Well the polls been out a few days and I think the forum consensus is clear. Statistically, it looks like the Iconian War pretty much graded with a C, possible curve to a B- at best.
I calculate the average at a 3.37/5 stars, currently.
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I gave it 4 stars. Overall all I felt the story was well done. I do think they could have improved some things. I would have thought the Tholians would have put up more of a fight especially in space, instead of getting their a** kicked all over New Romulus.
Uneasy allies: 4 stars
Blood of the Ancients: 5 stars
Delta Flight: 3 stars
House of Pagh: 3 stars
Time in a Bottle: 5 stars
Broken Circle: 2 stars
Butterfly: 1 star (I hate this one)
Midnight: 5 stars
Impressive map designs. But story ... with the exception of "Blood of the Ancients" and the attack in "Broken Circle" ... It never felt like a War.
The Krenim should of had their own Arc... Maybe they still can.
Where were the Elachi?
Undine? Borg? Voth?
Where was the Battlezone? Red Alerts? Patrols? In one of the blogs and "Midnight" it turns out ...
T'Ket had a grudge against the Romulans... New Romulus Battlezone maybe?
A new Romulus BZ is an excellent Idea: One where we could use an entire away team.
Over the weekend, I played through the whole arc on one of my alts from "Uneasy Allies" right thru "Midnight". I didn't do anything in between and didn't have to repeat any episode 4 times in a row over 4 weeks before getting the next episode. That makes all of the difference. It's a good story, well told (if holey) and the graphic polish is top notch. There is a good balance between ground and space as well. Although, if I had noticed this thread before I played through them all one after the other, I would have probably given it a 2.
"Midnight" is one of the best episodes done by Cryptic in this game. I'm not sure if it is as good as "Surface Tension" yet because I've only played "Midnight" 3 times so far. Albeit, I've enjoyed it each time. I've played "Surface Tension" on all 12 of my alts multiple times and every single time I've played it, I've loved it. So once I've gotten all of my alts through "Midnight" and I've enjoyed it every time, then I'll put it up there with "Surface Tension". Just my personal opinion, of course
I agree with the other posters in here that have said the "Iconian War" should have had much more "War" in it, though. Playing each episode 4 weeks in a row before the next episode was released really made me loose the feel of urgency to the "War". Some other content in game (other than in the queues) such as a BZ or some patrol missions or some Red Alerts....something...anything.... would have kept me feeling the urgency of the "War". The Blogs were good and well written. But even they were released one a week or so, so even those were too far spaced apart to impart urgency.
Over all, I've really enjoyed the Iconinan Arc. I just wish there were more ingame stuff to support the "urgency" and "desperation" that were hinted at in episode themselves and the Blogs. Next time I hope Cryptic takes this general feeling of the community to heart and fills out any future story arcs with other content relevant to the story they are trying to tell.
so if u think about it, Q was right from the beginning when he first approached Picard and told him to go back he will only make things worse. it was his ultimate actions that started the proverbial snowball rolling that lead to the war...they should of sent wesley instead it would of prevented a few conflicts in later episodes, also Tasha had to die at the hand of Armus so Worf could become awesome...u know now im curious how the TOS crew would of handled the Enterprise D in Picards place, and how Picard would of handled the original Enterprise from kirks era! while we are at it, lets switch janeway and sisko, along with their crews to see what happens. i bet sisko would of decked Neelix the first hour they met ^^
Mission and system limitations aside, story wise the content could have been better. Midnight was a little too "deus ex machina" for my tastes and it all ends with a red herring chase.
It was perhaps not the most interesting story-arc Cryptic has done..
My thumbs up are still on the Breen story, I was going on the hype train for every new episode.
Cryptic totally missed the devastation that the Iconian brought, we only saw it in episodes, but everything was quite left out outside of those arcs. We had 2 (?) Queues and that's it. Mean while when reading the logs of Enterprise, we can read that planet after planet was being taken by the Iconians, still us players didn't get to witness any of that or red alerts.
They could have gone so much further of helping us the players to feel the sense of devestation and losses.
The Story arc has whole was interesting, well made, but nothing really that sticks out. The conclusion was a bit of a let down. (purge the heretics!).
Pro:
Well designed
Voice actors
The atmosphere.
Con
Playing it safe, nothing that puts out.
For the ultimate villian, we didn't get to feel that.
Didn't engage the players outside the story arc.
The missions were generally good in my opinion. But the lack of a battle or adventure zone fails to really nail down the sense of war in-game. I find the VBZ, Undine Space BZ, Defera and Kobali Prime achieve this in a much better way.
I wonder if we will get a concluding war blog today. I'd like to have a final tally about what was lost.
No, thanks, no more war blogs, but more things explained / showed / playable IN GAME.
This. The war blogs were the most asinine idea ever.
