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[PODCAST] Tribbles in Ecstasy Take 209: "Lights, Q-mera, Timelines!"
midniteshadow7
Member Posts: 787 Arc User
Tribbles in Ecstasy Take 209: "Lights, Q-mera, Timelines!" has warped on to Holosuite Media, you can download and stream it from:
Joining the Tribbles in Ecstasy crew is the Star Trek Timelines Lead Narrative Designer, Jessica Sliwinski and Game Designer Michael Woods.
After the interview the crew discuss all the news of the week from Star Trek Online, Star Trek news, the latest from the Star Trek Unofficial Productions and more.
The topics discussed this week are:
Our community question this week is:
In STO, what sort of map and/or system do you think should be used to help test and feedback your builds?
Please reply to this post with any feedback you have about any topic we've covered or even about the show in general, we'd love to hear what our listeners have to say.
Please help friend of the show and fellow Star Trek Online player and podcaster Mav with donations to support his recovery with his current health situation here: http://www.gofundme.com/tomsrecovery.
LLAP \\//_
Joining the Tribbles in Ecstasy crew is the Star Trek Timelines Lead Narrative Designer, Jessica Sliwinski and Game Designer Michael Woods.
After the interview the crew discuss all the news of the week from Star Trek Online, Star Trek news, the latest from the Star Trek Unofficial Productions and more.
The topics discussed this week are:
- Star Trek Timelines,
- Antaeus Theatre Company,
- Star Trek TNG: The Worf Chronicles,
- Starfleet Academy Experience,
- Star Trek Continues,
- Star Trek Anthology,
- Star Trek Renegades,
- Star Trek Axanar,
- Star Trek Online news and events,
- and more!
Our community question this week is:
In STO, what sort of map and/or system do you think should be used to help test and feedback your builds?
Please reply to this post with any feedback you have about any topic we've covered or even about the show in general, we'd love to hear what our listeners have to say.
Please help friend of the show and fellow Star Trek Online player and podcaster Mav with donations to support his recovery with his current health situation here: http://www.gofundme.com/tomsrecovery.
LLAP \\//_
0
Comments
Community question:
The easy answer would be... do what a lot of other MMOs have done before: Training dummies. (WoW has them, SWTOR has them and I think I saw something like that in LotRO, too.)
Just a bag of HP standing around somewhere and you shoot at it (and use your respective space/ground magic) until you're sick and tired of it.
The more complicated answer would be what... who suggested it... I think it was sunseahl... came up with. That "training program" in the holodeck on Bajor. Something similar to that. Actually, why don't people just use that until Cryptic comes up with a normalized dummy/program? Is it linked to a mission or something? I mean, that is a very controlled environment.
STO storytime part 1: Honorable deaths?!
Okay, I have to split this up and I'm not quite sure how many of these I'm gonna make.
Let's start with something that should please dragon and sun... stories about klingons. Or to be more precise... stories about klingon deaths. I will take a rather brief look at 4 klingons who died within a story and how those deaths have been handled.
Spoiler warning? (I mean, those episodes have been out for a long time now, so...)
1.) K'Valk
For those who don't remember, that was the klingon in the "Doomsday machine" episodes in the Federation "Klingon war" story arc.
We get introduced to him, we talk to him, we read the captain's log (K'Valk was the first officer on a Bird of Prey) about him. We get some background story and at the end he takes a shuttle, we hail him, he explains his motivation, sings an epic klingon song (I have no clue what that song was about, but it sounded epic!) and pulls a Commodore Decker maneuver.
I will admit that this story was not exactly new. sun would/could probably rant that it was a tired cliche. But after all is said and done, I saw where he was coming from. I might not have agreed with his decision, but I understood it.
So... overall I liked it. It was not exactly new and exciting, but it was handled well. Was it an homage to "Doomsday machine" or a ripoff? That's up to the player to decide.
2.) K'mtar (not his real name but a pseudonym...)
A klingon we meet in the first klingon story arc (after the Tutorial). sun didn't like how that was another "klingon civil war in the making", but I didn't mind that too much. At the end K'mtar dies to protect Worf. You know, I think I would have preferred it the other way around (I know, they could/would never kill Worf), but I could see it happen like this. I did understand why he did it.
Again, maybe not the most surprising story, but I did understand his motivation. There's always room for improvement, but another death handled reasonably well.
3.) Kahless (clone...)
Oh boy, this is where the fun starts. House Pegh. Kahless decides that he is a legend and since he wields his legendary Bat'leth, he can and will defeat an Iconian.
Where do I even begin? How about... Remember when he first showed up in TNG? Worf defeated him, which proved that he was not the "real" Kahless. You could argue that Worf is a god with the Bat'leth, but the fact stands that this "Kahless" has been defeated by another klingon before. An Iconian is completely out of his league. Is the clone suffering from genetic degeneration? Is he getting senile? Delusional?
