Its Star Trek, its a MMO, it has great (even if somwhat comic) graphics. But,, its nothing new. I have watched almost every Star Trek movie and episode. Almost every sci-fi flick actually, BSG, Stargare, Star Wars, etc. My imagination would run wild, when I was younger, I used to build bridge "sets" out of carboard and markers. I sat at consoles, and blew up imaginary enemies, I ran down corridors (my mom used to yell at me for leaving rubber skid marks on the hallways floors) to repair a damaged system before it could explode and ruin my entire day. That is my dream, to be able to live out in detail, the life of my fantasy. In pretty much every sci-fi MMO to date, EVE for example, you are your ship, thats it.... In Anarchy Online, you are actually a character, but you are tied to the ground. Cryptic has a huge amount of lore, money, and not to mention to tremendous fan-base. They have the opertunity to take space MMO's to the next level, the personal one. And what do they do? A half baked approach that you usually relate to Microsoft. You are a character on planets, that they got right, but as soon as you enter your ship, you turn into a ship. Sure, boarding battle sequences put you on to a map of your bridge to fight it out, but thats not my dream, I am not tied to a bridge. Cryptic, you have disappointed me. You have the absolute best odds, and you are failing in this area of gameplay. I want to be a character, never, ever, a starship. I want combat to be based off my own skill, not that of my avatars skill level. I want the other people on my ship to be players, not "bridge crew" or red-shirts. I want a unpredictable, human being at my side, not a NPC. I want the freedom of a virtual world, like the pen and paper rpg's of old, I want the freedom of those old carboard box sets, and that black streaked hallway of my moms house. I want to be free of the standards set by the current generation of space based MMO's.
I agree, this a F'ING MMO.
Let me guess what we need.
Helmsman
Science OF
Tactical
Security
Chief and so on before the ship can do anything!
I don't want to pilot a 200+(even 8,20,100) crew wessel by myself.
Cryptic! Please wake up and go back and visit this before you ruin this game!
Crafting same thing: You have to earn technology.
Example: You and your 300 guild mates. Some craft and others pilot the wessels and get to higher tier mineral areas. you build bases ,stations and whatnot. Then you get crafting stations. Hell even put a crafting station on the ship.In a/instance
Ships are built at Starports/hangars! Figured I'd let you in on that secrete.
The crafters earn the right to craft a Voyager or a Brown Variant Valdore. It will not be an easy task (or at least it shouldn't be)
Make the crafting engaging with stimulai it should be groundbreaking to any craftin in MMO to-date.
let the noobs start in smaller Pick up group like wessels (non DS9 Defiant etc). They can queue for a 5 player wessel and go earn exp and get some sell loot. When they have enough credentials they can become a crewman and train and specialise for what the Captain of the Guild/ship the Vessel needs and actualy have or be earning the expertise needed to be apart of a better wessel and it's crew. I'm sure you could have UFOP (Klingon Acadamy etc) as NPC starter guilds( federations,clan ,corp wtfever). Guilds looking for new or replacement crew members could look at these new players see how they are progressing and use this as a recruitment pool. Others who like to solo could possibly do like Guildwars did with NPC crewman. They might not be good at 1 thing but, they are good enough for a solo'r and not overpwered if done right (PVE only). MMO's are not for solo(lonewolf) type players but, there is money in it as having them a subscriber.
Seriously, I would love to meet the guy incharge of ideas over there. I don't think he has a clue about what an successful MMO is.
I want the other people on my ship to be players, not "bridge crew" or red-shirts. I want a unpredictable, human being at my side, not a NPC. I want the freedom of a virtual world, like the pen and paper rpg's of old, I want the freedom of those old carboard box sets, and that black streaked hallway of my moms house. I want to be free of the standards set by the current generation of space based MMO's.
Well, have u ever considered that 95% of the players (or some lopsided) number would want to be the captain? There won't be many who are willing to "being at your side" and do your bidding.
