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I don't feel like a Starfleet Captain
nate1980
Member UncommonPosts: 2,063
Okay, the Captain of the Starship, according to the TV shows, have the authority to act in whatever creative way they feel as long as they aren't violating their orders or the Prime Directive.
So why is it that my bridge officer's are always telling me what to do? Sure, in the beginning they're only "suggesting" that you do this or that, but their suggestions always become your objective and if you don't complete those objectives, you won't complete the mission. Later in the game, they just tell you what you need to do next. I didn't ask them for their opinion, nor did they ask me if they could speak freely.
So I just feel like a puppet Captain, where the bridge officer's pull the strings.
Comments
Another example of why more time was needed to make this game. In Star Trek, the Captain always met with his/her senior officers and got everyone's opinion. Kirk listened to Spock and Bones, Picard to Data and Riker, Sisko to Dax etc. but in the end, it was the captain who made the decision on what to do. If Bioware was making this game that is exactly what you would have gotten.
Currently Playing: World of Warcraft
You still have a choice. The officers are telling you how to finish the mission. Up to you if that's what you want to do.
Yeah, let is ignore the fact that television and games are completely different media. Who cares if trying to generate non scripted dialogue discourse and decision making for randomly generated missions would take an infinite amount of time to construct.
Perhaps we should cast aside the concept of having some fun and focus on holding meetings in the briefing room every 20 mins. Ooo we could realign the dilithium crystals, recalibrate sensors to 99.8% efficiency.
So the choice is either do what your subordinates say or fail?
Haha!
No it isn't up to you. Every time one of your officers makes a suggestion on how to proceed, THAT is the direction you go. If he says "we should scan for liforms" then that is your next objective. If he says," we should find a computer to do this" then guess what you're doing? It's not like you have a choice of what to do. It would be more fun if two or more of your officers gave suggestions and it was up to you the captain to make a decision. I'm not asking for a meeting in the war room for every decision, just more frreedom of choice in the missions.
Currently Playing: World of Warcraft
It was like this in the shows because those other people the captain spoke to would be the equiivlent of other players, not npc's
I think that they should add a thing to the game: Some missions (PvE and PvE) that a guild is playing a single ship together. I would be some work for the devs but it would add a star trek feeling to the game.
If they played their cards right something like this could be implemented instead of the regular raids that MMOs usually have.
A 25 person ship with bridge officers, engineers and so on would really be cool, you could have a voice channel for the captain and officer, and then the officer could have a second to his men (like Scotty to his engineers). there is endless possibilities with it as long as it is optional. You could have long missions, maybe get the ship boarded and similar things.
I think it is time to actually make suggestions now, just complaining about the game sucks gets useless after a while, we got that the game was hastily made with little content and not the feeling it should have.
What do you guys think they should do to make the game better?
Definitely NOT this.
The vast majority of people playing this MMO don't want to be an engineer playing around with Dilithium chamber mixtures to get optimal effect so some other person can push a button and fire dual phaser banks, or do scans of botanical life from Seti Alpha Five so some other person can be a doctor and make antivirus serums out of them. Except maybe some of THESE people.
They want to be the Captain and make the choices and control where their adventure is going.
This game needs more story content. The suggestion about "choices" makes the most sense, and is the easiest thing to do. I'm not sure why they didn't have story missions whiteboarded in tree form where:
"Player does A, B, or C. If player choses A, then 1 or 2 happens. If player choses B, then 3 or 4 happens." Etc etc.
Then the tree branches out like that into completely different paths due to the choices the Captain made, not Scotty. That would not only add replayability to this game instead of the same old missions when you inevitably reroll a new ship design, but would foster more interaction between players as more discussion about the missions will take place.
All I ever see in chat is a bunch of people talking to each other about how they don't actually NEED each other for missions, and beat a fleet of Klingons or Cardassians singlehandedly.
The only mission people actually ask for help (or need it) is the Crystalline Entity and the people who already completed it don't want to go back with noobs dropping mines at the little shards and making everyone waste an hour of their lives because the Entity healed back to 100%.
"TO MICHAEL!"
Over four thousand posts in a gaming forum and you believe this would be a "cool" workable feature?
I'm just replying in general.
I think a choice tree with different paths being taken depending on your choice is a good idea and what I had in mind and was hoping you all would suggest. Something like this is what Bioware is doing, so no one can say that Cryptic couldn't have done it as well. They're playing with a large IP here, not City of Heroes or something. They should have had the funding to do this, but probably chose not to. That's fine, it's their money to develop with as they wish, but there's nothing wrong with people who play this game still (me) to come on this forum and discuss things that they like and dislike.
As for making suggestions, rather than complaining, what's wrong with both? Complaining isn't inherently bad, it's just a way of expressing displeasure over something. Developers get the same information when someone is complaining about a feature as they are when someone is suggesting something: What players like and dislike, so they can come up with a solution. Anyways, suggestions are made daily and I've made mine.
