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Star Trek Online Previews: Bridges & Bridge Officers Preview
Bridges will be in for launch. We find out in exactly what form and all about the mechanics of those who will populate them.
By Dana Massey on December 02, 2009
The bridge is one of the most iconic locations in any Star Trek series or film. It’s where the bulk of the action takes place and an inherent part of the starship captain fantasy. A couple weeks ago, the Associated Press broke the news that Cryptic had listened to fan demands and will launch with in-game 3D bridges. Executive Producer Craig Zinkievich gave us all the details on them and the crews that will populate them during a recent trip to Cryptic HQ.
At launch, the Bridge is going to be pretty simple. Each time the player earns a new ship, they get to select from a group of prefabricated bridge areas. The team is close to launch and they didn’t want to bite off more than they could chew.
Over time, the plan is to add far more customization for players to really tailor their bridge. They also want to expand out into other iconic interior starship rooms, such as the Captain’s Quarters; an area that could theoretically house trophies and more personal achievements.
;)
A Captain on his bridge.
“You work with the players,” Zinkievich noted. Where exactly they expand first after launch will in large part be determined both by what players tell them and what they actually do in the game. If there’s a demand, of course more interiors will be added. It’s what got them on the launch feature list in the first place, after all.
The Bridges of STO will be larger than those of the show, which Zinkievich described as a necessity of a 3D video game. The fact is, they want people to be able to bring their friends in. The limit on the exact number of characters in a bridge will be based mostly off “what looks good.” Those they showed me seemed to strike a balance between that necessary size without losing the feeling of what made Bridges cool.
Naturally, the bridge serves as a control hub for the ship. UI elements from the general game will be accessible from within the bridge at logical locations. However, at least to begin, they have no plans to let people fight or actually pilot their ship from the inside. It’s far more akin to player housing than a different way to play the game.
Aside from other players, the bridge will of course be fully be populated by the NPC crew people have earned throughout the game.
The crew members have become an integral part of every aspect of the game. In space, they provide access to special abilities that could make the difference between victory and defeat. On land, their phasers are there with you in every scenario.
;)
Proper discipline in evidence.
The team has gone to great lengths to make them apparent to the players from day one. They won’t have full blown personalities like side-kicks in single-player RPGs like Dragon Age, but they won’t be anonymous peons either.
“Captains never hail and never scan anything,” Zinkievich pointed out. When you use the replicator, it’s your engineer who gives you feedback and whose face you see beside the console. The premise is that no matter what action you pick on board a ship, you’re likely asking someone to do it and they show you that. These little touches didn’t seem like much at first, but over a couple hours of playing the game organically (from character creation through the tutorial and first few missions) I got to know the people with me in some strange way.
Bridge Officers fall into three general categories. Like most other elements of the game, they’re either Science, Tactical or Engineering. Each officer has four ranks to progress through with access to two skills (one for space and one for the avatar) per level. Each of these skills has nine levels within it for players to work on. These skills can vary widely form crew-member to crew-member, even within a single class. Players earn merit that can be used to train up their officers.
These officers can also be customized completely by the player. Their names, faces and races can be totally transformed so that each person develops a unique group of characters to carry out their orders.
Great description Dana. I'm really looking forward to checking this out.
" This collection game encourages people to seek out, create or trade for the officer with the ideal configuration of eight skills for them."
Hmm...wouldn't this basically lead to the selling of tradeable officers, thus creating a "slave market" so to speak?
This isn't your daddy's Star Trek...it's great grandpa's.
Pepperidge Farm remembers.
This project just gets more laughable.
Dibs on the orion slave girls!
The game looks great and sounds interesting. I can't wait to get my hands on it.
In regards to the bridges, I understand what they are saying about the bridge size, but I think maybe they look a little too big still. There was a closeness on the bridge in the shows that allowed the captain to give orders without shouting. In this game, the distances would have you almost shouting to be heard over the typical background noise of standard bridge operations. But it's a game and I guess we have to make allowances.
I am wondering if this will be out around the same time as the Star Wars mmo. It will be rough playing Fallen Earth, trying STO and then giving the Star Wars mmo a go. Just think if the Star Trek game and the Star Wars game were great games. Omg....that would be so awesome and suck at the same time because there is only so much time to play these games :)
It's due for launch on February 2. There's no way in any hell that The Old Republic will be released any earlier than September, unless BioWare is also under the pressure of a destitute publisher.
While they aren't faceless peons, I have to say they don't sound like more than a collection of skills with a rank. Not having a personality really sucks, imho. From everything they said the only difference between two officers with the same skills would be appearence, which is pretty lame. The Vulcan isn't going to act like a Vulcan anymore than a Ferangi would act like a Ferangi (if they have the same class and skills they are essentially exactly the same it sounds like). Given that the shows had such a great crew dynamic, this is pretty disappointing.
What exactly makes you think this would function as a "slave market" ?
Ever heard of an "Officer's Exchange Program" ? It's been seen/used in Star Trek, among others with Riker serving on a Klingon ship, and Worf's brother Kurn, serving on the Enterprise.
Sub-standard officers are sometimes transferred to other postings (such as Barclay). In neither of these cases, are the officers considered "slaves". The officers serve either within the Klingon Defense Forces, or within Starfleet. And thus ultimately are under the leadership of the Admiralty at Starfleet Command, or the Klingon High Command.
Not a huge fan of the "supersized" bridges in STO, but I do understand the merit of making them larger and able to accomodate more people/players.
I loved this statement with reference to the future:
"If there’s a demand, of course more interiors will be added."
And while I get the size vs game 3D capabilities, yea those suckers look HUGE! Especially since you're only talking a handful of bridge officers. Guess they thought my naming it the 'social hub' you'd be having ballroom dancing in there.
Also what was with the one tag "Retro Bridge Look", what retro was he looking at, cuz I couldn't place it.
It is good they put it in, too bad you won't be able to pilot the ship from that screen as I know a few on the forums had hoped for that. I'd probably try it once just to see and then would go back to 3rd person view which works better for me.
Game seems to be shaping up OK, moving in the right direction so far. Got to see if I can do open beta to check it out.
To me, the bridge looked pretty "retro" Defiant-style, however it's been supersized.
"Social Hub" isn't exactly what I had in mind when I was asking for ship interiors...
I think I'll stick with my fully functional bridges that i can have player crews in, and use to control my ship. But thanks for the thought.
I'll still try the game out because its Trek, and it does look pretty awesome. But the bridges are a laugh Cryptic, you can't even be second? CastleThorn beat you by more than 3 years.
Exciting, can't wait to try it out.
Ha-ha-ha! Just the bridge and perhaps some other key areas in the future? No thankies. I'll stick with my ship with fully complete internals which'll fit as many friends as I want to over at SQO
Looks pretty good, but I don't think I'm gonna try out STO. I just dislike the idea of everyone Captaining a ship at first. I like fully crewed ships, Players not NPCS, and the teamwork. I am not leaving my shell in SQO just to play basically alone on a ship.
Cryptic, You can do better
Especially with your Budget.
I'd love to see what CTS could do with Cryptics budget. Imagine SQO in DirectX 11.
Its already got more gameplay than what STO seems to have.
I suspect that once STO comes out, you'll be posting on how much you hate it and how much better the game you're a correspondent for is.
Maybe because it's true?
I'm not a correspondent anymore. mmorpg.com just never changed my status.
Check my past posts, the closest I've come to bashing a game was against SQO. "The Good, The Bad, and The Darkside"
If STO is any good at all, I won't be posting against it. As for graphics and solo content, its going to be way better than SQO.
Actually, its going to be better than SQO in a lot of ways, simply because of a big development staff, large fanbase, and nice budget. None of which SQO has.
But in the case of a real trek feeling through ship interiors, and being a player in ship, on ground, or in orbitals, good luck matching SQO with your social hubs, and your limited interiors.
Truth be known, I prefer EVE to everything right now. ;)
Uhm...
Nope.
Sorry, but CTS could not do much better than they are now, it is not as much a matter of budget, it IS a matter of design and ability.
Granted, CTS lacks the budget which might prevent a lot, but they ALSO (at least seem to) lack direction, focus and ability which prevents even more.
And the Gameplay in SQO is basically limited to blow stuff up especially since they have all but removed the need for non-PvP occupations from their game.
Anyhow...
I am looking forward to see what the STO bridges are about, and i have to say i like the idea to have NPC bridge crew.
BUT:
I would still love to have at least the OPTION (as opposed to the necessity, as is the case in SQO basically) to have a player-taking a seat on my ship instead of the NPC.
With the limit to 2skills per level for an NPC, that would even have a "natural" bonus to live PC crews then, as PCs have a wider array of skills - or so i heard.
Now, THAT would make it fun for me, even if it were limited to combat only, as it seems to be.
It would also make the game more... "ST"-like, at least to me.
Since from the info i have so far, it at least LOOKS as if all this game has to do with "ST" is it's ship models, race names/looks and ofc the name.
As to stuff being added in as time goes on as the Dev said in the article, i am kind of wary about that.
People say that all the time and do... well, perhaps not nothing but not "it" either.
Still, it is very likely i will at least give STO a try.
But it is just as likely that i won't be STAYING active unless they actually put some decent economy and other, non-combat content in.
Thats true it is very focused on PvP, but the other options are being added to, not removed.
Then you must not have seen some of the recent patches. The last colony addition for example, building structures to support your colonies population and customize it. Ranches/farms, hyperwave transmitter towers, fusion plants. And a lot more to follow like appartment buildings, schools, immortrax centers, planetary weapons and shields.
Or the F-207 Valkyrie fighters for that matter. Jump from your ship onto a fighter, fly in formation with your buddies into a planets atmosphere, land and go check out the indigenous lifeforms while the rest of the crew stais on the ship in orbit staying on look out. Something I actually did a few hours ago.
Supersized would throw off the prespective, I'll have to watch the DS9 Tribble episode tonight to see what the bridge looked like. When I think retro I go back to Classic Trek. Now that would be one sweet choice.
Thanks for clearing that one up.
If you check out Champions Online you would realize that no, no they can't do any better.
STO closed beta started last month and it is scheduled to be released in February, not nearly enough time to get the bug reports and fixes needed for release date, and if they do the same thing that they did with the beta of CO, they will ignore the beta testers and release the game in all it's un-finished glory.
I'm not dismissing the game entirely, but I'm not going to bother with it until several months after release, hoping that by that time they might have started to add necessary content and fixed the inevitable imbalance issues.
To Cryptic:
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
If you pre-order the game from GameStop, you can get avaible the Classic TOS Constitution Class Heavy Cruiser. The game provides the Movie Constitution Heavy Crusier as a option. My question is will this SE version provide the proper bridge from the original series?
What exactly makes you think this would function as a "slave market" ?
Ever heard of an "Officer's Exchange Program" ? It's been seen/used in Star Trek, among others with Riker serving on a Klingon ship, and Worf's brother Kurn, serving on the Enterprise.
Sub-standard officers are sometimes transferred to other postings (such as Barclay). In neither of these cases, are the officers considered "slaves". The officers serve either within the Klingon Defense Forces, or within Starfleet. And thus ultimately are under the leadership of the Admiralty at Starfleet Command, or the Klingon High Command.
Not a huge fan of the "supersized" bridges in STO, but I do understand the merit of making them larger and able to accomodate more people/players.
I dont rember the Klingon captin offering a new hull or "Pimping new Warp nacells" for Riker to server aboard his ship... thats what will make it slavery ;p
Maybe I read it wrong but it didnt seem like you could trade officers for parts...more like trading officers for officers.
It's fun to see the trolls come out, hi trolls!
Anyways, as far as there being a "slave trade", I highly doubt there will be any rare skills, so getting the skills you like for your bridge officer shouldn't be a problem. Since they apparently can only have 1 ground and 1 space skill per level, that gives you 8 of each. How your officer performs will be based on what skills you outfit him with, not how rare he is.
