well... to fair. Many people HAD solutions. It was stated by the head guy on this very forum "Thats the story we are telling." and that any input we had was mute.
The issue is two fold anyway. We are made part of the Faux Romulans. But before you can wrap your head around having to wear a scarf, you are forced to be herded into another faction.
Well.... yeah.... thing is... playable Tal Shiar or RSE don't fit in the STO story. They just don't. The remains of the old empire are run by Nihilists....
She has an entire scene where she tells off Hakeev as he is dying. I think she kicks him once or twice.
I know. But her general tone through out is someone speaking to a subordinate. She's pissed because he went behind her back and did stuff she told him not to.
People would be justifyably upset if with the LoR patch the klingons all of a sudden started acting diplomatic and conflcit adverse. If they only took up arms to defend their peaceful farming lifestyle, if they joined vulcan monastaries en masse. Klingons and Romulans have certain iconic traits that are identified with them. You may call that a stereotype, I call that culture. Besides, it has already been discussed how a Romulan can adhere to these expectations and still be unique in their own regard, such as Toreth.
Working customer service for just under 3 months... people get upset at some of the stupidest things.
Anyway, they aren't joining Vulcan Monastaries. Have you played through the entire story yet?
you have an increadible capacity to ignore even the most simple or responses. Ifyou had bothered to read the portions of my reply in parenthesis, or the last sentence of my post, you may have noticed that I already addressed these points in the message you quoted.
"Exactly. We already had a pre-established friction between the Tal Shiar and the military. There was already a pre-established friction between the Tal Shiar and Sela"
Is what you said and is factually false.
The "two" frictions were actually Taris and Sela. I'm just not trying to be as antagonistic as you.
"There was already a 'rebuilding the empire' subplot going on prior to the introduction of the Romulan Republic."
Sela as Empress was, no Senate... we've already detoured away from canon Romulans pre-STO, TNG, and the aftermath of Nemesis.
Actually as others have pointed out, you're not correct on this point either. Also the false logic isn't anything to do with the canon, it's that you're trying to make out like people shouldn't complain about it being wrong if they don't have a solution to fix it. Again, you don't have to know how to fix a car to know it's broken, and you don't have to be a game dev to know that a design is broken.
It is a valid argument because they position themselves in a Negative. There is no "Defined" state they wish to differ from the Romulan Republic. Some wishing to join the TalShiar where it already strayed from what they call "real" Romulans, they work with an Alien race. They do not seem to show steps in a linear pattern of the happenings between TNG, Nemesis, and JJ's Trek. The irrationality of their arguments are solely that, an emotionally based reaction.
I have never once not said the Romulans aren't self-interested, chaotic, etc. If anything I have re-asserted it. The point I choose to differ with them is purely that I do think the Romulan Republic is Romulan. I even have argued that they may be setting up the foundations for such a stronger Romulan faction to exist in the future.
Could you imagine if they told everyone who loved the Federation that they could only play the Maquis? That wouldn't be satisfactory.
What if they said that the Federation didn't represent humans and that the Maquis was what "real" humans were like? That wouldn't be satisfactory to me.
What if they told all the people who wanted to play Federation but were forced to play Maquis, that they should just "role play" that they're a Federation spy? That wouldn't be satisfactory.
If the Federation were somehow dissolved and gone through the major turbulence, upheaval, radical government changes, etc... apples and oranges.
It's not like it would be hard to have mystery in a storyline where you were part of the Tal Shiar, in fact I think it'd be more fun to actually be part of the mystery. Not only would you have the NPCs doing mysterious things, you could participate in stories where you were the mysterious one. Instead, the storylines could easily be replaced with Federation fighting Borg.
Are you sure? One of my favorite missions is from Oblivion where as part of the dark brother hood, you go into a house and have to murder all the guest, but get bonus points if you do it with out getting cuaght or others getting suspicious of you. Now imagine how fun and mysterious that would be if every mission was like that. Exploration was some what fun at first, but after repeating an encounter for teh Nth time, it's just a chore, and that would have happened with any sort of subterfuge for this faction. Also, the mystery was not knowing what the Romulans where really up to and having to second guess them. Doesn't quite work if your the Romulan. It be like Picard acting in a simmialr fashion, except that we get to see it the entire time. It just be strange. These sort of mysteries are better played as the person trying to figure out what is going on.
That's not to say there couldn't be the occasional mission where you are using subterfuge to throw off your enemy, but STO isn't designed around that sort of game play. It's more combat oriented, even amongst it's story, and that is partly because this is a game. As fun as some of those non combat mission where in teh featured episodes, It lost interessting having to replay it as the mystery was gone and the joy taken away.
You are right this could have been a fed strory with the borg invading, if the feds lost their home worlds and trying to recover after decades of political turmoil and civil war. After all, even in the path to 2409, political leaders taking teh reigns were assassinanted. This story works best with the current situation of teh Romulans.
[QUOTE=tachyonharmonic;9931551]A sudden invasion by a new species with highly advanced technology, where they come out of nowhere and abduct people to make new soldiers, who don't speak or reason with you. You spend your time trying to defend against their raids and find a way to beat them. Frankly it's lazy writing imo, which is worse than bad writing.[/QUOTE]
It's also frankly got alot of people excited about the new content. It's fun and refreshing from what we already havein game and is compariable to the Featured episodes in quality. It may not be your taste in story, but that doens't make it bad, lazy, or hackneed either.
You say that "most Romulans are not the cloak and dagger folks" but that's not really something you get to decide. We go by the ones shown on the shows, such as the lady delivering soup who is adept enough at the "cloak and dagger" game to see that Picard/Data are more than they seem. Heck, all of the Unificationists were in hiding right under the Romulan's noses, so they had to be part of the cloak and dagger crowd. It was a way of life for pretty much all the Romulans we saw in the shows. You say that Tal Shiar agents would just be bullies, but again that would be lazy writing. A Tal Shiar agent could be anything from James Bond to Elim Garak.
As far as people accepting a half-finished faction, well we're putting another half-finished one in, after having lived with a half-finished one since day one. Deciding the fate of an entire faction on wanting to have 2-team PvP is a terrible design decision. They could easily have solved all their problems regarding populations and 2-team pvp by having the Romulans side with the Klingons for PvP as a tentative "enemy of my enemy" where they both hate the Federation more. But then of course that would mean Cryptic would have to actually think about this "war" between the Fed/KDF where they can't decide if it's still going or not.
I'll have to disagree with you here. They chose to do the alliance because of game limitations, and not wanting to redesign major portions of the game, but the faction has content both PvP and story from level 1 to 50, whcih the Klingons are finally getting. They are a finsihed faction because they have the content to play through. Now how the faction is implement can be debated. Some feel that forcing them to allign with an existing faction is unexceptable, it doe snot negate the fact that Cryptic in the end felt it would be far worse on the community as a whole to fracture it even further, and in this way, the KDF can get a fresh influx of poeple, to help fill in their ranks.
What they're really doing is this: Imagine if they decided to have a Star Trek Online MMO, and they announced many of the species from the Federation would be playable. Then they announced you wouldn't actually get to play the Federation; you could fight them and be asked to join them during the story, but you couldn't actually be part of the Federation. Instead, you only got to play the Maquis.
