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Is this really Star Trek Online?
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Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
I've been playing Star Trek Online since it was first released and a lot of improvements have been made since then but this game still isn't truly Star Trek.
The problem, that most people have already reported, is the missions - as most of them are combat based which just doesn't feel right. Yet with all the time that has passed this still remains a problem and I know there are plans to make changes in Season 4 or 5 but why that long? Surely this is an important thing to correct, is it not? Granted there has been some progress in this matter, the Foundry Beta for example, which will make a huge impact in the number of missions that can be played but what's the betting that most of these are also combat based?
An idea that I would love to see in the game: I don't know if anyone in Cryptic will see this but I would like some more unpredictability in Star Trek Online - just like Star Trek. If you sit down and watch a few episodes of any Star Trek series you will easily see what I am on about. Distress calls, unknown alien ships/nebulas/space anomaly's, etc. that distract them from their mission and present course. They decide whether to investigate or continue with their original heading... Why isn't this in Star Trek Online? It would make space so much more interesting!
For example: You get given a mission to go and sort out a problem in a nearby sector of space, while you're warping through sector space you suddenly hear a computer bleep and a distress call coming through your speakers - the transmission isn't perfect because maybe the ship is being attacked or something - a little screen pops up with one of your bridge officers telling you that someone is sending out a distress call. You get given the option to answer it or ignore it. If you ignore it you may get a few diplomacy points knocked off or something like that but if you answer it and accept it then you can go off, deal with the problem, get some small reward and then continue on your original course as normal. BUT The distress call SHOULD NOT always be combat related. It may be an unknown disease that you have to find a cure for or some space anomaly that requires you to investigate and solve a problem.
If this was implemented into Star Trek Online it would make the game much more interesting and it would be even better if you could send out a distress call yourself so if you are stuck in a bad situation, where your ship is being pounded and you need assistance, you can simply send out a distress call and anyone in the local area can pick it up. It would also give people like me something to do when you've reached the end game and have barely anything to do. I would quite happily go around and help people in distress!
Please post your thoughts and ideas on this. Is it just me or would someone else want to see this implemented into Star Trek Online?
The problem, that most people have already reported, is the missions - as most of them are combat based which just doesn't feel right. Yet with all the time that has passed this still remains a problem and I know there are plans to make changes in Season 4 or 5 but why that long? Surely this is an important thing to correct, is it not? Granted there has been some progress in this matter, the Foundry Beta for example, which will make a huge impact in the number of missions that can be played but what's the betting that most of these are also combat based?
An idea that I would love to see in the game: I don't know if anyone in Cryptic will see this but I would like some more unpredictability in Star Trek Online - just like Star Trek. If you sit down and watch a few episodes of any Star Trek series you will easily see what I am on about. Distress calls, unknown alien ships/nebulas/space anomaly's, etc. that distract them from their mission and present course. They decide whether to investigate or continue with their original heading... Why isn't this in Star Trek Online? It would make space so much more interesting!
For example: You get given a mission to go and sort out a problem in a nearby sector of space, while you're warping through sector space you suddenly hear a computer bleep and a distress call coming through your speakers - the transmission isn't perfect because maybe the ship is being attacked or something - a little screen pops up with one of your bridge officers telling you that someone is sending out a distress call. You get given the option to answer it or ignore it. If you ignore it you may get a few diplomacy points knocked off or something like that but if you answer it and accept it then you can go off, deal with the problem, get some small reward and then continue on your original course as normal. BUT The distress call SHOULD NOT always be combat related. It may be an unknown disease that you have to find a cure for or some space anomaly that requires you to investigate and solve a problem.
If this was implemented into Star Trek Online it would make the game much more interesting and it would be even better if you could send out a distress call yourself so if you are stuck in a bad situation, where your ship is being pounded and you need assistance, you can simply send out a distress call and anyone in the local area can pick it up. It would also give people like me something to do when you've reached the end game and have barely anything to do. I would quite happily go around and help people in distress!
Please post your thoughts and ideas on this. Is it just me or would someone else want to see this implemented into Star Trek Online?
