My biggest thing has got to be PSI's. I mean, what's the point of being on a starship if you're not actually on it? Someone should start a poll for forwarding to Cryptic on: Would you be willing to work your way up? ie. Would you be willing to be the doctor, or Chief Engineer or Science officer on someone else's ship? Or are all the naysayers right and everyone just wants to be the captain? Could you really follow orders or would you just say "screw it" and bail? What if you're given an order you feel is unjust or stupid? Would you follow it anyway or bail? What if one of your friends is down in Engineering and it becomes necessary to order them to their death, do you do it? Would they even follow the order or would they say "Sorry, I spent the last four months building this character and now you're going to make me kill him/her? No way!! Send someone else." "Real" Starfleet Officers 1. Volunteer knowing that their lives may be forfeit for the good of the ship. 2. Are willing to do whatever is necessary to protect the safety of the ship regardless of their own personal feelings. and 3. The most important, really. They can be punished if they don't follow orders! You can't have PSI's with PC's grouped together into one crew unless you have firmly established rules of conduct and real, game-relevant punishments. Is it really worth it for Cryptic (or whomever) to bother with PSI's when no one is going to bother actually making it worthwhile for them to do it? If they do make PSI's, how much of the ship would be accessible? Would you need clearance (ie Rank/Exp.) to gain access to certain parts of the ship? What if someone you know has clearance but you don't? Could they "sneak" you in? These are just some of the problems the devs are going to have dropped on them if they decide to go with PSI's. Personally, I want them, but I think they are just going to turn out to be too difficult to make it happen. How many of us would really sacrifice our hard-earned XP, Rank, Gadgets, Rep, Quarters etc. just so that the other players on the ship can keep playing while we have to go back to square one?
My answer to the orders question etc.? Yes on all counts. I will be one of those serious immersive players that will treat the game as real-life scenarios and not just some sim that I can turn on and off at will. As a member of a crew I will make sure that I have the time to complete the missions given to me before I embark upon them and follow orders as if I were actually there. As Captain I would insist that my crew also do the same and schedule game times to accommodate as many of them as possible. If my crew can't or won't then I would recommend them for transfer to another ship.
The other thing I would want to see in the game is multi-monitor support. Increasingly, more and more people are going to multi-monitor systems but there isn't a single piece of software out there that specifically had this in mind in the development stage. I run dual 21.5 inch LCD monitors and since I got them I have yet to see anything that makes the $350 price tag for each of them worth it. Every game I have runs on one screen, making my other one useless during game play. What I want is to be able to put my main POV on one monitor and put all my auxiliary stuff (ie. comms, inv, maps etc.) on the other so I don't have to clutter up my main monitor with junk. It can't really be that hard to do. I understand that not everyone has this or can afford it so it would have to be an option to choose during installation. You simply choose single- or multi-monitor play and the game can adjust itself.
And while we're on the subject of monitors, what about touch-screens? They're here and they're not going away. Some things that may hold some level of difficulty using the mouse could be much more easily accomplished by simply touching the screen. ie. lining up your targeting reticle on an enemy. No matter how much they bounce around you just have to move your finger a little and they're back in the crosshairs. How about running the Starfleet interface? How much quicker could you accomplish a reroute operation when all you have to do is touch the screen at the appropriate spot and slide your finger to the new spot? I intend to add a third monitor to my system within a year and it will be a touch screen. I would really like it if the software devs got on their horses and wrote some software to make use of the new technologies. Again this would have to be an install option as not everyone has a touch screen. (YET)
That's all I can think of off the top for now. I'll post more as it comes to me.
J.T.