Would u like to play a red shirt? or worse yet, a comm officer that does nothing but says "hailing freq open"
What nariusseldon said, while you might make assumptions about what you would like to do in a game, your statements in this post were all about you being in charge of a real crew. You don't want an MMO, you want to be a crew member on a starship in the ST world and i don't think any game you play will you give you that level of immersion until the holographic suite actually exists.
With everything i've seen about the level of cooperation between random players in a game, what are the odds that:
A) They're going to let you be in charge without any knowledge or trust in your abilities,
You won't end up with some griefer blowing your hangar doors at a vital moment and screwing up your game.
C) People won't just join, muck about, quit, join, hurl aabuse, quit, join screw something up, quit.
It's a good dream to have a game that gives you that immersion, but it's just that, a dream.
While having a player crew sounds great, and I could enjoy that to a point. I always seem to be the leader of my groups. While playing in a fantasy MMORPG being group leader is alot different than being captain of a player controlled crew abourd a ship.
In my groups as leader, even though I may decide tactics I am participating by combat at the same time. Now as captain of my player crew aboard the USS Thor, What is my job? Just give orders? Think up tactics on the fly? While everyone at the stations, tactics, engines, science etc, all has something to do. Some sort of mini game I would think on long travels through space. This to me, just seems boring.
Now being captain of my own ship with npc crews also would seem boring, But I do know that I will actually be operating the flight of my ship and monitoring ship npc crews. Seems more fun. I would not even begin to think about monitoring real life crews cause I would not to make them feel stupid or inept. When your talking about playing leader with others you have to start worrying about their ego's. It is very easy to bruise someone's ego where they won't enjoy playing and would definitely not want to play with that captain.
So I feel that Cryptic is going the right way with everyone is a captain. You can still lead a squadron and still have things to do personally besides just giving orders. At least for me this will be fun.
Its Star Trek, its a MMO, it has great (even if somwhat comic) graphics. But,, its nothing new. I have watched almost every Star Trek movie and episode. Almost every sci-fi flick actually, BSG, Stargare, Star Wars, etc. My imagination would run wild, when I was younger, I used to build bridge "sets" out of carboard and markers. I sat at consoles, and blew up imaginary enemies, I ran down corridors (my mom used to yell at me for leaving rubber skid marks on the hallways floors) to repair a damaged system before it could explode and ruin my entire day. That is my dream, to be able to live out in detail, the life of my fantasy. In pretty much every sci-fi MMO to date, EVE for example, you are your ship, thats it.... In Anarchy Online, you are actually a character, but you are tied to the ground. Cryptic has a huge amount of lore, money, and not to mention to tremendous fan-base. They have the opertunity to take space MMO's to the next level, the personal one. And what do they do? A half baked approach that you usually relate to Microsoft. You are a character on planets, that they got right, but as soon as you enter your ship, you turn into a ship. Sure, boarding battle sequences put you on to a map of your bridge to fight it out, but thats not my dream, I am not tied to a bridge. Cryptic, you have disappointed me. You have the absolute best odds, and you are failing in this area of gameplay. I want to be a character, never, ever, a starship. I want combat to be based off my own skill, not that of my avatars skill level. I want the other people on my ship to be players, not "bridge crew" or red-shirts. I want a unpredictable, human being at my side, not a NPC. I want the freedom of a virtual world, like the pen and paper rpg's of old, I want the freedom of those old carboard box sets, and that black streaked hallway of my moms house. I want to be free of the standards set by the current generation of space based MMO's.
i don't think your thinking things through. Who do you think really wants to pay money to be your redshirt, or your communitcations officer? Sure you'll be the captain and all but really you think everyone else wants to be your crew waiting in sick bay for someone to get hurt ot in engineering for a fire to start? Think about it. Its not just about your enjoyment its about every paying customers enjoyment and what your suggesting be the norm would be a terrible yawn feast from pretty much eveyone else who has to play as your underling. Perhaps they should add full loot PVP so that way you can have that unpredictable human being at your side phaser you when they get bored to tears following your commands.
