Like a lot of us that are interested in STO's story (and Foundry stories too), I really wonder where head writer Cryptic_Kestrel (Christine Thompson) is going with the Iconians. So far, all signs seen throughout the main plot episodes point to them being just another cookie cutter master race of conquering villains that commits multiple murders at the wave of a hand and has warned us "not to attract their attention again". *Yawn* Cool at first, but it loses nearly all its gravitas with subsequent viewings, and makes me think, "Just another Independence Day (the movie) type of evil aliens that we have to kill." I can easily imagine that STO is being secretly directed by Roland Emmerich or Michael Bay, and that maybe PWE should hire Will Smith to voice Captain Sisko instead of Avery Brooks :rolleyes:
This is, after all, just another video game that focuses on violence with minimal or no consequences to the story or the mental states of our characters. We, as the players, are conditioned by society to oppose the so-called bad guys that the author(s) repeatedly push in front of us, but I think a Star Trek story should go beyond that.
So I ask you: do we deserve a better and more intelligent opposition with lots of complex interwoven grey area, or would that be too much to ask of an award-winning writer like Kestrel, and simply just settle with the typical black & white good vs evil cliche for the Iconians if it means blowing up more ships for the sake of nothing more than, y'know, things going boom because we're too dumb a species to appreciate anything else?
So I ask you: do we deserve a better and more intelligent opposition with lots of complex interwoven grey area, or would that be too much to ask of an award-winning writer like Kestrel, and simply just settle with the typical black & white good vs evil cliche for the Iconians if it means blowing up more ships for the sake of nothing more than, y'know, things going boom because we're too dumb a species to appreciate anything else?
This was Q's position from the first encounter with him, although he eventually saw value in our affinity for combat, tempered by our constant self-doubt and ambivalence. But to the point, it would be refreshing to have some story content more cerebral than a rat maze or pest extermination exercise. After all, if we are to impress some of these "higher" races with our shining character, then we will have to be able to think multi-dimensionally and perhaps even self-sacrificially. I am reminded of the early KDF storyline taking us into Stovokor; not your usual space opera fare, to say the least! Of course, it's tricky to posit some overarching moral imperative common to sentient species, but this is the stuff of some of the most memorable Trek episodes!
Expendables Fleet: Andrew - Bajoran Fed Engineer Ken'taura - Rom/Fed Scientist Gwyllim - Human Fed Delta Tac Savik - Vulcan Fed Temporal Sci Dahar Masters Fleet: Alphal'Fa - Alien KDF Engineer Qun'pau - Rom/KDF Engineer D'nesh - Orion KDF Scientist Ghen'khan - Liberated KDF Tac Welcome to StarBug Online - to boldly Bug where no bug has been before!
STO player since November 2013
I wouldn't read too much into that one cutscene at the end of "Surface Tension". All we've been getting since S8 are small tastes of the Iconians; we really have no way of knowing what direction Cryptic will be going with them until they begin fleshing them out in earnest. I've already gone on record many times as predicting the next expansion will do that in a big way.
In the Novelization of Lensflare:2009, Nero's name is justified as an occasional Romulan quirk, where the give their name to outsiders backward, on the grounds that it sounds better to them than the pronunciation being mangled
Under that, Sela is actually called something like Ales, or quite possibly Alice (did Tasha get to name her?)
At the end of Cloaked Intentions Sela (Alice) gets dragged through (falls down) an Iconian Gateway (a rabbit hole)
At the end of Surface Tension a 'Female' Iconian (queen of hearts) is quite put out with you interfering
In sumarry, the Iconians are living in Wonderland, and we will have to deal with the Mad Hatter (Slamek) before we get to fight the Ico's
The less likely but infinitely more disappointing possibility: The Iconians will be introduced, they will be trash mobs, they will be in multiple pve queues, they will no longer be threatening inside of a week.
The other more likely possibility: the Iconian mobs will be composed entirely of either brainwashed/servitor species and constructs like the probes, and the Iconians themselves will be big huge damage sponge boss fights with the bulk of their instant kill telekinesis conveniently technobabbled away in dialogue any time they are fought.
Tbh I don't like either. But I'll take the latter over the former.
Through caution to the wind. Ignore the cries of PVE noobs weeping that the game is too hard. The bug that made Breach Super OP, I LOVED THAT. They should of left it as is and gave huge marks for beating it...like 200 marks.
They should do the same think with iconians. MAKE THEM HARD AS HELL. Make their AI smart. If we GW them, have use a power to get out if it. One of us throwing heals, focus on them, then take out the team. Get them powers we can to think around. Look to PVP for the damage being done then allow the inconians THAT level of DPS. Allow them to counter US so that we inturn have to counter them.
YES I KNOW WHAT THTA MEANS. 10-20k DPS OR MORE.
GOOD!
Make the game a challenge and when people cry, hand them a tissue and say "dont like it, dont play the mission." Give the PVE noobs a choice, pay easy and grind marks....play iconian godmode, and get crazy marks and bragging rights.
pve noobs? elitist mentality such as this its why pvp'ers are looked down upon. get a grip.. it's just a game. and in a twist or your own words "if you don't like this game...don't play":rolleyes:
If we ever do fight the Iconians, I don't want the team to half-A it. I'm talking about a classic MMORPG-style epic boss slobbernocker that's epic.
