You need to actually read what has been written. If you know you're going to dislike a character driven story, you don't walk headfirst into a character driven story, then complain that you hated it. Instead, partake of the content setups that actually appeal to you.
It's completely analagous to someone who dislikes PvP going into a PvP scenario, and then complaining that PvP happened.
The point is that if you want to play a Romulan, you have no choice but to run through this character-driven story (that isn't even using your characters, much like SWtOR). You can't just "not play that content" to avoid it. You have to play through it, and then once it's over, maybe you can actually "make" the characters you want instead of being force-fed your background/story like what BioWare did when they completely missed the point of players making their own characters in MMOs.
I don't even know if you can get rid of these pre-generated BOffs (it sounds like you can't get rid of Tovan, maybe he'll die later on in the story so you're more free to create your own crew). I know we can't alter the rest of them currently, and that's enough to put a bad taste in my mouth, although even if Tovan dies, all Romulan players will still have "their good buddy Tovan from back on the colony who died" and "Reman Engineer girl whose daddy died so you let her work on your ship".
(And yes, I know this is an awfully RP-centric standpoint to take from someone that admittedly doesn't like RP. I still want my characters to be my characters instead of having the same background/story as everyone else. With the FED and KDF toons, we at least have the freedom to come up with our own backgrounds and character concepts.)
Even worse, talking about this now isn't going to change anything in LoR. It's already baked-in, hard coded into what's going to come in a couple weeks. While I will say that it is a good story, and all the work has been impressive, making everyone the same character is not the direction I would have wanted them to go with introducing players to a new Romulan faction. Especially not emulating the techniques that BioWare employed.
The point is that if you want to play a Romulan, you have no choice but to run through this character-driven story (that isn't even using your characters, much like SWtOR). You can't just "not play that content" to avoid it. You have to play through it, and then once it's over, maybe you can actually "make" the characters you want instead of being force-fed your background/story like what BioWare did when they completely missed the point of players making their own characters in MMOs.
I don't even know if you can get rid of these pre-generated BOffs (it sounds like you can't get rid of Tovan, maybe he'll die later on in the story so you're more free to create your own crew). I know we can't alter the rest of them currently, and that's enough to put a bad taste in my mouth, although even if Tovan dies, all Romulan players will still have "their good buddy Tovan from back on the colony who died" and "Reman Engineer girl whose daddy died so you let her work on your ship".
(And yes, I know this is an awfully RP-centric standpoint to take from someone that admittedly doesn't like RP. I still want my characters to be my characters instead of having the same background/story as everyone else. With the FED and KDF toons, we at least have the freedom to come up with our own backgrounds and character concepts.)
Even worse, talking about this now isn't going to change anything in LoR. It's already baked-in, hard coded into what's going to come in a couple weeks. While I will say that it is a good story, and all the work has been impressive, making everyone the same character is not the direction I would have wanted them to go with introducing players to a new Romulan faction. Especially not emulating the techniques that BioWare employed.
Oh God you're kidding me they took this path with the content, it's not just one BO?
Oh God you're kidding me they took this path with the content, it's not just one BO?
I believe everyone gets the exact same 4 BOffs during the introduction. Tovan, Reman girl (I think her name is Hiven), and IIRC two more Romulans. They all have little story introductions as to how they join you (which would be fine if we were playing Mass Effect and everyone is Commander Shepard). You can't change their costumes/looks, and I'd assume you also can't change their names as well.
You do get Romulan BOffs and <allied faction> BOffs later on, and you can change their costumes. But the first group is the same for everyone.
I believe everyone gets the exact same 4 BOffs during the introduction. Tovan, Reman girl (I think her name is Hiven), and IIRC two more Romulans. You can't change their costumes/looks, and I'd assume you also can't change their names as well.
You do get Romulan BOffs and <allied faction> BOffs later on, and you can change their costumes. But the first group is the same for everyone.
You know what this sounds like. They are trying to cut down the data in the game. I know customization has always been an issue. This is part of the reason Neverwinter took a similar approach with its companions.
I believe everyone gets the exact same 4 BOffs during the introduction. Tovan, Reman girl (I think her name is Hiven), and IIRC two more Romulans. They all have little story introductions as to how they join you (which would be fine if we were playing Mass Effect and everyone is Commander Shepard). You can't change their costumes/looks, and I'd assume you also can't change their names as well.
You do get Romulan BOffs and <allied faction> BOffs later on, and you can change their costumes. But the first group is the same for everyone.