Don't be sad, it was a failure from the start when cryptic first annouced they would be the new devs for star trek, they only know how to make budget mmo's for kids.
Its Star Trek, its a MMO, it has great (even if somwhat comic) graphics. But,, its nothing new. I have watched almost every Star Trek movie and episode. Almost every sci-fi flick actually, BSG, Stargare, Star Wars, etc. My imagination would run wild, when I was younger, I used to build bridge "sets" out of carboard and markers. I sat at consoles, and blew up imaginary enemies, I ran down corridors (my mom used to yell at me for leaving rubber skid marks on the hallways floors) to repair a damaged system before it could explode and ruin my entire day. That is my dream, to be able to live out in detail, the life of my fantasy. In pretty much every sci-fi MMO to date, EVE for example, you are your ship, thats it.... In Anarchy Online, you are actually a character, but you are tied to the ground. Cryptic has a huge amount of lore, money, and not to mention to tremendous fan-base. They have the opertunity to take space MMO's to the next level, the personal one. And what do they do? A half baked approach that you usually relate to Microsoft. You are a character on planets, that they got right, but as soon as you enter your ship, you turn into a ship. Sure, boarding battle sequences put you on to a map of your bridge to fight it out, but thats not my dream, I am not tied to a bridge. Cryptic, you have disappointed me. You have the absolute best odds, and you are failing in this area of gameplay. I want to be a character, never, ever, a starship. I want combat to be based off my own skill, not that of my avatars skill level. I want the other people on my ship to be players, not "bridge crew" or red-shirts. I want a unpredictable, human being at my side, not a NPC. I want the freedom of a virtual world, like the pen and paper rpg's of old, I want the freedom of those old carboard box sets, and that black streaked hallway of my moms house. I want to be free of the standards set by the current generation of space based MMO's.
i don't think your thinking things through. Who do you think really wants to pay money to be your redshirt, or your communitcations officer? Sure you'll be the captain and all but really you think everyone else wants to be your crew waiting in sick bay for someone to get hurt ot in engineering for a fire to start? Think about it. Its not just about your enjoyment its about every paying customers enjoyment and what your suggesting be the norm would be a terrible yawn feast from pretty much eveyone else who has to play as your underling. Perhaps they should add full loot PVP so that way you can have that unpredictable human being at your side phaser you when they get bored to tears following your commands.
I agree with many of the above posters. I can't think of too many people that want to pay $50 and a month;y script to sit in someone elses ship and hail other ships all night or scan other ships all night. That sounds really boring. Where it works though is on the ground missions grouping there with different specialties will make for good grouping.
I also think its a little too early to tell whether or not the game will fail or not.
I was just gonna post a comment similar to above, if they made a game that required people to man individual stations on a ship the game would appeal to no more than a handful of rabid fanboys craving total immersion. The rest of the MMO population would just look at it and frown, people want bang for their buck, thats why AoC and WAR failed, they don't offer anything for your buck after the first chunk of the game is over with.
People will not pay a monthly fee to perform the most monotonous tasks so someone else can fly around and blow stuff up and generally have the fun that the communications officer is missing out on.
It's the exact same situation as Bioware face with Jedi, you can either get rid of jedi completely and appeal to the hardcore or you can let everyone be jedi and appeal to the masses and no company is ever going to give up money to appease a handful of hardcore.
I know for a fact if I subscribed to SWO I would want to captain my own ship, not be a slave to some moron who at the end of the day will be gettin far more value for money than myself. I hope they let us explore the insides of the ships etc and they most likely will but forcing people to group up and perform meanial tasks will never make a good game.