This seems like a good way to have players customize the way they perform in combat, not to mention letting them change roles on the fly. If you're fighting a bunch of small ships, maybe you want your officer with the torpedo spread. If you're fighting the battlecruiser, maybe you want to swap him out with an officer that can drain shields.
DANA wrote:
" Bridge Officers provide players with a more iconic and complete Star Trek experience. Part of the fantasy is to be the Captain and while some out there would no doubt love to travel the galaxies in the role of Ship’s Doctor, that’s not exactly compelling gameplay for the average player. "
Informative article over all, but then you had to take it down ten notches by parroting this over-used strawman argument. First of all, no Ship's Doctor class/profession was ever developed, so how do you know if something is compelling or not if it wasn't even created?
You also say "part of the fantasy" is to be a Captain. Well 'part of the fantasy' is to run ones ship from an interior. Another 'part of the fantasy' is to have player crews. Cryptic, and journalists, have created this circular argument that is beyond frustrating. Without proof or evidence, its assumed that being a Captain is the ONLY part of the fantasy that matters.
Finally, "Bridge officers provide players with a more iconice and complete Star Trek experience..." More iconic than what? Not having them? And if Iconic was so damn important, then Cryptic would have developed a system for player crews because that is even MORE Iconic.
It should be noted that in all of those bridge screenshots, the ship's viewscreen is displaying the planetoid known as Memory Alpha: memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Memory_Alpha
Also, those bridges look way, way, way, WAY too huge. They look too huge at the point of being utterly unrealistic and very immersion breaking for me. If I'm flying a Defiant class ship (which these bridges all appear to be) I want the bridge to feel like the small spartan warship the Defiant is supposed to be. I know this game is in beta, but please, please, please Cryptic, scale the bridges back to something more reasonable.
Exactly.
I've seen fan pages devoted to Dr. Julian Bashir. I'm willing to bet that the fan who made that page would prefer to be like her hero rather than a captain. Why are all these people assuming that everone just loves the captains and wants to be one of them? What about all thev fans of Scotty or Data or Spock? They're being left out in the cold because people like Cryptic are making brash assumptions that really have no basis in reality. And that does not bode well for this game...
if i go klingon i want the option to shoot my bridge officers to force the others to perform better.
Exactly.
I've seen fan pages devoted to Dr. Julian Bashir. I'm willing to bet that the fan who made that page would prefer to be like her hero rather than a captain. Why are all these people assuming that everone just loves the captains and wants to be one of them? What about all thev fans of Scotty or Data or Spock? They're being left out in the cold because people like Cryptic are making brash assumptions that really have no basis in reality. And that does not bode well for this game...
Hmm, there should have been something along the lines of personalities for the crew at least. Not only can you not play Bashir, you can't even have him on your crew. All doctors are the same, more or less, after all.
I almost wonder (well, instant brainstorm) if they shouldn't have done something where you don't play anything in particular per se. You aren't a member of the crew, you aren't the ship, you aren't quite all of them together either. Instead are identified with a ship and crew, and you can control the ship (in combat for instance) or a member of the crew, but only one at a time. Then quests and such basically pit you with problems that you have to solve utilizing the crew, but the crew will act independently of you to an extent (based on their personalities). That let's some crew members doing boring stuff that takes a long time while you control one of the people more involved in the action at the moment (and later you can get the info from the guy doing the boring stuff). Sometimes the focus of things might be on a planet, sometimes it might be in space, sometimes it might be on the ship, and sometimes a combination of all of those, but in any case you can zoom in on the action and control one of your "people/things" to help resolve the situation. If you use that person to talk to someone else, then the dialogue options are appropriate for that person's personality (if you have Worf try to be a diplomat it won't be nearly as effective as Picard..unless perhaps they are Klingons or something). I think that might have been pretty awesome to play. A lot of potentially for very interesting multi-player interaction.
Now, I suppose some people might try to claim STO is this, but without personalities for the crew and with the fact it identifies you as the captain and no internal ship problems, it loses out a lot (fails in other ways too). That said, not having personalities is the major loss as you're simply not going to identify as strongly with the crew. They should have spent another year or two and developed some procedural technology for personalities and crew interactions at the very least.
I'd be more worried about them shooting you if you fail that mission... Klingons often earn promotions through assassination...
I'd be more worried about them shooting you if you fail that mission... Klingons often earn promotions through assassination...
That was my thought exactly.
Nice article, the game sounds better everytime I read something new...I will be trying this out. Hopefully it can keep my attention for more than 3 months :)
Hmm... Doesn't sound good to me. Based on the TV shows, what could be more important than the character interaction between the captain and the crew? By having crew members without distinct personalities, I feel like this suggest that there will be a lack of story and character development in the game overall. Does it make any sense that you will have more meaningful interactions with random quest NPCs than you'll have with your own crew? And look at the screenshot on this article - the two female crewmembers look like they have the exact same head and face. Weak.
I'm not saying that I need elaborate back-stories like in Dragon Age, but if the crew has no personality than they're nothing more than a stat item to help you go fly around and shoot stuff better. Ho hum. Not interested.
I dont see why player crews are constantly being brought up. They have several reasons why they didnt go that route. The biggest being what happens when a specific player isnt needed??? Say you are the doctor of a ship. What are you supposed to do when the ship is warping to the next mission??? What if the next mission doesnt call for your character or abilities????? "Hey lets bring Counselor Jax cause she hasnt gone on any missions yet".
The reason they made everyone a captain is because 99.9% of the classic Trek episodes revolved around Kirk.
Exactly.
I've seen fan pages devoted to Dr. Julian Bashir. I'm willing to bet that the fan who made that page would prefer to be like her hero rather than a captain. Why are all these people assuming that everone just loves the captains and wants to be one of them? What about all thev fans of Scotty or Data or Spock? They're being left out in the cold because people like Cryptic are making brash assumptions that really have no basis in reality. And that does not bode well for this game...
By heart I fully agree. I have many fav Trek characters who are NOT captains. I love Trek mostly for the crew interaction and I could not care less for space combat.
By brain however I wonder, what would someone as, say, Medic do all day? Be in sick bay and tend people? Or a Chief Engeneer? Stand in engeneering all day & press buttons to raise warp efficiency? I admit I can't really see anything to do for such ideas. I can imagine however a part of the game which has some quests on board starships or space stations. I am as unhappy with the idea that the players are all captains, but truth be told, I cant really imagine a working concept otherwise.
No one reads Drachasor's long posts (or even medium-length ones). Sad now. : (
Star Trek Online: Never quite able to get one step above mediocrity.
Isn't it up to the developers to find interesting things for every member of the party to do? Wouldn't it be the developers' fault if my paladin has nothing to do but stand around and occasionally buff or heal in WoW?
Also, wouldn't the doctor be the classic "healer" class? We've also seen on the shows that the doctors do far more than mindlessly heal people. From using hyposprays to incapacitate enemies to devising cures to plagues and even engaging in combat ("The Siege of AR-558," Dr. Bashir knows how to field strip a phaser rifle much to the surprise of the battle-hardened Starfleet security officer. Bashir mentions that he's had to do that far too often.) You're the one putting artificial restrictions on things, you're the one making them boring with your narrow imagination.
Isn't it up to the developers to find interesting things for every member of the party to do? Wouldn't it be the developers' fault if my paladin has nothing to do but stand around and occasionally buff or heal in WoW?
Also, wouldn't the doctor be the classic "healer" class? We've also seen on the shows that the doctors do far more than mindlessly heal people. From using hyposprays to incapacitate enemies to devising cures to plagues and even engaging in combat ("The Siege of AR-558," Dr. Bashir knows how to field strip a phaser rifle much to the surprise of the battle-hardened Starfleet security officer. Bashir mentions that he's had to do that far too often.) You're the one putting artificial restrictions on things, you're the one making them boring with your narrow imagination.
and if the developers cant come up with something interesting shouldnt we let it go???
And if you are in the middle of ship to ship combat with the Klingons what is Bashir going to do??? Wait until someone gets hurt???
Exactly right. No reason officers can't have secondary - even tertiary training allowing them to step in for a player who has D/Ced, gone AFK, or bio.
If the developers can't come up with something interesting then they should be replaced with those who can.
excellent second part to the preview. everything in this game is giving me day dreams as i read about it. emagining myself in the capt's chair , going on away missions. great, i cant wait for BW's latest blockbuster....
BW? Are you referring to BioWare? They are putting out the The Old Republic game.
This game is being made by Cryptic.
Both will be fine Space MMOS and both have an eager Player base looking forward to them.
BW? Are you referring to BioWare? They are putting out the The Old Republic game.
This game is being made by Cryptic.
oops! my bad, i guess thats the price i pay for following 2 games in production.. thanks for the correction, i indeed did mean Cryptic..
silly me
Oh, I don't know...you're in a fantasy MMO guild and you're running quests...Guild leader says, you know, we really don't need a Cleric against this Golem. John, why don't you bring your DPS wizard instead....
You see there's this new MMO innovation called Alt characters...they let you play various other roles if you want to.
And 99.9% of hyperbole will get you no where in an argument.
By heart I fully agree. I have many fav Trek characters who are NOT captains. I love Trek mostly for the crew interaction and I could not care less for space combat.
By brain however I wonder, what would someone as, say, Medic do all day? Be in sick bay and tend people? Or a Chief Engeneer? Stand in engeneering all day & press buttons to raise warp efficiency? I admit I can't really see anything to do for such ideas. I can imagine however a part of the game which has some quests on board starships or space stations. I am as unhappy with the idea that the players are all captains, but truth be told, I cant really imagine a working concept otherwise.
There have been a lot of great suggestions both here and on the STO forums regarding the roles each would play. As a jumping off point, one only needs to look at SWG Jump to light speed as a foundational example of where to take the design.
But hey, I've come to appreciate how genius the original SWG Devs were -- brilliant system designers (not so great at content designing, though, heh). Maybe multi-player ships are just too damn hard for the Cryptic devs to design. Nothing to be ashamed of...can't all be Einsteins in the developing world.
Maybe they are Bob Einsteins.
Okay, so given everyone must be a captian - What if I wanted to be a real ship commander and delegate away team responsibilities to my second? How would that play out?
(That would probably be too much Star Trek for this startrek game)
It's pretty clear that the devs and the fans of this game are satisfied with a very shallow treatment of the IP. Which is a real shame, because there is more than enough source material to provide a very rich and deep MMORPG experience.
WoW in space, indeed. Starships are mounts, and crew are pets. Blech.
Sounds more like professional Baseball and Football teams. Unless you think they are "SLAVES" too.
Unless they have 'no-trade' clauses in their contracts, they pretty much are.
If you get to do that as a Klingon, I want to be Picard so I can shoot Wesley the first time he whines! :)
I'm slowly warming up to the game and here's why:
1) It's not standard Fantasy. I like D&D every so often, not enough to make a $15/month commitment to it.
2) The learning curve isn't too steep: As nicely detailed as EVE online is, when you have a regular job it feels like more work. How long do you really have to grind asteroid/missions/skills to get to a "comfortable middle"? Also the end game is PVP which I can't really stand.
3) It's not a watered-down, yet-shinier version of a game I already play: Champions doesn't interest me, the power system is more flexible than City of Heroes but there is much less content than City of Heroes had "AT LAUNCH". Even with different characters the missions get old fast and all it details is "X character is better/worse at this content than Y character".
I'm also interested in Star Wars: TOR, and I can like both and not feel like they are the same thing since BioWare probably isn't going to have robust space combat. If I want to fly a Starship, I'll play STO, if I want to mow down dudes with a Lightsaber I'll play SWTOR.
Although with STO I would like to try the game for 1/2 a day first before shelling out money for it.