UPDATE: These are everyone's starting BOffs (on the Romulan faction):
Tovan Khev: Romulan Male Tactical BOff. Fixed appearance, fixed name.
story: outlined in the devblog
Veril: Reman Female Engineering BOff. Fixed Appearance. Can change name.
story: you rescue her from a Reman colony that gets attacked by Tal Shiar. Her father goes missing/dies in the attack and joins your crew
Setra: Romulan Female Science BOff. Fixed Appearance. Can change name.
story: rescued from Suliban Helix, where she was hiding from the Tal Shiar with a group of refugees.
Hiven: Romulan Male Science BOff. Fixed Appearance. Can change name.
story: You bust him out of jail (he was in there for accusing a guard of being Tal Shiar), and now he's looking for revenge for the death of his brother.
The BOffs that Romulans get afterward (at least so far) are received the same way as BOffs are currently received for the FED and KDF, and you can change their appearance and names.
I believe everyone gets the exact same 4 BOffs during the introduction. Tovan, Reman girl (I think her name is Hiven), and IIRC two more Romulans. They all have little story introductions as to how they join you (which would be fine if we were playing Mass Effect and everyone is Commander Shepard). You can't change their costumes/looks, and I'd assume you also can't change their names as well...
Oh.
:eek:
That seems unfortunate.
I'm especially not fond of the idea that these characters' uniforms are locked. One of the reasons I don't really use the existing FE BOs (Breen, Reman, etc.) is that their appearances are locked. I mostly play Space, so when I do play Ground missions, I want my away team to have matching uniforms. Otherwise it's ugly.
I do hope that by L50, I will be able to say good bye to the motley starter crew, and enlist some regulars that I can design/maintain.
You can find/contact me in game as @PatricianVetinari. Playing STO since Feb 2010.
UPDATE: These are everyone's starting BOffs (on the Romulan faction):
The BOffs that Romulans get afterward (at least so far) are received the same way as BOffs are currently received for the FED and KDF, and you can change their appearance and names.
Thank you very much for the information. That really is too bad. When you say the post intro BO's are received in the same way do you mean via missions, Duty missions and able to be bought and traded? Is there a place to buy them for the Romulan faction like on ESD or Qo'noS?
I'm especially not fond of the idea that these characters' uniforms are locked. One of the reasons I don't really use the existing FE BOs (Breen, Reman, etc.) is that their appearances are locked. I mostly play Space, so when I do play Ground missions, I want my away team to have matching uniforms. Otherwise it's ugly.
I do hope that by L50, I will be able to say good bye to the motley starter crew, and enlist some regulars that I can design/maintain.
Yeah I've still got my Breen hanging around, but I never use him. I like my crew to be Mine. Be they a motley band under my Joined Trill KDFer or an Orion Matriarchy ship, where the males are subordinates only.
And yes, I do agree that taking a Mass Effect approach in a game that isn't Mass Effect is not really suitable.
I've often wondered how any mmo can claim to be an mmorpg.
I've never seen an mmo that offered you choices and changed the story based on the way you treat others and the decisions you make.
I tend to agree it is not good to change the approach in mid-stream. This has killed other games. I want to play the content before I final judge it obviously, but I guess I'll have to wait.
As to the RPG in MMORPG, I don't think it is every really possible to make a game like Neverwinter Nights (not the Cryptic Neverwinter) or Mass Effect style single player RPG in an MMO. People are willing to put up with different things when they can just reload a saved file.
UPDATE: These are everyone's starting BOffs (on the Romulan faction):
Tovan Khev: Romulan Male Tactical BOff. Fixed appearance, fixed name.
story: outlined in the devblog
Veril: Reman Female Engineering BOff. Fixed Appearance. Can change name.
story: you rescue her from a Reman colony that gets attacked by Tal Shiar. Her father goes missing/dies in the attack and joins your crew
Setra: Romulan Female Science BOff. Fixed Appearance. Can change name.
story: rescued from Suliban Helix, where she was hiding from the Tal Shiar with a group of refugees.
Hiven: Romulan Male Science BOff. Fixed Appearance. Can change name.
story: You bust him out of jail (he was in there for accusing a guard of being Tal Shiar), and now he's looking for revenge for the death of his brother.
The BOffs that Romulans get afterward (at least so far) are received the same way as BOffs are currently received for the FED and KDF, and you can change their appearance and names.
Let's be clear, I'm a Legacy Account Holder with 1000 day veteran.