I was just gonna post a comment similar to above, if they made a game that required people to man individual stations on a ship the game would appeal to no more than a handful of rabid fanboys craving total immersion. The rest of the MMO population would just look at it and frown, people want bang for their buck, thats why AoC and WAR failed, they don't offer anything for your buck after the first chunk of the game is over with. People will not pay a monthly fee to perform the most monotonous tasks so someone else can fly around and blow stuff up and generally have the fun that the communications officer is missing out on. It's the exact same situation as Bioware face with Jedi, you can either get rid of jedi completely and appeal to the hardcore or you can let everyone be jedi and appeal to the masses and no company is ever going to give up money to appease a handful of hardcore. I know for a fact if I subscribed to SWO I would want to captain my own ship, not be a slave to some moron who at the end of the day will be gettin far more value for money than myself. I hope they let us explore the insides of the ships etc and they most likely will but forcing people to group up and perform meanial tasks will never make a good game.
Why don't they offer the best of both worlds then... offer solo captain play, but don't shrug off those "Trekies" who are looking for a more immersive form of gameplay. In fact... offer an incentive to group ship play for example, whoever is in charge of engineering gives a slight performance boost to the ship whereas that a solo captain can't get. This way all sides are appeased, and yet more choices and options are given in the process to diversify your gaming experience.
I know I would be interested in both types of gameplay, as my mood can change from day to day. Not everyone wants to be a captain, why force everyone to be one?
Reading the replies paint the picture of the wow crowd. Instant gratification wins the day, and that is why this game will fail, like all the other big AAA failures out there. Not that instant gratification is a bad thing, but when everyone is doing it, it becomes boring. What happened with games made by gamers, for gamers?
One good thing with this thread though, it made me wanna trial the starquest game
This debate was going on when Perpetual had the license. Cryptic is using their engine that they have for City of heroes/villians. I assume they are not going the ship interior route because it would deviate too much from their engine.
A shame too, because it is an opportunity to really stand out from space MMOs.
Of course everyone wants to captain their own ship. I do not think that should be taken out of the game design. However, it was my understanding that captains were not simply assigned a ship out of Starfleet Academy. They trained in all aspects of the ship. Yes, some specialized - Scotty / LeForge became captains though they were Engineers. Dr. Beverely Crusher captained a Medical Ship.
The specialties on the ship are career paths which can be categories for the avatar skill sets. For example a player who takes on Engineering Path has access to skills that could twink the Ship Systems. Buffs, Heals, Hacks, could be broad categories an Engineer could bring to the group. If the Engineer is a Captain rank, then his ship perhaps would have more "enhancement (city of heroes lingo) slots" or upgrades that affect ship function.
A Security officer type - Warf, could bring to the table more skills of melee and personal combat. Very important for away missions, but also have a role on attacks by the ship. They could control when the ship fires, what it attacks with and where it attacks. If the ship was boarded, the security player could command the group for its defense ( this could be done in an instance setting). Maybe even if the ship allows smaller craft like fighter pilots or combat shuttle craft, the security can go into space combat alongside his ship..
Medical officers are vitally importnat in away missions, but their primary role in the ship mechanic is personel. In combat, personel get hurt. When personel get hurt, personel cant work the ship efficiently. Combat effectiveness declines when the personel are dead or in sick bay. The medical player receives reports of injuries, and works on personel like a crafter works on a crafting table. The "product crafted" is an active crewman ready to return to duty. A failure is a dead crewman and the ship skills drop as a result until they replenish numbers at another starbase. If player characters are hurt in ship combat, the medical officer player is really needed. Not to mention Star Trek should have lots of content regarding alien bio threats, etc.
OK, slowly turning into wall of text.
So what if the player doesn't want to group ( join a player run ship)? They can still solo several ways. NPC run ship for instance missions that would cater to your specific specialty. Station missons. Holodeck Missions.
So what if the group breaks up during a mission? The game replaces the slot with NPCs. This is where a Captain needs to know his stuff. Captains would have complete control over his NPC crew. They adjust the settings how the NPC is to behave. Holodeck Medic will heal when party heal is at 55%, NPC Science Officer will notify when hazards are near. NPC engineer will reroute Ship power from thrust to shields when shields at 40%, etc.
