Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Cryptic drops the ball, makes STO a massive single player game.
Howard2341
Member Posts: 16
I don't see the good that can come out of the direction Cyrptic is going with STO. They are taking so much away from the game, so much potential. Basically dumbing it down. There are plenty of ways to cater to a large audience. Starship Interiors are a large part of Star Trek. Im not talking where you HAVE to group to fly a starship, but give us the option. The NPC system they have inplace sounds really great, but what if me as a Science captain decide I want to do a mission with some of my friends. Will we ALWAYS have to fly our own ships? Yes at times that might be what we want. But when the time permits, I think it would be a hell of a lot of fun for me and a few of my friends/guild mates can get on a ship and go explore, maybe go to the nuetral zone for some PvP. Maybe run a mission. Bascially be a crew and enjoy the game and experience. Not just get in our own ships to go Peew Peew Peew and do the Eposodic( ie Instanced) missions. Yes I agree there needs to be some instances, but outside those specific areas, leave a decent portion of the galaxy open, when there is risk flying to certain areas to explore, there is greater reward and enjoyment. I know people will say that having a crew of say 4 people on a starship you wont have anything/ or much to do. But I call bullsh*t. There can be plenty to do. And besides, your not ALWAYS going to be grouped on a starship together so I think those people are blowing it way freaking out of proportion. If someone leaves then whoevers ship it is there NPC guy will replace them, and the captain can delegate his/her responcibilites to the NPC or another crew member. Even 2 man crews could be lots of fun. One person flys/targets. Does the shooting. The other does repairs/delgate shields. Run sensor sweeps for information, etc etc. There can be plenty to do. It doesnt interfier with solo people, doesnt give people that group a huge edge, so its stays a level playing field as any game can be. Adds a whole lot of fun. People then get to feel like they are in the Trek universe which is what most people playing will want. Plus if the gameplay is sound it can stand alone and other people that might not really care about trek will play because its a good/unique game.
This guys post helps illistrate what I am saying.
""""""""""""""
[quote]I agree 100%,these developers need to start implementing their ideas fully and quit giving the people half ass products.
I can go all the way down the line and name things that should have been implemented in games.The biggest example that falls in the same category is EVE.It has literally no exploration at all,so here you have a game that is about visting thousands of solar systems and planets,but you can't actually do anything.Even the ship that the ENTIRE game is designed around,you baby,your project in the works ,is nothing more than a cheap housing with you as a make believe operator.
I know many people complain there is too much Fantasy,but realistically a Space type game needs to go the whole nine yards before they gain any credibility.The ONLY game that put forth lots of content was the now infamous SWG,as far as NON Fantasy games go.
If you are going to use Space stations,then open them up and make them an active part of the game,not some static mesh,nobody cares about.Spaceships ,same thing,they SHOULD have interiors/controls/engine room a working crew.Geesh what better way to make guilds an active part of a MMO game than to allow a full crew onto a ship giving everyone special duties to make the ship happen.You could still have small single man pods,but also large say 50 man ships,where your whole guild can get involved.It creates a MORE immersive REALISTIC game,where you have mechanics/cooks/a captain/officers/explorers/security ,the whole nine yards.
This would allow players to hit the forums and say you know what,this game is amazing and full of content,not just some run of the mill cheap adaptation that plays more like a MUd than a 3d interaction game.[/wuote]
Comments
[general-chat] xRikerx: LFM, full organia run, need engineer/science officer pst
guess we'll never see that now =(
To the OP, do you really believe it'd be "Fun" for anyone to be a "Cook" on a Star Trek vessel?
Or even science officer? Engineer? Have you even thought about how you would make those FUN things for people to do on hours on end?
[Mod Edit]
No offense, but did you even read what I wrote? I didn't say it would be forced. I asked how in the hell could it be fun to be a science officer or engineer or cook for hours on end. That's a "Crew" is it not? If not those positions, insert any others you feel like. Now make them entertaining for everyone.
Sure, different types of gameplay sounds great. Now make it fun. Explain how you'd make each position YOU want to be playable to be fun. That's easy right? You're bashing Cryptic for not doing it, so it has to be something within your powers to describe and flesh out.
Sweet. From what i read here STO and SWTOR will be solo friendly. Two of my favorite properties Woot.
Some of the most fun I had in SWG was getting on the capital ships and playing gunner with others.