I was thinking ahead to the trade chat spam...
"WTS Rank 4 BO with +5 tactical and great teeth"
That's what I meant, yes. You can trade officers with other players. If you prefer... "Reassign them."
This isn't a staw man argument, it's common sense. I know there are really hardcore Trek fans who would love to do this, but honestly, I've yet to hear one of these purists present a suggestion for compelling gameplay. On the show, they had "jobs" and performed them. We didn't watch them do those mundane thing. In a game, you would have to.
Seriously, what would you do? In Engineering would you constantly play a mini-game about balancing power to the various systems? Would the doctor treat runny noses of NPCs between missions?
There simply is not enough content there to drill that deep on any reasonable development timeframe.
Being a Captain is not the only part of the fantasy that matters, it's the only part that would be fun in a video game for a mass audience. You'll probably pick on the sentence "mass audience," but the fact is that Cryptic likely wants more people than just hardcore Trek fans to play the game.
Disgruntled Trolls never able to stop being fucking obvious.
That's the problem. Trek fans will leave when they see how shallow the treatment of the IP is, and casuals will leave for the next shiny new MMO that comes out.
The point of most of my complaints about this game is that they shouldn't have taken on the IP if they were going to be so lax and unfaithful to the source material.
Just make your own space battle MMO, Cryptic. But no, they will trick Trek fans into buying this with hopes of playing a Trek MMO, which this is not.
This isn't a staw man argument, it's common sense. I know there are really hardcore Trek fans who would love to do this, but honestly, I've yet to hear one of these purists present a suggestion for compelling gameplay. On the show, they had "jobs" and performed them. We didn't watch them do those mundane thing. In a game, you would have to.
Seriously, what would you do? In Engineering would you constantly play a mini-game about balancing power to the various systems? Would the doctor treat runny noses of NPCs between missions?
I'll second that.
There was an episode of Babylon 5 called 'View from the Gallery (I think)'. It followed the work day of a couple of maintenance guys. Yes they had to go fix a couple of things (1 stuck elevator?) but you also saw them eat lunch and 'buff' the floor. Not much in the way of mini-game's.
"Yo Engineer, got a clogged toilet in room 556. Fix it."
Strawman.
No one is calling for the ability to play maintenance crew. That's a far cry from being Spock, Riker, Scotty, or LaForge. Who all had episodes devoted to them.
This long time Trekker greatly approves of what Cryptic is doing. Is it perfect? Does it have everything hardcore Trekkers and Trekkies want? No.. but guess what... no game will EVER have what everyone wants.
I just hope I can get into Open Beta!! Lets go STO!! :-)
Well, I had a post on this...I thought I outline compelling gameplay (heck, you could even have it setup so a friend could visit your ship/crew for a while and see what they are like if you wanted). Anyhow, here's a reposting of what I said:
Hmm, there should have been something along the lines of personalities for the crew at least. Not only can you not play Bashir, you can't even have him on your crew. All doctors are the same, more or less, after all.
I almost wonder (well, instant brainstorm) if they shouldn't have done something where you don't play anything in particular per se. You aren't a member of the crew, you aren't the ship, you aren't quite all of them together either. Instead are identified with a ship and crew, and you can control the ship (in combat for instance) or a member of the crew, but only one at a time. Then quests and such basically pit you with problems that you have to solve utilizing the crew, but the crew will act independently of you to an extent (based on their personalities). That let's some crew members doing boring stuff that takes a long time while you control one of the people more involved in the action at the moment (and later you can get the info from the guy doing the boring stuff). Sometimes the focus of things might be on a planet, sometimes it might be in space, sometimes it might be on the ship, and sometimes a combination of all of those, but in any case you can zoom in on the action and control one of your "people/things" to help resolve the situation. If you use that person to talk to someone else, then the dialogue options are appropriate for that person's personality (if you have Worf try to be a diplomat it won't be nearly as effective as Picard..unless perhaps they are Klingons or something). I think that might have been pretty awesome to play. A lot of potentially for very interesting multi-player interaction.
Now, I suppose some people might try to claim STO is this, but without personalities for the crew and with the fact it identifies you as the captain and no internal ship problems, it loses out a lot (fails in other ways too). That said, not having personalities is the major loss as you're simply not going to identify as strongly with the crew. They should have spent another year or two and developed some procedural technology for personalities and crew interactions at the very least.
I'll second that.
There was an episode of Babylon 5 called 'View from the Gallery (I think)'. It followed the work day of a couple of maintenance guys. Yes they had to go fix a couple of things (1 stuck elevator?) but you also saw them eat lunch and 'buff' the floor. Not much in the way of mini-game's.
"Yo Engineer, got a clogged toilet in room 556. Fix it."
LOL good one... anyone for a spoo sandwich?
You can have your fill Feb 2010.
This is such a narrow view, and it seems to me that it come from having limited knowledge about Star Trek. This is probably the same view that Cryptic has. The more I hear about the game, the more I feel like they have a passing knowledge about Star Trek, but like Dana, they think it's all about the captain and the rest of the crew are just there to tinker with engines or mend broken bones.
Fans of Star Trek know that most episodes of Star Trek focused on characters other than the captain, and followed them through various challenges they had to face, and believe it or not episodes about the doctor were never about treating runny noses. As an example off the top of my head, there was an episode of Deep Space Nine where Chief O'Brian is kidnapped by the Cardassians. Just because he is an engineer doesn't mean all of his challenges have to be about balancing ship power or repairing ruptured conduits.
Captain Pwnage: So how is the phaser training going for your new Tactical Officer?
Captain NOOB: Really well actually, he's got 7 of 9!
Game will be release 02-02-2010, so I feel that far from ST-ToR release.
I can't complain about the looks as they do look pretty decent, I also felt it was once again a good informative article about Bridges & Bridge officers, but somehow I am still not getting a MMORPG fibe from the game other then the game so far gives me a Multiplayer or Action Online Game fibe.
Also I still feel that they fall short on what is Star Trek, like others have said why is it that they asume everyone want's to be a captain, is this like Star Wars where they asume everyone want's to be a jedi.
But hey...I am a niche MMORPG gamer, give me a game with the IP like Star Wars or Star Trek or Stargate and make sure these worlds are true from what we know and let me take my own route in any of these galaxies/universes.
If I want to feel like some hero there are plenty of games in the single/mulitplayer area that provide this, where MMORPG should be about a diverse community.
Overall I feel they definitly are taking the most limited way to represent something like Star Trek, but again I still hope Cryptic will proof me wrong, but for now I doubt that from info that is given.
Being a Star- Trek/Wars/Gate fan at the moment can't see these upcoming games take me away from FE, I will play them, no doubt, but for now don't feel I can play them in a MMORPG way, but more like the way I play multiplayer games.
Exactly.
I've seen fan pages devoted to Dr. Julian Bashir. I'm willing to bet that the fan who made that page would prefer to be like her hero rather than a captain. Why are all these people assuming that everone just loves the captains and wants to be one of them? What about all thev fans of Scotty or Data or Spock? They're being left out in the cold because people like Cryptic are making brash assumptions that really have no basis in reality. And that does not bode well for this game...
Indeed, I would like to hang out at Quark's bar and drink some glowy drinks. Some gamers do want a simple shoot em up, but there are millions of people who would become gamers if they were told that the Star Trek Universe has become real, or at least as real as our current technology allows. Creating something like I envision would probably take tons of time and resources and by the time its released would already be outdated. We can at least hope for upgrades and perhaps complete revamping of STO down the road.
That's fine. I understand that the other characters are interesting, no one disputes that.
The question for you and anyone who wants to have player crews is a simple one:
Present to me compelling day-to-day gameplay for the ship's engineer? The doctor? The Security Officer?
What would they do during the average play session? What would their typical 10 minute gameplay experience entail? Why would this be fun?
Further to that, if I am in combat as a Captain and want to turn left. What would my experience then be if I had a player crew? Would the entire Captain gameplay experience consist of being on teamspeak trying to get other people on my ship to fire the phasers and turn the thing?
Seriously, I've heard lots of examples from the show of why crew is awesome, but I've yet to see one compelling gameplay idea that would be remotely practical or fun.
(also in reply to KillKip)
The link you gave points to an OLD patch, where they announced.dedicated colony buildings, a truly good idea (bad implementation, but the idea is.good, has to be, it was mine anyways).
alas, but for three buildings it remained at the announcement, that is not even half-done - hence why i said they miss FOCUS..
No follow-up patch mentioned any further buildings, nor much else (nothing really, except for a plan to introduce galactic market).
Nothing was added to that since then either, instead they concentrated on stuff like "joystick usage" and "shuttles" - more or less irrelevant features, aside from the "nice to look at" aspect.
(in reply to KillKip: why would i want to fly with a shuttle when i can port, except for the looks of it? How were shuttles "needed" when one task (economy is not even half-done?)
As to the removing:
They all but completely REMOVED the need for non-PvP occupations (mining, building) from their game with that change to mining and refining yields; where before it was a "full-time occupation" to mine and build, you do it now more as an afterthought in a fraction of the time. all that is left now, basically, is the cargo-hauling, and even that is um... crap (unless you run cargos to your OWN colonies) since what do you want the cash for anyways?
This is why i say they miss direction, they SAY they want to go this way but DO go another way.
Or perhaps they *do* have direction and just failed to communicate it?
I could say more, but this is the STO not the SQO forums - if you wish to discuss this further, send a PM or open a thread in the SQO forums on this site.
To people like Elikal, who ask "what would the (PC) crew do all day?":
Duh...
Ever heard of secondary occupations?
What did Beverly Crusher do when she was on the Bridge of the Enterprise? Or Troi?
Especially with limited bridge space (as others have mentioned, perhaps tied to the ship size) that tends to become a non-issue.
You have x number of bridge stations, if no PC is on, the NPC takes the job (likewise if the PC goes LD/logs off).
This would broaden up the PC-crewed ship's selection of abilities (as i understand the current STO combat system) on one hand, and would create (more of) a "trek feeling" on the other hand.
I figure with 2 or 3 tactical stations, an engineer would not have much time to ask what he's to do as he'll be busy enough re-routing all the energy to where it is needed...
"Seriously, what would you do?":
Engineer, during combat: Watch weapon heat/efficiency, re-rout energy as primary occupation, sending repair/maintenance crew crew as secondary "battleoccupation" (more than one "mini-game", with a station-specific UI).
Engineer, non-comabt: Re-align Dilithium Crystals to maximize output, repair that blown plasma relais, spend time in the "workshop" (gaining XP, tradeskilling whatever)
Medic, during Combat (off-Bridge, ship-wide) treat wounded that are teleported into sickbas (NPCs that got burnt by a plasma leak or whatever, random events); in case of boardings, use life-support to distribute gas (weaken/"debuff" intruders).
Medic, during combat, on bridge: Occupy some science station or whatever secondary skill he has. Perhaps man the scanners to analyze the opposing ship's crew, searching for weaknesses (cross-check with the ship-database)
Medic, non-combat: prepare+distribute his meds ("buffs" for personal combat), synthesize materials (tradeskilling) or use animals (milk snakes to get their poison for antidotes or whatever), maintain the ship's database entries on chemicals and lifeforms...
These are just examples, ofc.
What does a group in another MMO do when not in combat?
Right, wait for mobs to spawn or travel across zones to get to (new) hunting grounds.
In a ST.-game, you socialize (chat) while the ship is in transit (galaxy-map) or prepare your char or use the time to tradeskill...
Certainly more exciting than merely hit the FWD key to steer your avatar/mount towards the next zone as you do in other games, is it not?
The problem is NOT to find things for people to do, the REAL problem is the laziness of Dev's (and perhaps budget constraints) to implement them.
"There simply is not enough content there to drill that deep on any reasonable development timeframe."
