Originally posted by Ozmodan

Originally posted by bverji

Originally posted by Ozmodan

As usual, lots of negative comments because people fail to read and think.

Can any of you naysayers even imagine the mess you would have if everyone is a crew member instead of their own captain?   First place, you spend spend forever crewing your ship.  Nothing worse having a party sit around waiting for one or two slots to fill because they need a certain class.   This game will probably have a bunch of needed classes too, some less desirable than others, good luck finding a crew member to fill that particular slot.  Then you better hope you have a decent captain and hope that everyone follows orders.  In a MMO, not going to happen.  Sorry if you want to go play EQ, then go play it.  The vast majority of us don't want to be forever sitting around waiting for others to play.

Cryptic has done the only thing they could do, make the crew attached to you as NPC's.  That is the ONLY way to make a game like this.

At least you can walk around the ship, something Perpetual was refusing to do.

I think Cryptic is on the right track.

I hope Daron Stinnett is reading all this and realizing how wrong he was with his design.

There are other/better ways to deal with the issues you present. Having NPC red shirts isn't a bad thing but they should be used as fillers, not the whole team. 

It's not because I fail to read or think, it is because I am able to think beyond what is just presented me that I see the wasted potential.
 

What makes Star Trek engaging hasn't been the awesome effects, or ships it is in the charcters stories and progressions. It's the exploration of humanity and the embodiment through the characters stories that makes Star Trek Iconic. Reducing that to a bunch of boys with their toy ships totally fails to represent the communinal dynamic which made Star Trek popular.

 

"Other ways in dealing with the problems"  Oh, and what might those be?   If the play was just on planets it could be done, but since ships are such a big part of this, it creates too many problems to make a team up.  How about you get your ship started on a mission after finally filling all the needed skill slots and all of a sudden you someone in an important position has to leave.  Explain how you fill that position when you are out in space?  Bzzt.  I could spend all day listing countless problems with doing a team approach on a ship.  I am sure Cryptic did the same. 

While some players would actually put up with all the problems of such a system, developers would find that they are catering too a very small niche audience.  MMO's are expensive games to develop and aiming for such a small audience is like setting out to swim the English channel with lead weights attached to your feet.

So, when you get down to it, what you propose is a situation any developer is going to go to all lengths to avoid.  Hence, my original comment about sitting down and actually thinking about it, it is pretty obvious to anyone that a game with space ships will just not be designed like that.

Maybe someday, when highly advanced and productive tools allow quick coding of a MMO, something like you want will be possible, but not in this day and age. 

You have mentioned creating a ship at the beginning of your play twice now like that's the only way to do something. It's that type of narrow mindness and inability to think out side the paramaters given to you that is the real failure.

If I was designing STO I would make the ships like guild halls. Everyone on your guild is part of your crew. The class of your ship grows with the growth of the guild and rank of the guild leader ( commanding officer). You have 2 seperate command structures, one being your standard military rank based upon your players progression and one based upon your position in the guild/ship. That way the "Captain" isn't the only one that has access to the ship, he still has control over who has access and how much.

You have 3 types of mission systems. The first being ship missions that are done with your guild (this is a system already used in other games). The larger/more established ships/guilds that adventure further away from the core planets would have to rely on these missions more, but would have access to NPCs and could get help from crews from different ships depending on how far away they were.

The second type of missions would be missions that anyone within the federation space could access. There are many LFG modes that have been used by various games, I actually like the system used in DDO, where you just have a LFG screen that says what you are looking for and someone clicks to fill the spot.

The third missions types would be missions that let whole guilds work together.

In a single open server. like Cryptic pitches, there is no reason anyone should ever have trouble finding teams. Yet, if you like you can still use NPCs to fufill missions. It allows the game to remain focused on characters, interaction and individuals progression by emulating the interactions/dependency of a ships crew from the TV shows/movies.

 You can also take care of class needs by opening up skill sets, not making missions level dependent, making missions vast, defeatable in a varity of ways and at different levels of success.

Originally posted by katriell

Why can't Cryptic allow players to be part of the bridge crew OPTIONALLY? That would hurt no one and satisfy everyone.