Refugee from UO,EQ,AC,AC2,AO,DAOC,L2,SB,HZ,CoH,PT,EQ2,WoW,VG,SWG,EVE,WAR,DF,MO,AI,GA,LOTRO, SWTOR... Gw2 on Deck
[Mod Edit]
No offense, but did you even read what I wrote? I didn't say it would be forced. I asked how in the hell could it be fun to be a science officer or engineer or cook for hours on end. That's a "Crew" is it not? If not those positions, insert any others you feel like. Now make them entertaining for everyone.
Sure, different types of gameplay sounds great. Now make it fun. Explain how you'd make each position YOU want to be playable to be fun. That's easy right? You're bashing Cryptic for not doing it, so it has to be something within your powers to describe and flesh out.
There are lots of ways to make mini-games for these activities fun, take a look around this site and you will find games that do that. You brought in the idea of 'cook' and 50 people crews, which the OP never mentioned. Captianing a ship in real life is extremely boring, and doing the same on a starship would most likely be extremely boring. Yet, you and the people at Cryptic are under the impression that can be made fun, so why can't other activities that you think of as boring (I enjoy cooking) be made fun?
[Mod Edit]
No offense, but did you even read what I wrote? I didn't say it would be forced. I asked how in the hell could it be fun to be a science officer or engineer or cook for hours on end. That's a "Crew" is it not? If not those positions, insert any others you feel like. Now make them entertaining for everyone.
Sure, different types of gameplay sounds great. Now make it fun. Explain how you'd make each position YOU want to be playable to be fun. That's easy right? You're bashing Cryptic for not doing it, so it has to be something within your powers to describe and flesh out.
There are lots of ways to make mini-games for these activities fun, take a look around this site and you will find games that do that. You brought in the idea of 'cook' and 50 people crews, which the OP never mentioned. Captianing a ship in real life is extremely boring, and doing the same on a starship would most likely be extremely boring. Yet, you and the people at Cryptic are under the impression that can be made fun, so why can't other activities that you think of as boring (I enjoy cooking) be made fun?
Um... tell me where I mentioned 50 people crews? Howard2431 said that, not me.
Being a captain of a spaceship can be boring, sure. But you won't be just the "captain" I'm gathering, you'll be "everyone". That should fill up your time most of the time (I have had plenty of boring downtime in most MMO's I've played).
But making a single ship/person a fun thing to play would definitely be easier than making a helmsman, security officer, cook, or whatever you want to dream up to be fun *for hours on end*.
Sure there could be a mini-games, or whatever, if your ship is invaded by the borg, and you had to take over the security officer's job at that point... but for the 99.9% of the time when your ship isn't being invaded by other people, the security officer position would be mindnumbingly boring. Astrometrics? Fun for brief times, boring all the rest.... etc.
But I want to see how the OP would make being part of a crew FUN for everyone for hours on end. That's all I want. Should be easy right?
Indeed, that can be fun. If you have enemies to shoot.
Also, in SW, gunnery was actually a manual process. Star Trek, alas, gunnery was the computer's job for the most part. (Considering that lasers are speed of light weapons, this makes some sense, more so than the bolts of energy from Star Wars, but then Jedi wouldn't be able to deflect blaster weapons anymore, and that'd leave a lot more dead Jedi's around.)
I can really understand, what the OP tries to say there.
STO and SWTOR will not have any type of content that encourages teaming up with others.
STO at the moment is pretty much like playing two games in one. The space-battles will be like playing Freelancer and the ground-missions will be like playing Mass Effect.
It would be fun if we actually would be encouraged to team up with others for ground-missions. So if there's team-player missions, would it be logical to have 5 captains flying their Voyager-class ship to the same planet and beaming down to the ground for that team-mission? Sounds a little bit awkward tbh.
And flying a ship like you do in Freelancer, where you control all stuff on your own like shield-systems, weapons, energy and the actual piloting?
I'd be very happy, if we got actually encouraged to group up with 3 or 4 players flying a Voyager-class ship, and actually having an advantage by doing so. Having a single person to control each of these critical systems should increase your abilities to fly the ship effectively and it should also enable teams to fly to a planet and beaming down to surface for their team-mission.
Options, options, options... that's what makes for a good game tbh.
It will be a bad use of the "Intelectual Property" to make a generic WOW+EVE game out of it. If you feel that is what is doing. Maybe you sould try to warn the owners of the IP to stop that wroingdoing.
It will be sad if other different intelectual property step in, and make right what sould have be STO.
I haven't read much about STO, and what I have seen hasn't actually given any specifics about the systems and mechanics in the game.
If the game is a Freelancer method of controlling starships (where did this come from btw? I haven't seen that article) then I'm all for it.
