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[PODCAST] Tribbles in Ecstasy Take 210: "Temporal Talk"
midniteshadow7
Member Posts: 787 Arc User
Tribbles in Ecstasy Take 210: "Temporal Talk" has warped on to Holosuite Media, you can download and stream it from:
This week the Tribbles in Ecstasy crew discuss all the latest gaming news of the week from Star Trek Online (including the annoucement of Season 11.5), Star Trek Timelines plus the latest Star Trek news and more.
The topics discussed this week are:
Our community questions this week are:
1. What do you think about what is to come in STO Season 11.5?
2. In Star Trek Online, What do you think will be released on May 5th?
3. Do you have any questions on your build when the new STO Skill Revamp goes live on April 12th?
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
This week the Tribbles in Ecstasy crew discuss all the latest gaming news of the week from Star Trek Online (including the annoucement of Season 11.5), Star Trek Timelines plus the latest Star Trek news and more.
The topics discussed this week are:
- Star Trek Online news and events,
- Star Trek Timelines updates,
- Star Trek Series 6 (2017),
- Star Trek TNG: The Worf Chronicles,
- Star Trek Continues,
- Star Trek Anthology,
- Star Trek Renegades,
- Destination Star Trek Europe,
- and more!
Our community questions this week are:
1. What do you think about what is to come in STO Season 11.5?
2. In Star Trek Online, What do you think will be released on May 5th?
3. Do you have any questions on your build when the new STO Skill Revamp goes live on April 12th?
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 questions:
1.) I don't mind the skill revamp at all. I haven't logged into Tribble at all. I'm just not worried.
Now the upcoming Featured Episode... uhm... that story blurp about a peaceful summit that ends in chaos because of the Na'kuhl attacking... It reminds me of something.
Something like a supposedly peaceful summit that ends in chaos because of the Krenim attacking. But I can't quite put my finger on what episode that was...
Just kidding, I know exactly which episode it was. It was the last one. Time and Tide.
So, let's just say I am not optimistic about the upcoming FE. At this point in time (no pun intended...), the black plot holes that manifested themselves within the "story" have started to cause a cataclysmic reaction. I mean, the people over at the G&T show are brilliant at logically deconstructing the Axanar debacle and at the same time fail to see any issues with this Temporal Cold War thingy. What kind of bizarro parallel universe have you created, Cryptic?
2.) I really, honestly, sincerely hope that we "just" get a TOS-themed FE or something like that (although that would be rather soon after the already announced "Temporal Front" FE...) I'd rather face the forums getting lit up by the flames of disappointed T6 Connie... let's call them enthusiasts... than a playable T6 Connie.
I mentioned so many times before that I dislike the T5 Excelsior and outright hate the T6 version. A T6 Connie would just kill any plausibility this game "might" still have. (Yes, I know that lockbox/lobi ships exist and I do have an opinion on them.)
This is SCIENCE fiction. If I wanted space fantasy, I would play SWTOR. I mean, the technology in Star Wars lore basically doesn't change over thousands of years.
(Seriously, compare SWTOR to the Star Wars movies. It's basically the same look and feel even though SWTOR is supposed to take place 3,000 years before "A New Hope"...)
3.) No, I don't. Because... like I mentioned before, I'm just not worried.
STOrytime part 2 (I'm still working on the title...): Let's get this party started!?
Okay, where do I begin? How about... the beginning. To the batcave! Uhm... the tutorials, I mean.
Fed tutorial:
Let's see... I like Elisa Flores. I don't really know anything about her, but I liked the way she talked to my character. I liked that little "race" when the tutorial tried to teach me how to sprint. I don't think my characters would necessarily engage in that sort of thing, but I can see Elisa doing it and that's what matters to me.
I like T'Vrell. I don't know how I would be able to give a (successful) pep talk to a Vulcan, but I apparently did... And as a result she improved her grades in the communications exam or something.
The rest of my tutorial crew... exist. I mean, that female Bolian engineer and then that male Saurian security officer on Delta Vega colony...