That sentence is BS, really.
And if it is true (it seems to be, currently), it's solely atributed to the Dev's laziness and the suit's unwillingness to "live up" to Gene's idea.
The more detailed the content is, the higher the immersion factor (you feel "at home" on your ship).
And what is "reasonable" both in terms of budget as well as timeframe, is in the eye of the beholder.
It is MY firm belief that money spent on CONTENT is never wasted, and that time spent on CONTENT is time well spent, usually.
And IF there is really a problem with that, why not create a holodeck (editor/scripting kind of thing) instead and let the players create their own "content" during the "downtimes"?
I am sure a security officer would LOVE to script a "boarding action" instance if he could - that would be development time wisely spent since it removes basically ALL downtime-related issues that might come up.
(During downtimes, people would either script or use other people's script - do a "holomission" while the ship is in ransit, perhaps even earn XP for it...)
"Being a Captain is not the only part of the fantasy that matters, it's the only part that would be fun in a video game for a mass audience":
Nonsense!!!
As it is, the focus on combat missions at best aims at the teens as a target-group, NOT at "trekkies" who are, usually, at least in their 30s and quite "nerdy" as a rule of thumb (but it's them that have got the money...)
NPC bridge crews are ok, as an OPTION.
But at the same time, people (and especially "trekkies" ) would want at least the OPTION to have PC crews (do something with their RL friends, TOGETHER), and if given the proper tools they'd FIND stuff to do during "downtimes", just as they do in other MMO's.
Heck, people (read: Trekkies) are making their own fictions and MOVIES, for god's sake.
Do you REALLY, honestly think that playing "picard" all day and meeting other people in the game only happening via meeting up with their ships/doing AWAY-missions together does REALLY cut it for a TREKKIE?
Heck, even the "mass audience" you are mentioning?
To ME, one cannot really be that ignorant - more like it's a mindless repetition of what Dev's and suits use as an excuse for them NOT working on content that's been asked by their "natural" target-audience.
Full player crews might not be a lot of fun, but that doesn't mean you should have crews with no personality. It also doesn't mean you should have crews with no internal dynamics. There is a vast spectrum of possibilities here, and Cryptic went with a very bland options (that admittedly requires little work). They could easily have worked and done something to make sure crew members weren't just a collection of combat stats, a rank, a face, and a class.
Given the vagaries of "fun" this line of argument is unlikely to convince him. Simpler is showing that Cryptic's route is wrong.
Laughable, really.
Yeah, that toilet might be a "real" problem, but ofc nothing to "satisfy" people in a game.
But why stop at this laughable example?
Why do you not think beyond that?
What do YOU do at work/in school/whatever when work (or whatever your normal day-occupation) is slow?
You either go read something, surf or - if you are a "good" employee, you train your skills.
So why don't we just assume that the Char in STO would be a "good fleetie" and train his skills?
This could be implemented in "away-mission-simulations" to enhance the tactical or GUI-using skills (how do i aim that rocket launcher or use the sniper rifle, in BF2-speech).
Or, IF they'd implement an economy (which they should but apparently omitted also until now, certainly Dana would say because it does not appeal to the "mass audience" duh...), chars could/would spend their time in the workshops aboard the ship for their tradeskill.
But yeah... with the neglect the Dev's trat all non-combat aspects of gaming in general and the Trek-universe specifically i guess one has to make excuses like "does not appeal to mass audience" to justify that blatant LACK of content :/
Just call it that then: omission to neglect/not caring, don't make up silly excuses that are "reinforced" by even more laughable examples like the above!!!
Well, I'm not actually a supporter of player crews, exactly. I just hate the idea of crew characters being nothing more than a set of stats to be traded with other players like Pokemon cards.
My utopian vision of STO would have players create and play their whole senior crew, not just the captain. It might feel a little bit like the Captain is your main, and the rest of the senior staff are alts. Cryptic is known for their character creation systems with which players like to create bunches of alts anyway, so why not make alts part of the game. You would start out creating your captain and you control a small ship. Then when you upgrade to a larger ship you gain a first officer, so you go back to the character creator to create your first officer character. Then later you upgrade again, and now you go back to the character creator and add your security and engineering officers. And then finally once you have a full-fledged starship, you add science and medical officers.
This would open up the game to do various quest lines for each character. Maybe there's a mission where a plague has broken out on a Federation planet. How would this work in Cryptic's STO? My captain puts on his medic's hat and beams down with a medkit? That should be a mission for the medical officer. It would be a chance to get involved in a story for that character.
Anyway, that's one way to do it. That's how I'd probably do it. If not, I would at least like to see the crew be real characters and not just trophies to stick in the chairs around the bridge and give me +5 phaser power or something.
Finally... FINALLY! We're starting to get some ship interiors! This has been my #1 "sticking point" for many months now, so, for me, this game just went from a "maybe OK" to a "probably good" status.
This still perhaps isn't the STO I had once envisioned, but if I sit back and just accept it for what it looks like it's shaping up to be, I think it has a LOT of potential.
"Make it so..."
I was actually an early supporter of either Ppl taking the NPC slot option (should appeal to those that wish to RP) or using Ppl's on ships like they do in SWG multi-player ships:
Captain is in tactical charge and steers (Capt & Helm), someone calling targets and shield/power shunting (Tactical & Sensors), gunner(s) shoot (Tactical) and your spare guy (Eng) repairs battle damage.
All good combat related mini-games. It seems to be the non-combat time that's the problem. Yes I could train my toon but how fun would that be during a 5 hour weekend play session?
A real good example would be my DDO time last night. I logged on, spent an hour running down the F2P quest list to see which I could do that would be new, then went and did a quest for 1 1/2 hours, died and spent 1/2 hour AFK healing and then logged off. So I was on for 3 hours. An hour was killed doing paperwork, lost 1/2 hour running to and fro and really got to play only 1 hour while doing a dungeon, and lost 1/2 hour by dieing.
Meaningful playtime for me would really only be that 1 hour in the dungeon, the rest .... meh. Now I'd hope I'd have the option in STO to do other stuff but would the above be worth $15.00 a month if I knew that's all I had to look forward to? Yes maybe I could play in the simulator or borrow a shuttle and go off on my own etc... etc.... but then what happens if the ship's schedule changes and I just missed out on the fun part?
Two things. One, the stuff you described is a whole other game. This isn't laziness. What you're asking is eight times their budget if they actually wanted to do it. You're describing like eight different games rolled into one.
Secondly, those other games besides "flying around and fighting" only appeal to a very hardcore and very specific audience. In their current path, all players use all the content, more or less. You'd have them make games that 85% of their population never spend a second on. From a development perspective, spending man years on that kind of content for such a small audience is a very bad proposition.
Yes, what you describe would appeal to Trekkies. But, as you might have noticed, the last TV show they made was watched by barely anyone. The last movie, which many Trekkies lambasted as too "mainstream" and for throwing away all the cannon made more money than God. You need more than the hardcore audience.
The game you described is ideal, but it would require literally eight times the current development resources to accomplish without adding even close to eight times the number of interested players.
The average person is never going to balance plasma relays. Hell, the average person doesn't know or care what a plasma relay is.
All that said, what I'd personally like to see (and no I saw no particular indication they're planning this) is to do multi-person ships as end-game raid content. I believe, if I am recalling correctly, that was the plan Perpetual had. That alleviates the day-to-day grind since you'd only get on those huge ships for specific reasons.
I have already answered your first question (which you merely repeated in the above quote, despoite others having answered you on that too) so i will now try to answer your 2nd,3rd and 4th:
"What would they do during the average play session? What would their typical 10 minute gameplay experience entail? Why would this be fun?":
Average gaming session would be:
*Crew gets on, waits for more to come (very much as you do in ANY other game)
*Crewman decides waiting is boring, so he goes to "his" room/workbench/whatever and spends the time tradeskilling or he goes to the comm station and uses the in-game browser to surf the net or go to the computer console and maintain the ship's records.
(basically comparable to going somewhere to solo/tradeskill in another game while waiting)
*Crewman is still alone, decides to take the ship out in a solo mission (as he can do in STO's current state, highest-ranking PC takes "command" of the ship)
This is even more viable since they said you do not loose the ship, but instead simply re-appear at some savepoint.
But the FUN truly starts when his other FRIENDS are online:
*Crewman meets other PC-crew, they have a short chat on the bridge or in the ready-room what they are gonna do and who is doing what and go to computer to get the mission while one flies the ship towards where the mission takes place (yay! "felt" reduction of traveltime because there are two tasks performed parallel that would have to be done sequentially in other MMO's!)
*crewmen do the mission TOGETHER.
(even MORE fun than if you were doing it alone - shared fun is doubled fun. likewise, more fun if failed, shared burdens are half burdens)
*Two (or more) friends play the game TOGETHER, the GAME provides the "YOU are the ST-show-crew" feeling, they play their own ST but you know.. TOGETHER.
As it is, they play their own ST too, but individually.
See the difference i hope!
ST is about CREWS of single ships/stations (at least the shows all were), not about fleets of ships!
In school you'd get a "F" for missing the topic if you were to submit articles under the name "Star Trek" that goes on babbling about epic space battles where (constantly) multiple ships take part or where 5SHIPS meet in Orbit of a planet to perform a joint "away mission".
5th question:
"Further to that, if I am in combat as a Captain and want to turn left...":
Come on... are you really that ignorant or are you putting us up?
How about this: As Captain during combat, your primary "JOB" is to assign targets and beyond that, you help out with damage control ("send a security detail to teleporter-room1" or "repair team to STBD nacelle" ) if your engineering guy slacks or is too occupied, whatever.
In the shows the CO simply says "evasive maneuver" and he trusts his pilot to be able and skilled enough to do as he asks.
He never does it himself - pretty boring job, huh? WHY would ANYONE want to become captain then?
In a multi-PC-crew setting OF COURSE the actual "duties" on the bridge differ from what you expect when you have only one player per ship.
You specialize your char more in such skills that help you on "your" station.
But the point is: the SHIP as such is more powerful/has more options than if it were crewed with a single player.
6th question:
"Why would it be fun?"
Yes, playing Uhura might not be much fun, UNLESS the Dev's make the comm-station MEANINGFUL in combat.
It is not really MY place as acustomer to tell the Devs HOW to do their job, but it IS my place to voice WHAT i want in "my" product that i am supposed to buy/subscribe to.
You see, FUN comes with doing something you LIKE.
For some that is blowing up stuff, at their own schedule - and that's ok. they can (or rather could, if "true ST" were impleneted) use the NPC crew for that.
Kiddies that want to be Picard can pretend to be him and order their NPC crew around (not really, just put their skills to use!)
But "Trekkies" for which "fun" comes from interacting with people, solving stuff diplomatically etc, they could (and certainly can NOt now) derive much of their fun from the company of their FRIENDS, on the SAME ship - which is actually something different (on the "feel" side at least) than having your warrior, wizard and cleric ship doing a mission together.
It is STAR TREK where a ship has a CREW after all, not SW where people fly in their own X wings!
You seem to make it your correspondent's job to ridicule people asking for something different (or rather: more) than what is currently offered and do so by using made-up rhetorical questions.
Answer your own questions, use your imagination!
And if you TRULY need more input to fire up your imagination, feel free to leave a message i will then forward you some design motes on (what i consider) a "good" game...
A bit off topic...
The last TV show they made sucked. That's why hardly anyone watched. Voyager had a lot of bad writing too. That's the very simple reason why TNG and DS9 had much better ratings. If you want a Star Trek show with good ratings, then get good writers. It's not hard (in principle).