Because there's so much more development time to put into such a system.  It's much easier (and indeed will serve a far greater audience) to spend that development time in fleet and armada functionality so that players can team up for large scale encounters and pvp.  If you'll allow me to talk about the way I see the system....Instead of being an engineer, you'll be captain of a ship that boosts the abilities of other ships, or can repair them in battle.  Instead of being a medical officer, you'll boost the mental state of other captains and board ships to heal injured crew.  Instead of being a first officer, you'll be a squad leader of sorts who could boost the targeting effectiveness of ships in the fleet, or give them better shields.  Make no mistake about it, teamwork will be necessary to succeed in this game, it's just that the teamwork will be a different method then placing everyone on the bridge.

And seriously, the next idiot who claims that being your own captain makes the game completely soloable (not referring to Katriell here) and that nobody will ever have to work together should be shot for pure stupidity.  If you had bothered to listen to the podcast, you would know that Jack specifically states that there are areas of the game that large scale teamwork will be required.  That being said, I certainly hope that there is no forced grouping in this game.  People should group because it is fun, not because they have to or otherwise progression is stiffled.  That is simply bad gameplay design.

Originally posted by Guillermo197

The Security Officer that controls the tactical station controls weapons AND shields, so on a mission or in a fleet battle this station is highly critical and can actually be very interesting and fun.

Yeah, for five minutes of a 45 minute TV show.  The other 40 minutes that character is staring at readouts.  Try doing this as your mmo profession.  You may find it fun,  but come on think about the average person here.  It's a series of minigames, which is hardly condusive to a long term mmo experience.

As you put it, its the same saying like who in earth wants to be a priest in a MMO. It's hitting spam heal buttons all the time. Must be getting boring really fast. Reality is that people actually like it and find ways in making it interesting to play that character.

Being a ship medic in STO is on a totally different level then any mmo healer class.  That being said, on planetary exploration and combat we would see similiar mechanics at work.  So I'll give you a point there.

And if this game is Skill based and not level-class based, then people can switch and train to another profession/class easily.

IMO, it should never be *easy* to switch professions and classes.  You have to go to school for four years + for a degree.  Switching from a doctor to an engineer is not something that should be done quickly.

So I really don't see a problem in this. That's why Star Wars Galaxies was one of the best MMO's ever before it got destroyed with the NGE update.

We're in large agreement here, however.  :)  But SWG is a far cry from PC ship crews.  I heartily agree that there should be plenty of crafting based progressions in STO, but I again reiterate that a PC crew would be boring beyond belief for the vast majority of gamers.  This is a *game*, not a Star Trek simulation.

Originally posted by zaxxon23

Originally posted by katriell

Why can't Cryptic allow players to be part of the bridge crew OPTIONALLY? That would hurt no one and satisfy everyone.

 

Because there's so much more development time to put into such a system.  It's much easier (and indeed will serve a far greater audience) to spend that development time in fleet and armada functionality so that players can team up for large scale encounters and pvp.  If you'll allow me to talk about the way I see the system....Instead of being an engineer, you'll be captain of a ship that boosts the abilities of other ships, or can repair them in battle.  Instead of being a medical officer, you'll boost the mental state of other captains and board ships to heal injured crew.  Instead of being a first officer, you'll be a squad leader of sorts who could boost the targeting effectiveness of ships in the fleet, or give them better shields.  Make no mistake about it, teamwork will be necessary to succeed in this game, it's just that the teamwork will be a different method then placing everyone on the bridge.

And seriously, the next idiot who claims that being your own captain makes the game completely soloable (not referring to Katriell here) and that nobody will ever have to work together should be shot for pure stupidity.  If you had bothered to listen to the podcast, you would know that Jack specifically states that there are areas of the game that large scale teamwork will be required.  That being said, I certainly hope that there is no forced grouping in this game.  People should group because it is fun, not because they have to or otherwise progression is stiffled.  That is simply bad gameplay design.

And you should be shot for your ignorance and stupidity, because you failed to read constructive posts about solutions that make player crews on a ship possible and fun.

If everyone can only be a captain of a ship. Then were is the diversity? Exept of having just a ship that looks different from the outside.

People like customisation of their character, not just playing to level up some NPC crew.

What you are talking about already exists (fleet battles, armadas, that sorta thing) >> EVE Online.

Cheers.

Originally posted by Guillermo197

Originally posted by zaxxon23

Originally posted by katriell

Why can't Cryptic allow players to be part of the bridge crew OPTIONALLY? That would hurt no one and satisfy everyone.