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
It's very much Star Trek; the setting for the game is also in a time of war. People that play World of Warcraft don't expect things to be peaceful, after all. Combat and conflict are inherent to both franchises.
As to your branching mission plotlines - it's my guess that the game engine can't support it, which is a shame. I'd like to be proven wrong.
The simple truth is that STO launched a year too early. The whys for this aren't important. Ultimately, though, the game should be launching were it's currently at with a well-defined horizon ahead of us. Most of us have survived a pay-to-beta over the last year but there's a lot of good things coming in 2011. I think a lot of the predictability is going to be changed and there's going to be a lot more random stuff thrown at us: both about the war and about exploration.
I can also relate to having nothing new to do at end-game, but I also know, at last count, the Foundry had around 200 missions on it so there's a lot of gaming for me to do there. If I so 3 new Foundry missions a day, along with my normal Dailies, I'm looking at 2 months before I run out of new content - and by that time there will probably be 200 more new missions on Foundry. Throw in the Weekly Series stuff and everything coming in Season 4 and 5 I can see myself staying fairly busy for the next 6 months.
What missions are you referring to that ask us to "commit war crimes"?
"Beam down and deal with the tribbles?" .. uh, second thought that is actually a public service...
Which belongs to a very much sentient species that also happens to be an enemy.
Mission name there in black>The New Link<
Doesn't make it any more right though.
Think they edited the mission at one point. Not done it in ages because of the lovely after taste it leaves.
When the Foundry goes live I'm sure there will be some non-combat missions, or less combat oriented missions. I know that some missions I have planned will allow you to talk your way past problems, provided the tools are available in the Foundry to achieve that result.
130 fights over 80 episodes.
Episodes with fights had an average of 2.36 fights per episode.
PS: Yeah, it sure is a shame that there are no Diplomatic, First Contact and/or Aid the Planet missions in this game.
I do agree that (in MMOs in general, really) the players tend to devolve into mass murdering drones, and I dislike that very much. (bonk, bonk on the head) I've read similar comments from other gamers; it's not just a problem here. Again, I ask: what do we do instead?
For the Feds (who would be concerned about it) I think we could change gameplay so that phasers can be set to stun (although I wonder: would anybody use it?), and the damage models in space could more realistically reflect battle damage, so instead of ending *every* enemy encounter with an exploding enemy ship, maybe we could simply disable it. --- Or, for an easier fix, we could see escape pods (where species appropriate) ejecting from the dying hulk before it blows up in it's very predictable fashion. Better yet, a combination of all three options: Some blow up, some are just disabled, some send out escape pods and lifeboats. Hell, that works for the KDF too.
Unpredictability is also major issue that plagues MMOs. Every mission is kill X of those (or scan them)... couldn't there be some kind of formula that includes variables introduced to the mission load-in sequence? So that the number of things to scan changes? The number of enemies? Or the numbers that make up the NPC squadrons? Of course, this adds the possibility that some missions could seem too easy to some people, some might get tougher NPCs... so it makes things harder to control. A bit of a conundrum.
So ultimately, the key is variability. Things like the number and composition of NPCs, whether a ship explodes or not, the size of the explosion... all could work together to really give a sense of newness to the old tired basic mission. --- That's what's missing. There is no spontaneity in our universe.
In the end there are two things needed: Said spontaneity and a different game mechanic besides killing to complete a mission. In this case, stunning an NPC works (but who, as a player, wants to be stunned and unable to move for any length of time?) and disabling ships, but what else? Come up with that and you solve the dilemma that's confounded game developers since the 80s.
Only because conflict makes for better TV and Video Games, but Star Trek is about exploration and right now there is next to zilch in that department(and do you honestly think that three Diplomacy missions and recycled First Contact/Aid the Planet is really sufficient). I just think you need to get over your warmongering self and realize that many fans want Star Trek to be about the Exploration and discovering new civilizations not just "pew" "pew" all the time(I also wonder how your statistics would stack up if you threw TNG in there:rolleyes:).
