Star Trek as a Vehicle for Moral Plays

mustrumridcully0

A lot of Star Trek episodes were moral plays. They addressed a moral question or discussion. That was what Star Trek explored -ways to answer this question. Sometimes it was very obvious (racism as a topic with the black & white and white & black species), sometimes it was more complex and not clear-cut (In the Pale Moonlight).

But it seems to me that Star Trek Online is really short on missions that involve such questions. Some missions may be more complex in their story line, even with the occassional twist and turn. But moral discussions are rarely to be had.

Is it possible to make such missions? Or is it inappropriate for an MMO, because in the end, you would need to have the player decide his choice and that might just not allow writing a mission script or the meta story that works with these quite different choices?
Could the writers do more? Should the writers do more? Or are we actually tired of Star Trek preaching to us, and sometimes blowing up ships is just the thing we need to do?

mirrorchaos

mustrumridcully0 wrote: »

A lot of Star Trek episodes were moral plays. They addressed a moral question or discussion. That was what Star Trek explored -ways to answer this question. Sometimes it was very obvious (racism as a topic with the black & white and white & black species), sometimes it was more complex and not clear-cut (In the Pale Moonlight).

But it seems to me that Star Trek Online is really short on missions that involve such questions. Some missions may be more complex in their story line, even with the occassional twist and turn. But moral discussions are rarely to be had.

Is it possible to make such missions? Or is it inappropriate for an MMO, because in the end, you would need to have the player decide his choice and that might just not allow writing a mission script or the meta story that works with these quite different choices?
Could the writers do more? Should the writers do more? Or are we actually tired of Star Trek preaching to us, and sometimes blowing up ships is just the thing we need to do?

far too controversial a choice to bring to mmo's, remember that kids play this game and there is already enough violence, bigotry and other disgusting things in the world without cryptic standing on top of it ignoring the reason they hire people for to discriminate on a game.

its just not appropriate. so consider that sto is a star trek superhero and his or her ship and officers on a quest to defeat the iconians and restore peace and above all the values of others, that includes race, gender, sexual, political and many other orientations and preferences. this means you go out defeating bad guys, nothing but.

leviathan99

mirrorchaos wrote: »

far too controversial a choice to bring to mmo's, remember that kids play this game and there is already enough violence, bigotry and other disgusting things in the world without cryptic standing on top of it ignoring the reason they hire people for to discriminate on a game.

its just not appropriate. so consider that sto is a star trek superhero and his or her ship and officers on a quest to defeat the iconians and restore peace and above all the values of others, that includes race, gender, sexual, political and many other orientations and preferences. this means you go out defeating bad guys, nothing but.

You mean like how half of WoW's arcs and most of its PvP are moral plays? Or for that matter Secret World? Or a third of the missions from City of Heroes?

It's become more controversial with this Gamergate nonsense but that's just dinosaurs saber rattling.

MMOs and RPGs have always tended more towards moral plays than shooters and fighting games have. But even those are moving towards having moral play aspects. Injustice comes to mind. So does Mass Effect.

sheldonlcooper

I thought the Kobali thing was challenging for players to think about. Are we on the right side here? Is their culture too icky etc..

talonxv

sheldonlcooper wrote: »

I thought the Kobali thing was challenging for players to think about. Are we on the right side here? Is their culture too icky etc..

Or when you are forced to make a choice on Neelix's station. That was a moral decision.

leviathan99

Also, I'd say it's probably about 40 years out of date to consider super-heroes as anything BUT morality plays... and even before that they still were. But by 1974, they were full of social relevance themes. Spider-man was facing drug dealers. Green Arrow's sidekick was doing heroin. Race and feminism were becoming topics in comics.

Then you get into Swamp Thing, Watchmen, and Doom Patrol in the 80s/90s at the mature end even as Transformers was crafted from older Japanese toys to be a story about war, ecology, and death. Adolescent fare evolved towards things like Buffy and the new Doctor Who (which have a bit of Star Trek in their DNA). Sitcoms even started having "very special episodes" in the 80s and began incorporating Norman Lear style approaches and today feature plot points that include morality plays involving sexuality, infidelity, drugs, war, and religion.