And if that was what they felt best fit the mmo genre, I would judge the game on the merits of if I felt thast was fun. But the major difference here is that while teh Maquis might be fun to play, the federation isn't in a position of having the very policies that make up the Romulan Government the reason they lost their homeworld, and have not been able to really stabalize and bring back into the fold, all the different Romulan factions. Again read the path to 2409, it wasn't till Sela over threw the reigning Leader and apointed herself as empress (with the help of the Hirogen) was there any strong Romulan Government, and The methods being employed still drive many of the fractured Romulans to want to escape then return.
What's left of the Romulan Star Empire has either been destroyed through politics and power struggles or through the onsluaght of the KDF taking advantage of the people. The Remaining RSE military is either serving Sela, and the Tal shiar (many not by choice.) or have fallen into one fo two groups, D'tans resistance, or just wants to be left alone all together. The best story you could tell with the Romulan military, is something akin to Battle Star Galactica, with a demisnshed fleet, where every ship counts, but instead of 1 persistant enemy, three (not including the federation, who while peacefull would strike back at any attacks made against them.)
I can understand your fustration over the direction, as many people wanted to play as the Romulan military or even Tal Shiar from the show, but thanks to the works of Abrams, and other now cannon material, it's just not a feasble plot line. Also, much of the way such a faction would play is too similar to the Klingons. That or harrasing federation captians along the neutral zone.
Making excuses like "they have a limited time to work on this" and others doesn't cut it in my opinion. They're the ones who set the timetable, are we really going to excuse them for rushing out a half-finished faction instead of taking the time to do it right? It took them 3+ years to get KDF even reasonable, how can we expect anything less for Romulans?
frankly, time is a constraint, and so is appeasing the player base. Many of whom wnat to play as Romulan, and many of those are actually kind of satisfied with what they got. You're right in the fact that they could have taken more time, with a much greater period of not releasing content to make a much grander faction, but then that could also mean a loss of player interest in the game during that down time. And there was no guarentees we would have naything resembling what you want. That fact that they managed to make this much is impressive, especially with how many missions that are being added just for one faction.
Saying that "Time will tell" what happens to the Romulans specifically points out that they're not done yet. The idea of using "role play" to shore up design flaws is also a cop-out in my mind. Imagine if they never let you play a human, but told you to be a Bolian and "role play" that you just had cosmetic surgery and you're really a spy. Imagine if the Klingons/Romulans didn't have cloaks and were told to "role play" their cloaking and de-cloaking.
but that is an accurate statement. MMO's tend to have elvolving story lines, with new stories bring the factions further into the future. We know at some point we will be facing the Iconians, as well as other content related to each faction. At some point we will see what becomes of New Romulus, and what a strengthened Romulun empire would look like in a few years.
And frankly, that is what the foundry is there for, filling in the gaps between what the developers want and what the players want. Some want to do section 31 missions, but teh developers don't have the time, nor see such a demand for them to devote alot of resources to it, when there are other priorities that need to be taken care of. The foundry at least gives you the oppertunity to play some of those missions. And it's a far better choice then not having it at all.
Also your analogies are far to exagerated to really serve their purpose. It be like me saying imagine of, instead of flying a starship in STo, you just had to pretend you did to get here. Where imagining that a small short coming like not being the Tal Shiar, or the remneants of the star empire because it didn't fit the story, is a far cry from heres is a completely missing mechanic to make the game work. It sucks you don't play as a proper TNG era Romulan, but that is mostly due to circumstances. If the Hobus star never exploded, we might have seen the Star Empire stabalize after Shinzons rebelion and continue as we knew it. But that's not how it happened, and we can't change that.
The expansion hasn't even launched yet and we're already making excuses and suggesting that the "next season" will really fix things this time. What's wrong with wanting them to have been finished when they're launched?
And that isn't what I'm saying either. I frankly see nothing wrong with the Romulan Republic. My character isn't forced to be a reunificationist, he's just there to rebuild his people, and if that means that D'tan and his less xenophobic ways will do that, then fine. We are still going to be a Romulan power, and not some copy of the U.N. of the federation.
And while the game mechanics don't really allow for you to have a pure Romulan fleet, much of those are for the end game and frankly, I think it might be a better call. Less fracturing of the player base, and provides better oppertunities for teh existing fleets. And frankly, they don't have to redesign the entire game to accamodate multy faction combat that is satisfying to play with the feds shooting both Roms and KDf and so forth with each faction.
Imperial Secret Order. "we are the ones that maintain the balance of power in the universe. May our shadow never fall upon you."
And that isn't what I'm saying either. I frankly see nothing wrong with the Romulan Republic. My character isn't forced to be a reunificationist, he's just there to rebuild his people, and if that means that D'tan and his less xenophobic ways will do that, then fine. We are still going to be a Romulan power, and not some copy of the U.N. of the federation.
And while the game mechanics don't really allow for you to have a pure Romulan fleet, much of those are for the end game and frankly, I think it might be a better call. Less fracturing of the player base, and provides better oppertunities for teh existing fleets. And frankly, they don't have to redesign the entire game to accamodate multy faction combat that is satisfying to play with the feds shooting both Roms and KDf and so forth with each faction.
I think it's best to tie in with some current events, it's the Green Light at the end of the Dock and Daisy.
Also, just to point out, as it got lost some where in my responce. While the show does focus more on the Romulan's governemtnal entities, IE, the senate or the military, that does not mean that every Romulan is like that. Some of the references in both TOS and even a few references in Voyager hint at the Romulans being far more diverse. It's alos eay to extrpolate that any society, especially the Romluans can not exist as back stabbing, underhanded, and solely self interested. even the Roman EMpire, which the Romulans are based off weren't like that. Only the ones in charge.
It be like what they did with the Klingons. They are so focused on the ways of the warrior, beleiving even that dying of old age is dishonorable, and the only way to go is in battle, it brings to question simple necesities like engineers, farmers, educators, and most of the other jobs needed to maintain a society. Even with slave labor, you would still have jobs that would require there to be vast sections of the empire doomed to enternal damn nation, by virtue of not being a warrior. It makes them far more two dimensional and aptly fit the monicker, "space vikings"
As I have atested before, there is personal Honor and duty, and that duty would inlcude taking care of elements that hurt the nation. Romulans are not softies, but they are also not foolish to do things as rashly as the KDF. They are maticulous, and not all schemes need to be sinsiter or done under the quise of subterfuge. And there are hints that the Romulan public is far more diverse then the ones we see in command of ships. But thats true in all cultures. (At least realistic cultures.) other wise they would be doomed to extenction, which the Tal Shiar is doing a bang up job at.
As for the Reunifactionsit being sneaky. there is a disticntion of being a spy or secret agent, along the lines of the gustapo, and hiding out of the min stream so that you cen preach more openyl your beleifes. Humans have been doing the later for ages, and that doesn't make them any more cloak and dagger like. One is about survival, while the other is about manipulating circumstances through illicit means to acheive a desired goal.
Imperial Secret Order. "we are the ones that maintain the balance of power in the universe. May our shadow never fall upon you."
Working customer service for just under 3 months... people get upset at some of the stupidest things.
Anyway, they aren't joining Vulcan Monastaries. Have you played through the entire story yet?
Not paying attention again....you seem to have a very selective memory....
The comparison was that making the New Romulus faction is like making the Klingon faction a faction of pacifists, monks, etc. You could jsut as easily justify such a faction as being justifyable because honorable warrior Klingons are 'stereotypes like you did with sneaky Romulans, but the matter at hand is that such an action would strip the Klingons of their Iconic traits. People, particularly Klingon fans, would be justifyably disturbed. The same situation here is applicable to the Romulans, right now with the LoR expansion, how is that so hard to grasp?