Tell me, do you even know what that word means?
TNG had plenty of violence/combat in its episodes. In fact, the episode a lot of people seem to think was well done involved torture (hint: "There...are...four...lights!") Build a bridge, get over yourself and take off your blinders. There is a lot of combat/conflict throughout all of the series.
The variety of missions, or lack thereof, is an MMO issue, not a Star Trek one. I don't know what the answer is, so I don't presume to tell Cryptic, Blizzard, BioWare, etc, how to do their jobs.
We really need a facepalm smiley.
For what it is worth, I think the devs are going to look at things from such a perspective when planning future Weekly Episodes as well as overall design direction.
I was being facetious.
There's the early mission where you're forced to kill the Romulan scientists even though 1) all the evidence the player is given says that they're doing nothing wrong and 2) they're begging for their lives.
Or how about the mission where you have to destroy incubators full of Jem'Hadar eggs?
Or Drake ordering you to murder a fellow starship captain? That one at least gives you the option of shooting Drake instead, too bad it's all on a holodeck.
A number of ground explore missions (which have gotten a bit rarer, but are still in the game) have you fight through groups of enemies to scan anomalies/artifacts/debris. Really? I'm murdering people over a dead civilization's statues?
Those are a few. If I were at home and could look through the mission logs, I could probably find more. Peregrine_Falcon is correct, Star Trek had lots of fighting. But it never had this kind of fighting.
But I digress from the orrigional point. Just because the majority of the episodes had fights, they also did a great deal of diplomacy as well. So while it's great to go in all guns blazing, there should be a few missions that let you talk your way out of a potentially catastrophic situation.
I would also like to point out that, before Gene Roddenberry passed away (may he rest in peace), that there WERE plans to get the Federation, Klingon Empire and the Romulons involved in a battle against the Borg. Bear in mind, that was never confirmed, and was more rumor than anything else. Or maybe it wasn't, and the old boy just didn't get the chance to put that out in a movie.
I agree with you, I actually made a post earlier today with some ideas. The federation and starfleet only use their weapons purely for defence / or are meant too. Given that we are at war with the klingons etc. The game does seem a bit 'trigger happy' and less on the fact that the overall mission is "to bodly go where no one has gone before". Random encounters, wormholes, distress calls etc. bring it on...as a Captain, you should have the choice to continue or assist. Should we in the federation give up this principle? I hope not!
I have, actually, but I'd say you never bothered to read up on the miriad of prereviews prior to launch.
Makes you wonder if they even hired a writer to come up with this mess of a story.:D On the bright side the weekly episodes are finally beginning to demonstrate the level of writing we would expect from Star Trek.:cool:
Besides, the Milky Way has always been a dangerous place. If we're not ticking off Roms, Klinks, Cardassians, and Sheliak we're ticking off Borg, Q, and other god-like species.
My issue is not the factions, but with the implementation of it. I have always felt this war was a bad ripoff of the Dominion War.
Not necessarily; you can be original, but it is blatantly obvious that this is a ripoff of the Dominion War. They even use allot of the same plot devices.
Species that can impersonate other species...CHECK
Said species invading the highest ranks of other governments to instigate war...CHECK
The Klingons being the first species to figure out whats going on ...CHECK
The Federation commits war crimes while under control by said species ...CHECK
So I think it is fair to say that the STO writers really did not try hard to come up with a unique reason as to why the Federation would go to war with the Klingons.
Yes, much of the writing in STO sucks. - "Help us Rear Admiral Upper Half <insert character name here>. The Borg are tearing up our planet looking for artifacts from their Third Dynasty." Lol what?
And yes I agree with you that it does seem that this war is an almost direct rip off of the Dominion War. I'll even go one further and ask; "Is the Klingon/Federation war even necessary?" Sure games, like movies, do much better when they're about conflict, but even without a war there's still plenty of ways to get conflict into this game.
As for why the Federation went to war with the Empire, well the Empire did attack the Federation first and is continuing to do so. So the Federation isn't at war because they want to be, but rather because they're being attacked and have no choice but to fight back.