It makes a lot of sense IMO.
-The Gamma Quad is the only other place in Star Trek TV show canon where we know the Iconians had other gateways.
-The Iconian computers in "Sphere of Influence" mention having agents in the Gamma Quad to keep the gateways hidden from The Dominion.
-The Hur'q fit into the paradigm of the other servitor races in that they are a mysterious alien race that randomly appeared out of nowhere, attacked one of the races of the Alpha quad, then left just as quickly as they appeared.
-The Fek'Ihri, an ancient enemy of the Klingons, mysteriously appear during the time the Iconians are ramping up their war effort, and sending out their servitor races en-masse.
-The Fek'Ihri are implied to be creations of the Hur'q in STO.
-The Fek'Ihri use portal technology similar to the Iconians to get around.
-Its said in Butterfly that simply removing the Iconians would mean the Hur'q would have never gotten the warp drive, and the lack of a Hur'q attack on the Klingons in the past would have changed them from a warrior race into a race of poets(or something similar). This establishes a technological dependency on the Iconians similar to how the Vaadwaur got a massive tech boost from the Iconians in Delta Rising.
IMO, it fits perfectly that the Hur'q are the Iconian's servitors in the Gamma Quadrant, and that the Fek'Ihri are genetic creations of theirs, similar to how the Solanae created the Bluegill.
Similarly, the use of Iconian portal technology would explain how the Hur'q got from the Gamma Quad to Qo'noS in the ancient past in the first place, given that the wormhole wasn't open then.
It also makes sense because, really, outside the three The Dominion species, the Hur'q are basically the only other species from the Gamma Quad ever really developed or made important in the TV shows.... the other like 10 races we know of from the Gamma Quad are like "one mission in an expansion" tier races.
Like I said, I like how you think.
You didn't have to, but the reasons are plain as day. If Cryptic cared to continue the purely Klingon storylines T'Ket linking up with the Hur'q to continue her vendetta is low hanging fruit.
One reason you missed, their flaming demonic visage is right in line with the Iconian's Herald philosophy instead of rifles things like tridents that give the appearance of magical weapons instead of technological ones. Demons of Air and Darkness aligned with demons from the pit of Gre'thor.
The only thing is that Butterfly seemed to imply that many species gained technology from remnants of the Iconians, rather than directly, but it can easily go either way.
We also know that The Dominion ends up joining the Galactic Union in the future, and given out habit of desotrying our enemies, it makes it unlikely that The Dominion would be the big bad of a Gamma Quad expansion. Unless OFC they were being tricked by another species, say, the Hur'q, and we fought them until we found out the truth and then teamed up to take them down or something.
Well it could be as simple as Odo finally getting what he's learned through his fellow droplets liquid skulls.
Or Sela may have actually done something useful.
On the other hand Eraun said from jump that the Dominion were already scared shitless of the Iconians. I can easily see them be equally apprehensive about someone erasing the Great Link from history. Heck any random agent going back in time and warning the combined Tal Shiar/Obsidian Order about the ambush in the Omarion nebula would drastically alter Dominion history.
Now that I'm thinking about it, all we know is that the Dominion signed on to the Temporal Accords. That means they may be on good terms with the Union, or they may simply agree that this is agreement is also in their interest.
Post edited by captaind3 on
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
It also allows the Iconian based queues to still have reason to exist, though the idea that after New Dawn they would shut down is actually fairly compelling. A lot more exclusive than not having previous years ships available in winter and summer.
It's no more "compelling" than removing all the old episode missions.
It also allows the Iconian based queues to still have reason to exist, though the idea that after New Dawn they would shut down is actually fairly compelling. A lot more exclusive than not having previous years ships available in winter and summer.
It's no more "compelling" than removing all the old episode missions.
Well it would've given a sense of finality to the war. That said, we would've needed more of the war to play out in game as well. For instance Iconian Red Alerts going off all the time. Then after that war finishes in game, then you put those on the shelf until T'Khet rears her ugly head again.
As for the old episode mission, the problem is how condensed they made those old arcs. 14 for 5 missions is not cool. That said some of those old missions were weak.