"Exactly. We already had a pre-established friction between the Tal Shiar and the military. There was already a pre-established friction between the Tal Shiar and Sela"
Is what you said and is factually false.
The "two" frictions were actually Taris and Sela. I'm just not trying to be as antagonistic as you.
"There was already a 'rebuilding the empire' subplot going on prior to the introduction of the Romulan Republic."
Sela as Empress was, no Senate... we've already detoured away from canon Romulans pre-STO, TNG, and the aftermath of Nemesis.
No, it is actually factually true, if you bothered to read the path to 1409....
The head of the Tal Shiar faked his own death (killing his own family in the process) in order to frame Sela, the Tal Shiar then arrested her on trumped-up charges and had her sentenced to death in a kangaroo court-she was saved and sent into exile thanks to the intervention of the Praetor Chulan. This was after she went after them for assassinating Tal'aura and managed to get their funding cut via the senate. Taris wasn't evet praetor yet, the conflict that sent Sela into exile was her vs the Tal'Shiar, so no-not exactly false. The conflict between Sela and Taris was a sideshow at best.
A quote from path to 2409: "The leader of the Romulan fleet, Admiral Taris, maintained a low profile during the troubles" (When Sela was sent to exile) Sela only came in during the tail end of the conflict to overthrow Taris-most of the work was done by Tebok and Velal (both Romulan military commanders and not tal Shiar)
yes there was a 'rebuilding the emprie' subplot, it is explicitly mentioend as a 'golden age' in the path to 2409-making LoR a blatent retcon.
Also, just to point out, as it got lost some where in my responce. While the show does focus more on the Romulan's governemtnal entities, IE, the senate or the military, that does not mean that every Romulan is like that. Some of the references in both TOS and even a few references in Voyager hint at the Romulans being far more diverse. It's alos eay to extrpolate that any society, especially the Romluans can not exist as back stabbing, underhanded, and solely self interested. even the Roman EMpire, which the Romulans are based off weren't like that. Only the ones in charge.
It be like what they did with the Klingons. They are so focused on the ways of the warrior, beleiving even that dying of old age is dishonorable, and the only way to go is in battle, it brings to question simple necesities like engineers, farmers, educators, and most of the other jobs needed to maintain a society. Even with slave labor, you would still have jobs that would require there to be vast sections of the empire doomed to enternal damn nation, by virtue of not being a warrior. It makes them far more two dimensional and aptly fit the monicker, "space vikings"
As I have atested before, there is personal Honor and duty, and that duty would inlcude taking care of elements that hurt the nation. Romulans are not softies, but they are also not foolish to do things as rashly as the KDF. They are maticulous, and not all schemes need to be sinsiter or done under the quise of subterfuge. And there are hints that the Romulan public is far more diverse then the ones we see in command of ships. But thats true in all cultures. (At least realistic cultures.) other wise they would be doomed to extenction, which the Tal Shiar is doing a bang up job at.
As for the Reunifactionsit being sneaky. there is a disticntion of being a spy or secret agent, along the lines of the gustapo, and hiding out of the min stream so that you cen preach more openyl your beleifes. Humans have been doing the later for ages, and that doesn't make them any more cloak and dagger like. One is about survival, while the other is about manipulating circumstances through illicit means to acheive a desired goal.
No one is arguing that Romulan can't be diverse and have different motivations etc. Toreth is one of my favorite examples of that. (and that episode does a good job of showing the differences in character between the reunificationists, Toreth, Tal Shiar, etc) Everything we know seems to point to paranoia/backstabbing etc being part of Romulan culture at large-just look at what the human defector in 'unification pt 1' says about their culture, or really, just about every example ever outside of LoR of typical Romulan behavior.
Exceptions are interesting. A klingon living at a vulcan monastary? yeah, that would be an interesting character for an episode of Star Trek. But they are interesting because they are exceptions-make every Romulan an exception, and it begs the question-why even bother using Romulans when humans would work just as well?
While you assert Romulans having a sense of honor (even comparign them to the Klingons...whaaat?) I would assert is more adequately described as an importance placed on reputation, rather than honor.
Hakeev is dead and Sela is missing. So really they are moot,
We uncovered the truth and exposed Hakeev (likely weakening his faction and reducing their power. Blowing up the homeworld just wont go down well with Romulans)
So we have a weakened, leaderless Tal Shair shamed with the blood of Romulas.
After the events of cutting the cord.. Hakeev and his plots and all the aliens are done with.
People cant keep going on about Hakeev did this or that so DTan is cool. HAKEEV IS DEAD.
So its more or less canon now that those dark days are over and we can get around to choosing a new praetor.
Hakeev is dead and Sela is missing. So really they are moot,
We uncovered the truth and exposed Hakeev (likely weakening his faction and reducing their power. Blowing up the homeworld just wont go down well with Romulans)
So we have a weakened, leaderless Tal Shair shamed with the blood of Romulas.
After the events of cutting the cord.. Hakeev and his plots and all the aliens are done with.
People cant keep going on about Hakeev did this or that so DTan is cool. HAKEEV IS DEAD.
So its more or less canon now that those dark days are over and we can get around to choosing a new praetor.
This right here is proof that a Romulan faction could be RSE military, Tal Shiar, whatever-instead of being Romulan republic. Any Romulan outside one of the lobotomized psychotic drones Cryptic has written in would turn on Hakeev and his goons in a heartbeat. You don't want to be a faux Romulan federation lite Romulan republic bunny chaser to want to overthrow those lunatics. they blew up your planet and want to sell the survivors off to the Iconians/Elachi Any self respeccting Romulan would push hakeev out the nearest airlock if they knew what he was up to or had done. A storyline where a Romulan captain player uncovers their plot and outs them to the public (followed by several episodes of hunting down and killing every last one of those traitors) would pretty much write itself, and wouldn't have the unfortunate implication that only the fed lite Romulans are capable of being alarmed about such happenings to the point of actually doing anything about it.
No one is arguing that Romulan can't be diverse and have different motivations etc. Toreth is one of my favorite examples of that. (and that episode does a good job of showing the differences in character between the reunificationists, Toreth, Tal Shiar, etc) Everything we know seems to point to paranoia/backstabbing etc being part of Romulan culture at large-just look at what the human defector in 'unification pt 1' says about their culture, or really, just about every example ever outside of LoR of typical Romulan behavior.
Exceptions are interesting. A klingon living at a vulcan monastary? yeah, that would be an interesting character for an episode of Star Trek. But they are interesting because they are exceptions-make every Romulan an exception, and it begs the question-why even bother using Romulans when humans would work just as well?
While you assert Romulans having a sense of honor (even comparign them to the Klingons...whaaat?) I would assert is more adequately described as an importance placed on reputation, rather than honor.
