Profile: Hype
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• • Are Personal Starship Interiors Still Important?

  • Are they important to the show? The franchise? The Mythos?

    They're important to the game as well.  I think each ship class, or at least ship-size should have its own interior map and be filled with content.  Small defiant-ships, not so much, but Galaxy class? There's NPCs there, NPCs with their own storylines.  There's belligerent crewmen, some that can even turn violent if triggered.  There's prisoners to escort, holodeck simulations (and disasters) to play out and aftereffects from battles and anomalies.

    Add that to the great ideas you've been kicking around in here and yes, it's clear... ground combat, and even ship-to-ship combat should compliment the shipboard experience.

  • Posted: 5/20/08 12:59 PM
    Star Trek Online
• • The Early Perpetual Vision of STO that Crytic Should Shoot For: Agree?

  • Originally posted by TookyG
    

    
    Could you come up with 10 things for people to do on a ship in combat?  Sure.  Would it be simultaneously, fun, engaging, and rewarding for everyone involved equally?  Probably not.

     

    Sorry that your SWG multi-person ship experience wasn't fun.  It's clear that the challenge wasn't up to the skill of your crew.  The fun, however, has been proven, provided the situation is challenging.

    What to do on a Star Trek ship during combat? The key is having several layers to combat other than 'spam X, Y, Z until victorious.'  Another key to remember is that there is always something going on on the ship... like on the show:

    1) Helm - Fly the ship. 

    2) Tactical - Shields and Phasers.

    3) Engineering - "Running around ships making repairs."  Multiple people.

    4) Science - Crafting solutions.  Multiple people.

    5) Command - Control NPCs like pets. 

    6) Captain - Buffer via handing out 'commands.'

    7) Security - Fighting intruders.  Many people.

    8) Medical - Priority Processing NPCs to keep the ship going.  Multiple people.

    9) Operations - A "buffing" position. Toss in Communications (chat channel control/link attacks in multi-ship battles) and Transporters (steadiness of hand mini-game to determine speed and potential health loss) and Sensors (??) for good measure. multiple people.

    10) Away Team - Who says you can't send some invaders over to that Klingon Battlecruiser... potentially many people.

    11) Uniques - You never know who's Betazoid empathy or Aurian battle meditation is going to come in handy at crucial points in the battle.  Potentially multiple people.

    12) Non-Combat - Let's face it... the cook is just going to be in the galley, mining dilithium, or some such.  And the ship's counselor... she's gotta be doing something useful, right?  And what about the guys who are already preparing for after the battle? Or some other pressing issue to which the battle is merely an inconvenience?  What about the people on the holodeck who don't even know there's a battle?  Many people.

    That's TWELVE ship to ship combat roles, to say nothing of dealing with anomalies, crazy planetary mysteries, exploration, travel and shipboard crises of varying degree and cause.  These 12 roles -  Engaging? Every bit as much as combat.  Rewarding? With XP and the right art/sound team, every bit as much as combat.  Fun? That's totally subjective, but all signs point to yes.

    And I think this is the key to making a Star Trek MMO successful: making ships viable adventure zones of their own.  You can have 50+ on a ship, of wildly varying levels and experience and each be engaged both in combat and out of combat.  When you add on TOP of that mutli-ship combat, you have hundreds of people in a single epic battle, all combining strategies and such.  Perpetual got one thing right: Ships are cities/hubs.  They just forgot that they were player-run hubs that can be flown into battle.

    Players who favor solo, for whatever reason, should still be able to play ten people on ten ships, but those who wish to pool should be rewarded for their teamwork and specialization.  Let solo players train up NPC crew to man those stations, and tab between the stations on their hud as needed... of course, again, they lose the multitasking and specialization, but so do soloers in other MMOs... no worries.

  • Posted: 5/20/08 11:38 AM
    Star Trek Online
• • Star Trek Online???

  • I'd love a Star Trek game that was a Sci-Fi game as opposed to a Fantasy Genre MMO with Star Trek Skins.  No healing class, no tanking (dear God no tanking) and real unpredictiable elements that require multiple adaptive strategies to overcome.

    Imho, any Star Trek MMO that has levels, in the traditional sense, especially ones that affect hit points or whatever, is a failure at Star Trek, even if its a successful game.  Any Star Trek MMO in which Captains are the only way to play, or are inherently better at combat, medicine, engineering, science or tactical... well, that's a failure at Trek too.

     

  • Posted: 5/20/08 7:04 AM
    General Discussion
• • New MMO's you would like to see?

  • Liscenced fun:

    Star Trek MMO
    DC Universe MMO
    Heroes (NBC) MMO

    Specifics:

    I'd like to see consequences to actions in my next MMO.
    I'd like to see games balanced by gradually changing enemy AI, numbers and environments, not by sweeping numbers changes.
    I'd like to see PvP and PvE integrate seamlessly.  I know, but that's what I want.

  • Posted: 5/06/08 9:06 AM
    General Discussion
• • Harry Potter MMORPG?

  • A Harry Potter MMO should revolve around Hogwarts, imho, since that's the setting of the books, and that's what most people are familiar with.  The immense world should be available for different quests and missions and so forth, but the bulk of the gameplay should be school-based, just with a lot of field trips and independent study.

    Figure about 3-6 months of heavy playing to be a "year" of Hogwarts, so you have two years to improve the school and develop the World of Harry Potter expansion for graduates to go work for the Ministry of Magic or become a dark wizard of one sort or other... or some other career path.

    If the school gameplay is dynamic and engaging, if classes are fun and challenging, if students have chances to travel and get involved in larger than life adventures, then you can balance low level wizards against each other.  If you make the school a footnote, or just a tutorial level, then you need to balance high caliber wizards against each other in a, more or less, generic magical setting.  Either that, or you have 'graduates' who aren't actually more powerful than the students seen in the books.

    Speaking of a tutorial level, it would be cool if certain checkpoints and actions and inactions in the tutorial determined, or helped determine where the sorting hat would put you.

     

     

  • Posted: 5/06/08 8:45 AM
    General Discussion