Most of Marvel and DC's films at least play with these kinds of themes. (Look especially at Iron Man, Captain America, and the Nolan Bat-films.)

If anything, super-hero games have tended to lag in this respect.

Meanwhile, I'd argue that WoW is often more Trek than STO in terms of its tendency to apply broad morality play themes to its arcs.

They had a quest where you're basically trying to talk a bunch of 1930s style socialites out of supporting a Hitler figure. A number which involve free will, ethical implications of biological weapons, habitat conservation...For that matter, despite the name WAR - craft, players in that game aren't active soldiers and tend to get involved in personal stories like passing love letters between separated couples, dealing with people obsessed with revenge over the loss of a loved one, saving and interacting with individual characters.

vestereng

This feeds directly into the reason I laughed at the concept of "story" in STO from day 1.

Star trek is all about choices, here there are none - anytime you remove the initiative from the player he becomes a spectator and it's no longer a game.

Any game, perhaps a star trek one especially, has to put the user in the main role. YOU are the story, what you do becomes the plot.


I think it speaks volumes of cryptic's perception of its users the way they let us be silent pawn fanboys everytime, how simple the design is and how un-intelligent it is.

So you don't take philosophy class so what, mostly everyone who steps outside or maybe even just watches tv ought to instinctively know and understand some of the major conflicts or paradoxes of life - love, death, friendship etc etc

Then they build missions like the one where you have to fix a drink for someone I mean come on, I was never that immature and neither was star trek - the neckbeard fanboism is just insulting


Like everything is okay because we named an NPC ship something that was mentioned in an episode it's now high-end quality and completely star trek through and through, nope

ddesjardins

vestereng wrote: »

Star trek is all about choices, here there are none - anytime you remove the initiative from the player he becomes a spectator and it's no longer a game.

Could not agree more.

Fundamentally Star Trek in 1967 excelled as social commentary. How that could translate into a MMO, let alone a video game is challenging to say the least.

Star Trek Online makes no attempt to bridge those types of dilemmas, and when they do it's in the briefest of ways - should you kill the Ferengi to make the Vorta happy, or save her?

Either decision has no impact on the player, beyond a momentary sense of 'that's the right thing to do' or boom goes the Ferengi and what XP did it give me?

stardestroyer001

It takes a certain mindset to "become" your character and face the limited moral dilemmas that exist within the game. Most players, including myself most of the time, tend to let the character become me - in other words, they don't give a ***** about moral dilemmas or even the story, just hitting the F button repeatedly and killing anything with a red name over it.

proteusblack

vestereng wrote: »

This feeds directly into the reason I laughed at the concept of "story" in STO from day 1.

Star trek is all about choices, here there are none - anytime you remove the initiative from the player he becomes a spectator and it's no longer a game.

Any game, perhaps a star trek one especially, has to put the user in the main role. YOU are the story, what you do becomes the plot.


I think it speaks volumes of cryptic's perception of its users the way they let us be silent pawn fanboys everytime, how simple the design is and how un-intelligent it is.

So you don't take philosophy class so what, mostly everyone who steps outside or maybe even just watches tv ought to instinctively know and understand some of the major conflicts or paradoxes of life - love, death, friendship etc etc

Then they build missions like the one where you have to fix a drink for someone I mean come on, I was never that immature and neither was star trek - the neckbeard fanboism is just insulting


Like everything is okay because we named an NPC ship something that was mentioned in an episode it's now high-end quality and completely star trek through and through, nope

ddesjardins wrote: »

Could not agree more.

Fundamentally Star Trek in 1967 excelled as social commentary. How that could translate into a MMO, let alone a video game is challenging to say the least.

Star Trek Online makes no attempt to bridge those types of dilemmas, and when they do it's in the briefest of ways - should you kill the Ferengi to make the Vorta happy, or save her?

Either decision has no impact on the player, beyond a momentary sense of 'that's the right thing to do' or boom goes the Ferengi and what XP did it give me?