Actually, when I talk about honor for the Romulans, I'm talking a personal sense of Honor. One of the best examples of this is "Balance of terror." While Romulans don't have the personal qualm with using sneaky tactics to off some one, they will with draw from a fight if they feel an opponent isn't worthy, or even give in when the opponent is very much worthy. The desticntion though, is that the Klingons have a code of honor that is very much, never back down, and die in combat facing your opponent. For the Klingons, it isn't so much a personal honor code, but rather a broad code that encourages an almost mindless zealot-ism, striking down all those in their path to find a worthy challenge. Romulans have always been something else. backing off, even when they got the advantage, simply because the victory wouldn't have been savory. This is not true for all Romulans, and each one has a different opinion on what is honorable, or fulfills duty, as duty will some times trump honor and vice versa. Again, this is because the Romulans are based off the Romans, who had a lot of the same culture and beliefs. the Klingons are a completly different type of honor, and a different way to express it. (though attacking freighters or from a cloaked ship is hardly a challenge, which the Klingons always brag about. Which makes me wish for the TOS Klingons when they flew the mighty D7s with out cloak, and where a force to keep the federation at bay.)
Imperial Secret Order. "we are the ones that maintain the balance of power in the universe. May our shadow never fall upon you."
Working customer service for just under 3 months... people get upset at some of the stupidest things.
Anyway, they aren't joining Vulcan Monastaries. Have you played through the entire story yet?
The first isn't a valid argument, and in fact is just an attempt to insult people who have a valid opinion.
The second, the person you were responding to was clearly talking about how people would be upset of Klingons joined Vulcan Monasteries. You misread or misconstrued his point.
It is a valid argument because they position themselves in a Negative. There is no "Defined" state they wish to differ from the Romulan Republic. Some wishing to join the TalShiar where it already strayed from what they call "real" Romulans, they work with an Alien race. They do not seem to show steps in a linear pattern of the happenings between TNG, Nemesis, and JJ's Trek. The irrationality of their arguments are solely that, an emotionally based reaction.
Sorry no. "Positioning themselves in a negative" isn't a thing. Many people did indeed suggest where they would like to see the playable Romulans be, but that doesn't matter. It's faulty logic to suggest that you can only make a criticism if you have a solution. In fact that's what these forums are here for; so people can provide opinions on things they don't like, even if they don't have a fix in mind. Claiming that they need to show a linear pattern from TNG through JJ Trek (which isn't even about this timeline) is false. Claiming their arguments are irrational without any evidence, or that they're solely emotionally based is also false.
If the Federation were somehow dissolved and gone through the major turbulence, upheaval, radical government changes, etc... apples and oranges.
Actually it's the exact same thing. The RSE hasn't been dissolved, and all of the major factions have gone through major turbulence, upheaval, etc. The fact remains that if people weren't allowed to play the Federation, they'd be upset. It's the same thing, except because there are fewer people who are fans of the RSE, their opinions are being ignored.
One of my favorite missions is from Oblivion where as part of the dark brother hood, you go into a house and have to murder all the guest, but get bonus points if you do it with out getting cuaght or others getting suspicious of you. Now imagine how fun and mysterious that would be if every mission was like that.
That's an exaggeration, though. There's nothing saying every mission would have to be a stealth murder mission. The limitations are only based on how clever the Cryptic mission designers are. I don't think you believe they're not smart enough to come up with anything else.
It's also frankly got alot of people excited about the new content. It's fun and refreshing from what we already havein game and is compariable to the Featured episodes in quality. It may not be your taste in story, but that doens't make it bad, lazy, or hackneed either.
The problem is we get new story content so infrequently that people are happy for it no matter what it is. I don't disagree that it's good, but again it's nothing revolutionary. It's rather comparable to what we have in game, it just feels newer because it's got more shiny green applied to it. Having played through the entire new storyline, there's nothing in there that a Federation story wouldn't have done, and frankly there's nothing really in there that the Elachi do which the Borg wouldn't have done, outside of the weak idea that they're working with the Tal Shiar. That's definitely weak writing in that aspect.
I'll have to disagree with you here. They chose to do the alliance because of game limitations, and not wanting to redesign major portions of the game, but the faction has content both PvP and story from level 1 to 50, whcih the Klingons are finally getting. They are a finsihed faction because they have the content to play through. Now how the faction is implement can be debated. Some feel that forcing them to allign with an existing faction is unexceptable, it doe snot negate the fact that Cryptic in the end felt it would be far worse on the community as a whole to fracture it even further, and in this way, the KDF can get a fresh influx of poeple, to help fill in their ranks.
You're welcome to disagree just as much as I disagree with you here. The problem is that they are the ones who created the game limitations, so it's not an excuse, it's just them being lazy. The faction actually does not have it's own content from 1 to 50. It goes from 1 to about 30 for original content, and then you go through all the exact same episodes as the Fed/KDF. Again, for 40% of the levels they have the FED/KDFs content to play through, not their own. They are prevented from grouping with non-allied Romulans in some instances, which proves they aren't a unified faction. They are simply a new race for either faction with a few unique things thrown in. You use ally Starbases, ally fleets, ally ships, ally gear, ally boffs, ally doffs, ally queues. You get some of your own thrown on top, but you might as well have started Fed/KDF. Cryptic is actually playing both sides of the argument, claiming that Romulans are their own unique faction, but claiming that making Romulans their own unique faction would splinter the playerbase. The reality is that all of the "problems" that Cryptic and others use as excuses for why Romulans are a crippled faction are problems that Cryptic has caused. Rather than fix the problems, they simply coded around it to cut corners.
Again, regarding the issue of the "canon" being that the RSE is destroyed, that's probably the easiest hurdle to overcome, as there's certainly plenty of Romulans out in their "former" empire. It's just lazy writing to say "oh well lets start over with a clean slate batch of Romulans that are completely different".
To the argument of Abrams being responsible for all this, I find that a cop-out as well. The Hobus Nova was primarily part of JJTrek, which Cryptic is under no obligation to follow, nor do they have the rights to incorporate stuff from that series anyways. They use it because it's a crutch to let them be lazy and hit the reset button on the Romulans. There's certainly an infinite number of ways they could have gotten around it.
It's also easy to say that time is a constraint, but the only people setting a deadline is Cryptic themselves. Is it fair to excuse them for not giving themselves enough time? Do we say "Oh well they wanted to rush it out in X months, so we accept a half-finished product"? That's not satisfactory to me. It's the same excuse as saying "Time will tell". Do you think when they launched the broken KDF, it was okay for it to be broken because "time would tell"? Three years later they're still broken imo (compared to the Feds). How many years will we have to wait for time to tell on the Romulans? Another three years?
My analogies aren't exaggerated because it's not a "small shortcoming" that you can't be part of the RSE. It's exactly the same as someone who loves the Federation being told they can't play Federation, or a Klingon fan being told he can't be part of the Empire.
As far as "many people" being satisfied, there's also "many people" dissatisfied with the crippled faction that we're getting with the Romulans. Heck that's why this thread was started.
just to touch on some of your comments... i keep hearing "it wouldnt fit the story.."
well thats because Cryptic pulled it out of bunnies behind a few months ago.
The "story" they are telling is actually the one that makes Zero sense and requires retconning, losing canon, stretching credibility and just simply making things up as they go.
just to name a few
D'Tan is an old coot few people would follow. Would be like the US following Sarah Palin after some disaster.
The RRW has no resources but can field fleets manned by farm hands
Farm hands are given Capitol ships with no actual qualifications. SF and KDF spend years training and working thru the career ladder. Not the RRW. A janitor could become Admiral.
Virielent (sp) is already and important and established Romulan planet that is considered its bread basket. It is a strategic and vital asset for all not a back woods Bag end wanna be.