 

Because there's so much more development time to put into such a system.  It's much easier (and indeed will serve a far greater audience) to spend that development time in fleet and armada functionality so that players can team up for large scale encounters and pvp.  If you'll allow me to talk about the way I see the system....Instead of being an engineer, you'll be captain of a ship that boosts the abilities of other ships, or can repair them in battle.  Instead of being a medical officer, you'll boost the mental state of other captains and board ships to heal injured crew.  Instead of being a first officer, you'll be a squad leader of sorts who could boost the targeting effectiveness of ships in the fleet, or give them better shields.  Make no mistake about it, teamwork will be necessary to succeed in this game, it's just that the teamwork will be a different method then placing everyone on the bridge.

And seriously, the next idiot who claims that being your own captain makes the game completely soloable (not referring to Katriell here) and that nobody will ever have to work together should be shot for pure stupidity.  If you had bothered to listen to the podcast, you would know that Jack specifically states that there are areas of the game that large scale teamwork will be required.  That being said, I certainly hope that there is no forced grouping in this game.  People should group because it is fun, not because they have to or otherwise progression is stiffled.  That is simply bad gameplay design.

 

And you should be shot for your ignorance and stupidity, because you failed to read constructive posts about solutions that make player crews on a ship possible and fun.

If everyone can only be a captain of a ship. Then were is the diversity? Exept of having just a ship that looks different from the outside.

People like customisation of their character, not just playing to level up some NPC crew.

What you are talking about already exists (fleet battles, armadas, that sorta thing) >> EVE Online.

Cheers.

Jesus, you didn't read a word of what I said did you? 

"If everyone can only be a captain of a ship. Then were is the diversity? Exept of having just a ship that looks different from the outside."

Now, read my post again and recognize how utterly retarded your quote is.  Actually, since I don't really trust you, I'll just repost...

"If you'll allow me to talk about the way I see the system....Instead of being an engineer, you'll be captain of a ship that boosts the abilities of other ships, or can repair them in battle.  Instead of being a medical officer, you'll boost the mental state of other captains and board ships to heal injured crew.  Instead of being a first officer, you'll be a squad leader of sorts who could boost the targeting effectiveness of ships in the fleet, or give them better shields."

There's your freakin' diversity.

And go ahead, shoot me for my "ignorance and stupidity" by not agreeing with your ridiculous PC crew idea.  I know it wouldn't work, I know it would be boring to the vast majority of players, perpetual did too, and so does Cryptic.  At what point do you finally begin to realize that your idea just isn't feasible for an online game?

That being said, you're right, STO sounds quite a bit like EVE.  Even away from my take on it, the presentation today certainly supports that opinion.  I think we're both on the same page in that we'd like to see something other then another EVE.

In a way Id love having Guild ships.

Un-locking Bigger ship as your lvl up the guild.

Everyone could have some small 10 Crew ship to fly solo with npc.

But to Bring out the big Flag ship you could need 10-40 players operating it.

That would be somthing fresh!

Imagine the class posibility's

HELM,ENGENEER,WEAPONS ,SENSORS,DIPLOMAT

Having everyone working as one to make the ship perform at best......

If somone sucks all you do is kick him out of the guild simple.

It would be nice for a change instead of being spoon fed

 i like the idea,s .. and i hate working with  peope ..... its ok off and on .. but for me solo is ok... need more games were u can solo . and to lvl your crew very nice ... cant wait ... for me i love it .. thanks jack :D

Originally posted by bverji

Originally posted by Ozmodan

Originally posted by bverji

Originally posted by Ozmodan

As usual, lots of negative comments because people fail to read and think.

Can any of you naysayers even imagine the mess you would have if everyone is a crew member instead of their own captain?   First place, you spend spend forever crewing your ship.  Nothing worse having a party sit around waiting for one or two slots to fill because they need a certain class.   This game will probably have a bunch of needed classes too, some less desirable than others, good luck finding a crew member to fill that particular slot.  Then you better hope you have a decent captain and hope that everyone follows orders.  In a MMO, not going to happen.  Sorry if you want to go play EQ, then go play it.  The vast majority of us don't want to be forever sitting around waiting for others to play.

Cryptic has done the only thing they could do, make the crew attached to you as NPC's.  That is the ONLY way to make a game like this.

At least you can walk around the ship, something Perpetual was refusing to do.

I think Cryptic is on the right track.

I hope Daron Stinnett is reading all this and realizing how wrong he was with his design.

There are other/better ways to deal with the issues you present. Having NPC red shirts isn't a bad thing but they should be used as fillers, not the whole team. 

It's not because I fail to read or think, it is because I am able to think beyond what is just presented me that I see the wasted potential.
 