I also stand behind every word quoted here. For me growing up, the value of the nature of Star Trek lied in what I learned from the questions that arose among the characters' circumstances. It taught me about critical thinking. The physical conflicts were simply a detail among the bigger picture of why it existed in the first place, and all the choices that were made between engaging in it or not, and why.

Maybe one day, game technology will evolve enough so that we can implement a deeper dynamic that allows each player to make unique choices and experience outcomes naturally as reward and consequence, and maybe promote interactive critical thinking in this medium.

adverbero

Sadly I think the closest we'll get to proper morality plays will be those written by self motivated foundry authors, and that suffers from a lack of continuity since we can't carry actions from one map to another let alone a sequel mission
And of course as a player you will be subject to the whims of the authors moralistic views as most of us are probably not as objective as we think we are.


But faults aside, the tool is there for us to self produce the content we feel is appropriate but absent, so why not try to make a morality play ?

talonxv

stoleviathan99 wrote: »

Also, I'd say it's probably about 40 years out of date to consider super-heroes as anything BUT morality plays... and even before that they still were. But by 1974, they were full of social relevance themes. Spider-man was facing drug dealers. Green Arrow's sidekick was doing heroin. Race and feminism were becoming topics in comics.

Then you get into Swamp Thing, Watchmen, and Doom Patrol in the 80s/90s at the mature end even as Transformers was crafted from older Japanese toys to be a story about war, ecology, and death. Adolescent fare evolved towards things like Buffy and the new Doctor Who (which have a bit of Star Trek in their DNA). Sitcoms even started having "very special episodes" in the 80s and began incorporating Norman Lear style approaches and today feature plot points that include morality plays involving sexuality, infidelity, drugs, war, and religion.

Most of Marvel and DC's films at least play with these kinds of themes. (Look especially at Iron Man, Captain America, and the Nolan Bat-films.)

If anything, super-hero games have tended to lag in this respect.

Meanwhile, I'd argue that WoW is often more Trek than STO in terms of its tendency to apply broad morality play themes to its arcs.

They had a quest where you're basically trying to talk a bunch of 1930s style socialites out of supporting a Hitler figure. A number which involve free will, ethical implications of biological weapons, habitat conservation...For that matter, despite the name WAR - craft, players in that game aren't active soldiers and tend to get involved in personal stories like passing love letters between separated couples, dealing with people obsessed with revenge over the loss of a loved one, saving and interacting with individual characters.

One thing I will give SWTOR, morality is almost everything and it influences how your story turns out.

[Deleted User]

mustrumridcully0 wrote: »

A lot of Star Trek episodes were moral plays. They addressed a moral question or discussion. That was what Star Trek explored -ways to answer this question. Sometimes it was very obvious (racism as a topic with the black & white and white & black species), sometimes it was more complex and not clear-cut (In the Pale Moonlight).

But it seems to me that Star Trek Online is really short on missions that involve such questions. Some missions may be more complex in their story line, even with the occassional twist and turn. But moral discussions are rarely to be had.

Is it possible to make such missions? Or is it inappropriate for an MMO, because in the end, you would need to have the player decide his choice and that might just not allow writing a mission script or the meta story that works with these quite different choices?
Could the writers do more? Should the writers do more? Or are we actually tired of Star Trek preaching to us, and sometimes blowing up ships is just the thing we need to do?

This was actually what I considered most wrong with Star Trek.

janus1975

My take on sci-fi (Star Trek in particular) is that the "It's set in the future!" is a ruse to open up the opportunity to talk about a question that is absolutely set in the "now". It's like a fun park mirror that distorts things just enough to alter the factors just enough to make them not-quite-recognizable, to allow the discussion. Sometimes, that alteration is done in terms of "what if we were better?", other times, "what if we were worse?".

Even a film like Metropolis is like this: very obviously 1920s-style but dystopian, dealing with the issue of whether the machines of the time were making life better, making life worse; and whether machinery served society or whether society was giving things up for the sake of machines.