Since there is already a major Romulan planet in the area, there was no need to find Dewa
It makes no sense some of us are SF or KDF and will be fighting each other if we are trying to "rebuild"
Major planets exist along with stations and small colonies. People would not have to eek out life in squalor. There would be no "refugees". Everyone on Romulus was killed. The rest of the quadrent soldiered on
Most of Dtans problems arise from picking a crappy area to settle
The Fed/Klingons would be fairly stupid to just let Romulans lose with their ships and free access to data. Having dilpomatic relations is one thing but I doubt Star Fleet would hand over an assault cruiser.
I could go on and on. But the point is that its this plot/story they have invented that isnt plausible. You just have to keep making up more and more stuff to fill the glaring plot holes and inconsistancies.
As you said. Most issues were needlessly created by Cyptic for the simple sake of having an "adventure zone"
As far as "many people" being satisfied, there's also "many people" dissatisfied with the crippled faction that we're getting with the Romulans. Heck that's why this thread was started.
many people just want a new "shiney" and dont care where it comes from.
Other think we "are just lucky to get this" and have resigned themselves to it.
Can you say that in your entire life you ever heard anyone say Hey I really want to be a kinder gentler Rebublican. No because until a couple of months ago THERE WAS NO SUCH THING.
Actually we Romulans have been fairly well behaved. The Klingons from orginal Beta would not have stood for ANY of this. Those guys are serious. Of course most of them are gone now. You used to be able to speak Klingon in chat! People got models redone because something was off. And because of much of their input the KDF became a reasonable and fairly accurate Klingon experience.
The entire New Romulas thing is this game equivilant of the Xindi season of Enterprise.
My only hope is that this is all part of the Temporal Cold War and at some point the Timeline will return to normal and no romulan will be forced to wear a neck scarf.
Here's the main thing to remember: What fits in the STO storyline?
Playable Tal Shiar don't.
how so....
No, all a playbable Romulan Star Empire - we didnt have to be Tal Shiar - does is prevent them from having their bunny petting zoo and reputation grind.
as a couple of others have pointed out they are having to retcon, skim over, simply forget or just wholly make things up to get their Romulans to fit a story that didnt even exist a couple of months ago.
I could write the story different ways right now that would work with the Romulan Star Empire. And keep most of the same missions in the game now.
But we dont get to be Romulans so a few care bears can breed rabbits.
Here's the main thing to remember: What fits in the STO storyline?
Playable Tal Shiar don't.
As virtually every other reply to this thread has pointed out... the current storyline/Romulan republic faction has only been around for a few months. If anything, a RR faction fits the STO storyline worse.
Well, you can DRESS like one, and (at least on Tribble, dunno if it'll make it to live) you can use the IRW prefix on your ships... I know it's not the same though, but it LOOKS good
VADM William "Darkshadow" Shadow | Join Date: Apr 2009 | USS Immortal NX-93608-F (Oddyssey Tactical Cruiser) VADM RogueshadowIRW Kirino Kosaka (Valdore Retrofit) LT General MorboIKS Karac (Bortasqu War Cruiser) LT General PosuIKS Saya Takagi (Chel Grett Warship)
As virtually every other reply to this thread has pointed out... the current storyline/Romulan republic faction has only been around for a few months. If anything, a RR faction fits the STO storyline worse.
Fade in to Warbird.
You are a young low level officer. You are the pride of the Romulan Star Empire. One of the first graduates of newly established Military Acadamy on Rator. You are the future of your people.
You get called into your commanding officers ready room. he has a mission for you. do some low level mission that teaches you to fly and shoot. Return to your CO.
He tells you it was a test and he believes you are ready. He has an off the books mission for you. He and others suspect there was more to Hobus but have to be careful since the Tal Shiar is always listening. There are also rumors that colonies are being attacked in out lying areas. Your mission is to investigate and find out what you can. An old veteran who served under your captain has contacted him to say there are strange creatures showing up on Viralant our most strategic bread basket.
Fly to V and contanct D'Vex.
You land and meet D'Vex and investigate a cave of strange creature. You go back to town and suddenly alien drones swoop from the sky and Tal Shiar agents beam in. And explosion knocks you to the ground. D'Vex pulls you from the rubble and helps you a shuttle.... and so your adventure begins.
No need for New Romulas. Same basic story. Then late Hakeev dies, Sela vanishes and you are on the fast track for Praetor.
Well, you can DRESS like one, and (at least on Tribble, dunno if it'll make it to live) you can use the IRW prefix on your ships... I know it's not the same though, but it LOOKS good
The cant on the shuttle or the T5 ships. You get IKS or RRW. I swallowed my bile and clicked IKS since I wont fly the RRW banner.
I'm glad you guys are having fun wishing and hoping over a moot point. But I for one am extremely happy to be a freedom fighter working to establish a free Romulan Republic that won't implode in on itself because of hate and fear. I also enjoy blowing up any ship with the prefix of IRW be it Tal'Shiar or the lackys that work with them.
I'm glad you guys are having fun wishing and hoping over a moot point. But I for one am extremely happy to be a freedom fighter working to establish a free Romulan Republic that won't implode in on itself because of hate and fear. I also enjoy blowing up any ship with the prefix of IRW be it Tal'Shiar or the lackys that work with them.
Yeah, the point I was making is that the remnants of the old RSE are run by Nihilists who are out to ruin everything that made the RSE a great power....
The cant on the shuttle or the T5 ships. You get IKS or RRW. I swallowed my bile and clicked IKS since I wont fly the RRW banner.
At least the shuttle has a no registry option
That's... I don't even have words. Perhaps if my character goes up to D'tan on the flotilla and beats him repeatedly around the head with his rifle butt, he might agree that I don't share his ideals, and let me have my I.R.W prefix back. :mad:
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
This character is why I don't play my Romulan any more. Tovan Khev is NOT my BFF! Get him off my bridge!
Comments
yep right before you kill him go to space kick sela butt then iconians pop in help her or drag her off then mission is over
system Lord Baal is dead
My character Tsin'xing
Only what suits you.
Working customer service for just under 3 months... people get upset at some of the stupidest things.
Anyway, they aren't joining Vulcan Monastaries. Have you played through the entire story yet?
"Exactly. We already had a pre-established friction between the Tal Shiar and the military. There was already a pre-established friction between the Tal Shiar and Sela"
Is what you said and is factually false.
The "two" frictions were actually Taris and Sela. I'm just not trying to be as antagonistic as you.
"There was already a 'rebuilding the empire' subplot going on prior to the introduction of the Romulan Republic."
Sela as Empress was, no Senate... we've already detoured away from canon Romulans pre-STO, TNG, and the aftermath of Nemesis.
The fallacy is, how you've come under the impression the TalShiar aren't a military.
It is a valid argument because they position themselves in a Negative. There is no "Defined" state they wish to differ from the Romulan Republic. Some wishing to join the TalShiar where it already strayed from what they call "real" Romulans, they work with an Alien race. They do not seem to show steps in a linear pattern of the happenings between TNG, Nemesis, and JJ's Trek. The irrationality of their arguments are solely that, an emotionally based reaction.
I have never once not said the Romulans aren't self-interested, chaotic, etc. If anything I have re-asserted it. The point I choose to differ with them is purely that I do think the Romulan Republic is Romulan. I even have argued that they may be setting up the foundations for such a stronger Romulan faction to exist in the future.
The "identity" which is what?