20 Person ground battle, the Iconian doing things like throwing obstacles, firing energy blasts, floating, teleporting, and all sort of other things that makes the boss battles we have so far (especially the Borg Queen battle) look like kid's play.
And to make things interesting, have the battle with puzzles that some people have to work as a team to open up vulnerabilities.
If we ever do fight the Iconians, I don't want the team to half-A it. I'm talking about a classic MMORPG-style epic boss slobbernocker that's epic.
20 Person ground battle, the Iconian doing things like throwing obstacles, firing energy blasts, floating, teleporting, and all sort of other things that makes the boss battles we have so far (especially the Borg Queen battle) look like kid's play.
And to make things interesting, have the battle with puzzles that some people have to work as a team to open up vulnerabilities.
Cryptic won't do that because of the whiners.
"OMG I DIED ONCE, GAME SUCKS, I AM SUPPOSED OT BE INVINCIBLE!!"
Iconians worked well up until the last FE. Now it will all be downhill.
It's like a jump scare movie, yeah you can pull the uber scary trick once or twice, then it just gets routine.
The most terrifying villain is the one you never see. Scratch that.
The most terrifying villain is the one you never understand. B5 was good about that. As was the uber villain of the first Everis Cale trilogy. Slaughtering hundreds of thousands just to stand under the sun for a brief moment. That was a true villain.
Iconians just want their stuff back and try to jump scare ya. And to kill/enslave everyone.
Which could work if the plot was focused on character development/growth and they were simply part of the setting. Cause Shon, D'Tan, and stupid klingon lady who won't shut the er.. yeah not very interesting characters we got there.
Iconians worked well up until the last FE. Now it will all be downhill.
Now, that's not true. It'll be true if the Iconians keep showing up after every FE telling us to stop it. No, what Cryptic needs to do is to keep them out of the spotlight for as long as possible. We know they're there. We've seen them. We've seen what they can do.
Go the Darth Vader route instead of the scary monster route: have them mess around with other people from time to time, but don't get them pointed at the main hero until its time.
Now, that's not true. It'll be true if the Iconians keep showing up after every FE telling us to stop it. No, what Cryptic needs to do is to keep them out of the spotlight for as long as possible.
So they'll keep the Iconians out of the spotlight, aside from a few cameos, for the first two STOs and then they'll invade in force in the third STO only to anticlimactically reveal that the created will always rebel against their creators so we should pick an RGB ending?
Nitpicking is a time-honored tradition of science fiction. Asking your readers not to worry about the "little things" is like asking a dog not to sniff at people's crotches. If there's something that appears to violate natural laws, then you can expect someone's going to point it out. That's just the way things are.
if the iconians are the threat the devs want us to face, considering obex and that iconian, even a few of these iconian ships should be able to vaporize a small fleet pretty quickly, i mean we are talking/writing reaper level tech compare to the rest of the galaxy... i swear the devs have a subtle mass effect theme going on.
So they'll keep the Iconians out of the spotlight, aside from a few cameos, for the first two STOs and then they'll invade in force in the third STO only to anticlimactically reveal that the created will always rebel against their creators so we should pick an RGB ending?
as long as they are not called skin-jobs and spout nonsense about an all powerful being... but even so, that would be pretty weak.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
So they'll keep the Iconians out of the spotlight, aside from a few cameos, for the first two STOs and then they'll invade in force in the third STO only to anticlimactically reveal that the created will always rebel against their creators so we should pick an RGB ending?
We will learn they want to destroy us so we are not destroyed by our creations. Which is very nice of them.
The Iconians are still the "threat lurking in the shadow you'll never face". Everytime something bad happen, blame the Iconians.
But honestly the more they do that, the less scary they are. They go around destroying Romulus with a supernova, inciting the Undines into starting a war between kdf/fed, so we won't ally against them, and do they take this opportunity to strike ? No.
Once we are united (what they tried to avoid, but totally see it coming nevertheless), they kill 5-6 klingons and disappear. I'm scared.
At this rate, in a few thousand years the Klingons will be exterminated. If they stop making child, that's it. Such a clever plan.
I don't think we'll ever face them. They'll come and go trolling us, and we'll blame them almost everytime a new threat is added in the game (every new season with a rep).
Comments
This was Q's position from the first encounter with him, although he eventually saw value in our affinity for combat, tempered by our constant self-doubt and ambivalence. But to the point, it would be refreshing to have some story content more cerebral than a rat maze or pest extermination exercise. After all, if we are to impress some of these "higher" races with our shining character, then we will have to be able to think multi-dimensionally and perhaps even self-sacrificially. I am reminded of the early KDF storyline taking us into Stovokor; not your usual space opera fare, to say the least! Of course, it's tricky to posit some overarching moral imperative common to sentient species, but this is the stuff of some of the most memorable Trek episodes!
