What would you think of an Open Space Galaxy?

[ObiJuanShenobi]

In case your unclear just what Open Space means, it basically means that you have to take your ship and personally fly it to every destination, as opposed to just clicking on a map, and getting there after a short animation. An example of a game with open space would be Star Trek Online. (However it should be noted that STO has very dull and unexciting planets, and is essentially a Space Game).

 

Obviously, Open Space would mean that it would take longer to get from place to place. An idea of the travel time would be that getting from Illum to Tatooine, would take a maximum of an hour, Illum and Tatooine are on opposite sides of the Galaxy. When traveling, you could put a companion in charge of pioleting, telling him where to take you. The ships would also need to be upgraded and given more stuff for the player to do while aboard, perhaps Pazak games, the travel time could also encourage groups to travel together.

 

You could also have the possibility of an encounter in space, where you need to escape or fight off pirates or an enemy which would otherwise damage your ship. You could also incorporate Guild Ships into this, by making guild ships pioletable, allowing you to take your ship to where ever you need it to be, and could even engage and damage the ships of other Guilds, allowing for your guilds to have rank based on Naval Skill. You could also add in some space stations in space, which guilds could claim and fight over.

 

You could even make a Dynamic Naval war, where Imperial Guild Ships join together to make the Imperial Fleet and Republic Guilds join together to make the Republic Fleet. Each Guild having one ship (Battleship), which they can name and upgrade. This would also encourage guilds to group together, and for more, larger guilds to form.

 

The current Galactic Map which you see on your ship would probably have to be updated, to give more realistic spacing .

 

Open Space and Naval Aspects of the game would obviously take a long time to develop and put into the game, especially because it needs to be very good in order for it to be worth the added travel time. But it would add a more realist and engaging part to the game.

 

What do you think of the Open Space Proposal? Please comment.

 

I like your idea but an hour is pretty extreme. I'd say 5 minutes tops kinda like riding a shuttle to locations on world...and ONLY is you could play a mini game while you wait such as Pazaak or whatever game it was that Cheebacca was playing against C3PO. And the travel time would have to be optional.

 

Now, encounters in space? Yes, now this is something that I would love to see. This would put the "Star Wars" into the Star Wars game. All in favor of guild ships and rendezvous with buddies and world PvP scenarios. The only way that could work (coming from someone who doesnt know a damn thing about developing games) is if you could drive your ship like you can in Battlefront (not on rails) and for BW to code 'space' the way the code being on a planet...meaning a physical place you can move about and have points to get to. That'd take a hell of alot of work though, right now (outside of space missions) space is nothing but a cutscene that's played on the windshield of your ship. With how vast they would need 'space' to be that you can travel in, if wager a bet that implementing this idea would more than double the size of the overall game on your hard drive

Edited July 11, 2013 by ObiJuanShenobi

[CosmicKat]

Hey, if you want to voluntarily be less of a "baby" when your character gets defeated, go for it. Come up with some suitable penalty and impose it on your characters. That way you get what you want and the "babies" get what they want. Everyone''s happy.

 

Except you. What you really want is for everyone to have to conform to your idea of how an MMO should work.

 

Don't be so quick to dismiss my idea of how an MMO should work. I have designed, programmed, developed, and run just as many highly successful MMO's as Bioware. None. Therefore, we are equally qualified.

 

You're welcome.

[psandak]

I'm sorry it just won't fly (no pun intended).

 

Too many gamers want the travel experience sped up not slowed down. Spending precious seconds traveling is too much and you want to spend an hour crossing the galaxy? Even in tabletop RPGs I play in, travel is hand waved... unless something important is going to happen.

 

I will admit, it would be more immersive and realistic, but there is such a thing as too much realism in games.

[CosmicKat]

I'm sorry it just won't fly (no pun intended).

 

Too many gamers want the travel experience sped up not slowed down. Spending precious seconds traveling is too much and you want to spend an hour crossing the galaxy? Even in tabletop RPGs I play in, travel is hand waved... unless something important is going to happen.

 

I will admit, it would be more immersive and realistic, but there is such a thing as too much realism in games.

 

The issue with all of the "penalties" and "time sinks" in MMO's today is that they are all remnants of things from EQ that have been so watered down as to be completely meaningless. All of these did serve a purpose at one time, now they are like an appendix. They are useless. Nothing replaced them or the functions they served.

 

Death Penalty: The original intent of death penalties was to make you cautious and to actually fear dying. Now the only purpose it serves is a credit sink.

 

Travel Time: Original intent of travel time was A) to make the world seem bigger and more real B) to slow down your levelling and C) to facilitate player interaction. Now it takes so little time that it is pointless.

 

Down Time: Evolved from "meditating" in EQ. Mostly just a mechanism to extend levelling time. Now it is simply pointless. You can easily "meditate" anywhere, at any time, and it never requires more than 30 seconds.

 

Bind Points: They actually meant something when travelling took time. Now it doesn't, and the bind points are spaced about 30 seconds of speeder travel away from each other.

 

These weren't always good, and were sometimes terrible in the old days. Now they are just pointless and shouldn't even be in the game anymore. It's ridiculous that time is spent programming these things when they serve no function. They only exist because they existed in the template that all MMO's copy (EQ).

[Fergz]

I think they need to speed travel up not slow it down.

 

The old swg way was you went to a space port and bought a ticket got on a shuttle and went. even if you had to wait for shuttle its faster then the orbital station mess we have to deal with in this game

[PLynkes]

Is there a single example of two planets in the same system (i.e, they orbit the same star) in the game?

 

Not that I know of, but Nar Shaddaa is a moon of Hutta. Look up when you are on Nar Shaddaa. That big thing in the sky is Hutta. And surprisingly, the big thing in the sky when you are on Hutta is Nar Shaddaa.

 

You can also see Nar Shaddaa from your cockpit window when in orbit of Hutta (or maybe the other way round, or maybe both, I can't remember, but I definitely saw one of them off to the left out of my window).

Edited July 12, 2013 by PLynkes

[ghoul_drool]

Intriguing suggestion. It reminds me (showing my age here, haha) of the very first DUNE rpg where you had to travel from base to base in real time with an Ornithopter or worm, in order to spot hidden stuff on the route. You could explore the entire map this way and find more resources and the like. If you skipped the travel and traveled there instantly (also possible) you would never find anything, of course.

 

That would be the only way to do it right. Use hyperspace engines? Fine, but no hidden treasures. Or, you could explore and possibly find something, which would take time.

[ImpactHound]

Seems to me from watching Star Wars that inter-system flight happens pretty much instantaneously (or at least very quickly) via "hyperspace" (whatever the hell that is). Galaxies are BIG. If you are flying at sub-light speeds it will take you millions of years to get anywhere. Hyperspace travel seems to consist of punching in some co-ordinates and arriving at your destination, which is pretty much what we have now.

 

Now sub-light travel within a system, a system that had different planetary bodies, asteroid fields and such, that would be fun. I'd love to be able to actually fly from Hutta to Nar Shaddaa like that. But I think getting from system to system shouldn't be a matter of "driving" your ship there. We don't see that in Star Wars.

 

This was the impression I got with Voss being "re-discovered" despite being in Hutt space. If co-ordinates ever got lost or forgotten by a race or civiliazation, getting back to that place will be tough because if you don't have that bookmark, finding it again is like looking for a specific name in an encyclopedia set without a table of contents or index. Good luck with that!

 

On that note, I do NOT miss the lack of encyclopedias or the Dewey decimal system one bit. Remember the cheap ones taht grocery stores would carry, and parents would buy each volume one month at a time?