Tribbles in Ecstasy Take 220: "A Leaf on the Wind" has warped on to Holosuite Media, you can download and stream it from:
This week we talk to Thomas Marrone (
@crypticttc ), 2D/3D Artist for Star Trek Online before discussing all the news from STO, Star Trek Timelines, Star Trek 2017 TV Series and lots, lots more!
We've been nominated for the People's Choice Podcast Award – you can vote each day until June 12th – If you like what we do, help us get a Star Trek podcast as the winner of the Games and Hobbies category by voting for us now at
http://www.podcastawards.com!
The topics discussed this week are:
- Interview with Star Trek Online's 2D/3D Artist, Thomas Marrone,
- Star Trek Online news (2:05:00),
- Foundry Challenge from Foundry Roundtable,
- Crystaline Entity,
- Before and After Blog,
- Patch Notes,
- Trek Memories Blog,
- Episode Introductions,
- Galorndon Core,
- Role Play blog
- Star Trek Timelines (2:20:43),
- Star Trek News (2:32:34),
- New Series Writers Announced
- Unoffcial Productions (2:55:40),
- Star Trek Anthology,
- Star Trek Renegades,
- New Voyages,
- Star Trek Axanar
- Other News,
- and more!
Our community questions this week are:
1. Where did you place in the Star Trek Timelines Cowboy event and how did it differ from previous events?
2. What are YOUR Star Trek memories?
Please reply to this post with any feedback you have about any topic we've covered or even about the show in general, we'd love to hear what our listeners have to say. And feedback to us now and be entered in to a prize draw to get yourself a Star Trek Online Legacy of Romulus Starter Pack, Zen and Lockbox keys. Rules are here:
http://holosuitemedia.com/tiefeedbackgiveaways2016/ - Just reply to this post to enter.
Please help friend of the show and fellow Star Trek Online player and podcaster Mav with donations to support his recovery with his current health situation here:
http://www.gofundme.com/tomsrecovery.
LLAP
Comments
Oh gods.... We missed a few news things last week after I got ill during the show... So prepare for Sun-Rant this week! A whopping 2 of them!
Every time I click on it, it just takes me back to the Blog page.
I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born!
Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
2.) I was kind of a late Star Trek fan. The sci-fi I grew up watching when I was little Chozo Jr. was Star Wars and Star Trek. I remember being bored as a kid whenever my dad would watch TNG. (I was like 4 or 5 and didn't have that much of an attention span. Cut me some slack lol) So like most kids, I preferred Wars over Trek because at that age Wars just appealed to the fantasy and fairy tale parts of my imagination. The stuff like political and moral ideologies that TNG touched into a lot just didn't do it for me. I still liked watching the few shots of the ships though.
I didn't get into Trek until I saw First Contact. I think I was like 7 or 8. I remember being completely awed by the Sovereign class. It looked so real to me. (Heck it still looks real.) When Worf's crew member says to him "Sir, there's another starship coming in. It's the Enterprise." and the Sovereign zooms past the Defiant with the music playing... man. I'll never forget that. That shot to this day is still one of the most impressive looking special effects in my opinion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4DCOpG1oNE
Sovereign-chan deserves a t6
I also remember the Borg scaring me. The scene where an officer was pleading Picard for help as the Borg nanoprobes were coursing through his body and all the general mechanical horrors (such as getting drilled through the eye) really made me squeamish as a kid.
I was into Trek as much as my dad was by the time I was a teenager. I went back and saw how great TNG really was. I had a lot of catching up to do, but it was great. When it was announced that there would be a new movie after a long Trek drought, I was really giddy. When the first trailer finally hit, I showed it to my dad and he was like "What? Are you serious? Is this real?" It was a huge surprise to him as he doesn't follow movie news at all and I don't know how I never ended up telling him. He was as happy as I was seeing a (pretty much dead) franchise we love come back to life.
Having this problem, too, no download or play buttons appearing for me.
It's been a HELL of a week!
No rush, man. It happens!
Seriously though... The issues we've been having could drive a person to drink!
http://holosuitemedia.com/tie220/
Yup.. definitely enjoyed it and was very happy for the detailed answers by Cryptic_TtC *^_^* !!! Thanks a lot for the show!