I cannot think of a way to constantly and consistently engage a 'crew' of several players on one ship during exploration or battle. The Engineer isn't always going to have something to do, the science officer doesn't have tos can all the time...the weapons officer doesn't have to fire al the time.
And then there is communication..if you just have 5 positions they must all work together in a battle. Can you imagine a Pick up Group scenario like this?
Just considering the logistics is quite scary. And the fact that those espousing this viewpoint have been unable themselves to describe how these systems would actually function.
Also, how complicated would a sensor sweep have to be to engage someone? A complicated mini game that takes a minute to do a single sweep?
The Gunner positions sounds closest to having multiple people on one ship in my view. And then it only makes sense in combat.
Having the game Solo friendly should actually go a long way towards ensuring its success.
Having each player be a Captain is just completely logical in my view. It's the best position, and by controlling your ship you can drill down to the sub-systems that you want to control....go back to a high level captain view etc. as you see fit.
It puts the player in control of their own experience.
The problem is not, that the game will be solo-player-friendly...
The problem is, that there will be next to no multiplayer-content available, but only solo-player-content.
So far it's nothing else then a ORPG, without being Massive or Multiplayer. It's all instanced, all soloable. A big Star Trek themed RPG with a chatroom.
I call them mog's, mostly because the word 'mog' reminds me of John Candy and Spaceballs. MOG itself is just 'multiplayer online game'. Multi-player, the term by itself, doesn't explicitly mean that everybody is playing -together-. The game is multiple players on a server playing, just playing. So this type of game would be a mog, multi-player online game.
Any game that can only be played online is techincally a mog, but not all mog's are MMORPG's. A mog is the bastard cousin of an MMORPG. People will play them, I don't know how many, more power to them that they want to pay a monthly fee to play a game they might as well just be playing offline.
This thread wins the 2009 /fail award. It is confirmed, you and your friends can fly your ships around together for PvP and PvE, and you can beam down and do Away missions together. And some Away missions are on ships, meaning that ship interiors are part of the mission system at this time. And the devs are looking at adding player ship interiors later, plus adding more races over time. This is because they're a bit busy putting THOUSANDS of worlds into the game, each one with missions and other things to do. It's a big job.
This beats every other spaceship Sci-Fi MMO game out there now, or that is coming out in the near future. SWG does have space and ground play, and even multiplayer ships, but it's also an SOE doornail-dumb grindfest, which STO (imho) will not be.
Bottom line, if you're so disappointed - why come here and post? Just don't play it. That's even easier than venting all of your broken dreams on a game forum.
Bravo lol, this sounds like it makes a lot of sense for a game of this type.
I guess just like me, many have not read up extensively on the features of STO yet and are making broad assumptions.
:-)
Currently Playing: World of Warcraft
The game, before Perpetual Entertainment first changed direction in 2007 after 3 years of development and spoke of more casual-friendly content, was thought of being much more a sandbox with players encouraged to group up.
That's why I'm coming into the forums and tell, that it'll be a boring game.
I'm not a 20 years old kiddie and I grew up with Star Trek and Star Wars, reading the books aswell and not just watching TV eating chips and drinking Coke (hello you fat kiddies!), so I know about the lore and all the background-stuff and it would've been much more interesting to have freedom to do whatever you like to do in the Star-Trek-Universe. Doing random missions is wasted time in my books.
Additionally, a MMORPG should be about competition, and not just wasting your time in an animated chatroom. That's the reason I'm playing EvE Online, but unfortunately there's no characters to walk around on planets etc. and STO could've done that, within a known universe.
There's alot of EvE Online players, who feel like myself in this regard. They waited for STO to be a sandbox, with meaningful PvP (e.g. waging wars between the empires to influence the universe, making their own litle politics and intrigues besides the main-story.), complex crafting- and trading-systems...
Cryptic went even further with their casual-solo-player-approach, then what Perpetual Etertainment had in mind with their casual-player-content.
So yes, for people who follow the development of STO since 2004/5 are really disappointed to see, that STO will be a big animated chatroom, wthout the necessity to group up at all. Star Trek is about team-play throughout all the lore and Cryptic just overlooks this very imprtant part there...
Uhh..well then don't you still have EVE with its Hardcore PVP centric style?
Personally I would absolutely abhor a Star Trek game that took that approach, since it would leave behind 90% or more of the fan base, in my view judging solely by EVE's following over its entire lifespan.
I think Cryptic is on the right track:
User Friendliness, Ease of Use, Fun first.
I have not seen anything they have written which suggests you cannot explore the entire system on your own by flying for hours through black space if you really want to.