This means I start off the game with 3 seperate BOFFs (Borg Engineer, Photonic Sci and Android Engineer).
And two of those are fully customizable!
So explain to me why I would subsitute an uneditable BOFF for any of those officers?
And seriously, why would I want to edit the name?
It's the appearance I'm interested in changing, so they don't look like every other copy of those BOFFs!
And yes, I have preplanned my BOFF backstory and layout.
It would take me to up around the BOFF limit.
That's counting the other special BOFFs you acquire via gameplay.
Now we're adding 4 extra BOFFs to that list?
Excuse me for being cynical, but I'm thinking this is really a trick to sell BOFF slots on C-Store.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
Excuse me for being cynical, but I'm thinking this is really a trick to sell BOFF slots on C-Store.
I had that thought too... Like I said I know that data from customization is an issue for them, so this means that people who don't care about BO's will probably not bother replacing them and those that do will probably end up buying more slots.
Before I go on my short message, I personally think that Tovan Khev is a welcome addition to the STO universe and Cryptic should be applauded for making the Romulan story a little more personal than "fly-here-because-Admiral-told-you-so"-style storytelling.
That said, though, the one reason why I joined STO is because I was entranced by the amount of customization options there were available for your appearance, ship, and crew. I wanted to make my own identity within the game by creating my own personal file with all its numerous customizations.
While I welcome Tovan for the sake of storytelling, I implore Cryptic to let players have the option of letting the character go after the main Romulan storyline is finished so an element of customization within STO can be restored and enable players to create their own identity once again within the Romulan faction - appearance, ship, and crew.
Those are my two ECs about this character. Feel free to post up compliments or complaints to such a comment.
While I welcome Tovan for the sake of storytelling, I implore Cryptic to let players have the option of letting the character go after the main Romulan storyline is finished so an element of customization within STO can be restored and enable players to create their own identity once again within the Romulan faction - appearance, ship, and crew.
Those are my two ECs about this character. Feel free to post up compliments or complaints to such a comment.
I think this would make most people happy. I understand that these characters are needed for story, but give me the option to get rid of them later if I so choose. It's their story I play through, so later when I have played it give me the choice to play mine.
Personally, I'm delighted by the way one recruits the BOs in the Romulan storyline and I'm perfectly happy to adjust my pre-planned RPG stuff to adjust to that.
However, I'm still figuring out how to work around the fact that when I roll a second Republican char, there'll be a Tovan Khev clone aboard. Hm, clone? Not a bad idea. Or mirror universe Counterpart.. Problem solved!
Tovan Kev seems a bit Malcom Reynolds-like to me. Actually some of the story elements in the Romulan Republic arc I've seen so far have similarities to Serenity/Firefly with a mix of "War Of THe Worlds".
Especially the aliens that kidnap people from outlying colonies, while the strong centralized (evil) government denies the existance of such aliens but are ultimately responsible for why the aliens are kidnapping people from the outlying colonies.
Not to mention the way you meet your first group of bridge officers.
Comments
The point is that if you want to play a Romulan, you have no choice but to run through this character-driven story (that isn't even using your characters, much like SWtOR). You can't just "not play that content" to avoid it. You have to play through it, and then once it's over, maybe you can actually "make" the characters you want instead of being force-fed your background/story like what BioWare did when they completely missed the point of players making their own characters in MMOs.
I don't even know if you can get rid of these pre-generated BOffs (it sounds like you can't get rid of Tovan, maybe he'll die later on in the story so you're more free to create your own crew). I know we can't alter the rest of them currently, and that's enough to put a bad taste in my mouth, although even if Tovan dies, all Romulan players will still have "their good buddy Tovan from back on the colony who died" and "Reman Engineer girl whose daddy died so you let her work on your ship".
(And yes, I know this is an awfully RP-centric standpoint to take from someone that admittedly doesn't like RP. I still want my characters to be my characters instead of having the same background/story as everyone else. With the FED and KDF toons, we at least have the freedom to come up with our own backgrounds and character concepts.)
Even worse, talking about this now isn't going to change anything in LoR. It's already baked-in, hard coded into what's going to come in a couple weeks. While I will say that it is a good story, and all the work has been impressive, making everyone the same character is not the direction I would have wanted them to go with introducing players to a new Romulan faction. Especially not emulating the techniques that BioWare employed.
Raptr profile
Oh God you're kidding me they took this path with the content, it's not just one BO?
You do get Romulan BOffs and <allied faction> BOffs later on, and you can change their costumes. But the first group is the same for everyone.