Anyhow, lambasting the new movie because it had a plot that didn't make sense, a Kirk who was an idiot, and no ethical center doesn't mean that something similar to that movie couldn't have been made and done well. There are mainstream movies that have a sense of right and wrong, intelligent plot, and main character's that don't behave like little children. The Lord of the Rings is certainly an example of that. Just because American audiences will accept action crap doesn't mean that they only accept action crap, and it doesn't mean that Star Trek should be action crap. That's what Trekkers objected to.
I'm not ridiculing your ideas, what I'm saying is that I don't honestly believe what the "full player crew" contingent wants is even remotely practical. It's way too much content to develop for way too few people to use it. The budget would be absurd.
A bit off topic...
The last TV show they made sucked. That's why hardly anyone watched. Voyager had a lot of bad writing too. That's the very simple reason why TNG and DS9 had much better ratings. If you want a Star Trek show with good ratings, then get good writers. It's not hard (in principle).
Anyhow, lambasting the new movie because it had a plot that didn't make sense, a Kirk who was an idiot, and no ethical center doesn't mean that something similar to that movie couldn't have been made and done well. There are mainstream movies that have a sense of right and wrong, intelligent plot, and main character's that don't behave like little children. The Lord of the Rings is certainly an example of that. Just because American audiences will accept action crap doesn't mean that they only accept action crap, and it doesn't mean that Star Trek should be action crap. That's what Trekkers objected to.
Nemesis made 67 million globally. The new Trek made 384 million.
People like action. ;)
Two things. One, the stuff you described is a whole other game. This isn't laziness. What you're asking is eight times their budget if they actually wanted to do it. You're describing like eight different games rolled into one.
Secondly, those other games besides "flying around and fighting" only appeal to a very hardcore and very specific audience. In their current path, all players use all the content, more or less. You'd have them make games that 85% of their population never spend a second on. From a development perspective, spending man years on that kind of content for such a small audience is a very bad proposition.
Yes, what you describe would appeal to Trekkies. But, as you might have noticed, the last TV show they made was watched by barely anyone. The last movie, which many Trekkies lambasted as too "mainstream" and for throwing away all the cannon made more money than God. You need more than the hardcore audience.
The game you described is ideal, but it would require literally eight times the current development resources to accomplish without adding even close to eight times the number of interested players.
The average person is never going to balance plasma relays. Hell, the average person doesn't know or care what a plasma relay is.
All that said, what I'd personally like to see (and no I saw no particular indication they're planning this) is to do multi-person ships as end-game raid content. I believe, if I am recalling correctly, that was the plan Perpetual had. That alleviates the day-to-day grind since you'd only get on those huge ships for specific reasons.
Ok, you used the "eight times the budget" argument twice above.
I wonder how you came to that wisdom?
Frankly, if you can handle ANY multiplayer-operations, you can handle them whether they take place in ONE "object" or many.
It's merely the design that matters, and so in the end yes it IS laziness on the Dev's part if they use an existing engine basically and match the lore/setting to it rather than the other way around.
Yes, with the engine they ARe using one probably cannot do what i ask for that easily.
Not my problem if they use an existing suboptimal product for such an endeavour, or is it?
"The average person"...
Will get to KNOW what a plasma relay is if he plays a while.
It's how things work:
If they are itneresting, people will "learn" (assimilate) the "nerd talks" that come with it.
At first, they did not even plan to put in bridges, yet they have.
In the past they said they would not detail the interior, now they at least say they're thinking about it.
If i were NOT asking for an "ideal" ga,e, i'd never get it, instead i'd be fed the scraps they'd throw at me.
MORE budget? yes certainly.
8TIMES the budget? hardly! (and i know what i speak of too)
STO in it's current state (as i am able to glean from the released info) is but a shooter.
I have no idea yet what missions you are going to do, or what would even be "trekkie" about using violence to achieve your goals.
I have said elsewhere that the approach they seem to use fits a fantasy MMO, but hardly a space MMO.
The Bridge question is but one aspect of quite a few shortcomings.
You see, people have expectations, and in the case of STO it is fair to assume that those expectatinos are based primarily on the shows, be it TOS,ENT,VOY,TNG or DS9. In those shows, "epic space battles" were very, VERY seldom. in STO they are to be the norm. Isn't that a contradiction to you too? isn't that merely (ab)using the IP to market a (in my judgement) suboptimal product to a wider audience?
What, exactly, do "battles in space" have to do with ST? i mean, aside from the fact that both take place in space?
And Bridge crews are just one side-effect/issue, yet should really be the center of an ST-based game since all the shows were about a CREW overcoming obstacles (yes, violence too but not exclusively), not about a number of ships doing battles.
Thge least they could do, and i fully expect them to, is to ADD the OPTION of having multiple PC's crewing one ship.
It'd even make SENSE to me if that were kind of "limited" a) in numbers (on all ships) or b) to larger ships only (suboptimal).
In that light, your "end-game" reference makes sense to me, but i would again hate to see it LIMITED to "end game".
Perhaps you could/should start out "solo", no objections to soloing even in STO (and with bridge crew the way it is currently inmplemented), but before long they should offer the OPTION (and no., NOT at a surcharge or via RMT!) to take a friend or two or three aboard.
(perhaps limited to the number of stations a ship has, so that each PC can be used on the bridge during missions/combat if that is all the content they have)
But ST withOUT bridge crew simply is not STAR TREK.
At best it would be star WARS with the wrong uniforms and ship models.
Eight times might be hyperbole, but what you described is essentially designing a unique gameplay experience for each of the individual "classes" within a ship, correct?
Thus, you would need to double up the content for each class, because they would have totally different experiences. The current version, everyone has variations on the same core experience. Everytime you add a brand new experience, you're adding a lot of time, money and manpower to the schedule.
1) I truly wonder how you got that wisdom about the cost or practicability.
Heck, the "content" that is multi-PC-crew *SPECIFIC* is actually quite limited.
ALL there is to it is a DIFFERENT design approach!
Missions/other content would not even HAVE to be different (other than offer non-violent solutions at least ALSO if they were truly to be "trek" ).
For a "normal" mission (such as are implemented to date) it would not even MATTER if it is a solo ship or a multi-PC-crew one.
Ok, PERHAPS it'd take a bit more balancing effort to allow for the wider range of ship options that come from using PCs instead of NPCs in the current system (as i understand it).
They have said, that you have to manage your ship's power and such anyways, even as a solo player.
So why would it be that much different from what they hav eNOw if one player would do that, while another would aquire the targets and use the guns while the 3rd would actually fly and the 4th and 5th would handle "debuffs" (science/defelctor use) and repairs.
You would have basically the same "roles" they have now, but not on different ships, but on a single one.
Even though it would be more than suboptimal, i could even imagine them using it with the methods they have coded right now, just "arranged" (called) a bit diferently.
The only "true" argument against this, currently, would be that such a ship (crewed by multiple PCs) would rip that content apart, run through it like a hot knife through butter, whereas a solo player would possibly struggle.
But that is a design/balancing issue, and as such not a valid "contra argument" imo.
At worst (the most simple "solution" ) when you get the mission you'd get a different instance for a soloer and for a multiple-PC-crew.
(basically the same mission but with different SETTINGS to the opponents, i.e. more shields or whatever, so at most a bit more testing and balancing effort, not THAT much more design or implementation effort.)
2) "people like action"...
*sigh* yes they do.
Even i do, at times.
But if "action" is all you get, it gets boring pretty fast.
I have every ST movie on DVD, BUT the last one - for a reason.
And while that movie might have gotten paying viewers that other ("true" ) ST movies did not, i am by far not the only one that does not link that movie to ST, like at all.
Basically, people in my vicinity say "ok movie, nice effects - but it is not Trek".
And that is the problem really.
ST went downhill with Gene's death basically.
And all the writers/suits could come up with to counter that was "more action".
How typically american: if you have a problem, start a war! :/
(Wag the Dog, anyone?)
I'm not ridiculing your ideas, what I'm saying is that I don't honestly believe what the "full player crew" contingent wants is even remotely practical. It's way too much content to develop for way too few people to use it. The budget would be absurd.
A bit off topic...
The last TV show they made sucked. That's why hardly anyone watched. Voyager had a lot of bad writing too. That's the very simple reason why TNG and DS9 had much better ratings. If you want a Star Trek show with good ratings, then get good writers. It's not hard (in principle).
Anyhow, lambasting the new movie because it had a plot that didn't make sense, a Kirk who was an idiot, and no ethical center doesn't mean that something similar to that movie couldn't have been made and done well. There are mainstream movies that have a sense of right and wrong, intelligent plot, and main character's that don't behave like little children. The Lord of the Rings is certainly an example of that. Just because American audiences will accept action crap doesn't mean that they only accept action crap, and it doesn't mean that Star Trek should be action crap. That's what Trekkers objected to.
Nemesis made 67 million globally. The new Trek made 384 million.
People like action. ;)
Ah, you apparently aren't interested in a serious discussion. Bringing Nemesis which was a TERRIBLE movie in all ways makes that clear. For the record, I was pretty clear I was saying that the new Star Trek was action CRAP. All action is not action crap (LOTR is action, but not action crap).
In any case, back to the main topic, a Star Trek RPG where the crew has no personality is pretty stupid. You apparently prefer the more nebulous argument about player-based crew rather than talking about the bigger problem (of which a player-based crew is only one solution). They could have worked on crew personalities and they would have had plenty of time to do so if STO had a normal development cycle. Instead they made a cheap hack-job of having a crew, which is lame and unappealing.
I Have to agree 100% with your thott's here. I also am hoping for the more room upin up u can't keep troyph and fix up your bridge like a House. If a game don't have housing or crafting they just don't hold up in the MMO buss. at least not for me. Aion sadly has the worse crafting system and lack of housen of corse the future of Aion is going to fix that.:-P in 2011. This is already pre order for me for alot reason loved space only reason really keepin SWG plus the cards lmao. Where is my Wing Commander MMO!!!! While don't think I will ever see that but at least 12-10 or early 2011 when ToR come's out I got STO to keep me Co. But hear's hoping for som early patchs to More room on Ship and Tropyh's. As for the Slave Market comment. Hey is kind messed up tell your boy srry i need a new engie see u. But at same they say they want u to be friend your guy then sell him for a engie. I agree with u Dana give me at least a few xtra Officers spare if u would. and with a Few Key Officers not being in the game it is dishearting. But yes his 3 Gen officer statement make since plus hey u need something for next year hehe got keep the content and money flowin. :-()
I can see STO and TOR being like the MO vs DFO arguments that never end, tire my eyes, and are so fucking boring.
Both in space. Yeah.
Hordes of ST and SW geeks running around clammering for their next phaser / lightsaber. Yeah.
Other than that I doubt they will be similar in the least, yet they are compared numerous times in the thread, among others. Hopefully when TOR is released, which will probably be a bit after STO, their wont be the "STO pwns TOR +1 epic fail blah blah im an idiot" threads everywhere. But a man can dream.
The thing is if u only got 1 Story u got No replay value. But as for a PC Crew it is a worthless Idea for alot reason of corse u would have some ppl who just sit there pushing 1 button once every 10 mins which is borin of corse some ppl love that stuff. Which I can see them making a few ship where it take's a few ppl to crew Kind of like the PoB ship's of other game's but of corse with PoC is one that u had to get more PC to use bigger ship which was lame I don't want be stuck on a small ship because my server is full of ppl I can't stand or i work when everyone's on. But as for having to make unique Gamplay for each person of corse to a poiint but hell some ppl like eng. just sit around untill u get damage and got repair the problem so not like they got make a Arcade style non stop play for every crew member. But think that is a Worthless Idea to have PC crew anyways . NPC crew with more of a story would have been nice but that would mean going back to stage 3 and start over way to much work and money .