And the great part is... when he gets the opening he needs (because of our interference), he wounds the Iconian and then blabbers about honor instead of ending the fight which costs him his life...
I don't even...
As you might have guessed, I don't see the motivation. I see a delusional klingon trying to copy-paste K'Valks death (even kneeling down to do some meditation and singing) who throws away his life because... he can? Your guess is as good as mine.
And if you try to ripoff your own story: Try to figure out what made it memorable. Just repeating the "Klingon sings before he walks into certain death" is not good enough.
4.) Guroth
We meet Guroth. We even get an RP blog telling us how he is really fond of explosions. Even more so than the average klingon. So much so that he is an outcast. Character development?
When the battle in Broken Circle goes south, he decides to just throw a bigger explosion at the problem. Which is in character (we know that because it's his only character trait...). But he justifies it by saying that klingons don't retreat. Which they have done. On screen. Several times. So we know for a fact that klingons know the concept of tactical retreats. (M'Tara on the other hand talks about retreating but never actually does it...)
I don't even...
You know... I will be generous. Just this once. I do not get paid for this, but I will show you how this could have been turned into a reasonable/understandable death.
Are you listening? Okay... Erase Guroth from the game. He does not exist. There are enough people on Paris' task force that could easily take his place.
Now... since Kagran is in charge of the fleet and decided that a frontal assault is the only option left... He is gonna lead the charge himself. A true klingon leads from the frontlines or some other "honorable" blabbering. He sees that we are completely outmatched. And like a true klingon (or even general/admiral of earth's history), he takes full responsibility for this catastrophic failure. The only way to redeem himself is... honorable suicide. He does what Guroth did. Crash his ship (the combined fleet's flagship basically) into the Iconian "flagship".
See? That might not be very creative at all (do I need to remind you that I don't get paid for this?), but it made a ton more sense than what you did to Guroth.
Do you know the funny part? The funny part is those two rather poorly handled deaths occurred during the Iconian War story arc. In the episodes... House Pegh and Broken Brain... uhm... Broken Circle. The worst episodes of that story arc, imo. Coincidence?
Enter Sol system, choose to beam to Star Fleet Academy, Earth Space Dock or warp to Mars-UPS. When you get to Mars-UPS a pop-up can offer choices of different training sims or a beam down to a Mars-UPS ground map with a ship yard, bank, mail and exchange.
This could include pure dummies to test damage and buffs/de-buffs and many others for testing defence. These sims should be available at normal, advanced and elite levels. At the UPS you should be able to respec skills for free or at most a nominal EC/Dil cost, however these respecs only work at UPS!
Could make things more bearable and player/user friendly.
The song was a Klingon Battle Chant From TNG and DS9.
As far as Cliche's go.... this is one of the Better ones... because it IS an honorable task. It's unfortunate that this is ONLY happening, I'd like to point out, on the FED side. and that B'Vat sees no real punishment for resurrecting this monstrosity from the Klingon High Council even after USING IT on Klingon Territory! we should have has some cross-link to this on the KDF side.... woulda made a BUNCH more sense than continued, rampant High Counsil corruption....
This is from the TNG episode Firstborn. The story in that episode, K'mtar's fears are only somewhat directly related to what happens in the council chamber.... In this future K'mtar is no longer pushing for peace between the houses, but instead exposing yet more rampant, dishonorable corruption in the High Council(THAT is what irks me with the whole damned storyline). Instead of Worf dying for peace, K'mtar dies for a dishonorable Klingon's "revenge." >.>
That chanting Khaless II does is another one taken from something i can't quite remember the name of, but i wanna say it was something Kahless II did on-screen. If not him, another Klingon did.
and although I understand the motivation by cryptic for the death... I agree with you. The execution(what pun?) was horribly flawed. There was no need for Kahless II to go into a monologue like some mustache twirling villain... That's what the iconians were for.... *sigh*
I agree with this almost 100%
My only hangup was... "what the hell are we supposed to do with an assault on a Dyson sphere FULL of Iconain firepower? That's like flying a Ferengi Shuttle into a sun with no metaphasic shielding."
Also yes the "training programs" on bajor are linked directly to the 2800 story arc... they are combat simulations because of the Dominion taking the station over and us setting up temporary HQ at Hathon.