What makes Star Trek engaging hasn't been the awesome effects, or ships it is in the charcters stories and progressions. It's the exploration of humanity and the embodiment through the characters stories that makes Star Trek Iconic. Reducing that to a bunch of boys with their toy ships totally fails to represent the communinal dynamic which made Star Trek popular.

 

"Other ways in dealing with the problems"  Oh, and what might those be?   If the play was just on planets it could be done, but since ships are such a big part of this, it creates too many problems to make a team up.  How about you get your ship started on a mission after finally filling all the needed skill slots and all of a sudden you someone in an important position has to leave.  Explain how you fill that position when you are out in space?  Bzzt.  I could spend all day listing countless problems with doing a team approach on a ship.  I am sure Cryptic did the same. 

While some players would actually put up with all the problems of such a system, developers would find that they are catering too a very small niche audience.  MMO's are expensive games to develop and aiming for such a small audience is like setting out to swim the English channel with lead weights attached to your feet.

So, when you get down to it, what you propose is a situation any developer is going to go to all lengths to avoid.  Hence, my original comment about sitting down and actually thinking about it, it is pretty obvious to anyone that a game with space ships will just not be designed like that.

Maybe someday, when highly advanced and productive tools allow quick coding of a MMO, something like you want will be possible, but not in this day and age. 

 

You have mentioned creating a ship at the beginning of your play twice now like that's the only way to do something. It's that type of narrow mindness and inability to think out side the paramaters given to you that is the real failure.

If I was designing STO I would make the ships like guild halls. Everyone on your guild is part of your crew. The class of your ship grows with the growth of the guild and rank of the guild leader ( commanding officer). You have 2 seperate command structures, one being your standard military rank based upon your players progression and one based upon your position in the guild/ship. That way the "Captain" isn't the only one that has access to the ship, he still has control over who has access and how much.

You have 3 types of mission systems. The first being ship missions that are done with your guild (this is a system already used in other games). The larger/more established ships/guilds that adventure further away from the core planets would have to rely on these missions more, but would have access to NPCs and could get help from crews from different ships depending on how far away they were.

The second type of missions would be missions that anyone within the federation space could access. There are many LFG modes that have been used by various games, I actually like the system used in DDO, where you just have a LFG screen that says what you are looking for and someone clicks to fill the spot.

The third missions types would be missions that let whole guilds work together.

In a single open server. like Cryptic pitches, there is no reason anyone should ever have trouble finding teams. Yet, if you like you can still use NPCs to fufill missions. It allows the game to remain focused on characters, interaction and individuals progression by emulating the interactions/dependency of a ships crew from the TV shows/movies.

 You can also take care of class needs by opening up skill sets, not making missions level dependent, making missions vast, defeatable in a varity of ways and at different levels of success.

Who can't think outside the boundaries?  I have already given you several very solid reasons why your pie in the sky idea won't fly, yet you continue to harp on it, yet cannot offer one rebuttal to my examples.  I am not saying it can't be done, I am saying your ideas are entirely impractical. 

Adding different ship professions into this game and making them interesting enough to play would add another years to the development time.  To do this for a small niche group, just makes no sense at all.

Do a poll here, I bet you get more than 75% response of people who want to be captain.  Who is going to play the other  professions?  Right, you are going to be looking at an inordinate amount of time trying to fill the less popular professions slots.  Sorry that is what all of us hated about raiding, sitting around waiting.

It is nice to dream, but when you get down to it, if you want a product you have to make it so you have an audience of more than one to play it.  Hence you can lament all you want, but unless you magically come up with your own funding mechanism,  games like you want will never be made.  

Originally posted by Ozmodan

Originally posted by bverji

 

 I have already given you several very solid reasons why your pie in the sky idea won't fly, yet you continue to harp on it, yet cannot offer one rebuttal to my examples.

My whole post was a rebuttle, saying that it didn't exsist doesn't change the facts.

Adding different ship professions into this game and making them interesting enough to play would add another years to the development time.  To do this for a small niche group, just makes no sense at all.

I agree it would add more time, but that's because Cryptic choose the wrong direction in the first place. What I propseed is certainly more in line with what people are looking for then EVE with Guild War type NPCs. Talk about a nitch market. Generally people are looking for characters to advance and identify with in MMOs not star fleet battles.

Do a poll here, I bet you get more than 75% response of people who want to be captain.  Who is going to play the other  professions?  Right, you are going to be looking at an inordinate amount of time trying to fill the less popular professions slots. 