P.S 1 Last Thott. As for Money they spead on the STO. When u are Bring to life a Tek or SW hell even a LotRO u got put alot money into it u already got a Fan base that can put u in the 1 Mill+ mark if done right so not no Trig Prof. but 15 dollor's x even 700k Sub's u will get your money back plus some. If u throw together something that will have 7 servers and 150 ppl per server yes u are done as a Co. Close the door's. Guess it's up to your Backer's do they have faith in u or just want a fast return from great openin week sale's and no repeat sub's.
Forget "class" when talking space MMO's please.
Do not talk "class" when talking STO either.
According to the Dev's you have "skills" and that basic "kit", your "class" perhaps.
But not "enough" class to make them not overlap a lot -. at least when you listen to the dev's intentions.
(when we players ofc KNOW that min/maxing will happen and lead to "classes", even though they won't - apparently - be actually "defined" in-game)
In a space MMO you should not have a class, only skills.
If you have multiple stations on a bridge, but only a single char, that char should be able to operate them ALL (i.e. perform all functions/tasks that are offered by he game), but at skill-dependent "efficiency".
Depending on the station/task it would result in a lower success-probability or a longer duration or somesuch, but in effect one char could "do it all".
With NPC-crew, he could make up in part for his own lack (or selection) of skills with those NPCs.
With PC crew, different people would - normally - specialize in such a way that their skills "naturally" complement each other.
In STO terms: One would specialize in engineering, the other in science and the 3rd in tactical - one in offensive perhaps, and one in defensive skills of that field.
But even if you had two PCs specialized in "offensive tactical" would work - they would perhaps lack some defense, but make up for it in offensive powers.
Your last sentence is ONLY true when you put the cart before the horse:
If you design a game with certain features IN MIND (rather than "design" a game around an existing core-code) then the "added" effort is minimal.
And that is my major gripe with STO atm:
It's rather obvious that they did not say "hmm, we got the ST license... what do we need to make the most of it?", but that instaad they went at it "We have this engine and these experiences, now we also got that huge marketing trick called ST.... what do we do to make it "look" ST while being able to keep as much as we can unaltered from what we already have?"
I cannot say yet "it FEELS as if it were EQ (or some other fantasy game) in space" but i CAN say "it LOOKS as if it were".
And that, i regret, deeply!
I will still try it, but with the info i have now i do not think i would subscribe long, if at all.
And the more i learn about hte game, the less likely i become to subscribe, unfortunately.
(i say "unfortunately" without sarcasm or anything, as i REALLY waited for a ST-like MMO for a long time, actually.)
To be fair, I was only responding to the idea of a player crew, I didn't even comment back on what they are actually doing.
To me, from a development point of view, there are only three possible choices:
1) Vague Crew As Objects: What they're doing. They're essentially items or gear with faces, there's no dancing around it. The logic being that the game has Cryptic customization, so people will make them their own. It's a neat system, but yes, it is the "easiest" option.
2) NPC Crew As Characters: Make full blow characters you collect and join you, like say Dragon Age. The downside is that this is an MMO and practically speaking there is no way they could make enough characters so that everyone didn't have virtually the same crew.
3) Player Crew: As I said before, I don't think this is even remotely possible from a development point of view.
So, they went with Vague Crew and decided to have crew that is generally unique to each person and let people define those stories and roles themselves. Personally, I'd prefer the NPC Crew, but I recognize the amount of work that would take and the inherit flaws that has in any MMO, especially a more social one. SWTOR will have companions, which are more like Dragon Age, but it also appears to be a less social game. It would be silly if we all brought "Worf" with us on an away mission and there were three of him running around. It's a tough hurdle. If they try to keep up with demand, the characters are too vague to be any fun and they waste all their time on it.
Fact is, development only has so long. I know you think its rushed - maybe it is? - but this is a business for them and it has to get out the door on budget and on time or it doesn't get out the door at all.
Player Crew is such a can of worms that I can never see it being done in a reasonable time frame in a way that would appeal to anyone but the most hardcore.
NPC Crew with personalities has so many holes in an MMO experience that I can see why they chose to focus elsewhere.
You have to picture this like a budget. You cannot just add more without taking something away. Perhaps they could do NPC crew, but that might well mean no ground game whatsoever, let alone ship interiors. Something would have to give to fit that in. There is no conspiracy. I am sure they're making the best game they can in the time and budget they have.
agreed, i mean the Cap sould fit in his chair comfortably not be some 10 year old in daddy's big seat
To be fair, I was only responding to the idea of a player crew, I didn't even comment back on what they are actually doing.
To me, from a development point of view, there are only three possible choices:
1) Vague Crew As Objects: What they're doing. They're essentially items or gear with faces, there's no dancing around it. The logic being that the game has Cryptic customization, so people will make them their own. It's a neat system, but yes, it is the "easiest" option.
2) NPC Crew As Characters: Make full blow characters you collect and join you, like say Dragon Age. The downside is that this is an MMO and practically speaking there is no way they could make enough characters so that everyone didn't have virtually the same crew.
3) Player Crew: As I said before, I don't think this is even remotely possible from a development point of view.
So, they went with Vague Crew and decided to have crew that is generally unique to each person and let people define those stories and roles themselves. Personally, I'd prefer the NPC Crew, but I recognize the amount of work that would take and the inherit flaws that has in any MMO, especially a more social one. SWTOR will have companions, which are more like Dragon Age, but it also appears to be a less social game. It would be silly if we all brought "Worf" with us on an away mission and there were three of him running around. It's a tough hurdle. If they try to keep up with demand, the characters are too vague to be any fun and they waste all their time on it.
Fact is, development only has so long. I know you think its rushed - maybe it is? - but this is a business for them and it has to get out the door on budget and on time or it doesn't get out the door at all.
Player Crew is such a can of worms that I can never see it being done in a reasonable time frame in a way that would appeal to anyone but the most hardcore.
NPC Crew with personalities has so many holes in an MMO experience that I can see why they chose to focus elsewhere.
You have to picture this like a budget. You cannot just add more without taking something away. Perhaps they could do NPC crew, but that might well mean no ground game whatsoever, let alone ship interiors. Something would have to give to fit that in. There is no conspiracy. I am sure they're making the best game they can in the time and budget they have.
When ever someone whines about player crew i pull out my trump card, "ok now give me a system that has a player crew and can acominate that crew going AFK at random or logging off mid mission, or not showing up the next day cause Little Timmy has socker pratice."
To be fair, I was only responding to the idea of a player crew, I didn't even comment back on what they are actually doing.
To me, from a development point of view, there are only three possible choices:
1) Vague Crew As Objects: What they're doing. They're essentially items or gear with faces, there's no dancing around it. The logic being that the game has Cryptic customization, so people will make them their own. It's a neat system, but yes, it is the "easiest" option.
2) NPC Crew As Characters: Make full blow characters you collect and join you, like say Dragon Age. The downside is that this is an MMO and practically speaking there is no way they could make enough characters so that everyone didn't have virtually the same crew.
3) Player Crew: As I said before, I don't think this is even remotely possible from a development point of view.
So, they went with Vague Crew and decided to have crew that is generally unique to each person and let people define those stories and roles themselves. Personally, I'd prefer the NPC Crew, but I recognize the amount of work that would take and the inherit flaws that has in any MMO, especially a more social one. SWTOR will have companions, which are more like Dragon Age, but it also appears to be a less social game. It would be silly if we all brought "Worf" with us on an away mission and there were three of him running around. It's a tough hurdle. If they try to keep up with demand, the characters are too vague to be any fun and they waste all their time on it.
Fact is, development only has so long. I know you think its rushed - maybe it is? - but this is a business for them and it has to get out the door on budget and on time or it doesn't get out the door at all.
Player Crew is such a can of worms that I can never see it being done in a reasonable time frame in a way that would appeal to anyone but the most hardcore.
NPC Crew with personalities has so many holes in an MMO experience that I can see why they chose to focus elsewhere.
You have to picture this like a budget. You cannot just add more without taking something away. Perhaps they could do NPC crew, but that might well mean no ground game whatsoever, let alone ship interiors. Something would have to give to fit that in. There is no conspiracy. I am sure they're making the best game they can in the time and budget they have.
You can have characters that are NOT as detailed as those in Dragon Age and still have personalities easily enough. That takes a lot less development time and so you could have a lot more of them. If you have enough personalities and slowly expand on them, then each crew will be pretty unique. Or as you somewhat suggested even just one or two unique personalities would have done wonders to the game. (And I wouldn't diss SW:TOR on the social front yet, because we honestly don't know much about it. Certainly we don't have a lot of detail on how social STO is really...so the comparison is rather silly, imho).
Obviously the more impressive way to go would have been if they utilized something like translator technology to take generic text and add a character's spin onto it (so Vulcan statements sounded more logical, perhaps). I'm pretty confidant that's a good bit of work but doable with our current level of technology. It would have required more development time, but when making a good game that's what you do. It isn't like the Star Trek Franchise couldn't have gotten them another year or two when that's much closer to standard development times.
What they decided to do is make STO on the cheap. The lack of character and so forth reflects that. Yeah, it was a business decision to make the game cheaply, but that doesn't mean we have to just blindly accept that as ok. They made Star Trek cheaply? Fine. I just won't buy it.
Edit: On the mathematics of unique crews. If you have say 8 crew members and there are 20 personalities, then there are 20!/(8!*12!), or 20*19*18*17*16*15*14*13/(8*7*6*5*4*3*2)=19*17*2*15*13 = 125,970 possible crews NOT considering they could have different posts from crew to crew (which explodes the number). Dragon Age doesn't have 20 characters, admittedly, but cutting down the development on each character and expanding out the number is QUITE doable.
Well that's the analysis they have to do. Theoretically, you could develop an MMO forever. The key is to find the point that has enough content to attract the maximum number of people without developing too long. We'll see in February if they picked that spot or not, I guess :)
K Here is Why they don't give them a xtra 6 month's.They want to beat ToR out. They want to jump on the Back of the movie's so called Hit. Which sadly I watched ppl walk out said they didn't come to watch SW they thott it was Star Trek. So now they think they can ride the coat tail's of other's. lmao Don't get me wrong I done got my Pre -Order in and But in my Defence I try everything and uselly keep everything for at least 6 to 9 months hoping for everything to get iron out. But anywho the reason they are rushin them are hey we have our self a nice pumped up Fan base ( Not true Trek fan)I think the game is goig to be a blast is it going to keep me coming back for 3+ years like WoW, LotRO and EQ while still to soon to say. LotRO I'm a Lifetime member hehe I wish all MMO's did that But then I would prolly need more time and miss out on way to much :-P hehe
I liked that statement too, i know its very likely there WILL be such demand in the future. I for one am content with a bridge as it is for launch. After it launches and as the usual post launch bug fixing and fine tuning etc, i think its safe to figure some day in the future of STO we will have those extra interiors.
As to the crew personality thing. Ive watched plenty of star trek myself, and i think it'd be a neat future addition if there were limited personalities at the least . I dont just say this cause i have played Dragon Age and loved the personalities and dialogue in that game, but as a general gamer who is familiar with star trek and the various personalities of the crew that added to the whole experience.
All and all im still looking forward to giving this game a go at launch and hopefully a bit of open beta just to get a feel for it pre launch.
1) "vague crew":
as you say, those are basically items. kind of boing but i guess they do the job they're designed for.
You WILL have 3"Worf's" - no doubt about it.
2) "NPCs with personality":
There is a (single-player) game called "Space colony" that has some. or "The Sims". not too bad to program them and introduce "traits" in a modular way.
You'd still have 3"Worf's" , but each would "behave" a bit differently.
3) "All PC crews":
An "ALL PC-crew" approach, if used exclusively, has it's own shortcomings.
(namely "what do i do if my pilot is AWOL?" )
But that is why i never asked for a PC-crew ONLY implementation..
But i want - need really - the OPTION to have other PCs aboard, if i am to "feel" like "in space".