Ah yes about the name.. http://forvo.com/search/kurumi morishita/ - (..and "she", not "he"..) *^_^* \\//,
You'd be surprised how many times i get called He by our guests.... even friends. The old habit that "everyone online is a guy" is a hard habit to break. ^-^
Community questions:
1.) Nope, still not playing Timelines. Nothing to see, move along.
2.) That's a good question. Let me think... I vaguely remember watching an episode or two or maybe a handful... it's a blur... of TOS way back when.
I remember watching a few episodes of TNG, but that was weird. Well, I was still a kid and it was on in the afternoon and not exactly on my favorite TV channel, so... I did not watch that much of it.
I only really got into Star Trek when DS9 came around. And even then the first couple of episodes almost lost me. But friends kept talking about it and when I gave it another try, it had turned into an enjoyable experience. So much so that I actually started collecting the official Star Trek fact files. Yes, all of them.
Then Voyager came around and that was a drag. I watched it, but sometimes it was more like background noise to me. I think I started watching it more closely after Kes left.
And when Enterprise came around it aired on... saturday afternoon? I watched an episode or two, but I distinctly remember the intro (especially the theme song) throwing me off. I actually double-checked whether I had tuned into the correct channel. That's not exactly the best start. I guess I should give it another chance, but there's always so much other stuff to do and to watch...
Be that as it may, over the years I learned to appreciate TNG much more than before. So DS9 got me into Star Trek, but if you asked me which was the best show... both TNG and DS9 were "the best" but from different angles. And I think a DS9 movie might have been an interesting experience.
Feedback:
You know, I'm glad you relayed my praise to Thomas (and the other artists). I mean, I can be somewhat harsh in judgment, but I also like to give credit where credit is due.
By the way, when you talked about the Nautilus... Why would you compare it to the Jellyfish? It is clearly a 26th century interpretation of the Hope class, one of the variants of the Tier 3 (commander) Olympus class science vessel. Which in turn was based on the Daedalus. So the circle closes.
Unfortunately that brings us to my rant... Or as The Doctor would say: Basically, run!
STOrytime part... 6? "Immersion" or "You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means."
Okay, so in quite a few of these interviews, that are popping up now, there's a lot of emphasis on the "immersion" these TOS story missions supposedly provide.
Where do I even begin?
When Zeronius_Rex was on Trek News and Views she talked about how there would not be exclusive klingon/romulan content because they could not make it work and besides they only appeared on an episode or two.
That sounds like the argument is... klingons and romulans are generic aliens of the week.
Okay, let's do some research on that one. And at that point in time we get to the part of the interview where she geeks out about the T'Liss. And I'm like... that is wonderful, but aren't you supposed to downplay the romulans? Because if they were important, you should have given them something.
But back to my research, according to Memory Alpha klingons appeared in 7 out of 79 TOS episodes. A little under 10 percent. Romulans appeared in 3 out of 79 episodes. Okay, romulans are out. Why is there nothing for klingons? I mean, that is basically the same percentage romulans had during TNG and DS9. Those ~10 percent got them their expansion. You remember Legacy of Romulus, don't you?
You can tell me that romulans don't appear during TOS. You can tell me that romulans in-game did not buy the TOS costumes so they are clearly not interested in TOS, but what about klingons?
And something I mentioned but kinda glossed over before... you could not make it work? I'm sorry, but what? I am aware of certain shortcomings of your creative team. Like the fact that their RP blogs are really quite good until they (have to) reference the in-game story, which is... well... really not good.
What exactly is it that you could not get to work?
And one beautiful detail... she mentioned that they expect the majority of the playerbase to have grown up with TNG/DS9/Voyager. Does that mean you're doing this expansion for a minority? Hey, klingons and romulans, wanna say something to your TOS comrades?
Look at the detail!
The G&T show did an interview with CaptainGeko. During that interview he mentioned that... what we have come to call the Starfleet Delta/Arrowhead/Chevron was the Enterprise patch during TOS.
(Uhm, yes, I actually knew that.)
And that they have created over 90 different patches for the new expansion.
Okay, so you can pay attention to these little details, but you fail to notice that Lani Minella sounds the same whenever she voices another couple dozen characters. (Yes, yes, different speech patterns/"accents" (if we're lucky), but still very obviously the same person speaking...)