I don't need to poll I have some common sense. I have played star trek rpgs for years and not everyone is looking to be a captain. I have played RPGs and MMO for years and there is never been a shortage of players willing/wanting to play roll fillers. People are not as one dimensional as you want to paint them. Your clueless and argumentative to even make the sugggestion that everyone wants to play the same class/character type in a game. Have you even ever played an MMO before? Obviously if people all had the same desire when it came to playing a  MMO or RPG they would be unplayable. Not everyone wants to be a leader, most people don't even want to start a team and certainly not lead a guild. Seriously that's one of the stupidest things I've seen on these boards.

Lost me the second he said 'economy'

This is Star Trek.  The Feds don't use money.  They replicate all the goods they need.  The only reason the Feds don't replicate a billion tons of latinum or whatever and ruin the economy of every other civlization is the Prime Directive. 

Cryptic took fantasy MMORPG classes and jammed them into City of Heroes rather than looking at the genre and doing something innovative like making a game to fit superheroes.   It looks like they're going to do the same for Star Trek and use MMORPG mechanics that don't belong in the setting just because they're not original enough to come up with a game that isn't just a copy. 

The guild being a fleet does sound interesting, but I'd still rather have a guild belong to one ship. Regardless of what your rank is, you're still the Captain if you control a ship and its crew. I don't have much to complain about other than that. Everything else sounds fun.

lets give them a chance to make a good game

i liked the exploration idea and i hope they can put innovation and fokus into that aspect.

if they come up with a concept to gather a medical officer, a weapons officer and a tank officer and beam down to a planet to grind spawning mobs ill send a bunch of klingons over to redecorate their homes...

The way they selected is the only correct one. While it may sound great to have player played crews, you are too dependent on the playing time of those players. I think they will introduce special ships which requires multiple players to fly them, aka "guild" ships.

After reading the story and giving it a good thought.. they have done a great job so far! I am curious how big the universe will be and how they get content into the game. I hope they use some gerenator for creating loads of missions

---

You have mentioned creating a ship at the beginning of your play twice now like that's the only way to do something. It's that type of narrow mindness and inability to think out side the paramaters given to you that is the real failure.

If I was designing STO I would make the ships like guild halls. Everyone on your guild is part of your crew. The class of your ship grows with the growth of the guild and rank of the guild leader ( commanding officer). You have 2 seperate command structures, one being your standard military rank based upon your players progression and one based upon your position in the guild/ship. That way the "Captain" isn't the only one that has access to the ship, he still has control over who has access and how much.

You have 3 types of mission systems. The first being ship missions that are done with your guild (this is a system already used in other games). The larger/more established ships/guilds that adventure further away from the core planets would have to rely on these missions more, but would have access to NPCs and could get help from crews from different ships depending on how far away they were.

The second type of missions would be missions that anyone within the federation space could access. There are many LFG modes that have been used by various games, I actually like the system used in DDO, where you just have a LFG screen that says what you are looking for and someone clicks to fill the spot.

The third missions types would be missions that let whole guilds work together.

In a single open server. like Cryptic pitches, there is no reason anyone should ever have trouble finding teams. Yet, if you like you can still use NPCs to fufill missions. It allows the game to remain focused on characters, interaction and individuals progression by emulating the interactions/dependency of a ships crew from the TV shows/movies.

You can also take care of class needs by opening up skill sets, not making missions level dependent, making missions vast, defeatable in a varity of ways and at different levels of success.

---

Well... just want to say this.. Everybody wants to see the game, everybody wants to go out and explore. If I read your idea, I get the impression I would be dependend on the 'guild' which content I can and can't do. Tell me.. how can *that* be fun?

Originally posted by zaxxon23

 

Jesus, you didn't read a word of what I said did you? 

"If everyone can only be a captain of a ship. Then were is the diversity? Exept of having just a ship that looks different from the outside."

Now, read my post again and recognize how utterly retarded your quote is.  Actually, since I don't really trust you, I'll just repost...

"If you'll allow me to talk about the way I see the system....Instead of being an engineer, you'll be captain of a ship that boosts the abilities of other ships, or can repair them in battle.  Instead of being a medical officer, you'll boost the mental state of other captains and board ships to heal injured crew.  Instead of being a first officer, you'll be a squad leader of sorts who could boost the targeting effectiveness of ships in the fleet, or give them better shields."

There's your freakin' diversity.