If the Federation were somehow dissolved and gone through the major turbulence, upheaval, radical government changes, etc... apples and oranges.
Are you sure? One of my favorite missions is from Oblivion where as part of the dark brother hood, you go into a house and have to murder all the guest, but get bonus points if you do it with out getting cuaght or others getting suspicious of you. Now imagine how fun and mysterious that would be if every mission was like that. Exploration was some what fun at first, but after repeating an encounter for teh Nth time, it's just a chore, and that would have happened with any sort of subterfuge for this faction. Also, the mystery was not knowing what the Romulans where really up to and having to second guess them. Doesn't quite work if your the Romulan. It be like Picard acting in a simmialr fashion, except that we get to see it the entire time. It just be strange. These sort of mysteries are better played as the person trying to figure out what is going on.
That's not to say there couldn't be the occasional mission where you are using subterfuge to throw off your enemy, but STO isn't designed around that sort of game play. It's more combat oriented, even amongst it's story, and that is partly because this is a game. As fun as some of those non combat mission where in teh featured episodes, It lost interessting having to replay it as the mystery was gone and the joy taken away.
You are right this could have been a fed strory with the borg invading, if the feds lost their home worlds and trying to recover after decades of political turmoil and civil war. After all, even in the path to 2409, political leaders taking teh reigns were assassinanted. This story works best with the current situation of teh Romulans.
[QUOTE=tachyonharmonic;9931551]A sudden invasion by a new species with highly advanced technology, where they come out of nowhere and abduct people to make new soldiers, who don't speak or reason with you. You spend your time trying to defend against their raids and find a way to beat them. Frankly it's lazy writing imo, which is worse than bad writing.[/QUOTE]
It's also frankly got alot of people excited about the new content. It's fun and refreshing from what we already havein game and is compariable to the Featured episodes in quality. It may not be your taste in story, but that doens't make it bad, lazy, or hackneed either.
I'll have to disagree with you here. They chose to do the alliance because of game limitations, and not wanting to redesign major portions of the game, but the faction has content both PvP and story from level 1 to 50, whcih the Klingons are finally getting. They are a finsihed faction because they have the content to play through. Now how the faction is implement can be debated. Some feel that forcing them to allign with an existing faction is unexceptable, it doe snot negate the fact that Cryptic in the end felt it would be far worse on the community as a whole to fracture it even further, and in this way, the KDF can get a fresh influx of poeple, to help fill in their ranks.
And if that was what they felt best fit the mmo genre, I would judge the game on the merits of if I felt thast was fun. But the major difference here is that while teh Maquis might be fun to play, the federation isn't in a position of having the very policies that make up the Romulan Government the reason they lost their homeworld, and have not been able to really stabalize and bring back into the fold, all the different Romulan factions. Again read the path to 2409, it wasn't till Sela over threw the reigning Leader and apointed herself as empress (with the help of the Hirogen) was there any strong Romulan Government, and The methods being employed still drive many of the fractured Romulans to want to escape then return.
What's left of the Romulan Star Empire has either been destroyed through politics and power struggles or through the onsluaght of the KDF taking advantage of the people. The Remaining RSE military is either serving Sela, and the Tal shiar (many not by choice.) or have fallen into one fo two groups, D'tans resistance, or just wants to be left alone all together. The best story you could tell with the Romulan military, is something akin to Battle Star Galactica, with a demisnshed fleet, where every ship counts, but instead of 1 persistant enemy, three (not including the federation, who while peacefull would strike back at any attacks made against them.)
I can understand your fustration over the direction, as many people wanted to play as the Romulan military or even Tal Shiar from the show, but thanks to the works of Abrams, and other now cannon material, it's just not a feasble plot line. Also, much of the way such a faction would play is too similar to the Klingons. That or harrasing federation captians along the neutral zone.
frankly, time is a constraint, and so is appeasing the player base. Many of whom wnat to play as Romulan, and many of those are actually kind of satisfied with what they got. You're right in the fact that they could have taken more time, with a much greater period of not releasing content to make a much grander faction, but then that could also mean a loss of player interest in the game during that down time. And there was no guarentees we would have naything resembling what you want. That fact that they managed to make this much is impressive, especially with how many missions that are being added just for one faction.
but that is an accurate statement. MMO's tend to have elvolving story lines, with new stories bring the factions further into the future. We know at some point we will be facing the Iconians, as well as other content related to each faction. At some point we will see what becomes of New Romulus, and what a strengthened Romulun empire would look like in a few years.
And frankly, that is what the foundry is there for, filling in the gaps between what the developers want and what the players want. Some want to do section 31 missions, but teh developers don't have the time, nor see such a demand for them to devote alot of resources to it, when there are other priorities that need to be taken care of. The foundry at least gives you the oppertunity to play some of those missions. And it's a far better choice then not having it at all.
Also your analogies are far to exagerated to really serve their purpose. It be like me saying imagine of, instead of flying a starship in STo, you just had to pretend you did to get here. Where imagining that a small short coming like not being the Tal Shiar, or the remneants of the star empire because it didn't fit the story, is a far cry from heres is a completely missing mechanic to make the game work. It sucks you don't play as a proper TNG era Romulan, but that is mostly due to circumstances. If the Hobus star never exploded, we might have seen the Star Empire stabalize after Shinzons rebelion and continue as we knew it. But that's not how it happened, and we can't change that.
And that isn't what I'm saying either. I frankly see nothing wrong with the Romulan Republic. My character isn't forced to be a reunificationist, he's just there to rebuild his people, and if that means that D'tan and his less xenophobic ways will do that, then fine. We are still going to be a Romulan power, and not some copy of the U.N. of the federation.
And while the game mechanics don't really allow for you to have a pure Romulan fleet, much of those are for the end game and frankly, I think it might be a better call. Less fracturing of the player base, and provides better oppertunities for teh existing fleets. And frankly, they don't have to redesign the entire game to accamodate multy faction combat that is satisfying to play with the feds shooting both Roms and KDf and so forth with each faction.
I think it's best to tie in with some current events, it's the Green Light at the end of the Dock and Daisy.
It only makes sense.
It be like what they did with the Klingons. They are so focused on the ways of the warrior, beleiving even that dying of old age is dishonorable, and the only way to go is in battle, it brings to question simple necesities like engineers, farmers, educators, and most of the other jobs needed to maintain a society. Even with slave labor, you would still have jobs that would require there to be vast sections of the empire doomed to enternal damn nation, by virtue of not being a warrior. It makes them far more two dimensional and aptly fit the monicker, "space vikings"
As I have atested before, there is personal Honor and duty, and that duty would inlcude taking care of elements that hurt the nation. Romulans are not softies, but they are also not foolish to do things as rashly as the KDF. They are maticulous, and not all schemes need to be sinsiter or done under the quise of subterfuge. And there are hints that the Romulan public is far more diverse then the ones we see in command of ships. But thats true in all cultures. (At least realistic cultures.) other wise they would be doomed to extenction, which the Tal Shiar is doing a bang up job at.
As for the Reunifactionsit being sneaky. there is a disticntion of being a spy or secret agent, along the lines of the gustapo, and hiding out of the min stream so that you cen preach more openyl your beleifes. Humans have been doing the later for ages, and that doesn't make them any more cloak and dagger like. One is about survival, while the other is about manipulating circumstances through illicit means to acheive a desired goal.
Only if you define canon as 'anything warzerior says' and non-canon as 'anything catoblepasbeta says'.