One more thing. During that same interview he mentioned how personal shields did not exist during TOS, but they could not possibly rebalance the game. And then TAS offered the solution because there were personal shields in TAS. Uhm... I do not remember seeing personal shields during TNG, DS9 or Voyager. So if TAS says something else, TAS is gonna lose this argument.
Now that we got that out of the way, let's look at Cryptic's track record.
There was a time when Cryptic made up a bunch of ships because it's silly that canon only ever gave klingons 5 ships (if you count the D7 and K'Tinga as two different ships). Wait, Enterprise retconned some of that, how many ships did klingons get in Enterprise?
There was a time when Cryptic made up a few ships for the romulans, because they had so few in canon.
There was a time when Cryptic did not implement the (canon...) romulan science vessel because it was clearly a kit-bashed romulan scout ship.
There was a time when Cryptic did not implement the (canon...) K'Vort klingon battlecruiser because it was clearly an over-scaled Bird of Prey.
There was a time when Cryptic did not implement the (arguably canon...) Wolf 359 wreckage abomination kit-bashes (because they probably wouldn't sell).
There was a time when Cryptic made endgame K'Tingas and Excelsiors and put 31st (or 29th, I don't quite remember) century time ships into lockboxes and the lobi store. Because they are canon. Funnily enough, the Mirandas that blew up right alongside all the other ships during the Dominion War did not get an endgame version.
There was a time when Cryptic made the Iconians so insanely powerful that the "war" should have ended after a week (if I'm being generous...) and yet we can fly around in their ships without being centuries ahead of the other players. Why? How? Logic?
Cryptic flip-flops around when it comes to canon and what's silly and what must be put into the game.
And then we got the interview with ThomasTheCat. He said that the Daedalus looks kinda old and funky himself. And yet there will be endgame (T6) ships that can use those TOS skins.
Now riddle me this, Batman... uhm... Cryptic:
How are those (supposedly) 26th century ships flying around in 2410 not a violation of the Temporal Prime Directive? Don't tell me you forgot about the Temporal Prime Directive again...
How does it make any sense whatsoever that they can use the 23rd century skins?
TOS immersion is nice during the missions that take place in that time period. By the way, do we fly around in our ships or do they get TOS-appropriate costumes like during... Night of the comet? When we went back and our ship got that holographic klingon D7 disguise?
When you talk about how important immersion is... immersion is not a one-way street.
If immersion really meant so much to you, why is there no RP shard for Star Trek Online? Why can people not set how they want to be adressed? I mean, lots of people would prefer it if Captain was the final rank... And you gotta admit, calling someone "rear admiral, lower half" sounds more than a little clunky...
Why do Letheans not have their own ships? Why can't Gorn beam down and walk around their home-world?
This game is set in 2409/2410. If I wanted an endgame Constitution, I would have looked for a game set during that time.
Why would you expect/ask for an endgame Constitution in a game that is set ~140 years after TOS?
Let's imagine there was a game that was set during World War 1. Would you ask the developers to implement a rifle from the American Revolutionary War to be competitive with a machine gun from World War 1?
Well, some people obviously would, but there's neither logic nor reason nor common sense in that.
Oh and just as a reminder, I did not set this game in 2409. That was Cryptic's fault. Well, maybe it was Perpetual's fault, but Cryptic bought it like that, so it has become their problem.
So... TOS immersion is really serious business, but 2409/2410 immersion is... what? Not worth the effort?
Sorry. I tend to use "he" when the gender is unknown to me.
KDF: Dahar Master Kan (Borg Klingon Tactical)::Dahar Master Torc (Alien Science)::Dahar Master Sisteric (Gorn Engineer)
RR-Fed: Citizen Sirroc (Romulan Science)::Fleet Admiral Grell (Alien Engineer)
RR-KDF: Fleet Admiral Zemo (Reman Tactical)::Fleet Admiral Xinatek (Reman Science)::Fleet Admiral Bel (Alien Engineer)
TOS-Fed: Fleet Admiral Katem (Andorian Tactical)::Lieutenant Commander Straad (Vulcan Engineer)
Dom-Fed: Dan'Tar (Jem'Hadar Science)
Dom-KDF: Kamtana'Solan (Jem'Hadar Science)
CoHost of Tribbles in Ecstasy (Zombee)
Oh yes.. that's very true - but perhaps "one day"..
No harm done! *^_^* & thanks again for the fun-tastic interview/ep!