I played SWTOR and enjoyed (some of) the companion stories, so I would have liked a little more detail here. And yes, I do know how people threw a fit about "having a story forced on them". But if the first BOff we get (Elisa Flores, K'Gan, Tovan Khev) is supposed to be something even remotely similar to a "friend" (which is not a bad idea), tell us more about them. *shrug*
Klingon tutorial:
Uhm... K'Gan. The widower of my former superior officer. You know, that is a tragic story, but it does not make me feel connected to him. Don't get me wrong, he has my sympathies/condolences, but I'm really not sure why he's tagging along now.
And then... uhm... I'm completely blanking on the others. I mean, there was a Gorn and wasn't he a warden before that one prisoner made his escape?
Uhm... Klingons!? Sorry, but I just didn't feel anything here. I mean, the tutorial felt very klingon, but I don't really like klingons, so maybe that's the problem? dragon? sun? Any thoughts from you?
Romulan tutorial:
I guess this is the big one... Tovan Khev. I seem to remember something about... he is supposed to be our "best friend". Uhm... I didn't feel it. I think Elisa Flores was better at that job. I know nothing about Tovan and I don't really like him. (I don't dislike him either, but he is definitely not MY friend.)
And since I'm way past my casualcore (not quite casual, not quite hardcore) years, I'm fine with him taking up that one slot. I just wish his story was more engaging. I will go into more detail next week, when I talk about wasted potential...
The rest of my crew... uhm... I actually enjoyed Veril's story (the female Reman engineer). I think getting Satra (female Romulan scientist) was a bit rushed... Hiven and D'Vex were just there.
I guess what I'm trying to say is... there were some nice ideas in the revamped tutorials, but if I had to take a guess, I would say the low budget and the low headcount might have had something to do with these... let's call them shortcomings.
I was always more interested in Elisa than anything else from the fed tutorial. She felt... like she belonged.
K'gan's mate was our first officer. she died trying to wrest the ship from yet ANOTHER "dishonorable Klingon" trope of a captain after failing to challenge him. (in fact i believe the ONLY reason we won is because those two fought so hard and she injured him to a point of being weaker than us) after that about the ONLY thing that really stuck with me in the KDF Tutorial was punching a Ferengi in the face.... K'mtar's story just... got placed around it like a booksleeve.
See that's the thing that's so... odd.... The way the Romulan tutorial started Tovan seemed like OUR superior "security" officer. when did we change places? as for D'vex. You had met him before. and he's mentioned several times. infact you find his Centurion Helmet when you go back tot he ruins of Virinat in that one episode.... D'vex was the engie you talked to about career-specific investigation during the tutorial. To find and "save" him later was probably one of the better moments of the RR storyline to me.(That and his Veterancy BOff skills are AMAZING even if he's not a rommy operative.)
And guess what? The story is gonna surprise us and we're gonna love it. (There was more stuff in that interview, but I wanted to talk about this part right now.)
Okay, since no one at Cryptic/PW seems to get it, let me break out another food analogy:
Let say we are at a fancy restaurant.
(Yes, there will be people telling me that Cryptic/STO is some third-class burger joint at best... To these people I say: This is my analogy, so go away and bother someone else.)
We order a steak (and we tell the waiter that we want it medium) and some fancy side dishes.
We get our food (the episode) and it looks delicious. It smells delicious. The steak looks a little pale, but maybe that's some new fancy style to cook it?
So we try the side dishes (the flow of the episode, the way the story is told) and they taste great.
We are so happy we went to this restaurant and ordered the steak.
So let's get to the best part. The juicy steak (the story) itself...
The excitement reaches a new high, we start cutting the steak, wait... something is wrong. We look at the steak, it is not just pale... maybe the top side has seen the inside of a pan for 20 seconds, but that's it. This thing is definitely not medium, it's raw.
And you can tell me that after another nine steaks I will finally be happy, but do I really want to go through so many... how to put this nicely... suboptimally cooked steaks until then?