But it certainly isn't an X3 style Sandbox game.
And I, personally, am glad it isn't :-)
Regarding the random mission concerns, nobody's noticed the story aspect of Cryptic's development? It's not as hyped as SWTORs, but that's because Cryptic is saying far less overall than BioWare.
However, they have disclosed that:
a) each member of their STO team is required to be expert on one of the - venues, I guess. Whether a series (STTOR, STTNG, STDS9) or a book series, each one is required to watch/read the whole thing and bring that knowledge to the game. The entire team gets together regularly to watch TV episodes from the series too. This is expressly so they can bring the "living adventure" feel to the game for us players.
b) missions are set up to create story "episodes" to avoid the whole random mission thing. I guess this will be like quest chains, but tied to your career advancement and to the development of your bridge officers, as well as giving you ship equipment for customization. So if you are starting the game with other people, you should be able to join with them for the duration of the story, and pick up other people too along the way.
c) there is an overarching storyline for the entire universe. Things happen that lead up to an epic occurrence, and us players will be responsible for dealing with it. Rumor has it that an ancient alien force disclosed in one of the series drops by for tea and stays to dominate or destroy the known universe
So even with it's ship-based gameplay at launch, it still looks interesting and engaging to play. I am kind of looking forward to seeing 50 starships all rolling into a battle mission at once lol - that's going to be crazy fun.
You wouldn't be so dissapointed if you had taken a realistic view from the beginning
Sounds like WoW. What people want is to be able to man a single ship together, not fly a bunch of ships next to each other. It comes down to this:
Do you want to play as: Captain Kirk or Captain Picaard
or play as: Captain Kirk, or Spock, or Bones or Scotty or Ahura...?
The answer from the public (you know, the target audience) is overwhelmingly B.
Sounds like WoW. What people want is to be able to man a single ship together, not fly a bunch of ships next to each other. It comes down to this:
Do you want to play as: Captain Kirk or Captain Picaard
or play as: Captain Kirk, or Spock, or Bones or Scotty or Ahura...?
The answer from the public (you know, the target audience) is overwhelmingly B.
It comes down to this:
Do you want to play a fun role (role playing game): Captain
or play some mini-games: Cook, Science officer, Botanic officer, Sensory sweeper (it has to be fun for longer then one hour)
The answer should be A but since when does the public know what is best for them?
ALSO, dont be too optimistic about mini-games, it is not like we invent a new tertris/bejeweled every day...
I have always thought the idea of STO was ridiculous. Ships would have to be like "guild keeps" and the captain the guild leader. Guilds are generally an oligarchy, a council makes decisions about guild direction and rules. A captain is king. Running a ship is a full time job. An officer would have to be on 24/7. being a sailor is boring. Someone has to do the work.
The alternative is more ridiculous. Everyone is a captain. JoHHnY RoXXzor and his GFF TitzNaZZ will not make good captains.And thousands/millions of USS Enterprises running around going to "Genesis Worlds", please.It is an insane concept.
I can only hope this to be true. This is the type of game I've been looking for for a while. Personally, I like being in a community of players where you can trade stuff you find (player generated market and economy). I also like being in a world that will continue to grow and change. BUT... I like to play solo and not run into a bunch of stuff that I have no hope of ever beating because I have to group up to do it.
I'm not sure if I'm the only person that feels this way... but I kind of doubt it.
Just my two cents.
Sounds like WoW. What people want is to be able to man a single ship together, not fly a bunch of ships next to each other. It comes down to this:
Do you want to play as: Captain Kirk or Captain Picaard
or play as: Captain Kirk, or Spock, or Bones or Scotty or Ahura...?
The answer from the public (you know, the target audience) is overwhelmingly B.
It comes down to this:
Do you want to play a fun role (role playing game): Captain
or play some mini-games: Cook, Science officer, Botanic officer, Sensory sweeper (it has to be fun for longer then one hour)
The answer should be A but since when does the public know what is best for them?
ALSO, dont be too optimistic about mini-games, it is not like we invent a new tertris/bejeweled every day...
Thank you for defining "Fun" for everyone else based on your views of what is fun. I have a little news flash for you, different people find different things fun. So while you may find being the captain fun, there are other people out there who would find being the Science officer on-board a ship crewed by their friends just as fun.
Tried: LotR, CoH, AoC, WAR, Jumpgate Classic
Played: SWG, Guild Wars, WoW
Playing: Eve Online, Counter-strike
Loved: Star Wars Galaxies
Waiting for: Earthrise, Guild Wars 2, anything sandbox.