Anyways, it is a pipe dream. STO will be Earth and Beyond 2
This debate was going on when Perpetual had the license. Cryptic is using their engine that they have for City of heroes/villians. I assume they are not going the ship interior route because it would deviate too much from their engine. A shame too, because it is an opportunity to really stand out from space MMOs. Of course everyone wants to captain their own ship. I do not think that should be taken out of the game design. However, it was my understanding that captains were not simply assigned a ship out of Starfleet Academy. They trained in all aspects of the ship. Yes, some specialized - Scotty / LeForge became captains though they were Engineers. Dr. Beverely Crusher captained a Medical Ship. The specialties on the ship are career paths which can be categories for the avatar skill sets. For example a player who takes on Engineering Path has access to skills that could twink the Ship Systems. Buffs, Heals, Hacks, could be broad categories an Engineer could bring to the group. If the Engineer is a Captain rank, then his ship perhaps would have more "enhancement (city of heroes lingo) slots" or upgrades that affect ship function. A Security officer type - Warf, could bring to the table more skills of melee and personal combat. Very important for away missions, but also have a role on attacks by the ship. They could control when the ship fires, what it attacks with and where it attacks. If the ship was boarded, the security player could command the group for its defense ( this could be done in an instance setting). Maybe even if the ship allows smaller craft like fighter pilots or combat shuttle craft, the security can go into space combat alongside his ship.. Medical officers are vitally importnat in away missions, but their primary role in the ship mechanic is personel. In combat, personel get hurt. When personel get hurt, personel cant work the ship efficiently. Combat effectiveness declines when the personel are dead or in sick bay. The medical player receives reports of injuries, and works on personel like a crafter works on a crafting table. The "product crafted" is an active crewman ready to return to duty. A failure is a dead crewman and the ship skills drop as a result until they replenish numbers at another starbase. If player characters are hurt in ship combat, the medical officer player is really needed. Not to mention Star Trek should have lots of content regarding alien bio threats, etc. OK, slowly turning into wall of text. So what if the player doesn't want to group ( join a player run ship)? They can still solo several ways. NPC run ship for instance missions that would cater to your specific specialty. Station missons. Holodeck Missions. So what if the group breaks up during a mission? The game replaces the slot with NPCs. This is where a Captain needs to know his stuff. Captains would have complete control over his NPC crew. They adjust the settings how the NPC is to behave. Holodeck Medic will heal when party heal is at 55%, NPC Science Officer will notify when hazards are near. NPC engineer will reroute Ship power from thrust to shields when shields at 40%, etc.
Anyways, it is a pipe dream. STO will be Earth and Beyond 2
Although they are very vague in their descriptions at this point almost everything you have stated here including ship interiors is in Cryptic Studio's STO. You should go to the official site and read up on it as it sounds like a lot of what they have revealed so far especially in the interviews would surprise you. STO will be way more than Earth and Beyond 2. About the only thing that is missing that people are asking for is ship based group play (Player Crews) and that is really no biggie. Even that Cryptic is looking at to add sometime after launch. They just want to get a very stable and fun core game out there first so they can add to it later. This make perfect sense.
Edit: OK I read your post too fast the first time through and thought you were talking about player Captain skills and not Player Crew skills. Sorry my bad. Still this game has so much going for it that the "Player Crew" people just refuse to see. It's kinda like saying that all Hot Fudge Sundays suck because you can't get nuts on yours.
Being a ship will get old fast, I really can't see me playing this game long. I want to be a crew member, I want to walk the decks of the enterprise or some other ship, I want other crew members to be humans I can interact with. This game sounds like a total licence waste to me.
You should be assigned to an npc ship till say lvl 20 Then you get to be a bridge member of your own ship with the option of having other crew members controlled by either humans or npc's. The captain should not be able to influence the outcome of major battles, it should be down to the skills of the particular crew members then if the captain is off-line it's not a huge loss (the guild No1 can easily fill the role).
