Would you favor modified gameplay for smaller interiors?

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Okay... I'm not proposing first person camera, which is what you'd need to have accurate scale interiors. This has been shot down and it's been established over and over again that MMO players want third person perspective and that third person requires larger interiors for camera mobility.

However, glancing at Mass Effect, I notice that they have large ship interiors -- but still a bit smaller. And it looks like a major way they accomplish this is by restricting the camera to maybe around five feet away from the player character.

Now... I think this would be doable in Star Trek Online but it would require a heavy de-emphasis on managing bridge officers, relying on them to be more autonomous and less of a contributing factor both in terms of what you need to manage and in terms of your overall success. The camera panning and ability to zoom out is partly there for group management, I'd wager.

After running the U.S.S. Daxter mission, I did find the game to be a lot more engaging and challenging without a crew. It felt more hands on and not having the distraction of the crew's assistance or assisting the crew or managing them in any way intensified my feeling of investment.

Now... Assume they could reduce the distance that the camera will zoom out and make interiors closer to the desired size...

... and assume that doing so meant that you lost most of the Bridge Officer interface. You could set all passive, all aggressive, a waypoint for all, no micro-managing... and bridge officers would do substantially less damage and healing (but also take less damage and generate less aggro), rendering them as something closer to slight/cosmetic assistance (their real relevance coming in the form of non-combat play or assistance) and requiring you to carry the brunt of the burden for combat with your captain.

Would you favor BOs on the ground becoming more of a flavor element and the camera reined in if it meant smaller interiors?

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Why would limiting the camera require crippling the officers? The companions in mass effect are still useful in combat, and do pretty much the same damage as the main character with the same weapon. They just lack the ability to carry four other types of gun, and usually only have two powers where the main character has something like eight.

I'm strongly in favor of better interiors, but very much against crippling the officers. The goal should be to improve both, not destroy one in favor of the other.

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I am in favor with less Zooming out in order to shrink interiors a bit. I definitely want my Boff to be more useful than they are now, not less so. I would like them to be more independent when i am not micromanaging them. In the example of Mass Effect, Your companions compliment your abilities. While they don't do as much combat as you do, they are still very useful. They still kill bad guys, cover you when you are wounded, and make you feel like you are leading a Team of the best people around, not Chaperoning a kindergarten class on a field trip.

That's how i want my BOff to feel; part of an elite team. If we make them any LESS useful, i would rather just keep them on the ship and Solo since they almost go out of their way to sabotage my missions as they are now.

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Make fake ceilings. Something that allows the camera to clip into, but blocks the player. Player models behave like that ATM. The camera can clip into them but the player can't.
This way, you can allow the camera to go really high without creating massive internal ceiling heights. It does require re-mapping, but Cryptic would do it anyway if they went with your proposal.
This took care of the height, but not the width. The problem is that the width of the corridors serve 2 purposes. They are needed to allow the camera movement, but also needed to counter the bad BOFF pathing. The more narrow corridors are, the more likely your BOFFs get stuck on something.
Not even FPV can solve that issue.

Nerfing the BOFFs is a bad idea. Remove them completely or let them be as effective as you. Your BOFFs are pretty autonoumous (even hyperactive) right now. I rarely need to control them other than "Attack my enemy", or "Heal me".
If you remove them, you can have narrow corridors, but you will need to cut down the power of the mobs considerable (to 1/3rd) otherwise you won't stand a chance. It would also feel funny that there are 1000 hands on the ship, but you need to do all the firefight yourself while your crack marines take a long rest.

If you nerf them, you need to nerfs the MOBs too. BOFFs do less damage and they take less damage. That is nice but can't really work well. If you nerf the mob HPs down, you will be uber powerfull. Your damage will be out of the leage.
If you leave the mob HP at the same level, ground battles will be even longer than now because your collective DPS will be lower.

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I do not get it. Every 3rd person game I have ever played had no problems with interiors. Mass Effect 1 and 2, Oblivion, Morrowind, Gothic series, heck in Dragon Age Origins you can change from 3rd person to a strategy like overview. In ME as well in DaO you have companions who behave quite good. I really do not see a reason, why should we change our BOs in order to get a normal scale interiors. When I first saw my bridge, I had to laugh. They could play a football match there. And now the corridors. It is so incredibly ugly, that I visited it once never to return. So yes, interiors can be done to look normal without hampering anything else. But it would require more than copy/paste from their previous games.

