo and Sega, but noone wanted to develope for them becuase they didn't trust them anymore. If I'm not mistaken, some foriegn company bought them about a year or two ago. That company should have died a long time ago. LOL
Anyway here is a link if anyone is interested in reading about it.
http://timelines.com/1982/12/atari-releases-et-often-called-the-worst-video-game-ever-made
To be perfectly honest. THIS! More THIS! And a side salad of THIS.
If I knew this was an Atari published game I'd not have brought the damn thing. I've had a belly fully of them with Test Drive: Unlimited (which wasn't developed by Atari despite it's devs being Atari's internal team), whilst looking for support on their forums (which, despite making use of Atari's IP and (C) images, wasn't anything to do with Atari/Infogrames). And despite asking, plain, easy to follow questions such as "Why is the installer not asking for a serial number?" and "Why does it always crash after playing the three video's?" I was banned by an Atari employee (who wasn't an Atari employee despite having an Atari logo under their name)... for negative opinions of the product.
Atari. You'll find them sucking the sweat from a dead donkey's private parts. Alegedly.
back in 2008 they bought out cryptic.
http://www.massively.com/2008/12/09/atari-acquires-cryptic-studios/
The judicious use of a few more cut scenes, voice overs, and some smart use of predictive caching on the client side could have made the transition from, say, sector space to a system nearly transparent or at least in keeping with the StarTrek IP. In the time it takes to play a quick cut animation and have a voice say ("Were approaching the TRIBBLE system now captain")... you'd be int he instance and not necessarily care.
I think budget and timing has kept Cryptic from doing just this.
I prefer ritualistic bukaki with a side of whine.
Absolutely. Instancing has an opportunity to offer better visual effects. Now, whether they take advantage of it is another question. Even though it is on your PC. Imagine this: On YOUR PC, what has the opportunity for better visual effects and graphics? An entire city landscaped in a seamless world, or placing your character in a single, isntanced room in that entire city? Compare the graphics of Grand Theft Auto, for example, to Silent Hill: The Room. Silent Hill: The Room has far better graphics because each insance between loading screens is much smaller. Grand Theft Auto is a giant instance, which decreases the ability to have high-graphics.
In a logical sense, you could compare it to taking an HD photo of a single pine tree, as opposed to an entire mountainside. In the first single tree photo, you can see the bark, the individual pine needles, the make-up of the ground cover around its base. In the latter example, of the entire hillside, you would only see changes in shades of color and shadows.
The point is, when you isolate things to a smaller frame, whether that be a photo or an instance in a game, you are going to have better detail, or at least in the gaming world, a better opportunity to programatically offer up higher detail. Opportunity being the operative word.
The space combat would look atrocious if this was a seamless world. The way it is, with instancing, the space combat is pretty awesome, I must say.
And, if you love WoW so much, why the F*** are you here? IMO, WoW sucks the big one. The graphics are cartoonish, and the pastels in the scenery are overblown. The gameplay sucks and the "i'm better than you" mentality of the great majority of the players is yawn-inspiring. Star Trek Online offers a realistic look into the space and science-type world of where it is themed. The player base seems to be a bit more forgiving and friendly to one another than a lot of online games I play. And, if you are a WoW fanboy, please return to your game of love. Star Trek fans do not need your "dungeons & dragons, I got a bigger stick than you" mentality around.
WORD!
The power of the Customer!!! IMAGINE THAT!
You are comparing instancing to being inside a room, this is an incorrect analogy, since an instance has distant background just the same as a seamless world. The only difference in a seamless world is that the "instance" you are in moves with you. Your movement is limited by game mechanics, so the game only ever has to "know" what is within certain bounds to render it. This is all client work, whereas being in an instance is completely server sided.
I'm also not entirely sure why you would assume the STO community to be so much different, when you give a good example of why it isn't yourself. Trust me, any MMO will have elitism in it, especially the ones that offer gear for non-trivial content. Obviously I also wouldn't be here if I didn't love Star Trek.
Also you cannot seriously believe that the Star Trek universe is portrayed realistically in the game ? The game world is lacking 90 % of crucial options for it to be comparable to Star Trek, and the way they made it look (with nebula's all over) does not correspond to reality OR the tv show. If I shoot someone with a phaser he should be gone, yet instead it does 10-15 % damage on a normal shot. A Galaxy class starship cannot divert power to Auxiliary unless it has the proper Bridge Officer ready. Those are all examples of inconsistencies.
That's ok though, they are game mechanics and they are there for a reason, some of them even work very well, but don't call it realistic portrayal.
Not sure if you missed this or not but STO is based on a single-shard architecture. Meaning that everyone plays on the SAME server.
Seamless gameplay in a server capped at 8,000, reaching peak only for 4 hours a day, is pretty easy to accomplish. Look at how many servers WoW has though. What if your friend decides to by the game 6 months from now and wants to hook up with you, but can't create a character on your server cause it's full? Single-shard allows you to find all your friends that play the game at any time. It also means that there is only one server to update and maintain.
I personally find it a refreshing idea. They just gotta work out the kinks.