The testing issue, Like others have already said, Training Dummies are an option to just test out basic effects and develop and practice the rotation. Like in WOW and other games, these are usefully in seeing what a skill or talent will do. Having this in the game as a holodeck option at ESD, First City and the Rommulan Command would be the way to go. And they have the potential of creating more than one styles of testing. The options I could see theme create or: Single Target Non moving, Single Target moving, Multi-target non-moving, Multi-target moving and Multi-target Moving and shooting at you. DO this for ground and space. On ground you can bring your 4 away team member and in space it's just you. This will allow for all kinds of testing and allow for a great way to create useful feedback about each possible talent, skill, gear piece, trait and specialization on both Tribble and Holodeck servers. And the time used to code this will be more than paid back in constructive and useful feedback to improve the game and bug hunting. These "Training Sims" value to the player base and the Devs alike would be far outweighed by any time spent into creating and coding this particular system. It also is create for new players because they will be able to take the time to look at their builds, try out things, and work out how things can be properly used before they play the content.
For the Klingon Honorable deaths...
1) K'valk.....Classic Klingon death scene to me. He did what he thought was the right and honorable thing to do, as a Klingon. It works for me and actually made him memorable for that reason.
2) K'mtar....He went out honoring his father, himself, his ideals and the Empire. He faced the opposition to his truth with courage and unswerving loyalty to his Empire. Which made his story all the more tragic for it.
3) Kahless II...The clone liked to talk...a lot. And because of it, he was unusual for a Klingon. Him stopping to talk once again was not unexpected, what was unexpected is that he let his guard down. That is what ruined it more me. Being the epitome of the Warrior Culture for a warrior race, Kahless forgetting to be wary of his enemy was so out of character that it made the evetn poorly done, inconsistent with the established lore, and obvious failure on the writer to develop the scene in a believable reversal of fate. On top of that being unable to beam out him and the bat'leth further pushed the stupidity evelope. But it does make me wonder why J'mpok and the High Council have not demanded the return of the Sword of Kahless as well as his body. Specially since Kagran did so much to protect them from being harmed further by Sela in the last mission of the Iconian Arc. More poor judgment in story telling development.
4) Guroth....the reason they went with for why he chose to stay and fight was not the best option. They would have done better by having him tell the others to retreat and he will hold them off long enough for them to get away, and then his talent with bigger explosion, and the developed character trait, now become a useful thing and becomes the reason why we were fed this information to begin with (foreshadowing). And as a death, it would have become one of the most glorious, honorable and memorable Klingon deaths in the game. SO much more because his death is directly related to why we lived.
I think that they really need to set themselves some guidelines on what not to do so that they can avoid some of the obvious story pitfalls. I really think that if they spent more time on character development on paper before they write their stories would bring out better realized stories with believable events and character reactions. Kahless was to forced for me. at least in their effort to kill him. Guroth tripped up on stereotype pitfalls that created a inconsistent and unbelievable Klingon experience.
KDF: Dahar Master Kan (Borg Klingon Tactical)::Dahar Master Torc (Alien Science)::Dahar Master Sisteric (Gorn Engineer)
RR-Fed: Citizen Sirroc (Romulan Science)::Fleet Admiral Grell (Alien Engineer)
RR-KDF: Fleet Admiral Zemo (Reman Tactical)::Fleet Admiral Xinatek (Reman Science)::Fleet Admiral Bel (Alien Engineer)
TOS-Fed: Fleet Admiral Katem (Andorian Tactical)::Lieutenant Commander Straad (Vulcan Engineer)
Dom-Fed: Dan'Tar (Jem'Hadar Science)
Dom-KDF: Kamtana'Solan (Jem'Hadar Science)
CoHost of Tribbles in Ecstasy (Zombee)
Can someone on the writer staff explain to me why Walker, a captain from the 29th century, is sitting in an office in the 28th century just after the Accords attack? That REEEEEAAAAAALY bothers me.
KDF: Dahar Master Kan (Borg Klingon Tactical)::Dahar Master Torc (Alien Science)::Dahar Master Sisteric (Gorn Engineer)
RR-Fed: Citizen Sirroc (Romulan Science)::Fleet Admiral Grell (Alien Engineer)
RR-KDF: Fleet Admiral Zemo (Reman Tactical)::Fleet Admiral Xinatek (Reman Science)::Fleet Admiral Bel (Alien Engineer)
TOS-Fed: Fleet Admiral Katem (Andorian Tactical)::Lieutenant Commander Straad (Vulcan Engineer)
Dom-Fed: Dan'Tar (Jem'Hadar Science)
Dom-KDF: Kamtana'Solan (Jem'Hadar Science)
CoHost of Tribbles in Ecstasy (Zombee)
But doesn't it make it easier for him to be... you know... on his ship. where he can effectively monitor the timeline not just of the 28th century but further into the future? The ONLY thing i see coming from this is a temporal incursion he's not present or prepared for by being back in the 28th century.... you know... like us having to go save baby him.
Once again, I'll try to be brief...
K'Valk:
Thanks. I thought it might have been in some klingon episode, but... uhm... I guess it wasn't important enough for me to look it up. Doesn't change the fact that I still remember K'Valks story fondly.