An odd thing, I find it weird that they removed Divide et Impera instead of completing it and providing the episode with the redeeming sequel that it was supposed to have. That said, I don't miss it.
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
It also allows the Iconian based queues to still have reason to exist, though the idea that after New Dawn they would shut down is actually fairly compelling. A lot more exclusive than not having previous years ships available in winter and summer.
It's no more "compelling" than removing all the old episode missions.
Well it would've given a sense of finality to the war. That said, we would've needed more of the war to play out in game as well. For instance Iconian Red Alerts going off all the time. Then after that war finishes in game, then you put those on the shelf until T'Khet rears her ugly head again.
As for the old episode mission, the problem is how condensed they made those old arcs. 14 for 5 missions is not cool. That said some of those old missions were weak.
An odd thing, I find it weird that they removed Divide et Impera instead of completing it and providing the episode with the redeeming sequel that it was supposed to have. That said, I don't miss it.
I wasn't referring to the revamps, I meant as in completely remove the old arcs off the game. Because if we're supposed to be removing content to give "finality" to finished story arcs, why not go all the way, huh?
Of course, that doesn't make any sense, but then neither does removing the queues. We still have queues of the Fed-Klingon war, too.
Yeah, there should be Herald alerts. Real alerts, not queues in disquise like that Na'kuhl thing. Fortunately, with the T'ket plot, that could theoretically still happen.
It also allows the Iconian based queues to still have reason to exist, though the idea that after New Dawn they would shut down is actually fairly compelling. A lot more exclusive than not having previous years ships available in winter and summer.
It's no more "compelling" than removing all the old episode missions.
Well it would've given a sense of finality to the war. That said, we would've needed more of the war to play out in game as well. For instance Iconian Red Alerts going off all the time. Then after that war finishes in game, then you put those on the shelf until T'Khet rears her ugly head again.
As for the old episode mission, the problem is how condensed they made those old arcs. 14 for 5 missions is not cool. That said some of those old missions were weak.
An odd thing, I find it weird that they removed Divide et Impera instead of completing it and providing the episode with the redeeming sequel that it was supposed to have. That said, I don't miss it.
I wasn't referring to the revamps, I meant as in completely remove the old arcs off the game. Because if we're supposed to be removing content to give "finality" to finished story arcs, why not go all the way, huh?
Of course, that doesn't make any sense, but then neither does removing the queues. We still have queues of the Fed-Klingon war, too.
Yeah, there should be Herald alerts. Real alerts, not queues in disquise like that Na'kuhl thing. Fortunately, with the T'ket plot, that could theoretically still happen.
Easy on the Strawman. I get what you're saying.
Sealing the queues as a matter of ending the stories would make sense under a different paradigm. But not this one.
The fact is of course that the queues are much more about the resources you gain than the story. You can't cut the flow for people who haven't gotten what they want yet or the new characters that are going through that part. Red Alerts on the other hand are the perfect type of event to turn on and off to broadcast what "era" the game itself is currently in.
Indeed when T'ket strikes back I hope they'll apply this new concept.
An odd thing, I find it weird that they removed Divide et Impera instead of completing it and providing the episode with the redeeming sequel that it was supposed to have. That said, I don't miss it.
I think Cryptic removed the mission for the same reason the removed the "lol an Undine is infiltrating!" mission from the Cardassian arc, everyone knew it already.
They had one mission in the Klingon war arc, and I think they wanted to keep the Undine thing on the back burner until later. It got old that EVERY arc just HAD to have at least one mission that reminded us the Undine were infiltrating everything.
Made the supposed "masters of infiltration" look pretty bad at their job.
I could be wrong, but I think Divide et Impera triggered threads like this one in its day. It seemed pretty reviled, I know I was infuriated.
It's a little difficult to ignore the Undine threat at that point since it was the trigger of the Federation-Klingon War. Us finding infiltrators everywhere validates the Klingon's point and forces the Federation to pull its head out of its aft. One mission per arc actually seems about right for that feel.
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
I could be wrong, but I think Divide et Impera triggered threads like this one in its day. It seemed pretty reviled, I know I was infuriated.
