Soruyao
09-18-2009, 02:07 AM
It would be really neat if I could take control of one of my bridge officers and let my usual self be an AI, and cycle my eyes and control through my bots at will.
Say I`m a medical officer and most of the time I`m content just giving orders and following my pet bridge officers and healing them, but then I come to a situation where it would be better to have a smart tactical or engineering officer than a smart medical officer. Then I switch to that character and give orders to everyone else from them.
Upsides:
1. I played a mastermind in CoX for awhile, and it was fun, but I came to the realization that I couldn't play for longer than half an hour without being lulled to sleep. Spending all my time being support for AI can be very boring if it's not done right. I could see myself getting REALLY bored if I`m a medical officer and all I ever do in combat is heal and do tiny bits of damage and protect/micro my bridge officers. This ability would change things up a lot and go a long way towards mitigating that. (Sometimes everyone just wants to shoot stuff!.) It would be refreshing to see things through their eyes sometimes even if they are much weaker and have less abilities.
2. It would provide a higher skill ceiling for pvp and even pve sometimes. Someone who could switch fast enough to place their guys in the right places and call all the right shots would do better than someone who just put all their pets on aggressive and ran in and zerged combat.
3. It would make it less of a sacrifice to be a support role. (Though this already is less of a problem by having AI at all. :D)
4. It would be a very unique mechanic, and lets face it. STO ground combat needs some more unique mechanics before it feels solid. People have been feeling a little underwhelmed with it, and how similar it is to standard fantasy MMO combat. With magic like ranged healing abilities and everything else, this feature would be something that people would only get with this game, and it would help set it apart from the competition, and help it not seem as dull compared to the amazing ship combat.
Downsides:
1. It could be too overpowered when used. Less skilled players might complain about more skilled players winning fights a lot because of pet micromanagement. (But considering how much control we have over our pets already, this seems unlikely))
2. A player character might have too many abilities for the AI to take over and play decently. (This one depends on how much more complex a player character's abilites are than their bridge officers. The problem could be mitigated by picking a few abilities that we want the AI to use when they're us. Maybe limit it to the amount of abilities that BO's typically use. IE: I set myself up so that when the AI is me they use their heal, one buff, one debuff, and an attack. This would kind of be like how we set our pet bars up in WoW as hunters.)
3. If the AI emulates our abilities too well.
Example 1: a player may opt to not play themselves at all and just pew pew as one of their simpler BO's, thus they never learn how to use their own abilities well.
Example 2: A player realizes that the AI can be them just as well as they can or better, and they start to feel like the game doesn't need them at all.
Example 3: A powergamer realizes that the AI with a certain setup can do something faster/ more efficiently than humans can and again, never play as themselves. (This one I see as the most dangerous potential threat to my idea being implimented, but as far as solutions go, this one is pretty easy. How often in MMO history has someone complained that pet AI needs to be dumber? XD All you'd have to do is dumb down the AI if it was too smart, or limit how many skills it had to choose from, see the pet bar solution from problem 2.)
4. It could interfere with immersion. Hopping out of my body to take control of someone else doesn't feel very "trek", but then again neither does 5 ships orbiting a single planet and sending nothing but their most valuable officer each down to a dangerous planet. (I mean, it's already crazy enough that they create away teams with the most valuable/least replacable officers on their ship, but 5 ships sending nothing but their captains? That's just silly.) Basically, this is a game and not a sim, and fun is in general being chosen over "feeling trekish" when they butt heads.
You could also argue that this would simulate the way the camera cuts often between different officers in fight scenes. (The bar room fight in the tribble episode in ToS comes to mind. Scotty punching klingons, cut to checkov getting thrown over a table, cut to that trader guy trying not to spill his drink, cut back to scotty, etc.)
5. Extra dev time? I`m not sure how long this would take to impliment or how difficult it would be. It would be up to them to figure out if it would be worth it or not, but I certainly would appreciate it.
--
All in all I feel that the potential fun of this feature outweigh any of the problems it might have. If implimented correctly this could be the hook that makes ground combat in star trek online start to feel as fun and interesting as the space combat. It would be fun, and it would help people stay engaged and interested even if the character they rolled doesn't have the most interesting abilities.