This is just off the top of my head but I bet if I were in a conference room for a week with other members of the design team we could easily come up with a way on implementing this into the game.
Basically Cryptic have taken the easy, lazy way with this game and I am 100% certain it will come back to bite them in the ass. What a waste.
Comments
I agree, this a F'ING MMO.
Let me guess what we need.
Helmsman
Science OF
Tactical
Security
Chief and so on before the ship can do anything!
I don't want to pilot a 200+(even 8,20,100) crew wessel by myself.
Cryptic! Please wake up and go back and visit this before you ruin this game!
Crafting same thing: You have to earn technology.
Example: You and your 300 guild mates. Some craft and others pilot the wessels and get to higher tier mineral areas. you build bases ,stations and whatnot. Then you get crafting stations. Hell even put a crafting station on the ship.In a/instance
Ships are built at Starports/hangars! Figured I'd let you in on that secrete.
The crafters earn the right to craft a Voyager or a Brown Variant Valdore. It will not be an easy task (or at least it shouldn't be)
Make the crafting engaging with stimulai it should be groundbreaking to any craftin in MMO to-date.
let the noobs start in smaller Pick up group like wessels (non DS9 Defiant etc). They can queue for a 5 player wessel and go earn exp and get some sell loot. When they have enough credentials they can become a crewman and train and specialise for what the Captain of the Guild/ship the Vessel needs and actualy have or be earning the expertise needed to be apart of a better wessel and it's crew. I'm sure you could have UFOP (Klingon Acadamy etc) as NPC starter guilds( federations,clan ,corp wtfever). Guilds looking for new or replacement crew members could look at these new players see how they are progressing and use this as a recruitment pool. Others who like to solo could possibly do like Guildwars did with NPC crewman. They might not be good at 1 thing but, they are good enough for a solo'r and not overpwered if done right (PVE only). MMO's are not for solo(lonewolf) type players but, there is money in it as having them a subscriber.
Seriously, I would love to meet the guy incharge of ideas over there. I don't think he has a clue about what an successful MMO is.
Use your brains over there!
Well, have u ever considered that 95% of the players (or some lopsided) number would want to be the captain? There won't be many who are willing to "being at your side" and do your bidding.
Would u like to play a red shirt? or worse yet, a comm officer that does nothing but says "hailing freq open"
What nariusseldon said, while you might make assumptions about what you would like to do in a game, your statements in this post were all about you being in charge of a real crew. You don't want an MMO, you want to be a crew member on a starship in the ST world and i don't think any game you play will you give you that level of immersion until the holographic suite actually exists.
With everything i've seen about the level of cooperation between random players in a game, what are the odds that:
A) They're going to let you be in charge without any knowledge or trust in your abilities,
C) People won't just join, muck about, quit, join, hurl aabuse, quit, join screw something up, quit.
It's a good dream to have a game that gives you that immersion, but it's just that, a dream.
While having a player crew sounds great, and I could enjoy that to a point. I always seem to be the leader of my groups. While playing in a fantasy MMORPG being group leader is alot different than being captain of a player controlled crew abourd a ship.
In my groups as leader, even though I may decide tactics I am participating by combat at the same time. Now as captain of my player crew aboard the USS Thor, What is my job? Just give orders? Think up tactics on the fly? While everyone at the stations, tactics, engines, science etc, all has something to do. Some sort of mini game I would think on long travels through space. This to me, just seems boring.
Now being captain of my own ship with npc crews also would seem boring, But I do know that I will actually be operating the flight of my ship and monitoring ship npc crews. Seems more fun. I would not even begin to think about monitoring real life crews cause I would not to make them feel stupid or inept. When your talking about playing leader with others you have to start worrying about their ego's. It is very easy to bruise someone's ego where they won't enjoy playing and would definitely not want to play with that captain.