To put it simply and to strip some emotion, yes it did inspire a lot of discussion. The lack of player agency was cited a lot on the forums.
Yeah, anyone with a brain saw the ending coming half-way through. The facility was actually being used for anti-Undine research. Yes, the in-mission dialog confirmed that.
T'Ket is still active in game for one primary reason... gameplay. It provides a rationale for the fact that we can still enter a queue that has Heralds in it who are ready to kill us.
Likewise, there is an active faction of Na'Khul who are (and will remain) hostile to us. Yes, the Devs could provide a rationale by which they all become peaceful... but they won't.
Gameplay considerations tie their hands in how they resolve these storylines more than you might think. They have to consider long term replay value and thus at times hang the rationales for how things turn out on the thinnest of logical threads.
Providing airtight, neatly wrapped up plots is not the point. The point is gameplay and replayability. There are always going to be logical disconnects and continuity problems and the Devs are under no incentive to eliminate those, only to minimize them to some extent. As long as we have the ability to re-re-replay missions ad-infinitum, there is always going to be an element of self-suspension of belief involved. You'll have to provide your own rationales for why, because the Devs are too busy to do more than give you the thinnest of excuses for doing so.
The Na'Khul -- some of them, at least -- are always going to be bad guys from the gameplay standpoint, just like some of the Heralds/Undine/Jem'Hadar/Cardassian/Romulan/Klingon, etc. Removing their reason for being so makes even less sense than what we've been given to work with. Our individual ethics and preferences have little or nothing to do with it and regardless will not change the combat-oriented storylines that the Devs lay out.
Your choice as a character is not "Save ALL the worlds". In fact, you don't have a choice. You're going to save the worlds that the Devs set up for you to save and the ones they don't, you won't. If the inconsistencies in the stories are tearing you up, you're playing the wrong game. You might as well spend your energies making up rationales to support the gameplay, because making them to tear down the gameplay is just an exercise in frustration.
Specific critiques of the quality of the writing is certainly in scope, though. Cryptic is pretty good at the 'Big Idea' stuff but tend to suffer in the details. In their defense, they're game designers and not novelists but they could pay more attention to plot holes than they do.
T'Ket is still active in game for one primary reason... gameplay. It provides a rationale for the fact that we can still enter a queue that has Heralds in it who are ready to kill us.
Likewise, there is an active faction of Na'Khul who are (and will remain) hostile to us. Yes, the Devs could provide a rationale by which they all become peaceful... but they won't.
Gameplay considerations tie their hands in how they resolve these storylines more than you might think. They have to consider long term replay value and thus at times hang the rationales for how things turn out on the thinnest of logical threads.
Providing airtight, neatly wrapped up plots is not the point. The point is gameplay and replayability. There are always going to be logical disconnects and continuity problems and the Devs are under no incentive to eliminate those, only to minimize them to some extent. As long as we have the ability to re-re-replay missions ad-infinitum, there is always going to be an element of self-suspension of belief involved. You'll have to provide your own rationales for why, because the Devs are too busy to do more than give you the thinnest of excuses for doing so.
The Na'Khul -- some of them, at least -- are always going to be bad guys from the gameplay standpoint, just like some of the Heralds/Undine/Jem'Hadar/Cardassian/Romulan/Klingon, etc. Removing their reason for being so makes even less sense than what we've been given to work with. Our individual ethics and preferences have little or nothing to do with it and regardless will not change the combat-oriented storylines that the Devs lay out.
Your choice as a character is not "Save ALL the worlds". In fact, you don't have a choice. You're going to save the worlds that the Devs set up for you to save and the ones they don't, you won't. If the inconsistencies in the stories are tearing you up, you're playing the wrong game. You might as well spend your energies making up rationales to support the gameplay, because making them to tear down the gameplay is just an exercise in frustration.
Specific critiques of the quality of the writing is certainly in scope, though. Cryptic is pretty good at the 'Big Idea' stuff but tend to suffer in the details. In their defense, they're game designers and not novelists but they could pay more attention to plot holes than they do.