Something like STO can likewise address these issues, if it took the time to. There seems to be a "golden formula" for Star Trek in general, and similarly one for STO. Storyline that moves the player along, a question or a mystery to be solved, characters we care about (or even don't, but learn to like), a battle or two that fits in with the story. But ultimately the most memorable are those that surprise. One featured Foundry mission did that with a group that brought together all species of the galaxy once a century to give them new technologies for example. The discussion with Franklin Drake when (or if) you say you don't feel comfortable with what he wants you to do with the Devidians is another.

So I agree that Star Trek is about morals, values, and the consequences of our actions. I also say it's possible (but not very well implemented) for STO to follow a similar path.

coupaholic

It's difficult to do.

There are the usual problems of bringing in such content. Firstly is merely holding attention for the majority of players who basically see the plots in an MMO a necessary evil until the action starts. Then of course certain issues they attempt to convey could be mishandled or misunderstood, it could insult some players and so on.

Then there are the limitations of the MMO. Lack of choices in how to respond or how to act will annoy players - just as the DR plot does now for some. And the development cycle is always behind, in that they could attempt to tackle a very modern issue but once the stuff is made and released lots of other media have played the issue out to death and it becomes somewhat of a clich

bluegeek

adverbero wrote: »

Sadly I think the closest we'll get to proper morality plays will be those written by self motivated foundry authors, and that suffers from a lack of continuity since we can't carry actions from one map to another let alone a sequel mission
And of course as a player you will be subject to the whims of the authors moralistic views as most of us are probably not as objective as we think we are.


But faults aside, the tool is there for us to self produce the content we feel is appropriate but absent, so why not try to make a morality play ?

This. There's really nothing in the game that does anything but give the player the illusion of choice, at best. There are no lasting consequences of any importance for any of the decisions the player can make.

But then, if you think about it, that was mostly true for a lot of the stuff that actually took place in Star Trek. It was certainly true of TOS and mostly true for TNG, with mixed results for DS9, VOY, and ENT. And in the end, it's just a script and the story ends exactly where the plot says it will.

The big difference is that a writer has full control over all the characters in the story. Foundry authors do not. They can force the player to take certain actions, but they can't make 'em like it.

With the right set of tools, we could get around that limitation and through the magic of dynamic scripting make it a real "Choose Your Adventure". The outcomes are still limited, but the player's illusion of control over the character's destiny would be more complete.

This is why we're graced with or suffer with the presence of Tovan in the Romulan story arcs. The Devs introduced a character that they DO control in order to provide the sense of continuity that adverbero alluded to.

THEY don't have the tools to dynamically alter the outcome of a mission, either, or to trigger an event based on something the player did three missions ago. They and we can modify dialogue under some limited conditionals, and that's it. It's possible to alter the flow of the mission on a single map, but can get complicated really fast, always ends the same way, and doesn't affect the next map.

The successful authors figure out how to work within those limitations in order to create an illusion that what the player does and who their character is actually matters.

havam

the foundry is a beautiful thing.

After I parsed 50k MPS I stopped worrying about that kind of non-combat rp stuff. Kestrel and her team have it in them. But cryptic can t even create meaningful combat for anything other then pew pew, let alone faction specific dialogues that make sense.

The kind of intellectual stimulation for moral plays is beyond the design of this game.

adverbero

bluegeek wrote: »

This. There's really nothing in the game that does anything but give the player the illusion of choice, at best. There are no lasting consequences of any importance for any of the decisions the player can make.

But then, if you think about it, that was mostly true for a lot of the stuff that actually took place in Star Trek. It was certainly true of TOS and mostly true for TNG, with mixed results for DS9, VOY, and ENT. And in the end, it's just a script and the story ends exactly where the plot says it will.

The big difference is that a writer has full control over all the characters in the story. Foundry authors do not. They can force the player to take certain actions, but they can't make 'em like it.

With the right set of tools, we could get around that limitation and through the magic of dynamic scripting make it a real "Choose Your Adventure". The outcomes are still limited, but the player's illusion of control over the character's destiny would be more complete.

This is why we're graced with or suffer with the presence of Tovan in the Romulan story arcs. The Devs introduced a character that they DO control in order to provide the sense of continuity that adverbero alluded to.