You argument boils down to 'LoR adheres to canon' when said canon was exists because of LoR.... a retcon that contradicts the old canon.
Not paying attention again....you seem to have a very selective memory....
The comparison was that making the New Romulus faction is like making the Klingon faction a faction of pacifists, monks, etc. You could jsut as easily justify such a faction as being justifyable because honorable warrior Klingons are 'stereotypes like you did with sneaky Romulans, but the matter at hand is that such an action would strip the Klingons of their Iconic traits. People, particularly Klingon fans, would be justifyably disturbed. The same situation here is applicable to the Romulans, right now with the LoR expansion, how is that so hard to grasp?
No, it is actually factually true, if you bothered to read the path to 1409....
The head of the Tal Shiar faked his own death (killing his own family in the process) in order to frame Sela, the Tal Shiar then arrested her on trumped-up charges and had her sentenced to death in a kangaroo court-she was saved and sent into exile thanks to the intervention of the Praetor Chulan. This was after she went after them for assassinating Tal'aura and managed to get their funding cut via the senate. Taris wasn't evet praetor yet, the conflict that sent Sela into exile was her vs the Tal'Shiar, so no-not exactly false. The conflict between Sela and Taris was a sideshow at best.
A quote from path to 2409: "The leader of the Romulan fleet, Admiral Taris, maintained a low profile during the troubles" (When Sela was sent to exile) Sela only came in during the tail end of the conflict to overthrow Taris-most of the work was done by Tebok and Velal (both Romulan military commanders and not tal Shiar)
yes there was a 'rebuilding the emprie' subplot, it is explicitly mentioend as a 'golden age' in the path to 2409-making LoR a blatent retcon.
No one is arguing that Romulan can't be diverse and have different motivations etc. Toreth is one of my favorite examples of that. (and that episode does a good job of showing the differences in character between the reunificationists, Toreth, Tal Shiar, etc) Everything we know seems to point to paranoia/backstabbing etc being part of Romulan culture at large-just look at what the human defector in 'unification pt 1' says about their culture, or really, just about every example ever outside of LoR of typical Romulan behavior.
Exceptions are interesting. A klingon living at a vulcan monastary? yeah, that would be an interesting character for an episode of Star Trek. But they are interesting because they are exceptions-make every Romulan an exception, and it begs the question-why even bother using Romulans when humans would work just as well?
While you assert Romulans having a sense of honor (even comparign them to the Klingons...whaaat?) I would assert is more adequately described as an importance placed on reputation, rather than honor.
Hakeev is dead and Sela is missing. So really they are moot,
We uncovered the truth and exposed Hakeev (likely weakening his faction and reducing their power. Blowing up the homeworld just wont go down well with Romulans)
So we have a weakened, leaderless Tal Shair shamed with the blood of Romulas.
After the events of cutting the cord.. Hakeev and his plots and all the aliens are done with.
People cant keep going on about Hakeev did this or that so DTan is cool. HAKEEV IS DEAD.
So its more or less canon now that those dark days are over and we can get around to choosing a new praetor.
This right here is proof that a Romulan faction could be RSE military, Tal Shiar, whatever-instead of being Romulan republic. Any Romulan outside one of the lobotomized psychotic drones Cryptic has written in would turn on Hakeev and his goons in a heartbeat. You don't want to be a faux Romulan federation lite Romulan republic bunny chaser to want to overthrow those lunatics. they blew up your planet and want to sell the survivors off to the Iconians/Elachi Any self respeccting Romulan would push hakeev out the nearest airlock if they knew what he was up to or had done. A storyline where a Romulan captain player uncovers their plot and outs them to the public (followed by several episodes of hunting down and killing every last one of those traitors) would pretty much write itself, and wouldn't have the unfortunate implication that only the fed lite Romulans are capable of being alarmed about such happenings to the point of actually doing anything about it.
Actually, when I talk about honor for the Romulans, I'm talking a personal sense of Honor. One of the best examples of this is "Balance of terror." While Romulans don't have the personal qualm with using sneaky tactics to off some one, they will with draw from a fight if they feel an opponent isn't worthy, or even give in when the opponent is very much worthy. The desticntion though, is that the Klingons have a code of honor that is very much, never back down, and die in combat facing your opponent. For the Klingons, it isn't so much a personal honor code, but rather a broad code that encourages an almost mindless zealot-ism, striking down all those in their path to find a worthy challenge. Romulans have always been something else. backing off, even when they got the advantage, simply because the victory wouldn't have been savory. This is not true for all Romulans, and each one has a different opinion on what is honorable, or fulfills duty, as duty will some times trump honor and vice versa. Again, this is because the Romulans are based off the Romans, who had a lot of the same culture and beliefs. the Klingons are a completly different type of honor, and a different way to express it. (though attacking freighters or from a cloaked ship is hardly a challenge, which the Klingons always brag about. Which makes me wish for the TOS Klingons when they flew the mighty D7s with out cloak, and where a force to keep the federation at bay.)
The first isn't a valid argument, and in fact is just an attempt to insult people who have a valid opinion.
The second, the person you were responding to was clearly talking about how people would be upset of Klingons joined Vulcan Monasteries. You misread or misconstrued his point.
Sorry no. "Positioning themselves in a negative" isn't a thing. Many people did indeed suggest where they would like to see the playable Romulans be, but that doesn't matter. It's faulty logic to suggest that you can only make a criticism if you have a solution. In fact that's what these forums are here for; so people can provide opinions on things they don't like, even if they don't have a fix in mind. Claiming that they need to show a linear pattern from TNG through JJ Trek (which isn't even about this timeline) is false. Claiming their arguments are irrational without any evidence, or that they're solely emotionally based is also false.
Actually it's the exact same thing. The RSE hasn't been dissolved, and all of the major factions have gone through major turbulence, upheaval, etc. The fact remains that if people weren't allowed to play the Federation, they'd be upset. It's the same thing, except because there are fewer people who are fans of the RSE, their opinions are being ignored.
That's an exaggeration, though. There's nothing saying every mission would have to be a stealth murder mission. The limitations are only based on how clever the Cryptic mission designers are. I don't think you believe they're not smart enough to come up with anything else.
The problem is we get new story content so infrequently that people are happy for it no matter what it is. I don't disagree that it's good, but again it's nothing revolutionary. It's rather comparable to what we have in game, it just feels newer because it's got more shiny green applied to it. Having played through the entire new storyline, there's nothing in there that a Federation story wouldn't have done, and frankly there's nothing really in there that the Elachi do which the Borg wouldn't have done, outside of the weak idea that they're working with the Tal Shiar. That's definitely weak writing in that aspect.
You're welcome to disagree just as much as I disagree with you here. The problem is that they are the ones who created the game limitations, so it's not an excuse, it's just them being lazy. The faction actually does not have it's own content from 1 to 50. It goes from 1 to about 30 for original content, and then you go through all the exact same episodes as the Fed/KDF. Again, for 40% of the levels they have the FED/KDFs content to play through, not their own. They are prevented from grouping with non-allied Romulans in some instances, which proves they aren't a unified faction. They are simply a new race for either faction with a few unique things thrown in. You use ally Starbases, ally fleets, ally ships, ally gear, ally boffs, ally doffs, ally queues. You get some of your own thrown on top, but you might as well have started Fed/KDF. Cryptic is actually playing both sides of the argument, claiming that Romulans are their own unique faction, but claiming that making Romulans their own unique faction would splinter the playerbase. The reality is that all of the "problems" that Cryptic and others use as excuses for why Romulans are a crippled faction are problems that Cryptic has caused. Rather than fix the problems, they simply coded around it to cut corners.