Give me a good steak, don't just keep telling me that the eleventh (or whatever) steak is finally gonna be amazing.
(Actually, don't give me steak. I'm not a fan of steak, but I thought it would be a nice analogy...)
@sunseahl
You know, I think it might have been nice to stretch the fed tutorial a little. I mean, there is so much stuff happening on graduation day (we lose our captain while we go up against a klingon Negh'var battlecruiser and then get thrown into a borg invasion...), maybe we could have played the first day as a cadet and then a time-skip to... whenever the Kobayashi Maru test is supposed to take place and then another time-skip to graduation day. Or maybe a few more time-skips in between. And see how Elisa (and the other cadets) stop talking to us like "just another cadet" and instead more like they've become our friends.
But that might "confuse" people or maybe it's too complicated to write these kinds of "evolving" relationships. *shrug*
Yes, K'Gan's mate was the first officer. Our direct superior, since we were the second officer (and acting captain of the night shift, iirc). But like I said, that still does not make me feel connected to him. Maybe klingons are not supposed to have a "best friend" first officer?
I remember D'Vex, but let's face it, what do we really know about him? I think he made the starter ship (that romulan Bird of Prey... uhm... Warbird) flyable again (offscreen of course), but apart from that?
These people "exist". I know nothing about them. I don't care about them. Sure, it was nice to see (and save) someone from the tutorial later on, but I would argue that his rescue might have come a little too late. Like I said, I thought it was nice, but a little more of a payoff would have been nice.
You might have noticed that this week's "STOrytime" was a little more... rudimentary than last week's version.
But wait where I'm going with this. You're gonna love it! *scnr*
No, seriously. I needed to go over the tutorials because it sets up next week's "STOrytime". But since there are 12 BOffs in the tutorial... it would have been difficult to go into that much detail this week.
1) I am looking forward to the skill revamp. I found the old system a bit arcane and hard to explain to new players.
2) I think that the FE idea is more likely than the T6 Connie idea.
3) ok
The new FE's story does seem a bit of a rehash, but I am hopeful that the presentation will be better than last time, and that the Nah'kuhl are a better enemy that the Krenim have been.
I Like STOrytime as a title....
Elisa Flores introduced as our friend and showing us around was actually a good move, I think. The rest of the introduced characters works fine within the context of the story they present. The Saurian Security Officer is probably one of my favorite additions. The only thing I can say about this is that we loose a bit of the individuality that the old tutorial provided since we could choose from one of three BOff's each time. And you could build your crew as you see fit from the start of the game. That is my only complaint on all of the new tutorials that is consistent between all of them.
K'Gan sticks with us because we provide him the chance to rescue his mates honor so that she can get into Sto'Vo'Kor. As a motivation it makes the most sense. And overrides any artificial and forced friendship. K'Gan is just a guy who tags along with us because of Klingon Cultural reasons and then remains with us because he is respectful of us because of what we did for him. He isn't a friend, or neighbor, or anything else to us than that. And because of that, he becomes loyal to us, without us having to invest into him at all. It's the best tutorial because of that reason alone. As for the rest of them joining us. I don't think they needed to be named guys like that. Any generic BOff would have worked.
Tovan Khev is probably the least liked because he can't be dismissed. The only one that can't be because he has important storyline connections for the Romulans. Virel is cool in how she joins and why she stays. Hiven hangs with us because we "rescue" is brother. And D'vex is really just forgettable for me. I don't remember his reasons for joining us. And that is saying something, since I have 5 Romulan Republic characters so far. I guess D'vex could be replaced with a random guy and still feel as useful.
I think that overall the revamps were good, but they could have just given us the option of picking one of three to choose from would have been better for creating an sense of individuality. I know that my Vulcan and Alien Fed and Gorn KDF each choose different branches at each point because they had different needs and I felt that I needed different skills to support what I was doing with that character. The new tutorials lack that ability to build what you want from the beginning.
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)