The only place where I should be getting relevant plot and world building is in the game itself.
Disagree. World Building often and naturally happens with supplementary sources, not just the game itself. And it's also a bit of advertisement for the game, as people that stumble on the website might read a war blog and get interested.
The Iconian War without the War Blogs would have not been improved by the absence of war blogs. It would have been improved by more stuff in game reminding us we're in a war, but that is independent of whether we have war blogs or not. The war blogs are also not exactly stuff that fits well in the game - a private conversation between the Captain of the Enterprise and his Counselor is not something we'd be privy to, and allows a very different tone then anything we would see in game.
I hope Cryptic takes it as a lesson and the next time a big story-like this is running, they add some stuff like that.
They actually did it better once- the Breen Arc did not just have the Featured Episodes, but also a few new repeatable missions in sector space. It's not quite what would have sufficed for a War, I think, but it's a good start.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
From personal experience, i can say that an amazing number of players (i would say at least 65 %, and probably 75 %) never go to the game's site or forum. It's very easy to notice in zone chat in the alpha / beta / delta space map or ESD . People ask questions that have been answered in blogs, news or the forum, clearly indicating that they don't read the said pages. Some players are not even reading the messages on the game's launcher. So any content released in war blogs on the game's site is almost sure to NOT be watched by a significant percentage of the game's players.
3 stars due to inconsistent quality of episodes. Midnight was a superb one, certainly one of the best missions in game. Blood of the Ancients and Time in a Bottle were pretty good too. Broken Circle and Butterfly, however, were totally horrible.
Hmm..as people said..the intensity of the actual missions was usually well done it was when you weren't in those missions, there was nothing, no red alerts, events nothing, it was as if it wasn't happening, it didn't help that it did feel somewhat rushed, some conflicts can be rushed..but this one NEEDED the epic feel it was building up to, a good example is in my Foundry series when I did the Breen invasion storyline, there were threads in the missions leading up to it that the Breen were going to be a big problem and once they did actually strike most missions even if the breen wasn't the main focus they'd be there somehow (e.g. the episode nightmare planet starts with you defending a planet against the Breen )
little things like more armed security on stations, more npc warships patroling systems..y'know that general feeling of..ok something not happening..yet..but it will
Liked it overall, but I would have liked to have seen the results be more devastating, lots of ships destroyed, a big funeral, or even something as simple as seeing one of the big cast members with a bruise or a splinter or something
Neither side really tried very hard to win the war. There's already a whole thread somewhere on the many ways the Alliance could have turned the tide against the Iconians (one of which I touch on in my latest Foundry mission), so I won't rehash them all here. But the Iconians themselves were portrayed as having such a mind-bogglingly huge fleet (big enough to blot out the sun of the Andromeda Sphere) that they could have sent a few million of them to descend upon the core Alliance worlds, one by one, like huge hordes of locusts, overwhelm any planetary defenses by sheer numbers, reduce their entire surfaces and everyone on them to molten slag in a matter of minutes, then move on to the next planet and lather/rinse/repeat until every populated world in Alpha and Beta Quadrants was toast.
Feeling claustrophobic like the Haralds are closing in
Blood stains on my hands and I killed Iconians
I'm in trouble for the things I haven't got to yet
My phaser's set to kill and my palms are getting wet
i am going to wait for player-made for iconian saga, either in middle of war event or alter timeline arc.
i gave 5 stars for Midnight, it was sort of long waited conclusion, so that why we got "New Dawn", for new challenges and some old foes.
hey Devs, what about making new "Eugenic Saga"?, with few time travel story arc when klingons were look more human, there are possible of "other enchanted" survivors while Khan left some behind when he took revenege on Capt Kirk.
some of them are not all bad guys, even some do really want to join fed and be part of human family once again, and add lot of plot twists, sort of like genetic virus storyline, going to distant eugenic past where it begins, etc and so on.
what if we discover another lost "stasis" ship on some uncharted planets?
remember about DS9's fed doctor bashar? he is one of secret enchanted human, he only want to server fed as doctor as long they are still forbid to be tact officers.
i am sure there is some players who want to play enchanted human captains.
so if u think about it, Q was right from the beginning when he first approached Picard and told him to go back he will only make things worse. it was his ultimate actions that started the proverbial snowball rolling that lead to the war...they should of sent wesley instead it would of prevented a few conflicts in later episodes, also Tasha had to die at the hand of Armus so Worf could become awesome...u know now im curious how the TOS crew would of handled the Enterprise D in Picards place, and how Picard would of handled the original Enterprise from kirks era! while we are at it, lets switch janeway and sisko, along with their crews to see what happens. i bet sisko would of decked Neelix the first hour they met ^^
Picard on the original series would have meant a lot more 2 part episodes, Kirk on the enterprise d would have been fun, I think he would have never wanted the families on the ship, and Wesley would have been dropped off on the first planet they saw....and he would have given Q a patented double fisted judo chop in the first episode. Riker would have been in the brig for the beard, having been accused of being a mirror universe spy, and Dr. Crusher most likely wouldn't have liked being called bones.