Even moreso if i am to think it's Trek, since Trek - to me - means crews and overcoming one's shortcomings more than "ships" and "action".
4) the "PC crews are such a can of worms..".line:
There is (at least) one game out there, that DOES have PC crews.
As much as i do NOT like that game presently, and especially certain elements of their "community", they have more than PROVEN that PC crews are viable and all BUT impractical.
They use PCs exclusively (no NPCs) which i think is a big minus, especially since they ALSO have divided the controls between the stations (no flying and checking sensors with the same char for example).
BUT they have proven beyond doubt that PC crews are not only possible but viable.
And, believe it or not, if THEY can do it, ANYONE could.
Mix the PC crews with the option to use NPCs instead (or "superconsoles" where you control all the functions if needed) and you'd have a viable system in place - all further "nay-saying" is just that: nay-saying without real reason.
5) budget:
Yes you are right: One only has that much budget and that much time.
To get a proper opinion on the "time" argument, read Tom De Marco.
And to the budget:
You only have x amount of cash to burn, yes.
But the important thing is HOW you use it, and under what PREMISES.
I do not know how much cash was spent by Cryptic during development, but i am fairly confident that with that cash (including what "value" they put on their existing engine) and 10 skilled and dedicated people plus some contracting i could provide a MUCH better game in 2year's time - plus 6months of closed/open testing (and some time in preparation spent on selecting that dedicated core-team)
Especially with an IP as rich as Trek.
It is a complete WASTE of the license to dumb it down to mere combat.
6) "doing more without taking something away":
You are right perhaps
At THIS TIME they possibly cannot anymore.
But they COULD have, and should have.
It was their CHOICE to focus on what they did, and it was not the best of decisions.
With the choices they have made, it will be a major undertaking to make a viable MMO out of what they'll put on the table in 2months.
Completely ignoring Economy is a no-go nowadays, just as other aspects that they have completely ignored.
Some are easier (read: cheaper) to "fix" - implement afterwards - than others, but PC crew has to come - if only as an option and if only at "end-game" but it HAS to come.
Your trump card does not take.
Especially if you have both PCs and NPCs, in which case the player in question simply has to get off the station and a NPC takes over, or he hits a button to notify his other Crew and a NPC takes over.
"That other game" i was refering to above can manage quite well with a player going afk - especially if people have ALTs on the ship - and they do not even have NPCs at all.
I'm no Trekkie, but the more I read the better this game sounds. Will definitely have to check it out
That's what I meant, yes. You can trade officers with other players. If you prefer... "Reassign them."
This isn't a staw man argument, it's common sense. I know there are really hardcore Trek fans who would love to do this, but honestly, I've yet to hear one of these purists present a suggestion for compelling gameplay. On the show, they had "jobs" and performed them. We didn't watch them do those mundane thing. In a game, you would have to.
Seriously, what would you do? In Engineering would you constantly play a mini-game about balancing power to the various systems? Would the doctor treat runny noses of NPCs between missions?
There simply is not enough content there to drill that deep on any reasonable development timeframe.
Being a Captain is not the only part of the fantasy that matters, it's the only part that would be fun in a video game for a mass audience. You'll probably pick on the sentence "mass audience," but the fact is that Cryptic likely wants more people than just hardcore Trek fans to play the game.
Man, people who make these comments need to actually watch the show called Star Trek before they make these inane comments. Do you seriously think Geordi spent an entire episode in engineering balancing the ships power systems? Do you really have such a small and limited imagination?
That's fine. I understand that the other characters are interesting, no one disputes that.
The question for you and anyone who wants to have player crews is a simple one:
Present to me compelling day-to-day gameplay for the ship's engineer? The doctor? The Security Officer?
What would they do during the average play session? What would their typical 10 minute gameplay experience entail? Why would this be fun?
Further to that, if I am in combat as a Captain and want to turn left. What would my experience then be if I had a player crew? Would the entire Captain gameplay experience consist of being on teamspeak trying to get other people on my ship to fire the phasers and turn the thing?
Seriously, I've heard lots of examples from the show of why crew is awesome, but I've yet to see one compelling gameplay idea that would be remotely practical or fun.
What does a paladin or a hunter or a mage do during combat or out of combat in WoW? Imagine these professions as standard MMO classes and any developer can think of tonnes of things for these classes to do. A medical officer can heal crew, buff crew, debuff the enemy's crew. An engineer can repair the ship, buff the ship, debuff the enemy's ship.
Why is this so difficult for some people to grasp?
Your trump card does not take.
Especially if you have both PCs and NPCs, in which case the player in question simply has to get off the station and a NPC takes over, or he hits a button to notify his other Crew and a NPC takes over.
"That other game" i was refering to above can manage quite well with a player going afk - especially if people have ALTs on the ship - and they do not even have NPCs at all.
So explain a system. A complete one. when ever i hear peopel talk about pc crew it's always the same "eveyr station ha a player' there is never any mention of NPC stand ins just "give us a full pc crew! nao!"
That said i did work on the idea and posted my solution in the offical STO forms Big idea thread
Guild Ship
People want to have different roles performed by different live people not BOs, why why not make a Guild Ship.
The captian sets waypoints and can "paint the map" like a football narator
The enginnier redistributes power
Navigation player moves the ship
Tactical player commands weapons
(science officer) handles debuffs
etc.
This way people who want a shared ship just just form a SG
Two things. One, the stuff you described is a whole other game. This isn't laziness. What you're asking is eight times their budget if they actually wanted to do it. You're describing like eight different games rolled into one.
How many games rolled into one is WoW. More than one, for sure. Even at launch. You see - Cryptic wants our money. It is their job to fullfil our desires in order to get that money. We do not have a responsibilty to change what we want to meet Cryptic's effort or ability.
That is the way a service company works - satisfy your customers' demands, or they go elsewhere.
Secondly, those other games besides "flying around and fighting" only appeal to a very hardcore and very specific audience. In their current path, all players use all the content, more or less. You'd have them make games that 85% of their population never spend a second on. From a development perspective, spending man years on that kind of content for such a small audience is a very bad proposition.
Yes, what you describe would appeal to Trekkies. But, as you might have noticed, the last TV show they made was watched by barely anyone. The last movie, which many Trekkies lambasted as too "mainstream" and for throwing away all the cannon made more money than God. You need more than the hardcore audience.
No. You don't. Unless you are only going to be satified with WoW type numbers. Which isn't going to happen, anyway.
The game you described is ideal, but it would require literally eight times the current development resources to accomplish without adding even close to eight times the number of interested players.
The average person is never going to balance plasma relays. Hell, the average person doesn't know or care what a plasma relay is.
This game shouldn't be made for the average person. It should be made for fans of the IP. As others have pointed out - that is where big IP-based MMOs are going wrong.
Cryptic is making a Star Trek MMO for people who don't like Star Trek or MMOs.
All that said, what I'd personally like to see (and no I saw no particular indication they're planning this) is to do multi-person ships as end-game raid content. I believe, if I am recalling correctly, that was the plan Perpetual had. That alleviates the day-to-day grind since you'd only get on those huge ships for specific reasons.
What exactly is your job description? I ask because it sounds to me like you are employed to promote the new games coming out and to diminish the expectations of potential customers.
It's really not your place to be telling members of this site that they shouldn't be asking for features they want in these games.
MMOs are a service industry and you are spending a lot of energy telling us to be happy with minimal service. Leave that to employees of the compnies in question. As an employee of this site, you are supposed to be representing us. Please correct me if I am wrong on that point.
Eh, from what I understand, he starts representing us and he'll no longer get interviews, sneak peaks, previews, etc. Lots of game companies do that sort of thing now.
Indeed, but the gaming sites have to realize that they are very cheap advertising for the game companies. It's not a completely one-sided relationship.
Indeed, but the gaming sites have to realize that they are very cheap advertising for the game companies. It's not a completely one-sided relationship.
They need to form some kind of union honestly.* Otherwise a shill will always be willing to say nothing bad about products to get early treatment. With a union gaming sites can have some symbol of authority so gamers know which ones can be trusted. Until then you kinda have to sift through everything that gets said very carefully and important details will almost always be left out.
*One of my instant-brainstorms.**
**I am practicing calling out my attacks.
They need to form some kind of union honestly.* Otherwise a shill will always be willing to say nothing bad about products to get early treatment. With a union gaming sites can have some symbol of authority so gamers know which ones can be trusted. Until then you kinda have to sift through everything that gets said very carefully and important details will almost always be left out.
*One of my instant-brainstorms.**
**I am practicing calling out my attacks.
It's funny how movie reviewers can say whatever they want about a film and damn the movie companies if they don't like it. Game websites (this one included) are bought and paid for by the gaming companies.
Due to their income streams and 'exclusive content', I'm sure. That, and the fact that they are gaming nerds, not real journalists.
If the gaming sites refused to take gaming industry ads (not to mention - PERKS), then they would be freer to be objective.
Players go to gaming sites for the content - much of which is provided at the whim of the game companies.
If a site focused on hard information and debate - rather than screenshots and powder puff 'interviews', then gamers could go there. I think it will happen some day, as the industry is too big to be locked down by shills and fanboys.
Well, to me, my job is not to represent you or them. It's to report back what I see and let you decide for yourself.
The article presents the facts of what they showed with some limited informed opinion.
Now, in this thread, clearly I branched beyond what I'd write in an average article. I'm just participating in the ongoing debate like the rest of you.
I'm not saying their approach is perfect or even necessarily right. I'm saying I had some fun with it when I tried it and I do not personally believe that the "player crew" group has realistic expectations. That's my opinion.
That said, I've already written it down as something to specifically ask about in the future. I've given why I think they didn't do it, but that hardly matters. In the future, we'll ask them.
To those who think we write nice things to get future articles... well I doubt there is anything I can say to convince you otherwise, but honestly, this site over the last few weeks has published several very critical editorials about Cryptic, some from senior staff. Jon's came out the very day I went to the studio. There is honestly no blacklist I've ever seen and I've never even considered whether or not a company will talk to us in the future when writing about a game.
The only softening you see in articles are allowance for "this is clearly not finished" type things. I don't write about bugs from very early previews, for example, because people will harp on it and it's totally unfair to a game that is months away from launch.
Due to their income streams and 'exclusive content', I'm sure. That, and the fact that they are gaming nerds, not real journalists.
If the gaming sites refused to take gaming industry ads (not to mention - PERKS), then they would be freer to be objective.
Players go to gaming sites for the content - much of which is provided at the whim of the game companies.
If a site focused on hard information and debate - rather than screenshots and powder puff 'interviews', then gamers could go there. I think it will happen some day, as the industry is too big to be locked down by shills and fanboys.
See this argument is downright hilarious.
We post only game ads by fan REQUEST. We could easily sell beer and car ads on this site, but Craig has always had a policy to stick to products that people who visit the site actually want. So, basically, to some people we're sellouts if we have game ads, and money grubbers if we don't.
For the record, not that it matters, this particular trip to Cryptic was 100% paid for by MMORPG.com. Cryptic gave me a Coke and a slice of pizza, as I recall, if you want full disclosure. We paid for the flight, rental car, hotels, etc.
However, that's a luxury we have because we're a large site. If video game companies didn't fly people to events, you'd only ever read an article from Gamespot, Gamespy, IGN and.. on the MMO side... us.