And go ahead, shoot me for my "ignorance and stupidity" by not agreeing with your ridiculous PC crew idea.  I know it wouldn't work, I know it would be boring to the vast majority of players, perpetual did too, and so does Cryptic.  At what point do you finally begin to realize that your idea just isn't feasible for an online game?

That being said, you're right, STO sounds quite a bit like EVE.  Even away from my take on it, the presentation today certainly supports that opinion.  I think we're both on the same page in that we'd like to see something other then another EVE.

I did read your post, but had to cut my reply short as it was late.

Everyone here is being egocentric and keeps thinking that EVERYONE wants to play and be a Captain.

Numerous MMO's to date prove otherwise. NOT everyone is interesting in being a guildleader or a Maintank.

There are so many players out there that like to play support classes.

And why would a PC crew be boring? It's how engaging Cryptic it can make.

Like an NPC crew...now that's fun isn't? The way they present it, the NPC crew is nothing more then a bunch of Skill Attributes you level up to make you as Captain stronger.

So in an essence your whole ship, with you as Captain, functions as ONE character. Much like how EVE works. Altho EVE with it's sandbox idea goes a lot further atm. But you get the picture.

If you know the series and the movies. Then you know that about 90% of Star Trek revolves around Away missions!

So if Cryptic is doing it the right way, then most of your gaming time will be spend in Away missions.

With this being said... makes a PC crew only more interesting and possible.

Because if Cryptic is going to focus too much on Space battles, then it won't be Star Trek anymore, but just another EVE Online, with a Star Trek skin over it.

--------------------

And like I said before. I hate FORCED grouping too! So here is were the NPC crew comes into place.

Guild Wars has solved this remarkably. You can form your own group with PC's and if they aren't available you can fill in the empty spots with NPC's.

So for example, you want to go on a mission and you can only find a Pilot at the Helm, then you can activate and fill the rest of your crew with NPC's (and the quality of these NPC's is based on your (Captain) skills and how far you have trained them).

---------------------

Such a solution would honor the whole Star Trek feeling a lot better in my opinion.

But at the same time, for the more solo minded players a solution as well, as they can still fill their crew with NPC's.

This way guilds become actually a lot more meaningful and interesting. A large guild can still have several ships with Captains and form fleets. Alliance with other guilds and form Armada's even.

But if you make everyone Captain only. Then a guild in STO will just be like a Coorperation in EVE Online.

But even worse. Everyone on the Space Stations would be walking around in a Red Uniform (Starfleet side). So from RP perspective that's pretty much immersion killing as well and highly unrealistic and very limited too.

That's my 2cents on all this.

I am not trying to offend anyone. I am just as a Star Trek fan as anyone else and would love to get the best immersion possible in a good ST MMO.

Cheers

Originally posted by hbosman

The way they selected is the only correct one. While it may sound great to have player played crews, you are too dependent on the playing time of those players. I think they will introduce special ships which requires multiple players to fly them, aka "guild" ships.

After reading the story and giving it a good thought.. they have done a great job so far! I am curious how big the universe will be and how they get content into the game. I hope they use some gerenator for creating loads of missions

A lot of post here say that getting a crew together takes time, and what if someone leaves midway etc etc.

Isnt that the exact same thing that you have to manage when going into a dungeon in other MMOs.

What if you get a party together and the healer leaves for example? 

To me i dont see this as a  problem , you should be able to pick and form a random crew from the space ports, and much easier if you are in a guild. Just as it is now in other MMOs.

Another solution is to have NPC with the ability to swap them for PCs.

More importantly what will a group of players do on a ship, especially during combat??

What people forget is that you have all sorts of ships. Just wait and see what they come up with. I don't mind being a Captain of a small vessel

well, i have read a lot of constructive posts and some not so constructive about that topic, but let me say this:

there is one point that none of u have thought about when stating that not everyone wants to be a captain or why cant i be a security officer or whatever...it seems to me that the developers go a completely different way and just ask for some more open minds...look: the starship IS your character more so than the creature (the captain) behind it, the PRIEST in normal mmorpgs surely will be a support frigate, with a cruiser as TANK and so on.........well it sounds funny but surely is their concept....the npc on your ship and yourself are just more or less some characteristics of your starship which u can not simply bosst like leveling up, adding a point to strength but rather go on planetary missions, get xp for skills thus supplementing and contributing them to your starship indirectly................lets say your character (the captain) is not really more than a very complex attribute of your main character, the starship........if u see it that way i guess u will have less problems in accepting the fact, that your crew consists of npcs.....