Sisko would have ended Voyager in 1 episode having destroyed the Kazon and beating the caretaker untill he agreed to send everyone back. Janeway would have outlawed Ractagino and implemented that Coffee was the only drink to be served on the station.
I particularly enjoyed the fact that my bridge officers actually got dialogue that wasn't crucial to our mission in "Uneasy Allies". I.e the observations made about the statue remaining relatively unharmed (and short conversation between officers) etc.. Not sure if I'm in the minority, but I wish I would have seen more of that throughout the game. It makes your Bridge Officers feel more like a real team rather than near completely mute people who shoot (or die) and only speak if absolutely critical information is available.
I don't know, Uneasy Allies dialogue just made your crew feel more personable for a change.
All the other episodes had their ups too, but that subtle change is what made UA in particular a unique experience. Hope I can expect to see more of that from the writers in the future!
The final episode saved it from being a 2 or even 1 star affair, for me. And it could have definitely been at least a 4 star event, if there had been something more to the war ingame than just what was in the FEs and STFs. Again, I still don't understand why we didn't get at least an Iconian battlezone (especially since every other reputation has either a battlezone or an adventure zone), and Iconian-themed Red Alerts would have really sold the idea that Iconian forces can strike anywhere at any time. Worse, the ending even had justification as to why we'd still be fighting Herald forces even after the end of the war, what with T'ket refusing to accept peace.
Still, despite lacking the feeling that there was an actual war going on outside of the FEs, a lot of writer-induced stupidity and melodrama in the principal characters, and the usual plotholes, I did actually enjoy the ending, at least. I'm glad they finally acknowledged the idea that the Iconians weren't always so bloodthirsty, and that we managed to have a (mostly) peaceful resolution. As others have mentioned, it probably felt the most "Star Trek" out of the whole thing.
And I'm also really glad that, despite said peaceful resolution, T'ket is still out there somewhere, being a psychotic TRIBBLE. Hopefully the writers don't end up forgetting about her, as they're wont to do with NPCs from prior story arcs.
"There will never be enough blood to wash away my need for vengeance! A single world...I could destroy a million worlds and it would not be enough! Your existence is an insult to the memory of my people! I will continue my fight, even if I must fight alone!"
Comments
I calculate the average at a 3.37/5 stars, currently.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-)
Proudly F2P. Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
A new Romulus BZ is an excellent Idea: One where we could use an entire away team.
Over the weekend, I played through the whole arc on one of my alts from "Uneasy Allies" right thru "Midnight". I didn't do anything in between and didn't have to repeat any episode 4 times in a row over 4 weeks before getting the next episode. That makes all of the difference. It's a good story, well told (if holey) and the graphic polish is top notch. There is a good balance between ground and space as well. Although, if I had noticed this thread before I played through them all one after the other, I would have probably given it a 2.
"Midnight" is one of the best episodes done by Cryptic in this game. I'm not sure if it is as good as "Surface Tension" yet because I've only played "Midnight" 3 times so far. Albeit, I've enjoyed it each time. I've played "Surface Tension" on all 12 of my alts multiple times and every single time I've played it, I've loved it. So once I've gotten all of my alts through "Midnight" and I've enjoyed it every time, then I'll put it up there with "Surface Tension". Just my personal opinion, of course
I agree with the other posters in here that have said the "Iconian War" should have had much more "War" in it, though. Playing each episode 4 weeks in a row before the next episode was released really made me loose the feel of urgency to the "War". Some other content in game (other than in the queues) such as a BZ or some patrol missions or some Red Alerts....something...anything.... would have kept me feeling the urgency of the "War". The Blogs were good and well written. But even they were released one a week or so, so even those were too far spaced apart to impart urgency.
Over all, I've really enjoyed the Iconinan Arc. I just wish there were more ingame stuff to support the "urgency" and "desperation" that were hinted at in episode themselves and the Blogs. Next time I hope Cryptic takes this general feeling of the community to heart and fills out any future story arcs with other content relevant to the story they are trying to tell.
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Co-Founder of TOS Veterans and TOS Qan Mang
so if u think about it, Q was right from the beginning when he first approached Picard and told him to go back he will only make things worse. it was his ultimate actions that started the proverbial snowball rolling that lead to the war...they should of sent wesley instead it would of prevented a few conflicts in later episodes, also Tasha had to die at the hand of Armus so Worf could become awesome...u know now im curious how the TOS crew would of handled the Enterprise D in Picards place, and how Picard would of handled the original Enterprise from kirks era! while we are at it, lets switch janeway and sisko, along with their crews to see what happens. i bet sisko would of decked Neelix the first hour they met ^^
http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/10052253
Why are you not rejoicing?