If BOs offered suggestions, that would indicate that you were playing a role. This is why, back when we debated the whole 'mmorpg' thing, that I said STO was more of an adventure game than an rpg (you're not playing a role & you're travelling a linear path). You are more of an active observer than part of the story. The main problem is that the devs used templates for everything. Nothing is fleshed out and the game just feels flat and cold. There's no tangible difference between the first character you run and your fifth (other than appearance). You don't feel like a captain, because STO only allows you to be one superficially.
...Which would make sense if we were talking about games made 15 years ago. No, such things would not take an infinite amount of time to construct. Simply giving players a choice between "Follow the Science Officer's advice," "Follow the Doctor's advice," and "Do third option not related to the other two" would add a huge amount of immersion and make one feel like they are the captain rather than a puppet to NPCs.
Ironically thats exactly what I expected from a Star Trek MMO and I bet many others did too.
Cal...
This doom and gloom thread was brought to you by Chin Up the new ultra high caffeine soft drink for gamers who just need that boost of happiness after a long forum session.
In Eve you are supposed to be "the Capsuleer". Your brain controls every part of your ship from your egg-like pod, and you are alone to take decisions and make stuff happen.
In STO you *should* be a captain of a vessel with hundreds of people onboard and dozens of bridge officers. You'd expect some interaction, like asking an advice on the mission to your first officer, or having several options (i.e. the context is something like "captain, we have an unknown ship/entity approaching at full impulse and arming its weapons" and then some BO's make suggestions, i.e. tactical officer says: "it still at full impulse, if we shoot now we have better chances against it", the scientific officer says: "let's open hailing frequencies and try to talk, maybe we can come to an aggreement", the engineering says "we can hide behind that asteroid over there and <technobabble involving fancy minerals and spatial distortions> will hide us, so we can see what are they up to without being seen" and you still have the option to do as one of them suggests or do neither and just wait and see what will happen.
As it is, you are a puppet captain doing whatever NPCs say.
I think the game would have been awesome like this. Make your guild have to work up and save for a big ship with lots of areas on the ship, then have the entire crew made of actual players...
I may have even tried something like that.
That sounds exactly like what I had pictured in my mind when I first heard about STO. Pity I was wrong.
Bartoni's Law definition: As an Internet discussion grows volatile, the probability of a comparison involving Donald Trump approaches 1.
Really? Now step back from fantasy and look at the reality of what you propose. Given that it is a computer game, and not real people or people reading from a scripted situation for the purpose of a single unique encounter, after a few of these "dialogues" with your crew it will become nothing more than a menu in the way.
A menu is better than no menu (no choice) at all... it's still a beginning...
That's because despite being a Massively Multiplayer online Role Playing Game based on an IP that focuses heavily on the interaction of the characters on ships full of hundreds of people they took the cheap shortcut of putting you alone on your ship with npc's.
The only reason it is "fantasy" is because Cryptic decided Star Trek was a universe about killing on sight and flying around in a shoebox that is supposed to represent open space. I saw a video on youtube of Starfleet Dental blowing up huge ships over and over again then just reapearing. Now THAT's fantasy in my book.
Hell, even have a ship that takes, say, 5 people to fly. Doesn't have to be hundreds. Even throw some NPCs with them. Each player could have a skill set that contributes something to the overall status of the ship, ie. Enginner helps ships mobility, Tactical Officer controls weapons, Captain makes navigation decisions etc. etc. Would really be a great way to get people to play together.
"Given that it is a computer game, and not real people or people reading from a scripted situation ". Don't get you here. You could make it real people with this method.
What Ryuga suggested is WAY closer to reality.
Can you honestly see no problems with that suggestion? How on earth would that address the OP's title "I don't feel like a starfleet captain" ?
Being unable to explore, advance and thus play the game without 4 other people or more would be dreadful. What if you happen to be lucky enough to be "captain" and you request shields up from your player tactical officer only to find they are afk or discon?
It should definitely be an option, if you are alone or want to do stuff alone, NPCs do the usual job and things stay as they are now. But you can also board a ship with your friends and do stuff together (still, Cryptic has to make it fun for other people to do the engineering & stuff, not just pull a few sliders, but something like addicting player-skill based minigames that let players operate ship systems better).
That there would be problems is obvious. That those problems would be worse than the problems the game has now is really the more important question.
It seems kind of silly to propose "problems" (problems that have been addressed many times in these forums) as a bar to multiplayer crews as if the game didn't have tons of problems now with the choices they made without multiplayer crews.
LOL Im starting to wonder if this game shouldve ever been made with all the variables that people are complaining that arent in!
(BBBBBBBBBBBWWWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH has one of the female shapeshifter form the dominion shift into the supermodel Denise Milani!)
All my opinions are just that..opinions. If you like my opinions..coolness.If you dont like my opinion....I really dont care.
Playing: ESO, WOT, Smite, and Marvel Heroes