Ok, since Star Trek is one of my three holy grails, it's enough to make me say something for once again.

Having greatly enjoyed City of Heroes I do have some confidence Cryptic is capabale of making a good Trek MMO. However, there are some details that really made me thinking.

My personal concept of a ST MMO was somewhat like SWG in Trek, a game where you are mainly around with other players and *sometimes* make space combat. Now what I realized thinking about it all was, that ST unlike SW is mainly about space, not so much planets. So basically my hope was, STO would be about me as a character being either on a planet or a space station or a great starship with other players.

Now I must say that EVE never was my pair of shoes. The idea of space combat and staring into more or less endless blackness of space wasnt my idea of having a joyful MMO time. Not that I mind space combat, but I always preferred to explore, and explore PLACES, I mean like planets, space stations, whatever, but not endless variations of space, because with the exceptions of some nebulas or the one and other comet passing by, it's mainly empty blackness. It just does not have the same "density" of visual interest for me like a forest, a ruin, a city or a vast space station, or a big starship.

Now I wonder why everyone has to be captain? I had rather wished people would form crews together, but apparently people will be alone, everyone captain of his own ship now. I dont like that idea much, alas, I really would have preferred a more "social" approach than this. This sounds awfully much like you and your ship and pratically identical, as its the case in EVE, a concept that never thrilled me much. All my dreams had been, being a crew members along with other player and NPC crew members and not alo9ne as soloist in my ship.

I will follow how it goes, and I still think Cryptic can make a good game. But I wonder if a game where you are alone in your ship and a majority of time will be spent in the blackness of space really appeals? It is somewhat the same why Pirates of the Burning Sea wasnt my game. 90% of the time you rushed through bleak, blueness of  "empty" ocean, and compared to the exploration of worlds it felt boring very fast, since ocean practially looks the same no matter where you go, and basically the same goes with space, right?

Just my 10 cents.

Originally posted by Alienovrlord

Lost me the second he said 'economy'

This is Star Trek.  The Feds don't use money.  They replicate all the goods they need.  The only reason the Feds don't replicate a billion tons of latinum or whatever and ruin the economy of every other civlization is the Prime Directive. 

Cryptic took fantasy MMORPG classes and jammed them into City of Heroes rather than looking at the genre and doing something innovative like making a game to fit superheroes.   It looks like they're going to do the same for Star Trek and use MMORPG mechanics that don't belong in the setting just because they're not original enough to come up with a game that isn't just a copy. 

 

I was thinking the same thing.  I was banking on Cryptic to keep their "influence" mechanic as the method of player run economies.

That being said, not all things can be made with a replicator.  All the captains in the series had episodes where tangible objects were traded for items / resources desired.  So resources will be something desired as jack said in his video.  But, latinum? Yes, i agree. Latinum and monetary economies were not emphasized in the Star Trek universe to our Federation.

Originally posted by Stradden

On Sunday, Cryptic Studios Chielf Creative Officer Jack Emmert officially unveiled Star Trek Online to a Trek convention in Vegas. Fortunately for those of us not in attendance, the event was available for viewing online. During the preentation, Emmert revealed some details about the highly anticipated upcoming MMORPG.

On Sunday, Cryptic Studios made their very first public presentation concerning the recently announced Star Trek Online. The presentation was made in Las Vegas appropriately, at a Star Trek convention. This was smart for a number of reasons including the fact that in a crowded MMORPG market, the core fans of the IP are an important demographic for the upcoming game. Then, or course, there’s the fact that at a Star Trek convention, you can have your game introduced by Leonard Nimoy, the original Mr. Spock.

Before continuing, I should make it clear that the full presentation has been made available via www.startrekonline.com if you’re interested in watching the whole 43 minute long presentation. For those of you who aren’t, I’m going to try to cover the most important bits:

Check it out here.

Yeah, what a let down. I didn't really want to play a captain. So, it sounds like PoTBS on the ship, and what? Sword of the New World on ground?

Originally posted by hbosman

 

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You have mentioned creating a ship at the beginning of your play twice now like that's the only way to do something. It's that type of narrow mindness and inability to think out side the paramaters given to you that is the real failure.

 

If I was designing STO I would make the ships like guild halls. Everyone on your guild is part of your crew. The class of your ship grows with the growth of the guild and rank of the guild leader ( commanding officer). You have 2 seperate command structures, one being your standard military rank based upon your players progression and one based upon your position in the guild/ship. That way the "Captain" isn't the only one that has access to the ship, he still has control over who has access and how much.