Again, regarding the issue of the "canon" being that the RSE is destroyed, that's probably the easiest hurdle to overcome, as there's certainly plenty of Romulans out in their "former" empire. It's just lazy writing to say "oh well lets start over with a clean slate batch of Romulans that are completely different".
To the argument of Abrams being responsible for all this, I find that a cop-out as well. The Hobus Nova was primarily part of JJTrek, which Cryptic is under no obligation to follow, nor do they have the rights to incorporate stuff from that series anyways. They use it because it's a crutch to let them be lazy and hit the reset button on the Romulans. There's certainly an infinite number of ways they could have gotten around it.
It's also easy to say that time is a constraint, but the only people setting a deadline is Cryptic themselves. Is it fair to excuse them for not giving themselves enough time? Do we say "Oh well they wanted to rush it out in X months, so we accept a half-finished product"? That's not satisfactory to me. It's the same excuse as saying "Time will tell". Do you think when they launched the broken KDF, it was okay for it to be broken because "time would tell"? Three years later they're still broken imo (compared to the Feds). How many years will we have to wait for time to tell on the Romulans? Another three years?
My analogies aren't exaggerated because it's not a "small shortcoming" that you can't be part of the RSE. It's exactly the same as someone who loves the Federation being told they can't play Federation, or a Klingon fan being told he can't be part of the Empire.
As far as "many people" being satisfied, there's also "many people" dissatisfied with the crippled faction that we're getting with the Romulans. Heck that's why this thread was started.
just to touch on some of your comments... i keep hearing "it wouldnt fit the story.."
well thats because Cryptic pulled it out of bunnies behind a few months ago.
The "story" they are telling is actually the one that makes Zero sense and requires retconning, losing canon, stretching credibility and just simply making things up as they go.
just to name a few
D'Tan is an old coot few people would follow. Would be like the US following Sarah Palin after some disaster.
The RRW has no resources but can field fleets manned by farm hands
Farm hands are given Capitol ships with no actual qualifications. SF and KDF spend years training and working thru the career ladder. Not the RRW. A janitor could become Admiral.
Virielent (sp) is already and important and established Romulan planet that is considered its bread basket. It is a strategic and vital asset for all not a back woods Bag end wanna be.
Since there is already a major Romulan planet in the area, there was no need to find Dewa
It makes no sense some of us are SF or KDF and will be fighting each other if we are trying to "rebuild"
Major planets exist along with stations and small colonies. People would not have to eek out life in squalor. There would be no "refugees". Everyone on Romulus was killed. The rest of the quadrent soldiered on
Most of Dtans problems arise from picking a crappy area to settle
The Fed/Klingons would be fairly stupid to just let Romulans lose with their ships and free access to data. Having dilpomatic relations is one thing but I doubt Star Fleet would hand over an assault cruiser.
I could go on and on. But the point is that its this plot/story they have invented that isnt plausible. You just have to keep making up more and more stuff to fill the glaring plot holes and inconsistancies.
As you said. Most issues were needlessly created by Cyptic for the simple sake of having an "adventure zone"
Instead I would rather rebuild it to it's former glory and purpose of defending the Romulan people.
many people just want a new "shiney" and dont care where it comes from.
Other think we "are just lucky to get this" and have resigned themselves to it.
Can you say that in your entire life you ever heard anyone say Hey I really want to be a kinder gentler Rebublican. No because until a couple of months ago THERE WAS NO SUCH THING.
Actually we Romulans have been fairly well behaved. The Klingons from orginal Beta would not have stood for ANY of this. Those guys are serious. Of course most of them are gone now. You used to be able to speak Klingon in chat! People got models redone because something was off. And because of much of their input the KDF became a reasonable and fairly accurate Klingon experience.
The entire New Romulas thing is this game equivilant of the Xindi season of Enterprise.
My only hope is that this is all part of the Temporal Cold War and at some point the Timeline will return to normal and no romulan will be forced to wear a neck scarf.
No HAKEEV did that, And he is dead, you exposed him and ended all that.
Playable Tal Shiar don't.
My character Tsin'xing
how so....
No, all a playbable Romulan Star Empire - we didnt have to be Tal Shiar - does is prevent them from having their bunny petting zoo and reputation grind.
as a couple of others have pointed out they are having to retcon, skim over, simply forget or just wholly make things up to get their Romulans to fit a story that didnt even exist a couple of months ago.
I could write the story different ways right now that would work with the Romulan Star Empire. And keep most of the same missions in the game now.
But we dont get to be Romulans so a few care bears can breed rabbits.
USS Immortal NX-93608-F (Oddyssey Tactical Cruiser)
VADM Rogueshadow IRW Kirino Kosaka (Valdore Retrofit)
LT General Morbo IKS Karac (Bortasqu War Cruiser)
LT General Posu IKS Saya Takagi (Chel Grett Warship)
Fade in to Warbird.
You are a young low level officer. You are the pride of the Romulan Star Empire. One of the first graduates of newly established Military Acadamy on Rator. You are the future of your people.
You get called into your commanding officers ready room. he has a mission for you. do some low level mission that teaches you to fly and shoot. Return to your CO.
He tells you it was a test and he believes you are ready. He has an off the books mission for you. He and others suspect there was more to Hobus but have to be careful since the Tal Shiar is always listening. There are also rumors that colonies are being attacked in out lying areas. Your mission is to investigate and find out what you can. An old veteran who served under your captain has contacted him to say there are strange creatures showing up on Viralant our most strategic bread basket.
Fly to V and contanct D'Vex.
You land and meet D'Vex and investigate a cave of strange creature. You go back to town and suddenly alien drones swoop from the sky and Tal Shiar agents beam in. And explosion knocks you to the ground. D'Vex pulls you from the rubble and helps you a shuttle.... and so your adventure begins.
No need for New Romulas. Same basic story. Then late Hakeev dies, Sela vanishes and you are on the fast track for Praetor.
The cant on the shuttle or the T5 ships. You get IKS or RRW. I swallowed my bile and clicked IKS since I wont fly the RRW banner.
At least the shuttle has a no registry option
My character Tsin'xing
Ah, boo... haven't gotten to the T5's yet, I didn't know that. Seems kinda odd though.
USS Immortal NX-93608-F (Oddyssey Tactical Cruiser)
VADM Rogueshadow IRW Kirino Kosaka (Valdore Retrofit)
LT General Morbo IKS Karac (Bortasqu War Cruiser)
LT General Posu IKS Saya Takagi (Chel Grett Warship)
Grrrr!! They better change that and allow us to use the IRW prefix on our endgame ships.:mad:
Aid in leading the Romulan Star Empire back to its former greatness.
Join the Romulan Praetorian Guard and teach those epohh loving hippies what it means to be a true Romulan!
That's... I don't even have words. Perhaps if my character goes up to D'tan on the flotilla and beats him repeatedly around the head with his rifle butt, he might agree that I don't share his ideals, and let me have my I.R.W prefix back. :mad:
This character is why I don't play my Romulan any more. Tovan Khev is NOT my BFF! Get him off my bridge!
system Lord Baal is dead