And yes, it's a shame that klingons don't get such an epic moment during their leveling experience.
Btw. the High Council may not punish B'Vat, but we (as in: us Feds who played that storyline) get to kill him in the past. When we rescue Miral Paris at the end of that story arc.
But it would have been a nice hook for the klingon storyline to see what happens to his house after these events. I mean, there are leveling areas in WoW that tell the same story from two different angles. I like that concept. I just wish I didn't hate playing Horde that much. *shrug*
Guroth:
Well, we talked about Kagrans incompetence before, so I agree. But that had nothing to do with the "honorable deaths" I wanted to talk about.
Holodeck on Bajor:
Well, I know that it's linked to the 2800 story arc. I just didn't know whether or not you could use that holodeck without the mission, because I never bothered to try activating it without the mission.
RP blog "Diplomatic fallout":
Well, sun said it all. So long and thanks for the fish.
(Just kidding...)
Let's get this over with quickly...
I think it is a really well written story. Again.
And now Mr. Reed should stop reading. Because I'm about to open a can of soulcrushing negativity... You have been warned.
New Khitomer is in the Gamma Quadrant. They mention Commander Nereda being a (Starfleet) Cardassian. Again.
I swear, I'm gonna be so mad at Cryptic if we don't get playable (Fed/KDF) Cardassians and the Gamma Quadrant in Expansion 3.
And an RP blog points out the flaws in "Time and Tide". Again.
This time around: Armed "hostages". How exactly do you take an armed Klingon and an armed Breen hostage, "forget" to disarm them and "forget" to shoot (set your weapon to stun if you really want them alive...) them, when they reach for their weapons?
I don't get it. Are you playing this straight? Do you really believe Time and Tide told a great good decent passable story? Or are you poking fun at whoever was responsible for the inconsistencies in that episode? Enlighten me, please.
And sun... the Temporal Accords were supposedly signed in 2769. Captain Walker and the Pastak are supposedly from the 29th century. So... what are 30+ years between friends? *starts yelling and sobbing at the same time*
Warning! Meltdown in progress. Please stand by.
Warning! Meltdown in progress. Please stand by.
Hum? I was saying something? Oh right... I remember. Sorry about that little episode.
Uhm. Captain Walker is sitting in that office and (presumably) working with people from that time because delegating that kind of cleanup duty to a temporal agent from 2769 and returning to the Pastak to try and track the perpetrators down would be too... uhm... logical? The timeline has already been compromised, so TRIBBLE the rules? There are no temporal agents in 2769? Cryptic forgot that the 28th century is not the 29th century?
Guys, I'm running out of reasons here...
Btw. we were at the Temporal Accords and we know the klingons (and romulans) are part of the federation now. So... why exactly is there still a KDF? I mean, shouldn't that all be a big united happy starfleet now? Or does the federation devolve into more of a loose alliance by then?
I'm completely overthinking this, am I not?
Nope.... My question is why are the Orions still part of the KDF? You'd think their queen would have ended their KDF-allied union and told everyone to pack it in and go right back to being a syndicate... Just like the Ferengi will kinda remain capitalists... And the Naussicans will still be Pirates.... And the Letheans, Mercenaries for hire. Also... Where the hell are the Gorn in all this?
I was more shocked that there was like... zero kdf(allaince) representation outside that orion ambassador who never addressed if she was part of the KDF or not and although the optics made it seem that the klingons had joined the Federation through that Klingon Ambassador... I have to admit... I'm not sure if the Klingons are part of the Federation officially... Just that there is a Klingon Federation Ambassador. Kinda like Worf was for a while in Path to 2409. Or Miral was in the alternate future of Endgame in VOY....
I get the impression that he is coordinating the efforts of the local and chronological current resources to not only rebuild New Khitomer but start the search for Vosk's forces that seem to be a 28th Century based operation. WHy Vosk, reportedly being from the 29th Century also, has chosen to use the 28th century to operate from is unknown to me. But this fact may be driving Walker to operate in the same time frame as Vosk to be able to react to his efforts faster.
KDF: Dahar Master Kan (Borg Klingon Tactical)::Dahar Master Torc (Alien Science)::Dahar Master Sisteric (Gorn Engineer)
RR-Fed: Citizen Sirroc (Romulan Science)::Fleet Admiral Grell (Alien Engineer)
RR-KDF: Fleet Admiral Zemo (Reman Tactical)::Fleet Admiral Xinatek (Reman Science)::Fleet Admiral Bel (Alien Engineer)
TOS-Fed: Fleet Admiral Katem (Andorian Tactical)::Lieutenant Commander Straad (Vulcan Engineer)
Dom-Fed: Dan'Tar (Jem'Hadar Science)
Dom-KDF: Kamtana'Solan (Jem'Hadar Science)
CoHost of Tribbles in Ecstasy (Zombee)