My thumbs up are still on the Breen story, I was going on the hype train for every new episode.
Cryptic totally missed the devastation that the Iconian brought, we only saw it in episodes, but everything was quite left out outside of those arcs. We had 2 (?) Queues and that's it. Mean while when reading the logs of Enterprise, we can read that planet after planet was being taken by the Iconians, still us players didn't get to witness any of that or red alerts.
They could have gone so much further of helping us the players to feel the sense of devestation and losses.
The Story arc has whole was interesting, well made, but nothing really that sticks out. The conclusion was a bit of a let down. (purge the heretics!).
Pro:
Well designed
Voice actors
The atmosphere.
Con
Playing it safe, nothing that puts out.
For the ultimate villian, we didn't get to feel that.
Didn't engage the players outside the story arc.
No, thanks, no more war blogs, but more things explained / showed / playable IN GAME.
The missions were generally good in my opinion. But the lack of a battle or adventure zone fails to really nail down the sense of war in-game. I find the VBZ, Undine Space BZ, Defera and Kobali Prime achieve this in a much better way.
This. The war blogs were the most asinine idea ever.
The only place where I should be getting relevant plot and world building is in the game itself.
The Iconian War without the War Blogs would have not been improved by the absence of war blogs. It would have been improved by more stuff in game reminding us we're in a war, but that is independent of whether we have war blogs or not. The war blogs are also not exactly stuff that fits well in the game - a private conversation between the Captain of the Enterprise and his Counselor is not something we'd be privy to, and allows a very different tone then anything we would see in game.
I hope Cryptic takes it as a lesson and the next time a big story-like this is running, they add some stuff like that.
They actually did it better once- the Breen Arc did not just have the Featured Episodes, but also a few new repeatable missions in sector space. It's not quite what would have sufficed for a War, I think, but it's a good start.
U.S.S. Buteo Regalis - Brigid Multi-Mission Surveillance Explorer build
R.R.W. Ri Maajon - Khopesh Tactical Dreadnought Warbird build
My Youtube channel containing STO videos.
little things like more armed security on stations, more npc warships patroling systems..y'know that general feeling of..ok something not happening..yet..but it will
Tuvok couldn't handle him for 1 minute at his most annoying moments (OK, he had his brain messed up after a mind-meld, but still).
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Blood stains on my hands and I killed Iconians
I'm in trouble for the things I haven't got to yet
My phaser's set to kill and my palms are getting wet
i gave 5 stars for Midnight, it was sort of long waited conclusion, so that why we got "New Dawn", for new challenges and some old foes.
hey Devs, what about making new "Eugenic Saga"?, with few time travel story arc when klingons were look more human, there are possible of "other enchanted" survivors while Khan left some behind when he took revenege on Capt Kirk.
some of them are not all bad guys, even some do really want to join fed and be part of human family once again, and add lot of plot twists, sort of like genetic virus storyline, going to distant eugenic past where it begins, etc and so on.
what if we discover another lost "stasis" ship on some uncharted planets?
remember about DS9's fed doctor bashar? he is one of secret enchanted human, he only want to server fed as doctor as long they are still forbid to be tact officers.
i am sure there is some players who want to play enchanted human captains.
Picard on the original series would have meant a lot more 2 part episodes, Kirk on the enterprise d would have been fun, I think he would have never wanted the families on the ship, and Wesley would have been dropped off on the first planet they saw....and he would have given Q a patented double fisted judo chop in the first episode. Riker would have been in the brig for the beard, having been accused of being a mirror universe spy, and Dr. Crusher most likely wouldn't have liked being called bones.
Sisko would have ended Voyager in 1 episode having destroyed the Kazon and beating the caretaker untill he agreed to send everyone back. Janeway would have outlawed Ractagino and implemented that Coffee was the only drink to be served on the station.
I don't know, Uneasy Allies dialogue just made your crew feel more personable for a change.
All the other episodes had their ups too, but that subtle change is what made UA in particular a unique experience. Hope I can expect to see more of that from the writers in the future!
Still, despite lacking the feeling that there was an actual war going on outside of the FEs, a lot of writer-induced stupidity and melodrama in the principal characters, and the usual plotholes, I did actually enjoy the ending, at least. I'm glad they finally acknowledged the idea that the Iconians weren't always so bloodthirsty, and that we managed to have a (mostly) peaceful resolution. As others have mentioned, it probably felt the most "Star Trek" out of the whole thing.
And I'm also really glad that, despite said peaceful resolution, T'ket is still out there somewhere, being a psychotic TRIBBLE.