THEY don't have the tools to dynamically alter the outcome of a mission, either, or to trigger an event based on something the player did three missions ago. They and we can modify dialogue under some limited conditionals, and that's it. It's possible to alter the flow of the mission on a single map, but can get complicated really fast, always ends the same way, and doesn't affect the next map.

The successful authors figure out how to work within those limitations in order to create an illusion that what the player does and who their character is actually matters.

Very well said

Speaking of working around limitations, I did manage to create a few Player driven choices on one map, small things like giving an option to kill a security team OR hack the door ( Nightmare to set up, pain to make work every time by the way, and many players will barely notice ) and then I set up a puzzle that allowed you to save two trapped innocents, OR you can leave them to their fate your choice, But again a real pain to get it to work, as it involves at least 4 times the work of a simple event


And by far the most interesting tool I have found is dialogue triggers, Its not too hard to make a conversation matter,with twists and turns giving you info, allowing you to offend or befreind resluting in different flow, and even modifying objectives, but it is a lot of investment for limited return as I think many fail to appreciate how much work goes in on the back end

echelonalpha

I have always loved Star Trek for its social commentary and it's creative way of asking complex questions.

But then, take a look at our modern world.. how everything is polarized and debated and torn apart by the masses instead of discussed and compromised on..

Sometimes I wonder if certain episodes would even be produced, if they were making them today..

jheinig

Of course, social commentary does not necessarily mean making difficult choices. For instance, in "The Cloud Minders" (TOS) or "A Taste of Armageddon" (TOS), Kirk isn't really confronting a difficult choice about whether to support a particular culture's foible. In "The Cloud Minders," it's a Metropolis-esque social commentary about class divisions and about prejudices that prevent members of the different social classes from working together to address their problems. In "A Taste of Armageddon" it's social commentary on the increasingly automated process of warfare and whether people will blindly follow orders from a computer even if those orders mean killing everyone (a very pertinent comment in the '60s, during the Cold War, when someone might get a signal from a computer, interpret that as an attack from an enemy country, and press the button to launch a nuclear missile that would start the end of the world). In neither case is there an issue of making a moral choice -- it is not a classic "dilemma" (a choice between two paths, each with moral weight), but rather a case of using science fiction as a veneer to discuss the problems that society faces, a step removed from the actual cases. Star Trek usually does this in a fairly serious way, but it's also possible to lampoon in this fashion ("The Mikado," the famous musical, is actually social commentary about then-contemporary Britain, but by setting it in faux Japan they are able to make scathing commentary without it looking like "actual" Britain, wink wink nudge nudge.)

In MMOs especially it's difficult to have long-ranging, substantive consequences due to player choices, simply because it can mean massively ballooning the amount of content that must be built. That's why so many games (MMOs and otherwise) will give you a limited suite of choices but these lead to different approaches to similar outcomes.

theanothername

mustrumridcully0 wrote: »

A lot of Star Trek episodes were moral plays. They addressed a moral question or discussion. That was what Star Trek explored -ways to answer this question. Sometimes it was very obvious (racism as a topic with the black & white and white & black species), sometimes it was more complex and not clear-cut (In the Pale Moonlight).

But it seems to me that Star Trek Online is really short on missions that involve such questions. Some missions may be more complex in their story line, even with the occassional twist and turn. But moral discussions are rarely to be had.

Is it possible to make such missions? Or is it inappropriate for an MMO, because in the end, you would need to have the player decide his choice and that might just not allow writing a mission script or the meta story that works with these quite different choices?
Could the writers do more? Should the writers do more? Or are we actually tired of Star Trek preaching to us, and sometimes blowing up ships is just the thing we need to do?

Social criticism, a bit of shaming & exposure and going against to much political correctness should always find its way in Trek.