So I feel that Cryptic is going the right way with everyone is a captain. You can still lead a squadron and still have things to do personally besides just giving orders. At least for me this will be fun.
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
The game is not even in alpha stage yet, How on earth could anyone know what its going to be like?
And to be honest, I dont wanna be some Shmuck on your bridge, nor do I want to be a toon working on some other players ship!...
Get real, I want my own ships.. dont wanna be no deck hand.
i don't think your thinking things through. Who do you think really wants to pay money to be your redshirt, or your communitcations officer? Sure you'll be the captain and all but really you think everyone else wants to be your crew waiting in sick bay for someone to get hurt ot in engineering for a fire to start? Think about it. Its not just about your enjoyment its about every paying customers enjoyment and what your suggesting be the norm would be a terrible yawn feast from pretty much eveyone else who has to play as your underling. Perhaps they should add full loot PVP so that way you can have that unpredictable human being at your side phaser you when they get bored to tears following your commands.
Don't be sad, it was a failure from the start when cryptic first annouced they would be the new devs for star trek, they only know how to make budget mmo's for kids.
i don't think your thinking things through. Who do you think really wants to pay money to be your redshirt, or your communitcations officer? Sure you'll be the captain and all but really you think everyone else wants to be your crew waiting in sick bay for someone to get hurt ot in engineering for a fire to start? Think about it. Its not just about your enjoyment its about every paying customers enjoyment and what your suggesting be the norm would be a terrible yawn feast from pretty much eveyone else who has to play as your underling. Perhaps they should add full loot PVP so that way you can have that unpredictable human being at your side phaser you when they get bored to tears following your commands.
This game will be a failure.
I agree with many of the above posters. I can't think of too many people that want to pay $50 and a month;y script to sit in someone elses ship and hail other ships all night or scan other ships all night. That sounds really boring. Where it works though is on the ground missions grouping there with different specialties will make for good grouping.
I also think its a little too early to tell whether or not the game will fail or not.
I was just gonna post a comment similar to above, if they made a game that required people to man individual stations on a ship the game would appeal to no more than a handful of rabid fanboys craving total immersion. The rest of the MMO population would just look at it and frown, people want bang for their buck, thats why AoC and WAR failed, they don't offer anything for your buck after the first chunk of the game is over with.
People will not pay a monthly fee to perform the most monotonous tasks so someone else can fly around and blow stuff up and generally have the fun that the communications officer is missing out on.
It's the exact same situation as Bioware face with Jedi, you can either get rid of jedi completely and appeal to the hardcore or you can let everyone be jedi and appeal to the masses and no company is ever going to give up money to appease a handful of hardcore.
I know for a fact if I subscribed to SWO I would want to captain my own ship, not be a slave to some moron who at the end of the day will be gettin far more value for money than myself. I hope they let us explore the insides of the ships etc and they most likely will but forcing people to group up and perform meanial tasks will never make a good game.
Why don't they offer the best of both worlds then... offer solo captain play, but don't shrug off those "Trekies" who are looking for a more immersive form of gameplay. In fact... offer an incentive to group ship play for example, whoever is in charge of engineering gives a slight performance boost to the ship whereas that a solo captain can't get. This way all sides are appeased, and yet more choices and options are given in the process to diversify your gaming experience.
I know I would be interested in both types of gameplay, as my mood can change from day to day. Not everyone wants to be a captain, why force everyone to be one?
Reading the replies paint the picture of the wow crowd. Instant gratification wins the day, and that is why this game will fail, like all the other big AAA failures out there. Not that instant gratification is a bad thing, but when everyone is doing it, it becomes boring. What happened with games made by gamers, for gamers?
One good thing with this thread though, it made me wanna trial the starquest game
---
Grammar nazi's. This one is for you.
This debate was going on when Perpetual had the license. Cryptic is using their engine that they have for City of heroes/villians. I assume they are not going the ship interior route because it would deviate too much from their engine.
A shame too, because it is an opportunity to really stand out from space MMOs.
