It feels like im spending 30% of the time staring at loading screens!!!

It's a result of very large zones with very little in them.

• Every Explore mission is its own zone (and a relatively short one at that).
• Traveling from one place to the next requires crossing many zones with no intresting terrain or chance of combat. Double click the map and tab out of the game.
• Most city type zones are missing some vendors. This requires you to go back out and travel from zone to zone.

At its core, STO gives you no reason to stay in one place for more than a few minutes. It also makes the travel from one place the the next completely meaningless. It's just a time sink. The loading screens are literally the only "terrain" of import during your journey.

As bothersome as this is, Star Trek itself is to blame for this one. Pick an episode, any episode, and count how many times the action switches locations. You could go from different streets, different cities, different planets, different star systems, nebulae, asteroids, yadda, yadda, yadda all within a 30 minute timespan. There is not a computer in existence that could accurately simulate all that, let alone STO's little engine.

Granted, they could disguise it better, play cutscenes over them, images/video of your ship in transit (The foundry is really great for this, seriously, play "In the Shadow of MIDAS", it's great) and that would help alleviate the problem. But I think they've gotten a bit too comfortable with their loading screens, plus, it would be hard to retrofit all the old missions, and it does feel a bit weird when you play a great foundry mission that disguises your movement well (in a good way though).

Going forward, disguising/removing/working around loading screens is something that should be considered.

Heck of a lot better than sonic 06. That's all I need. A loading screen for two lines of dialogue followed by more loading screens.

Sector Space is an elaborate lobby. I've been pushing them for years now to do something more interesting with it.

There is NO reason they need sector blocks. Sector Space is EMPTY. There's just nothing there. If Lord of the Rings Online can let me walk from the Shire to Isengard, in a world FILLED with terrain, creatures, players, quests and so forth, without a SINGLE loading screen, there's no excuse for STO to have sector blocks with nothing in them.


I've been saying all along that sector space should be HUGE and open. The star systems should be there, of course, but there should always be activity in the form of random events. They would appear somewhat like exploration cluster missions, but would have more variety.

For instance, as you're flying to DS9, you come across an unidentified sensor signal. You investigate and find it's an uncharted star system, or perhaps a rogue comet. Maybe it's a distress signal or any of a number of possibilities.

These missions would be open missions. Anyone could enter them at any time.

There would be some restriction of mission type, based on where in sector space you are. For example, in the core areas, you would get fewer unexplored star systems (because it's been well explored already). Out on the fringe, you would get fewer cargo ships in distress (because they wouldn't usually be transporting things out there). You get the idea.


Of course, this is something that would take a lot of work, and they really couldn't charge us for it on the store, so I don't expect it will ever happen. They're not interested in making a quality game experience, only in lining their pockets.

The only loading screens that bother me are in sector space.

I agree party with this as the loading screens between sector space should be abolished and we can seamlessly move from sector to sector. However while your proposing distress calls anomalies etc if at the core worlds you have more of them they would get annoying after a while. I think just seeing your ship in transit would alleviate the loading screens issues for a lot of people

What I mean is, icons would appear in sector space for you to interact with, just as they do in current exploration zones. You could ignore most of them, though I think it would be appropriate if some interacted with YOU (eg. an ambush, some kind of shipboard accident (which could lead to a mission aboard your ship!), or what have you).

It would make sector space a little more relevant.

Well, there are not only entry points to other zones, but NPC ships that access Other non-zone parts of the game that are "global' (exchange, mail, Ferengi shops, etc.).

Maybe the game engine doesn't allow for the expansive zone like what LotR has?

Heck, back in EverQuest, one zone took 14 minutes (!) to run across in a straight line ... compared to that, STO is frakkin' awesome. Granted EQ was the first and is ancient ... but it's all relative.

In the end, how long are we taking about per screen load ... 5 seconds? 10 seconds? Meh. I get to sip a drink, maybe even hop to the bathroom and when I get back the next screen is loaded.

Do I think it's a problem, not really. Would I like one - really - big - sector map? Sure. But if that happens I'll bet we'll read more complaints like, "omg, it takes soooo long to get from Gamma Orionis to Bajor - we should have Transwarp ability on every shipz0rz!!1"

This game simply has one of the worst game engines in the business.