You have 3 types of mission systems. The first being ship missions that are done with your guild (this is a system already used in other games). The larger/more established ships/guilds that adventure further away from the core planets would have to rely on these missions more, but would have access to NPCs and could get help from crews from different ships depending on how far away they were.

The second type of missions would be missions that anyone within the federation space could access. There are many LFG modes that have been used by various games, I actually like the system used in DDO, where you just have a LFG screen that says what you are looking for and someone clicks to fill the spot.

The third missions types would be missions that let whole guilds work together.

In a single open server. like Cryptic pitches, there is no reason anyone should ever have trouble finding teams. Yet, if you like you can still use NPCs to fufill missions. It allows the game to remain focused on characters, interaction and individuals progression by emulating the interactions/dependency of a ships crew from the TV shows/movies.

You can also take care of class needs by opening up skill sets, not making missions level dependent, making missions vast, defeatable in a varity of ways and at different levels of success.

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Well... just want to say this.. Everybody wants to see the game, everybody wants to go out and explore. If I read your idea, I get the impression I would be dependend on the 'guild' which content I can and can't do. Tell me.. how can *that* be fun?

For a lot of players being part of building a guildand having a goal to create bigger ships and experience new content would be fun. Strong guild focused game are generally popular. However, if experiencing certain content is more important to you there are many ways to do that under the system I provided. Start your own guild, Join a guild that's has a ship to do that content, team up with players who belong to a ship that can do said content.

I have noticed though that the people who like Cryptics ideas and don't want player crews have been EVE players. So certainly coming from a different prespective then most MMo players.

Originally posted by dalevi11

Originally posted by Stradden

On Sunday, Cryptic Studios Chielf Creative Officer Jack Emmert officially unveiled Star Trek Online to a Trek convention in Vegas. Fortunately for those of us not in attendance, the event was available for viewing online. During the preentation, Emmert revealed some details about the highly anticipated upcoming MMORPG.

On Sunday, Cryptic Studios made their very first public presentation concerning the recently announced Star Trek Online. The presentation was made in Las Vegas appropriately, at a Star Trek convention. This was smart for a number of reasons including the fact that in a crowded MMORPG market, the core fans of the IP are an important demographic for the upcoming game. Then, or course, there’s the fact that at a Star Trek convention, you can have your game introduced by Leonard Nimoy, the original Mr. Spock.

Before continuing, I should make it clear that the full presentation has been made available via www.startrekonline.com if you’re interested in watching the whole 43 minute long presentation. For those of you who aren’t, I’m going to try to cover the most important bits:

Check it out here.

 

Yeah, what a let down. I didn't really want to play a captain. So, it sounds like PoTBS on the ship, and what? Sword of the New World on ground?

They are playing the odds that most people do want to command a ship. I think that is a safe bet.  In the MMO world, safe bets don't lose money.  For people that like a supporting role, I hope they offer instancing scenarios. Maybe you can work for an NPC Captain in defending the ship when it is boarded, or help a Station from its power source from exploding, or planetary missions, etc.

We shall see how things evolve in the coming years

Overall I think Cryptic is doing the best they can given that they do not want to reinvent the wheel. They have the engine which gives them the power to plug in scenarios and such. If they went the Bridge Commander route with player roles on a player ship, it will be much tougher to develop.

Watching the video at least it won't be a glorified Earth and Beyond. So I will watch and learn more as the game develops

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Originally posted by fansede
Overall I think Cryptic is doing the best they can given that they do not want to reinvent the wheel. They have the engine which gives them the power to plug in scenarios and such. If they went the Bridge Commander route with player roles on a player ship, it will be much tougher to develop.
Watching the video at least it won't be a glorified Earth and Beyond. So I will watch and learn more as the game develops

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You hit the nail on the head. They are doing the best they can at being lazy and uncreative :( If I were running their business, who knows, it's likely I would have went the same route. Being creative is too risky in this industry these days. But I can't help but feel this is a totally wasted opportunity at something that had potential to be revolutionary.

The emphasis on fleet battles feels like the opposite of what the franchise is about, while other aspects of the game sound pretty close to the direction I would go. At this point though, it sounds too much like "you are a ship" with some instances on the side. Will wait to see how it develops to know whether I like the game or not, but I think it could have been better.

On the plus side, at least my dream mmo idea is not stolen anymore. I was worried for a while :)