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a fix that allows for clipping past walls/roofs would be the ideal.

a condition applied that turns any wall between the character and the camera becomes transparent would be what they want. if people remember, the sets for the shows and films were built so any one wall could be removed or replaced to allow for shooting at different angles at short notice, setting a camera condition that "removes" a wall in the way would be basically the same.

that way we can have smaller rooms/corridors and keep the same Boff setup (or at least not sacrifice any of it)

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I do not get it. Every 3rd person game I have ever played had no problems with interiors. Mass Effect 1 and 2, Oblivion, Morrowind, Gothic series, heck in Dragon Age Origins you can change from 3rd person to a strategy like overview. In ME as well in DaO you have companions who behave quite good. I really do not see a reason, why should we change our BOs in order to get a normal scale interiors. When I first saw my bridge, I had to laugh. They could play a football match there. And now the corridors. It is so incredibly ugly, that I visited it once never to return. So yes, interiors can be done to look normal without hampering anything else. But it would require more than copy/paste from their previous games.

Mass Effect has much tighter camera restrictions and is less about NPC control and object placement. (Yes, you don't NEED to think about these things on lower difficulty in STO but STO is designed around these concepts and, hence, you're supposed to be able to zoom out enough to see 5 BOs at once.)

I'm suggesting that this game would be able to have interiors more like Mass Effect (which are still oversized) but it would mean having the same restricted camera as Mass Effect.

As noted before every game which has a non-First Person mode has oversized interiors. This includes Mass Effect. But how far that third person view camera extends determines HOW MUCH out of scale the game is.

A first person game can have a perfect scale. A third person game must be scaled up... but restricting the camera (as ME does) allows you to keep a somewhat better scale.

Transparent walls/ceilings are not an option for STO because of the way that layers of high quality textures are used. You could get part of it transparent but there would be flickering ghost elements because the existing textures and assets are not just flat textures and do not have a simple interaction with things like lighting sources.

As it stands, the amount of camera zoom we have is deemed necessary by developers for the gameplay we have. And the devs are NOT INTERESTED in designing the game around first person view. But I don't see why a more restrictive camera view (less ability to zoom out, for example) isn't an option for smaller interiors, although IF the developers feel that the current level of zoom is necessary for game mechanics, I'm suggesting that when ground gets overhauled, game mechanics could be simplified so that zoom could be more restricted and the max camera distance could be restricted. But I'm acknowledging that there must be a reason we're allowed to zoom out the camera so far now and that whatever the reason is for that might need revising.

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Transparent walls/ceilings are not an option for STO because of the way that layers of high quality textures are used. You could get part of it transparent but there would be flickering ghost elements because the existing textures and assets are not just flat textures and do not have a simple interaction with things like lighting sources.

Hm, last time I clipped my camera into a wall in ESB I didn't experiece flickering. But it was some time ago so I may remember incorrectly. However, when your cam clips into player, there is no flickering at all, that I'm sure of. Which means there is at least 1 texture and model type which doesn't flicker when clipped. If there is one, it can be used to achieve the fake ceiling effect.
Why tear down a wall when you can simply work around it.

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As noted before every game which has a non-First Person mode has oversized interiors. This includes Mass Effect. But how far that third person view camera extends determines HOW MUCH out of scale the game is. .

Hmm, I do not think so. Deep Space 9 The Fallen had up to scale interiors 10 years ago.

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/startrekdeepspacentf/images/0/39/?tag=screenshot

http://games.tiscali.cz/reviews/stdsnfallen/x5.html

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/startrekdeepspacentf/images/0/11/?tag=screenshot

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/startrekdeepspacentf/images/0/12/?tag=screenshot

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/startrekdeepspacentf/images/0/31/?tag=screenshot

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I just took a look at videos of DS9: The Fallen (I need to reinstall it from disc). Interiors are very slightly oversized (moreso in some cases than others) but the camera is much more restricted.

Maximum zoom out distance looks to be ten feet or less and it doesn't look like the camera can rotate around to view your character from the front. (Now, what if they removed that ability in STO but had a toggle that would cut to a frontal view with a max distance of ten feet or so?) The ability of the camera to swing around coupled with zoom distance probably contributes to the width of hallways.

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This is probably the best comparison/point of reference for DS9: THE FALLEN

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZjFKehdQ_s

Note both the camera and the map size.

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Personally, I'm not bothered by the size of the interiors. I realize that many players are sticklers for accuracy, but I'm more concerned about getting some functionality for the interiors.

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I know many people have talked about how Elite Force interiors can't work in third person. But, I have played them in third person and they seem fine to me. In the console command, you can set to third person and I haven't had any problems.