Something Else of corse is that u only get to see and hear what they want u to. They don't say come in and have the run of the place. Which of corse Sucks Because the Pre- Sell Statement from gamepro was That Aion was a non grind, PvE ,PvP Friendly Game. WHICH OF CORSE IS TRUE TILL LV 22. Then BAM changes to a Grind Fest and a watch your back or get ganked in yor PvE area.The Lack of Gatherin Statement's should have let us in on the awful grind for 1 pt. But was kinda passes -over. Now I can't read your Mind Dana or Gamepro's ppl's mind to know if u had more or they bluffed u so u only have a look at so much. I beleive that it is the dev's that try to keep there sercert's because if something does Fail in game at least they got the openin week sale's to help lick the wounds.I think this game will be Great for a time and then we will have to wait for update's and of corse The Expention's to give us the true fill we want. The thing they got to understand is if u Fail at lauch it is Hard to get ppl back ask SWG,WarHammer,AoC while i could go on. Aion will be another they have some great stuff for the future of Aion look's like a total another game. They was smart to throw it out after just losing 10% of there base Sub's to try and hold on a little longer till they can get it out. U will always have your QQ for any MMO when dealing with 100k+ ppl hopefully a mill+ ppl.ANYWHO We all should just be happy to have bridge's in. But truely if they didn't put it in this would have been a major Fail on there part and a lose they would have ot recovered from. When u got thousand of ppl saing hey we want bridge's and u kow thousand more just to nice to say hey come on u got think man what was we thinking not havin that.
I'll give you that. In some respects it's hard to call game journalism that because of a few core points:
-The subject matter, bluntly, isn't important enough for people to risk anything to tell the truth. If this were politics, people would leak things like subscriber numbers and such, but who really is going to do that in a video game company?
-Often we see what they want us to see until the very end.
That all said, Cryptic - to their credit - gave me the usual presentation/interviews, but they also basically just sat me at terminal and told me to go to town. I think I probably logged two hours without supervision or instructions on what I should be doing or what to avoid. I think in this case, mostly the first article that is, I got a pretty unvarnished view of the game as it stands to date.
i think the idea is trying to find a decent balance in a game. there will always be people the want more details/deeper lore/ more things to do/ complex the game. on the other hand some people are less "hard core" and just want to take a ship into space and blow things up.
as i said, the omega point will be to find the range that both type of people with be happy with.
as for that, yeah you cant play scotty 24/7 (ok yes you can by like dana wrote developing that I.P would take lots of time$cash),
again on the other hand, making some missions as u play one of the crew lets say the doc, and your job is on the mission to heal the team/ watch the back.( im talking about a surface mission). how about there is some sort of strange disease going on the ship, u need to travel to a distant plant in order to find a cure. simple isnt it? and yet fun and cool.
lets say worf for a mission, the borg just breached the main hull, you go and stop them while the npc cpt. carry on with the battle.
that would not be that hard to create.
the possibilities are endless,
so gimme a choice, i understand that most game play will be as a cpt. but i would like once in a while the option the play something different.
again choices.
oh on the 3 worf thingy. gw solved that with heroes,when 3 of the same npc are in one instance 1 remain as the real one, the 2 others get a lil make over and boom, 2 brand new klingon officers appears. again all im saying it can be dealt with.
I think a captain, a weapons office and an engineering officer is a reasonable start to the PC crew.
Captain flies, Weapons shoots, Engineering controls shields fixes ship if they can. Easy pie.
Three man groups, not too hard to find two others to fly with I think. The group leader could assign roles, every person would have xp in each of the three disciplines to give them some extra relevant skills. If someone wants to play captain all the time and does they will probably be asked to pilot ships due to their experience. You could probably create similar exploration teams like this, but I fear all we will be getting is WOW in space.
Exactly.
I've seen fan pages devoted to Dr. Julian Bashir. I'm willing to bet that the fan who made that page would prefer to be like her hero rather than a captain. Why are all these people assuming that everone just loves the captains and wants to be one of them? What about all thev fans of Scotty or Data or Spock? They're being left out in the cold because people like Cryptic are making brash assumptions that really have no basis in reality. And that does not bode well for this game...
Okay, you got a valid point. HOWEVER, how would you make a GAME that allows you to do this? You have to remember marketing speak. "Everyone will want to play like this" really means "we can only cater to those who want to play like this".
Take Spock. An Iconic character if there ever was any and I think in a way far more popular then Kirk as a story character but how do you play him?
A novelist can make a dark brooding character because he can be the narator and TELL us the character is dark and brooding. But a game maker trying to make a playable character who is dark and brooding just ends up with a silent character. There is a reason most Bioware RPG's have a silent hero, so you can create their voice in your own mind, to your own liking. Bones, in the better Star Trek books is a troubled character, always torn between serving as a soldier and a healer at the same time. But how do you make the player feel such a struggle?
For that matter, how do you turn into gameplay the science parts that Spock and McCoy pull off? We never actually see them do it, spock just stares down this tube and pronounces something profound and that is it. Where is the gameplay?
There is a reason most games are shooters. Because running up to people and pressing a button to bandage them is not nearly as challenging.
SWG was the biggest game that tried to allow you to play different roles, dancer, image designer (make-up artist), cook, bio-engineer. It was great, for those who likes it, but the subscription figures told us that simply killing stuff (WoW) was way more popular.
And there is a problem with the unique roles approach. Already with the simple trinity of tank/dps/healer you see many complain that they hate grouping because there are never enough healers around.
In SWG on my server there was ONE image designer around. Wanted to change your appearance in the game? Then you had to wait for that person to log on as NOBODY else had the skills.
I myself was a scout (harvest meat) and I liked the aspect of finding what place and critter was dropping intresting resources (it changed over time). But I was one a handful and as such, we sold our materials to cooks we liked and they gave us a portion of their produce and sold the rest for a fortune. if you went into the game with little social skills and wanting pure combat, then you were entirely dependant on what little people were prepared to sell to strangers. It worked, to an extent but only for the social players.
In STO, would you want to have your enterprise with 500+ people onboard have to wait because nobody wants to play McCoy or the only one is on an event with his guild? It is the reason why SWTOR is going for pure combat roles where you have side-kicks to fill the support role you need most. To get rid of "5/6 for the dogs balls, need healer PLEASE! Been waiting for an hour, you can have all the goodies and we pay you a gold piece each.PLEASE!"
Cryptic has produced nothing so far but "simple" mmorpgs that focus on getting out there and beating stuff up with the minimum of group interaction needed. Don't look to them to create a Star Trek Universe Simulator.
You make good points. I agree, the kind of game we Trek "purists" want would be difficult, if not impossible. Which is exactly why I say some IPs do not make good games. I think Trek is one of those.
Sure, they can create a generic scifi shoot 'em up and slap Trek colors on it and call it Star Trek. In that vein, simply take an existing MMO engine, slap IP skins on it and before you know it, there's an MMO for anyone's favorite show. By the end of next year, there can be MMOs claiming to be Firefly, Farscape, Twilight, Heroes, Terminator and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. And all play exactly the same.
Originally, when STO was first being created, it was slated to be the Trekker's dream come true: fully inhabitable starships (see every room, sit at every console, use every panel to control the tiniest functions of your ship), freely explore the galaxy (boldly go where you want, when you want, whether it is to orbit or beam down) and develop your starship (from a small one-person craft al the way to an enormous starship) as you move up the ranks. This was to be the STO everyone clamored for, and it was being brought to us by Perpetual. Then, after a long silence, the website came alive with new information from the devs. Profuse with apology, the dev's said they just couldn't figure out how to make that happen. Instead, we'd BE the starship (no rooms, no sitting in chairs -heck, no chairs at all!) and we'd pew pew with phasers at other ships in space. There'd be some form of planet-side combat too (and at this point, no one had really asked for heavy combat) and you'd find yourself back in the usual tank-dps-healer teams using phasers instead of spells -esentially WoW in Star Trek uniforms. Well, the fans went berserk and the forums were aflame with hate. On one very memorable day, a fan posted a poll which basically asked if you'd prefer the game simply never came out if this was how it had to be. Overwhelmingly, over 90% of the forum posters voted that they'd rather it never got released. There was some hatred returned by the devs, flaming development boards elsewhere that the fans should never be listened to and to just make the trinity games we're used to anyway because it just works (cuz ya know, it works for WoW). In the end, Perpetual went out of business and the fans were sad to see there wouldn't be an STO but were nonetheless relieved it wouldn't come out as this dreary, combat-heavy WoW knock-off. Then, there was a glimmer of hope. It was annoucned that Cryptic had picked up the title and it was back into production! The fans again swarmed the boards, telling tales of the misery during the last development, offering advice (to the tinest detail) as to what would be the dream game and what to avoid so as not to ever see that tell-tale poll again. After a long development period, Cryptic began issuing interviews and game info and..much to our surprise, they totally ignored the fans and made the very same WoW knock-off nobody wanted. You are the ship (a la Star Trek Armada --yawn) and beam down to fight in teams against Klingons et al. The graphics look horrendously poor and the thought put into the gaming system is, frankly, dreadful. They even went so far as to remove any ability to freely explore the galaxy. Everything is a quest chain in a series of "episodes" that they have admitted do not hinge upon one another. In other words, do what you like in any given mission --it will not affect the final "episode" of that "season." Your actions have no affect on anything. So, with overwhelming fan requests for being inside their ships' rooms, working the controls etc, freely exploring the galaxy and building their starships from small one man craft to mighty starships --Cryptic gives us the "fun" of being a small ship in a convoluted version of, "Asteroids," unable to freely explore and yet not trading that for any impact on the storylines into which they're funneled.
While there is conflict and often combat in any given episode of Star Trek, the main focus of the series' has always been, "to seek out new life and new civilizations," finding a peaceful solution, and generally exploring the galaxy -and the human condition. Instead, we are given "war has come to the Federation." ...yawn. With a glut of shoot-em-ups in the market, one more (albeit Star Trek flavored) just isn't breaking any new ground. There was a tremendous opportunity here to create a thriving galaxy, populated starships and a compelling universe. Instead -- its Asteroids meets Armada meets Half-Life meets WoW. And given the dreadful quality of the graphics and gameplay displayed in their trailers it isn't even a good version of those classic games.
Note to developers of future video games: when a fan base is packaged neatly along with the property you obtain and they tell you point for point what would make the perfect game -don't utterly ignore them and make the dead opposite. You're just wasting your time, money and a golden opportunity.
Now, don't think everyone feels this way. There are actually plenty of posters on the STO forums that squeal with delight over any piece of dreary footage the devs post. I'm certain there will be a player base for this game. But in reality, it will very likely be a few thousand players (as opposed to, for example, WoW's multi-million subscribers) and the game will fall eventually much like Earth and Beyond when the devs simply refused to make the game the 'dynamic and changing universe' they initially promised, or Uru when low playership and fly-in-amber lag made the game unplayable. If it persists at all, it will probably end up like Star Wars Galaxies, a game that had its code chopped and gutted to try, weakly, to resemble the game it should've been instead of what it was at launch. There's already a hint of that as Cryptic announces 'player bridges' Trying to stem the tide of disgust over the refusal to implement bridge-play, they've added a horribly modeled bridge to the ships that you can use as a 'social room.' Yep, it doesn't control anything but you can invite other "captain's" over to walk around the simplistic room NOT using consoles to do anything and RP that the doors don't open because the ship's lost power or something... In the end, its a weak attempt to mollify a dissatisfied fan-base that has years to wait, it seems, to finally get the Star Trek experience in an MMO. Oh well, there's always Star Wars the Old Republic. After all, Bioware listens to their fans.
Live long and prosper, and don't waste your money on STO.
LOL I hadn't thought about that but, yeah, you're right.
Very sad.
Late to this party, but I'd like to throw this in:
Naturally, the bridge serves as a control hub for the ship. UI elements from the general game will be accessible from within the bridge at logical locations. However, at least to begin, they have no plans to let people fight or actually pilot their ship from the inside. It’s far more akin to player housing than a different way to play the game.
Umm, I disagree. I think that aside from fighting, it makes perfect sense for the captain to pilot the ship, use communications, manage their bridge officers, etc. from the bridge.
Since this is a future timeline, the external camera view ("Tactical" view?) could be used in combat without breaking either canon or immersion.