Raptr profile
You know what this sounds like. They are trying to cut down the data in the game. I know customization has always been an issue. This is part of the reason Neverwinter took a similar approach with its companions.
This is really unfortunate.
UPDATE: These are everyone's starting BOffs (on the Romulan faction):
The BOffs that Romulans get afterward (at least so far) are received the same way as BOffs are currently received for the FED and KDF, and you can change their appearance and names.
Raptr profile
:eek:
That seems unfortunate.
I'm especially not fond of the idea that these characters' uniforms are locked. One of the reasons I don't really use the existing FE BOs (Breen, Reman, etc.) is that their appearances are locked. I mostly play Space, so when I do play Ground missions, I want my away team to have matching uniforms. Otherwise it's ugly.
I do hope that by L50, I will be able to say good bye to the motley starter crew, and enlist some regulars that I can design/maintain.
You can find/contact me in game as @PatricianVetinari. Playing STO since Feb 2010.
Thank you very much for the information. That really is too bad. When you say the post intro BO's are received in the same way do you mean via missions, Duty missions and able to be bought and traded? Is there a place to buy them for the Romulan faction like on ESD or Qo'noS?
Yeah I've still got my Breen hanging around, but I never use him. I like my crew to be Mine. Be they a motley band under my Joined Trill KDFer or an Orion Matriarchy ship, where the males are subordinates only.
It's just two guys arguing about SWTOR and comparing it to STO.
Let's go back to Tovan Khev shall we?
And yes, I do agree that taking a Mass Effect approach in a game that isn't Mass Effect is not really suitable.
I've often wondered how any mmo can claim to be an mmorpg.
I've never seen an mmo that offered you choices and changed the story based on the way you treat others and the decisions you make.
Maybe Cryptic are attempting this with Tovan Khev, but I don't think they're succeeding.
And by the way, in Mass Effect, you can change your companions appearances!
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
Maybe we should be thankful that Tovan Khev isn't as annoying as Corso Riggs?
Raptr profile
I tend to agree it is not good to change the approach in mid-stream. This has killed other games. I want to play the content before I final judge it obviously, but I guess I'll have to wait.
As to the RPG in MMORPG, I don't think it is every really possible to make a game like Neverwinter Nights (not the Cryptic Neverwinter) or Mass Effect style single player RPG in an MMO. People are willing to put up with different things when they can just reload a saved file.
updated story summaries for Hiven and Setra
Raptr profile
Let's be clear, I'm a Legacy Account Holder with 1000 day veteran.
This means I start off the game with 3 seperate BOFFs (Borg Engineer, Photonic Sci and Android Engineer).
And two of those are fully customizable!
So explain to me why I would subsitute an uneditable BOFF for any of those officers?
And seriously, why would I want to edit the name?
It's the appearance I'm interested in changing, so they don't look like every other copy of those BOFFs!
And yes, I have preplanned my BOFF backstory and layout.
It would take me to up around the BOFF limit.
That's counting the other special BOFFs you acquire via gameplay.
Now we're adding 4 extra BOFFs to that list?
Excuse me for being cynical, but I'm thinking this is really a trick to sell BOFF slots on C-Store.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
I had that thought too... Like I said I know that data from customization is an issue for them, so this means that people who don't care about BO's will probably not bother replacing them and those that do will probably end up buying more slots.
That said, though, the one reason why I joined STO is because I was entranced by the amount of customization options there were available for your appearance, ship, and crew. I wanted to make my own identity within the game by creating my own personal file with all its numerous customizations.
While I welcome Tovan for the sake of storytelling, I implore Cryptic to let players have the option of letting the character go after the main Romulan storyline is finished so an element of customization within STO can be restored and enable players to create their own identity once again within the Romulan faction - appearance, ship, and crew.
Those are my two ECs about this character. Feel free to post up compliments or complaints to such a comment.
I think this would make most people happy. I understand that these characters are needed for story, but give me the option to get rid of them later if I so choose. It's their story I play through, so later when I have played it give me the choice to play mine.
However, I'm still figuring out how to work around the fact that when I roll a second Republican char, there'll be a Tovan Khev clone aboard. Hm, clone? Not a bad idea. Or mirror universe Counterpart.. Problem solved!
Especially the aliens that kidnap people from outlying colonies, while the strong centralized (evil) government denies the existance of such aliens but are ultimately responsible for why the aliens are kidnapping people from the outlying colonies.
Not to mention the way you meet your first group of bridge officers.