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I know many people have talked about how Elite Force interiors can't work in third person. But, I have played them in third person and they seem fine to me. In the console command, you can set to third person and I haven't had any problems.

I bet you still can't set the camera half a football field away and rotate it around your character in 360 degrees.

I think the third person versus first person dichotomy is a false one. You could have a more restricted third person camera and have smaller interiors.

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Personally, I'm not bothered by the size of the interiors. I realize that many players are sticklers for accuracy, but I'm more concerned about getting some functionality for the interiors.

Same here. I actually like the larger interiors. And these are just three decks. On a canon note, who's to say the rest of the decks aren't submarines in space? These three decks could be purposely designed this way sortof the way the DS9 is designed with a huge Promenade and smaller halls in the remainder of the station.

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i just think cryptic would be better giving us a giant character class and then sticking two fingers up and going

SEE thats why we had giant corridors :)

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Many games allow the player to scroll in and out to their particular comfort-distance, AND switch to first-person if scrolled in close enough. This should be an option, and would allow correctly-scaled interiors without any problem.

Last night, I was backed against a wall and was fighting Romulans just fine, with the camera settled in what was essentially my character's head. It actually looked pretty cool, and the universe didn't end. It's possible to add first person and allow each player to find their own gameplay style.

NOTE - I'm not picking on the oversized ship interiors just because I like detail-accuracy... I'm picking on them because the game as a whole doesn't feel like Star Trek, and the interiors are one of the most tangible places where this can be illustrated. Between the hundreds of hours of available resources throughout all 5 series AND the regular requests from the playerbase for accuracy, I just can't comprehend why the interiors are still oversized. 'Camera Clipping Issues' just don't hold water when so many other games have pulled it off.

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i just think cryptic would be better giving us a giant character class and then sticking two fingers up and going

SEE thats why we had giant corridors :)

/signed I love this!

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I restrict the camera to my head yet I still manage to control my away team just fine. Do you remember Battlezone from 1998? It had a way grander scoope, but you still managed to order your allies without problem from FPV.
So I don't beleive that there is a direct link between effective team control and point of view.

If normal ceiling height can be achieved by lowering the cam_max_dist then I have no objection. But it should not involve nerfing/removing the away team.

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Sorry but i'd take planet sized interiors before those boff modifications.

I like having the ability to have more control over my pets, it annoys me to no end that i don't have similar control over the pets my vo'quv launches that i do with my boff pets. you don't need to nerf boffs for camera restrictions, brothers in arms allows you to have full control of pets and can do it from a first person or over the shoulder view so i don't see any reason why you couldn't do the same with STO.

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Personally, I much prefer that developer time not be wasted on ship interiors in order to free them up to code mission content, resolve PvP issues and better enhance the current space and ground combat environments.

In Cryptic's offering of STO, we have an avatar that, depending on the map it's currently spawned into, is either displayed as a humanoid or as a space ship. I would much rather not travel inside either of the versions of my avatar. :)

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Since when is there a ton of BO control? They just follow me, get in the way sometimes, but otherwise do their own thing. BO control probably has very little to do with the camera issue they site, and why the corridoes must be so wide. If the corridors were 4x as wide as the average sized character and maybe 10 ft tall, I would think thats fine, but this insane 20-30 ft tall corridors and tennis court wide interiors is retarded.

I'm not sure what the max height is, but having your head close to the ceiling is the price you pay for a tall character IMO.

Also, I don't see why the camera can't see through the other sides of walls and travel through them.

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I just don't see interior size as important enough to spend much time on them as opposed to other development. Personally I think the interiors look fine. The only problem I see is that they don't have the look of the series. But honestly I've always felt the interiors in the series/movies didn't look realistic for multi-purpose ships that were designed to spend years in space. Hallways and rooms with ceilings lower than most high schools just seemed silly. They always looked more like they were made for hollywood cameras than to be actual interstellar space craft interiors.

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My problem is that a game engine from a decade ago and people with spare time can make a much better scaled and accurate map than a company a decade later being paid to do it.

Here are some comparisons (both in Third Person.)

Voyager: Elite Force VS Star Trek Online 1 (http://a.imageshack.us/img268/9986/efvssto1.jpg)
Voyager: Elite Force VS Star Trek Online 2 (http://a.imageshack.us/img256/8512/efvssto2.jpg)
Voyager: Elite Force VS Star Trek Online 3 (http://a.imageshack.us/img530/9682/efvssto3.jpg)

Obviously, Elite Force has poorer graphics, but other than that, I find that bridge to be far superior to Cryptic's.