I was very pleasently surprised by the story parts with the patrol missions involving the Malon.

starswordc

jheinig wrote: »

Of course, social commentary does not necessarily mean making difficult choices. For instance, in "The Cloud Minders" (TOS) or "A Taste of Armageddon" (TOS), Kirk isn't really confronting a difficult choice about whether to support a particular culture's foible. In "The Cloud Minders," it's a Metropolis-esque social commentary about class divisions and about prejudices that prevent members of the different social classes from working together to address their problems. In "A Taste of Armageddon" it's social commentary on the increasingly automated process of warfare and whether people will blindly follow orders from a computer even if those orders mean killing everyone (a very pertinent comment in the '60s, during the Cold War, when someone might get a signal from a computer, interpret that as an attack from an enemy country, and press the button to launch a nuclear missile that would start the end of the world). In neither case is there an issue of making a moral choice -- it is not a classic "dilemma" (a choice between two paths, each with moral weight), but rather a case of using science fiction as a veneer to discuss the problems that society faces, a step removed from the actual cases. Star Trek usually does this in a fairly serious way, but it's also possible to lampoon in this fashion ("The Mikado," the famous musical, is actually social commentary about then-contemporary Britain, but by setting it in faux Japan they are able to make scathing commentary without it looking like "actual" Britain, wink wink nudge nudge.)

In MMOs especially it's difficult to have long-ranging, substantive consequences due to player choices, simply because it can mean massively ballooning the amount of content that must be built. That's why so many games (MMOs and otherwise) will give you a limited suite of choices but these lead to different approaches to similar outcomes.

Back when things started to get serious in Iraq this summer I suggested a mission plot that would use the True Way after Madred's capture as an analogy for ISIS (e.g. taking him down at Empok Nor opened the way for somebody far more dangerous to take over), with the CSDF replacing the Iraqi Army, a civilian-raised not-quite-legal militia for the Peshmerga, and the Oralians standing in for the Yazidis. Maybe I should start plotting that out and make it myself.

adverbero

starswordc wrote: »

Back when things started to get serious in Iraq this summer I suggested a mission plot that would use the True Way after Madred's capture as an analogy for ISIS (e.g. taking him down at Empok Nor opened the way for somebody far more dangerous to take over), with the CSDF replacing the Iraqi Army, a civilian-raised not-quite-legal militia for the Peshmerga, and the Oralians standing in for the Yazidis. Maybe I should start plotting that out and make it myself.

Could be one hell of a great mission if you get it right, careful though, don't want to hit the nail to hard on the head unless its too obvious an analogue

That and some people get touchy about Cardassians.

darramouss1

Anyone who has read any of my posts knows that I'm VERY critical of everything. That being said, I feel that the writing of the missions in the game has gotten better as time has gone on. The addition of actual Star Trek actors doing voices is fantastic.

That being said, a lot of the missions make me feel like I'm watching an episode where I'm occasionally required to press a few buttons on my keyboard to progress to the next scene. It's like it's becoming less of a game and more of an episodic tv show as we're not really being given choices that actually mean anything.

I think it would be awesome if the player was forced to make decisions that had actual impact on the mission itself. Decisions that potentially affect what loot you get, how much XP you get, even affect how NPCs in future missions regard you. As a minimum I do think we should be given choices that can potentially lead to mission failure. Someone in an earlier post was discussing the killing of the Ferengi to appease the Vorta. Killing the Ferengi should result in failure of the mission or at least less rewards as it goes against the beliefs of the Federation. (Klingons and Romulans would not need to incur this penalty as their cultures were based on different belief structures.)

thunderfoot

I sometimes think we fans expect far too much from Star Trek.

In ToS, Gene and the writers got away with a lot only because it was a science fiction show. So they did episodes that explored racism and other things which still make people uncomfortable.

They also produced "Specter of the Gun". Which I always thought was really awful. As in if this was the episode which was running when I tuned into Star Trek for the first time, it would be the last Star Trek anything I was ever around.

Over the years, the fans have interpreted meanings in episodes and scenes which may or may not be there. When the writers and producers were approached with these by fans, they very wisely said, "Yes. That's it. You got what we were trying to do, you clever, clever boy." So the fans felt all smug and hip and the writers and producers kicked the can down the road until the next time.