By that logic Starbase 24 and our fleet starbases are perpetually under Klingon attack despite the fact the war's long over, the Klingons must have lost half their fleet to the Borg, and Ja'rod must be the unluckiest and/or most masochistic Klingon in history for getting captured by them so often on the same exact planet.
They never bothered to provide such a rationale for the missions being replayable before and they didn't need to this time.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Battlezones and Groundzones are the same but you are kidding yourself if you think this game will ever be like an RPG that lets you run a Mission once and that's it. Just look at the Staging Area on New Romulus. Those lazy Romulans would have been fired by now. Instead, we are constantly admonishing them to no avail.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Battlezones and Groundzones are the same but you are kidding yourself if you think this game will ever be like an RPG that lets you run a Mission once and that's it. Just look at the Staging Area on New Romulus. Those lazy Romulans would have been fired by now. Instead, we are constantly admonishing them to no avail.
That's not the point I was making, I'm saying that they don't need to provide an in-story justification for it, especially not one that just adds injury to the insult of the Iconian diktat. It's gameplay and story segregation: story-wise, we didn't kill the Borg Queen seven bajillion times, we killed her once. (Twice, if you count "Borg: Disconnected".) Likewise, the Heralds do not incessantly besiege Qo'noS, they attack it once and we drive them off once.
TRIBBLE the New Romulus clickies, though: that's all time-wasting TRIBBLE that your junior enlisted crew should be doing.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Battlezones and Groundzones are the same but you are kidding yourself if you think this game will ever be like an RPG that lets you run a Mission once and that's it. Just look at the Staging Area on New Romulus. Those lazy Romulans would have been fired by now. Instead, we are constantly admonishing them to no avail.
That's not the point I was making, I'm saying that they don't need to provide an in-story justification for it, especially not one that just adds injury to the insult of the Iconian diktat. It's gameplay and story segregation: story-wise, we didn't kill the Borg Queen seven bajillion times, we killed her once. (Twice, if you count "Borg: Disconnected".) Likewise, the Heralds do not incessantly besiege Qo'noS, they attack it once and we drive them off once.
Exactly. That we can repeat missions, regardless of type, does not mean the events happened more than once. Any more than being able to watch an episode of a TV series multiple times means the episode happens multiple times.
The T'ket revenge bit is a sequel hook. Its not meant to "justify" keeping the existing Iconian-related missions, because no such thing is needed, but to give the devs an easy "in" if they ever want to do something Iconian-related in the future.
Comments
You didn't have to, but the reasons are plain as day. If Cryptic cared to continue the purely Klingon storylines T'Ket linking up with the Hur'q to continue her vendetta is low hanging fruit.
One reason you missed, their flaming demonic visage is right in line with the Iconian's Herald philosophy instead of rifles things like tridents that give the appearance of magical weapons instead of technological ones. Demons of Air and Darkness aligned with demons from the pit of Gre'thor.
The only thing is that Butterfly seemed to imply that many species gained technology from remnants of the Iconians, rather than directly, but it can easily go either way.
Well it could be as simple as Odo finally getting what he's learned through his fellow droplets liquid skulls.
Or Sela may have actually done something useful.
On the other hand Eraun said from jump that the Dominion were already scared shitless of the Iconians. I can easily see them be equally apprehensive about someone erasing the Great Link from history. Heck any random agent going back in time and warning the combined Tal Shiar/Obsidian Order about the ambush in the Omarion nebula would drastically alter Dominion history.
Now that I'm thinking about it, all we know is that the Dominion signed on to the Temporal Accords. That means they may be on good terms with the Union, or they may simply agree that this is agreement is also in their interest.
Well it would've given a sense of finality to the war. That said, we would've needed more of the war to play out in game as well. For instance Iconian Red Alerts going off all the time. Then after that war finishes in game, then you put those on the shelf until T'Khet rears her ugly head again.
As for the old episode mission, the problem is how condensed they made those old arcs. 14 for 5 missions is not cool. That said some of those old missions were weak.
An odd thing, I find it weird that they removed Divide et Impera instead of completing it and providing the episode with the redeeming sequel that it was supposed to have. That said, I don't miss it.