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I think the only thing EF has going for it there is the scale.

And I'm getting frustrated with this thread because people who want scale adjustments seem unwilling to make any concessions or discuss this in any depth and people who aren't bothered by the scale seem to see it as a waste of time, even if it can be part of the planned reworking of how ground combat looks, feels and works.

All I'm saying is, EF is different because it has less camera mobility. I think the restricted camera mobility COULD factor into a modified ground game.

Since when is there a ton of BO control? They just follow me, get in the way sometimes, but otherwise do their own thing. BO control probably has very little to do with the camera issue they site, and why the corridoes must be so wide. If the corridors were 4x as wide as the average sized character and maybe 10 ft tall, I would think thats fine, but this insane 20-30 ft tall corridors and tennis court wide interiors is retarded.

You're playing the game incorrectly if you aren't using the BO control. People claimed it was too hard and so the game was made easy enough that you didn't have to use the BO strategies and fabrication placements... But the game was designed around those strategies as the correct way to play. It's supposed to be an RTS but it's just been nerfed so heavy you can win without the strategy on most difficulties against most enemies.

But you're playing a game designed around a groundview RTS approach. It's just been made so easy, you don't have to use the strategy. My point is, why not make it less of a RTS since people aren't using those mechanics the way they're supposed to be used anyway...?

If the strategy isn't getting used (and anywhere it is required generates so many complaints that it results in content being nerfed down so as not to require thestrategy), take it out and replace it with something more engaging.

You're SUPPOSED to be using BO and fabrication placement, cover and managing your BO's positions and targets. Nobody seems to enjoy that and it's rarely required except on Elite so I'm saying, ditch it. But that doesn't mean it's not the intended design or "correct" playstyle, it's just that any time it's actually required of players, they complain until the requirement to utilize the system is dropped.


I'm not sure what the max height is, but having your head close to the ceiling is the price you pay for a tall character IMO.

Also, I don't see why the camera can't see through the other sides of walls and travel through them.

Because the walls and ceilings are not flat surfaces but are multi-layered objects with dimensionality and layers to them, concealing light sources and are composed of polygons that clip through eachother, some that would be visible even if the walls were invisible.

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My problem is that a game engine from a decade ago and people with spare time can make a much better scaled and accurate map than a company a decade later being paid to do it.

Here are some comparisons (both in Third Person.)

Voyager: Elite Force VS Star Trek Online 1 (http://a.imageshack.us/img268/9986/efvssto1.jpg)
Voyager: Elite Force VS Star Trek Online 2 (http://a.imageshack.us/img256/8512/efvssto2.jpg)
Voyager: Elite Force VS Star Trek Online 3 (http://a.imageshack.us/img530/9682/efvssto3.jpg)

Obviously, Elite Force has poorer graphics, but other than that, I find that bridge to be far superior to Cryptic's.

I think the Cryptic interiors are fine. When Scotty was on the Enterprise-D he mentioned how even an Admiral wouldn't even get quarters that big in his day. In the early 25th century, the bridges of Federation ships may be bigger for a reason.

But, if you want Cryptic to focus more time on the interiors, fine. Don't complain when we get no more new episodes.

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They should take a look at Everquest 2 or even SWG, as both had small rooms and large rooms, with four walls and a ceilng. There is no good reason why the rooms need to be so large.

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They should take a look at Everquest 2

In terms of Everquest, the camera was, as Leviathan suggests in the original post, rather close to you.

Thing is ... this game is different. The wider view enhances gameplay both aesthetically and mechanically.

Large rooms are a small price to pay for that.

What I'd really like is more authentic rooms. The scale doesn't bug me much at all. What bugs me a lot is how the Intrepid bridge looks nothing like the Voyager Bridge. Or the Diplomat bridge looks nothing like the Sovereign Enterprise E's bridge. The size isn't as big an issue as the details they overlook. Why sell an intrepid bridge that looks nothing like an intrepid bridge?

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In terms of Everquest, the camera was, as Leviathan suggests in the original post, rather close to you.

Thing is ... this game is different. The wider view enhances gameplay both aesthetically and mechanically.

Large rooms are a small price to pay for that.

What I'd really like is more authentic rooms. The scale doesn't bug me much at all. What bugs me a lot is how the Intrepid bridge looks nothing like the Voyager Bridge. Or the Diplomat bridge looks nothing like the Sovereign Enterprise E's bridge. The size isn't as big an issue as the details they overlook. Why sell an intrepid bridge that looks nothing like an intrepid bridge?