Savik - Vulcan Fed Temporal Sci
Dahar Masters Fleet: Alphal'Fa - Alien KDF Engineer Qun'pau - Rom/KDF Engineer D'nesh - Orion KDF Scientist Ghen'khan - Liberated KDF Tac
Welcome to StarBug Online - to boldly Bug where no bug has been before!
STO player since November 2013
My Foundry missions | My STO Wiki page | My Twitter home page
In the Novelization of Lensflare:2009, Nero's name is justified as an occasional Romulan quirk, where the give their name to outsiders backward, on the grounds that it sounds better to them than the pronunciation being mangled
Under that, Sela is actually called something like Ales, or quite possibly Alice (did Tasha get to name her?)
At the end of Cloaked Intentions Sela (Alice) gets dragged through (falls down) an Iconian Gateway (a rabbit hole)
At the end of Surface Tension a 'Female' Iconian (queen of hearts) is quite put out with you interfering
In sumarry, the Iconians are living in Wonderland, and we will have to deal with the Mad Hatter (Slamek) before we get to fight the Ico's
for spoiler text use #1b1c1f
Humans will never kill iconians...
if they make you fight iconians this game wlil become a joke... its like fighting Q... tell me how you want to counter their magic alike abilities ?
Inverted tachyon pulse.
As if...it didnt work on Q .. will not work on Iconians either...
The less likely but infinitely more disappointing possibility: The Iconians will be introduced, they will be trash mobs, they will be in multiple pve queues, they will no longer be threatening inside of a week.
The other more likely possibility: the Iconian mobs will be composed entirely of either brainwashed/servitor species and constructs like the probes, and the Iconians themselves will be big huge damage sponge boss fights with the bulk of their instant kill telekinesis conveniently technobabbled away in dialogue any time they are fought.
Tbh I don't like either. But I'll take the latter over the former.
Through caution to the wind. Ignore the cries of PVE noobs weeping that the game is too hard. The bug that made Breach Super OP, I LOVED THAT. They should of left it as is and gave huge marks for beating it...like 200 marks.
They should do the same think with iconians. MAKE THEM HARD AS HELL. Make their AI smart. If we GW them, have use a power to get out if it. One of us throwing heals, focus on them, then take out the team. Get them powers we can to think around. Look to PVP for the damage being done then allow the inconians THAT level of DPS. Allow them to counter US so that we inturn have to counter them.
YES I KNOW WHAT THTA MEANS. 10-20k DPS OR MORE.
GOOD!
Make the game a challenge and when people cry, hand them a tissue and say "dont like it, dont play the mission." Give the PVE noobs a choice, pay easy and grind marks....play iconian godmode, and get crazy marks and bragging rights.
20 Person ground battle, the Iconian doing things like throwing obstacles, firing energy blasts, floating, teleporting, and all sort of other things that makes the boss battles we have so far (especially the Borg Queen battle) look like kid's play.
And to make things interesting, have the battle with puzzles that some people have to work as a team to open up vulnerabilities.
Cryptic won't do that because of the whiners.
"OMG I DIED ONCE, GAME SUCKS, I AM SUPPOSED OT BE INVINCIBLE!!"
It's like a jump scare movie, yeah you can pull the uber scary trick once or twice, then it just gets routine.
The most terrifying villain is the one you never see. Scratch that.
The most terrifying villain is the one you never understand. B5 was good about that. As was the uber villain of the first Everis Cale trilogy. Slaughtering hundreds of thousands just to stand under the sun for a brief moment. That was a true villain.
Iconians just want their stuff back and try to jump scare ya. And to kill/enslave everyone.
Which could work if the plot was focused on character development/growth and they were simply part of the setting. Cause Shon, D'Tan, and stupid klingon lady who won't shut the er.. yeah not very interesting characters we got there.
Now, that's not true. It'll be true if the Iconians keep showing up after every FE telling us to stop it. No, what Cryptic needs to do is to keep them out of the spotlight for as long as possible. We know they're there. We've seen them. We've seen what they can do.
Go the Darth Vader route instead of the scary monster route: have them mess around with other people from time to time, but don't get them pointed at the main hero until its time.
So they'll keep the Iconians out of the spotlight, aside from a few cameos, for the first two STOs and then they'll invade in force in the third STO only to anticlimactically reveal that the created will always rebel against their creators so we should pick an RGB ending?
Joined January 2009
as long as they are not called skin-jobs and spout nonsense about an all powerful being... but even so, that would be pretty weak.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Partly why we can't have fun things. STO's been softballed to death.
The Iconians are still the "threat lurking in the shadow you'll never face". Everytime something bad happen, blame the Iconians.
But honestly the more they do that, the less scary they are. They go around destroying Romulus with a supernova, inciting the Undines into starting a war between kdf/fed, so we won't ally against them, and do they take this opportunity to strike ? No.
Once we are united (what they tried to avoid, but totally see it coming nevertheless), they kill 5-6 klingons and disappear. I'm scared.
At this rate, in a few thousand years the Klingons will be exterminated. If they stop making child, that's it. Such a clever plan.
I don't think we'll ever face them. They'll come and go trolling us, and we'll blame them almost everytime a new threat is added in the game (every new season with a rep).