Of course everyone wants to captain their own ship. I do not think that should be taken out of the game design. However, it was my understanding that captains were not simply assigned a ship out of Starfleet Academy. They trained in all aspects of the ship. Yes, some specialized - Scotty / LeForge became captains though they were Engineers. Dr. Beverely Crusher captained a Medical Ship.
The specialties on the ship are career paths which can be categories for the avatar skill sets. For example a player who takes on Engineering Path has access to skills that could twink the Ship Systems. Buffs, Heals, Hacks, could be broad categories an Engineer could bring to the group. If the Engineer is a Captain rank, then his ship perhaps would have more "enhancement (city of heroes lingo) slots" or upgrades that affect ship function.
A Security officer type - Warf, could bring to the table more skills of melee and personal combat. Very important for away missions, but also have a role on attacks by the ship. They could control when the ship fires, what it attacks with and where it attacks. If the ship was boarded, the security player could command the group for its defense ( this could be done in an instance setting). Maybe even if the ship allows smaller craft like fighter pilots or combat shuttle craft, the security can go into space combat alongside his ship..
Medical officers are vitally importnat in away missions, but their primary role in the ship mechanic is personel. In combat, personel get hurt. When personel get hurt, personel cant work the ship efficiently. Combat effectiveness declines when the personel are dead or in sick bay. The medical player receives reports of injuries, and works on personel like a crafter works on a crafting table. The "product crafted" is an active crewman ready to return to duty. A failure is a dead crewman and the ship skills drop as a result until they replenish numbers at another starbase. If player characters are hurt in ship combat, the medical officer player is really needed. Not to mention Star Trek should have lots of content regarding alien bio threats, etc.
OK, slowly turning into wall of text.
So what if the player doesn't want to group ( join a player run ship)? They can still solo several ways. NPC run ship for instance missions that would cater to your specific specialty. Station missons. Holodeck Missions.
So what if the group breaks up during a mission? The game replaces the slot with NPCs. This is where a Captain needs to know his stuff. Captains would have complete control over his NPC crew. They adjust the settings how the NPC is to behave. Holodeck Medic will heal when party heal is at 55%, NPC Science Officer will notify when hazards are near. NPC engineer will reroute Ship power from thrust to shields when shields at 40%, etc.
Anyways, it is a pipe dream. STO will be Earth and Beyond 2
Although they are very vague in their descriptions at this point almost everything you have stated here including ship interiors is in Cryptic Studio's STO. You should go to the official site and read up on it as it sounds like a lot of what they have revealed so far especially in the interviews would surprise you. STO will be way more than Earth and Beyond 2. About the only thing that is missing that people are asking for is ship based group play (Player Crews) and that is really no biggie. Even that Cryptic is looking at to add sometime after launch. They just want to get a very stable and fun core game out there first so they can add to it later. This make perfect sense.
Edit: OK I read your post too fast the first time through and thought you were talking about player Captain skills and not Player Crew skills. Sorry my bad. Still this game has so much going for it that the "Player Crew" people just refuse to see. It's kinda like saying that all Hot Fudge Sundays suck because you can't get nuts on yours.
Bren
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Being a ship will get old fast, I really can't see me playing this game long. I want to be a crew member, I want to walk the decks of the enterprise or some other ship, I want other crew members to be humans I can interact with. This game sounds like a total licence waste to me.
You should be assigned to an npc ship till say lvl 20
Then you get to be a bridge member of your own ship with the option of having other crew members controlled by either humans or npc's. The captain should not be able to influence the outcome of major battles, it should be down to the skills of the particular crew members then if the captain is off-line it's not a huge loss (the guild No1 can easily fill the role).
This is just off the top of my head but I bet if I were in a conference room for a week with other members of the design team we could easily come up with a way on implementing this into the game.
Basically Cryptic have taken the easy, lazy way with this game and I am 100% certain it will come back to bite them in the ass. What a waste.