CBS must not have given them IP clearance yet. Especially considering it is so obvious it isn't Voyager's bridge.

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Another thing they could do is actually design new interiors that would actually look better on the bigger scale the game must support.

The Star War MMO showed screenshots that supported that design view, so, if the ArtDevs go and create a new 2409 design aethetic that would look high-quality and mesh well with the chosen scale... it might be possible to have your cake and eat it too.

I mean, with the Star Fleet program to allow many species easier access to joining Star Fleet, there could be all sorts of 'out-there' excuses for large scale interiors following the example the U.S.S. Titan's multispecies crew showed.

- Sidewalks with lower gravity settings to allow species like the Elaysians to navigate more easily within a ship interior.
- Large corridors, turbolift and entryways to allow non-humanoid and larger species to circulate around a ship, with a set of larger transporter pads (along with the smaller normal size ones) to accomodate them.
- Heck, part of the corridor could even have aquarium-style watery passages to allow mobility to some Seelie, Cetacean and Xindi-Aquatic crewmembers.

As I see it, the future of Star Fleet can be pretty "out there" with the direction it could potentially take. I'm much more concerned with the concept to be well thought out and the design to be high-quality (not just 'scale bigger because of camera').

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Large rooms are a small price to pay for that.

I disagree here. The price to pay is too large. I'd happily forgo seeing my character from farther away if it meant feeling like I was actually on a scaled starship.

...Why sell an intrepid bridge that looks nothing like an intrepid bridge?

Completely agreed. The bridges, when named after ones we've seen in the shows, should represent the ones we've seen in the shows. I'm hoping they add a TOS bridge in the future, but I'm horribly fearful that my crew will look like munchkins when placed in Cryptic's version.

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Is it possible to have the camera distance restriction in indoor only maps? I have yet to see a map where you go from outside to inside without a load screen. Outside you need the view distance to control BOffs, inside you don't, and with more scaled interiors, they're not going to be that far away from you anyway.

The scale of the interior set pieces is more than just room size and ceiling height, watching an NPC tap away at a screen that extends twice their height above their head just doesn't look right. Either scale it down to where it should be, or get those poor guys some step ladders! :D

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Because the walls and ceilings are not flat surfaces but are multi-layered objects with dimensionality and layers to them, concealing light sources and are composed of polygons that clip through eachother, some that would be visible even if the walls were invisible.

I tested the clipping in ESB. There was some model flickering, but only in certain positions. Like when I had multiple layers of walls between the camera and the other room.
When I had only 1 wall it was perfectly fine. It was also perfectly fine when I clipped into some model objects like plants and stuff. No light problem, no flickering nothing.
So if Cryptic created some bigger fake ceiling models, clipable by the camera, ,and placed them on the maps, the huge inner height problem could be solved.

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Outside you need the view distance to control BOffs, inside you don't,...

I think I've been playing STO wrong.

I never control my Bridge Officers. I've bought them skills appropriate to their character and profession, increased their skill levels to where I feel comfortable, and just let them go. They heal me, they drop mines, they attack the enemy, and they follow me around. They never get stuck on geometry, although my doctor seems to enjoy running over consoles a lot. The AI has been more than adequate for my needs.

I think I've ordered them to "attack my target" in the past, and I know I've had to call them to me once or twice. Beyond that, they just do what they're trained to do.

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I think I've been playing STO wrong.

I never control my Bridge Officers. I've bought them skills appropriate to their character and profession, increased their skill levels to where I feel comfortable, and just let them go. They heal me, they drop mines, they attack the enemy, and they follow me around. They never get stuck on geometry, although my doctor seems to enjoy running over consoles a lot. The AI has been more than adequate for my needs.

I think I've ordered them to "attack my target" in the past, and I know I've had to call them to me once or twice. Beyond that, they just do what they're trained to do.

That's a result of people begging for difficulty nerfs.

I'm suggesting that they just start designing the game around your way of playing.

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I think the Cryptic interiors are fine. When Scotty was on the Enterprise-D he mentioned how even an Admiral wouldn't even get quarters that big in his day. In the early 25th century, the bridges of Federation ships may be bigger for a reason.

But, if you want Cryptic to focus more time on the interiors, fine. Don't complain when we get no more new episodes.

I can take bigger, I have no problem with bigger, but the 100 years between TOS and TNG, the quarters got bigger, yeah, but nothing like the 30 year gap between TNG and STO. Plus, he was kinda crazy in that episode, so I wouldn't exactly take him at face value, considering the quarters he was in was about the size of Kirk's from the Original Series.