Star Trek as a morality play? With Kirk bedding every female alien in sight? McCoy making bigoted and prejudiced statements at every possible opportunity? Spock walking around assuming everyone else was inferior? Picard and Riker doing whatever they pleased? Sisko deliberately assassinating a high level Romulan and framing the Jem'Hadar for the act? Janeway ignoring the Prime Directive whenever it got in the way?

No, I don't think Star Trek can be a morality play. I do think I enjoy it very much and I am willing to overlook some things to do so.

venkou

Since the series contained heavy social commentary, Star Trek: Online should have been a modern day role playing game. Within my use of the word modern, I am referring to: companion stories, companion relationships, species origin stories, dialogue influenced outcomes, dialogue wheel, npc background banter, open world exploration, epic open world feeling, etc...

Star Trek: Online is a throwback to the RPGs in the 1990s.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire, Oblivion, Skyrim, and Dragon Age should be used as templates for Star Trek: Online.

venkou

jheinig wrote: »

In MMOs especially it's difficult to have long-ranging, substantive consequences due to player choices, simply because it can mean massively ballooning the amount of content that must be built. That's why so many games (MMOs and otherwise) will give you a limited suite of choices but these lead to different approaches to similar outcomes.

You have not played the right MMORPGs.

Star Wars: The Old Republic is doing it sucessfully.

ruminate00

venkou wrote: »

You have not played the right MMORPGs.

Star Wars: The Old Republic is doing it sucessfully.

TOR still only gives you a limited suite of choices that lead to different approaches to similar outcomes.

leviathan99

vestereng wrote: »

This feeds directly into the reason I laughed at the concept of "story" in STO from day 1.

Star trek is all about choices, here there are none - anytime you remove the initiative from the player he becomes a spectator and it's no longer a game.

Any game, perhaps a star trek one especially, has to put the user in the main role. YOU are the story, what you do becomes the plot.


I think it speaks volumes of cryptic's perception of its users the way they let us be silent pawn fanboys everytime, how simple the design is and how un-intelligent it is.

So you don't take philosophy class so what, mostly everyone who steps outside or maybe even just watches tv ought to instinctively know and understand some of the major conflicts or paradoxes of life - love, death, friendship etc etc

Then they build missions like the one where you have to fix a drink for someone I mean come on, I was never that immature and neither was star trek - the neckbeard fanboism is just insulting


Like everything is okay because we named an NPC ship something that was mentioned in an episode it's now high-end quality and completely star trek through and through, nope

I can tolerate missions not having branches but I always felt like they should have "talkback" missions where you talk to your superior officers, Temporal Investigations, a counselor/doctor/bartender and get to register your opinion on what's going on, which could influence some kind of progression.

So maybe you have to work with the Kobali or kill/capture a guy and maybe that's necessary from Cryptic's POV that it go a certain way so they can do sequels. But you could register your feelings on it between missions which shapes your captain's development somehow.

leviathan99

Actually, I think this would be a good use of ship interiors, just thinking out loud.

The game seems like it can track what your recently completed missions (and duty officer assignments) were.

Now imagine you visit your ship interior for talkbacks on what happened recently for rewards.

Maybe you only get one talkback per mission completion so who you talk to and what you say influences the bonus reward after a mission.

mustrumridcully0

It has been an ongoing problem for me in STO that the Captain tends to say very little. Part of it always caused the feeling that I was just following my BOFFs orders (not suggestions).

Cryptic has gotten better at it, but there is still much to do. And cut scenes really suck in this regard, because everyone else may be voiced, but your Captain is silent. (Clear advantage here goes to TOR, which started with voice acting from the start.)

"Commenting" on past missions could be exactly one thing to do to give some feeling of control and moral authority back - explaining your choices or critisizing them, and maybe giving different types of rewards based on that.


Unrelated:
In the old Star Trek adventure game "25th Anniversary", there was also always a post-portem talk with the Admiral, that judged the results of the mission. I kinda liked that (though in that case, you are not the one in control. But the idea that the "judgement" was based on decisions you made and how well they agreed with Starfleet Principles was interesting.)