Say I`m a medical officer and most of the time I`m content just giving orders and following my pet bridge officers and healing them, but then I come to a situation where it would be better to have a smart tactical or engineering officer than a smart medical officer. Then I switch to that character and give orders to everyone else from them.
Upsides:
1. I played a mastermind in CoX for awhile, and it was fun, but I came to the realization that I couldn't play for longer than half an hour without being lulled to sleep. Spending all my time being support for AI can be very boring if it's not done right. I could see myself getting REALLY bored if I`m a medical officer and all I ever do in combat is heal and do tiny bits of damage and protect/micro my bridge officers. This ability would change things up a lot and go a long way towards mitigating that. (Sometimes everyone just wants to shoot stuff!.) It would be refreshing to see things through their eyes sometimes even if they are much weaker and have less abilities.
2. It would provide a higher skill ceiling for pvp and even pve sometimes. Someone who could switch fast enough to place their guys in the right places and call all the right shots would do better than someone who just put all their pets on aggressive and ran in and zerged combat.
3. It would make it less of a sacrifice to be a support role. (Though this already is less of a problem by having AI at all. :D)
4. It would be a very unique mechanic, and lets face it. STO ground combat needs some more unique mechanics before it feels solid. People have been feeling a little underwhelmed with it, and how similar it is to standard fantasy MMO combat. With magic like ranged healing abilities and everything else, this feature would be something that people would only get with this game, and it would help set it apart from the competition, and help it not seem as dull compared to the amazing ship combat.
Downsides:
1. It could be too overpowered when used. Less skilled players might complain about more skilled players winning fights a lot because of pet micromanagement. (But considering how much control we have over our pets already, this seems unlikely))
2. A player character might have too many abilities for the AI to take over and play decently. (This one depends on how much more complex a player character's abilites are than their bridge officers. The problem could be mitigated by picking a few abilities that we want the AI to use when they're us. Maybe limit it to the amount of abilities that BO's typically use. IE: I set myself up so that when the AI is me they use their heal, one buff, one debuff, and an attack. This would kind of be like how we set our pet bars up in WoW as hunters.)
3. If the AI emulates our abilities too well.
Example 1: a player may opt to not play themselves at all and just pew pew as one of their simpler BO's, thus they never learn how to use their own abilities well.
Example 2: A player realizes that the AI can be them just as well as they can or better, and they start to feel like the game doesn't need them at all.
Example 3: A powergamer realizes that the AI with a certain setup can do something faster/ more efficiently than humans can and again, never play as themselves. (This one I see as the most dangerous potential threat to my idea being implimented, but as far as solutions go, this one is pretty easy. How often in MMO history has someone complained that pet AI needs to be dumber? XD All you'd have to do is dumb down the AI if it was too smart, or limit how many skills it had to choose from, see the pet bar solution from problem 2.)
4. It could interfere with immersion. Hopping out of my body to take control of someone else doesn't feel very "trek", but then again neither does 5 ships orbiting a single planet and sending nothing but their most valuable officer each down to a dangerous planet. (I mean, it's already crazy enough that they create away teams with the most valuable/least replacable officers on their ship, but 5 ships sending nothing but their captains? That's just silly.) Basically, this is a game and not a sim, and fun is in general being chosen over "feeling trekish" when they butt heads.
You could also argue that this would simulate the way the camera cuts often between different officers in fight scenes. (The bar room fight in the tribble episode in ToS comes to mind. Scotty punching klingons, cut to checkov getting thrown over a table, cut to that trader guy trying not to spill his drink, cut back to scotty, etc.)
5. Extra dev time? I`m not sure how long this would take to impliment or how difficult it would be. It would be up to them to figure out if it would be worth it or not, but I certainly would appreciate it.
--
All in all I feel that the potential fun of this feature outweigh any of the problems it might have. If implimented correctly this could be the hook that makes ground combat in star trek online start to feel as fun and interesting as the space combat. It would be fun, and it would help people stay engaged and interested even if the character they rolled doesn't have the most interesting abilities.