Star Trek

It seems that every major MMO allows players to have tailoring skills. And there are actual elements in Star Trek that support the need to allow it in STO.

Garak, a very prominant character on the DS9 series, made a profession of tailoring, even though it was merely a cover for his true nature as a former member of the Obsidian Order. Probably every outfit worn by any resident of the station had been adjusted or made by him.

In the Series Premier of TNG, Doctor Crusher purchased an entire bolt of cloth from a Bandi (sp?) vendor at farpoint station. A woman doesn't buy a bolt of cloth unless she intends to make something with it...

One of the advantages to the Star Trek vision of aliens is that 95% of them are all humanoid, and therefore can share clothing models without much trouble. And one of the things that I will praise Star Wars Galaxies for is its ability to allow its characters to further customize their appearance with a very wide variety of player-made clothing... That is a valid aspect to carry over into STO.

Besides, there IS a player base in MMOs who do not want to really get involved in fighting, but prefer to use MMOs as a social outlet. For them, their goal may be to sell 1000 shirts in a month... While to a hardcore gamer, this may seem like a lame goal, but to those players, it is what they enjoy. And if you do not enjoy the game you are playing, then why play it...

I'm probably going to get flamed for this statement, but I think that a lot of the systems in Star Wars Galaxies are more suited for the Star Trek universe than anything else...

Crafting and resource gathering for example...

We know that dilitium mines exist. The TOS Episode "Devil in the dark" presented a mining coloney under threat from the Horta. For the more socuial/production oriented players, such things should be presented in STO as alternate gameplay from starship combat and phaser fights...

In Christ,
G. B. Jackson

Although the futuristic realm of the Star Trek Universe is one full of replicators and holodecks, one pervasive theme through most of the TV and Movie series is that replicated items cannot fully replace the real thing.  Like your mention of Garak, Quark would similarly not exist of the universe survived on replicators alone.  So while tradeskills may not be *as* important, and perhaps even more of a diversion for most people than anything else, they should at least have some part in the game.

One option that I think would add tremendously to the game would be the option of being a trader.  Perhaps as distant planets are explored, new types of raw materials could be found.  Those raw materials could then be processed by a variety of tradeskills to anything from clothing to Romulan Ale... perhaps even used to create new technologies like the experimental Federation cloaking device or Transwarp drive.  However, I firmly believe that strict limits should be placed on this sort of thing.  Players who wish to be as integral a part of the player economy as traders would be should have to be devoted almost entirely to that track.

SWG, Everquest, and DAoC show us the three extremes of bad player economies.  In SWG, players can dabble in the economy by harvesting resources even without spending skill points on it.  As a result, those who devote themselves entirely to tradeskills were actually less able to advance in those tradeskills than players who went with combat first, then bought a large extractor and mined a truckload of resources to grind their way through the trade profession.  If the ability to harvest resources had been limited to the crafters only, it would have left combat people good at combat and crafters good at crafting rather than combat people being good at combat AND crafting, and crafting people being slightly less good at crafting than the combat people.  It also probably would have severely limited the rampant inflation that allowed players to have hundreds of millions of credits a scant 6 months after the game was released.

Everquest is on the other end of the spectrum.  There's plenty of items to craft... but they're all sub par to the loot items that are dropped.  Because of this, few people buy them, and those that do pay barely more than the cost of materials.  In Star Trek Online, having crafted items be the best in the game makes sense, not only from a story standpoint, but from a game design standpoint.  It would encourage role specialization and player interaction.

Then there's Dark Age of Camelot.  In DAoC, crafted items are some of the best in the game... and certainly the most available.  Unfortunately, the crafting system is very much a vendor anchored system... the only way to get resources in any sort of usable abundance is to buy them from vendors... which means you need money. Not only that, but you *have* to sell to players to make any profit... selling it back to the vendor only gives you back half of what the raw materials cost.  As a result, tradeskills are a very long, boring, and arduous task rather than an enjoyable subset of skill choices.  Making the raw materials primarily player gathered will again encourage role specialization and player interaction, and it will also make tradeskills more enjoyable, since 90% of the appeal of tradeskills (at least, among most of my fellow tradeskill fanatics that I've met) is the social aspect.  Sitting and chatting around the forge was the entire reason that I've done tradeskills in every MMORPG I've played.

My SWG characters are always carrying truckloads of outfits around, I could go to Ten Forward in my crewmans uniform, but I'll need appropriate clothing for the holodeck...!

Also what about the materials to build Starships with I'm sure Starfleet does a lot of contracting for materials. Meaning mining and purification would also be necessary. Remember an empire is only as good as it's economy and it's military might. And the merchants back up the military might with the materials they need from fabric for clothing to weapons grade materials for photon torpedoes. Also how is antimatter made in the 24th century that alone is needed for every ship in the universe.

The problem is, those who will be part of Starfleet IF it is available, as a uniform that will be the same and wear the same all the time. Unless of course we would go to a tailor to purchase our uniforms.

Quote (Daisemiin @ Sep. 09 2004, 4:08 pm)

My SWG characters are always carrying truckloads of outfits around, I could go to Ten Forward in my crewmans uniform, but I'll need appropriate clothing for the holodeck...!

Good thought for Starfleeters Did not hink of likfe outside of duty

Here is my 2c on crafting in STO

I wont say Yes Crafting or No Crafting, but I will bring up some issues with both.

First off crafting does add a lot to an mmo. It often becomes a focus point for a player economy and it also helps to encourage player interaction. There is also room for trade skills in STO. Now there are many ways to go about adding a crafting system. The first is having a crafter like class or skill set that you must use in order to craft. This gives more meaning and prestige to a crafter (making them few in numbers) but because you have to give up some combat abilities many who would try crafting will give it up.

Another way to add crafting would be to make it something anyone can do (a sub set of skills kind of like hobbies). This IMO would be the best for STO if Crafting is to be added. Why? The focus of STO seems to be on your Action/Adventure situations (like exploring, combat and doing missions). If this is the focus of the game that most of your key content elements will be in doing things in those categories. In order to make sure everyone has access to the key parts of the game, it would be best to allow anyone to join in crafting without giving up key skills that involve combat and exploration.

What kind of crafting should be in STO? Well as many have said tailoring would be a big plus. Another area would be in dealing with weapon and ship modification. Now many might like to see this in the engineers skill set however it could also be a crafting trade.

Ok now comes the bad part of crafting in STO. First off crafting is almost useless when you take into account replicators. Yes they might not always get it perfect but you wont really be able to tell a difference since your not wearing the cloths or eating the food. Now they could make it so a crafter can add extra bonus to cloths or armor but IMO thats very un Star Trek like. I mean how often did you see a Klingon get hit by a phaser and hear him yell out Ha Ha good thing I had my Klingon battle armor with +2 to phaser protection on it.

Crafting also takes a lot of time to balance, making the Devs take time away from the focus of the game in order to add in crafting abilities.

So there are many pluses to Crafting and still many drawbacks. In STO its a tuff call given the fact that you have replicaters and other things that make crafting a near useless tool. We will see over the next years how the devs push the game.