Of course, that doesn't make any sense, but then neither does removing the queues. We still have queues of the Fed-Klingon war, too.
Yeah, there should be Herald alerts. Real alerts, not queues in disquise like that Na'kuhl thing. Fortunately, with the T'ket plot, that could theoretically still happen.
Easy on the Strawman. I get what you're saying.
Sealing the queues as a matter of ending the stories would make sense under a different paradigm. But not this one.
The fact is of course that the queues are much more about the resources you gain than the story. You can't cut the flow for people who haven't gotten what they want yet or the new characters that are going through that part. Red Alerts on the other hand are the perfect type of event to turn on and off to broadcast what "era" the game itself is currently in.
Indeed when T'ket strikes back I hope they'll apply this new concept.
I could be wrong, but I think Divide et Impera triggered threads like this one in its day. It seemed pretty reviled, I know I was infuriated.
It's a little difficult to ignore the Undine threat at that point since it was the trigger of the Federation-Klingon War. Us finding infiltrators everywhere validates the Klingon's point and forces the Federation to pull its head out of its aft. One mission per arc actually seems about right for that feel.
To put it simply and to strip some emotion, yes it did inspire a lot of discussion. The lack of player agency was cited a lot on the forums.
Member Access Denied Armada!
My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
My character Tsin'xing
Likewise, there is an active faction of Na'Khul who are (and will remain) hostile to us. Yes, the Devs could provide a rationale by which they all become peaceful... but they won't.
Gameplay considerations tie their hands in how they resolve these storylines more than you might think. They have to consider long term replay value and thus at times hang the rationales for how things turn out on the thinnest of logical threads.
Providing airtight, neatly wrapped up plots is not the point. The point is gameplay and replayability. There are always going to be logical disconnects and continuity problems and the Devs are under no incentive to eliminate those, only to minimize them to some extent. As long as we have the ability to re-re-replay missions ad-infinitum, there is always going to be an element of self-suspension of belief involved. You'll have to provide your own rationales for why, because the Devs are too busy to do more than give you the thinnest of excuses for doing so.
The Na'Khul -- some of them, at least -- are always going to be bad guys from the gameplay standpoint, just like some of the Heralds/Undine/Jem'Hadar/Cardassian/Romulan/Klingon, etc. Removing their reason for being so makes even less sense than what we've been given to work with. Our individual ethics and preferences have little or nothing to do with it and regardless will not change the combat-oriented storylines that the Devs lay out.
Your choice as a character is not "Save ALL the worlds". In fact, you don't have a choice. You're going to save the worlds that the Devs set up for you to save and the ones they don't, you won't. If the inconsistencies in the stories are tearing you up, you're playing the wrong game. You might as well spend your energies making up rationales to support the gameplay, because making them to tear down the gameplay is just an exercise in frustration.
Specific critiques of the quality of the writing is certainly in scope, though. Cryptic is pretty good at the 'Big Idea' stuff but tend to suffer in the details. In their defense, they're game designers and not novelists but they could pay more attention to plot holes than they do.
By that logic Starbase 24 and our fleet starbases are perpetually under Klingon attack despite the fact the war's long over, the Klingons must have lost half their fleet to the Borg, and Ja'rod must be the unluckiest and/or most masochistic Klingon in history for getting captured by them so often on the same exact planet.
They never bothered to provide such a rationale for the missions being replayable before and they didn't need to this time.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
That's not the point I was making, I'm saying that they don't need to provide an in-story justification for it, especially not one that just adds injury to the insult of the Iconian diktat. It's gameplay and story segregation: story-wise, we didn't kill the Borg Queen seven bajillion times, we killed her once. (Twice, if you count "Borg: Disconnected".) Likewise, the Heralds do not incessantly besiege Qo'noS, they attack it once and we drive them off once.
TRIBBLE the New Romulus clickies, though: that's all time-wasting TRIBBLE that your junior enlisted crew should be doing.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
The T'ket revenge bit is a sequel hook. Its not meant to "justify" keeping the existing Iconian-related missions, because no such thing is needed, but to give the devs an easy "in" if they ever want to do something Iconian-related in the future.