The problem with J'ula is simply nothing involving her felt earned. And L'rel fails several concepts of good storytelling. "Chekov's Gun" being the big one. She's not a character, she's an object to be acted upon. And one pulled out of a Wizards hat at the last minute to resolve a story.
And no Al, the player Hatred of J'ula is not something to be proud of. Because it is a hatred of a bad story that feels force fed. Look the players hate Sela in the way you imagine they hate J'ula. They hate her because they buy into the character. Sela the in game character annoys their characters. But Sela's power, her betrayals and her actions don't feel unearned. They feel organic to the game, the story and the lore. J'ula is not that. To the players observation she barely qualifies as a character. Because she has no real characterization. Certainly none delivered in game, beyond Rage, Cowardice and Stupidity. She would be fine for a bog standard villain that we have to run down and put an end to. But somehow the games writers imagine her on this great redemption arc... which they never bothered to deliver to the players. We go from "Kill the TRIBBLE" to "And Everybody Clapped" in a series of moves so fast that the player gets whip lash. And none of it feels earned.
The sad thing is they could have pulled it out at the end. Right there in that final scene. Even with the horrible characterization of Martok, and roping the player into being J'ula's lackey, they could have pulled it off. If at the end. She dropped the Batlev and walked away from it all, in an example of contrition. Let her follow Kahless's (the Clone's) example and lead a quiet life of reflection on Borath. The key point being she had to show regret for her sins. She had to understand that she was unforgivable and irredeemable. Only then could her redemption begin. What they gave us instead was a Super Villain that won. This is not a good ending. Not even if you are trying to "subvert your players expectations" (which is honestly and idiotic thing to do. Your players expectations are what pays your bills).
If Al here thinks J'ula is a character that the players love to hate, he may need to rethink his own assumptions and expectations a bit. And yeah don't go by the small percentage that post here, or on redit or on twitter. Cryptic has the real data. How often is the new content rerun by players after the first time? How often is it rerun per character past the first time? How does it stack up vs the other episodes? I'm willing to bet that the number of players who have repeated Knowledge is Power or played it more than once per character to get past it is shockingly low. But I will admit that is just a gut feeling. You probably see some replay of Partisans, which is actually a fun episode and is useful for grinding the KDF Recruit goals. But I'm thinking overall the numbers are lacking. Otherwise why even comment regarding the J'ula hate?
And really Knowledge is Power and the very end cutscenes of a Day Long Remembered are the problem. Most of the rest of the content is actually quite good with some of it being among the teams best work. But forcing players to spend an hour per character playing as the cardboard cutout poorly realized villainess, and make her the hero rang not simply hollow, it was infuriating. Telling the players that they just don't get Klingons is simply stupid.
If Al here thinks J'ula is a character that the players love to hate, he may need to rethink his own assumptions and expectations a bit. And yeah don't go by the small percentage that post here, or on redit or on twitter. Cryptic has the real data. How often is the new content rerun by players after the first time? How often is it rerun per character past the first time? How does it stack up vs the other episodes? I'm willing to bet that the number of players who have repeated Knowledge is Power or played it more than once per character to get past it is shockingly low. But I will admit that is just a gut feeling. You probably see some replay of Partisans, which is actually a fun episode and is useful for grinding the KDF Recruit goals. But I'm thinking overall the numbers are lacking. Otherwise why even comment regarding the J'ula hate?
First, I agree with much of what you said.
I'd like to point out however, that Cryptic actually doesn't have as much information as some people on here assume.
Yes, I'm sure they know how often a piece of content gets played. But that doesn't say a whole lot if lots of players are only playing it because they have to do that to get a certain piece of equipment or to reach some other goal.
That's the problem with how Cryptic designs its content: there's no way of telling whether people enjoyed playing a certain piece of content, because playing the content itself usually isn't a goal, it's a means. Which thus results in a lot of 'empty' data that doesn't say a thing about players' appreciation of the content.
So comments on Reddit or this forum are actually the only source of real information (instead of this empty data / Al's little 'metrics' pet) when it comes to determining whether players liked something or not.
L'rel is still a problem too, lacking any legitimacy for the role. As someone else mentioned, why her over the many other Klingons we've actually worked with fighting Borg and H'urq and so on over the years? She is nobody the PC has reason to care about, except because some magic monks said so. And we are supposed to imagine none of the Great Houses are going to contest her rule, this clone from a long time ago who apparently was happy to hold the entire planet hostage with a bomb in its core, planted by the Federation.
L'rell was the chancellor who took a Klingon Empire that was fractured by inter-House conflicts, and on the border of self annihilation due to civil war, and reformed it into a single, solidified, Empire, making it the strongest its ever been for decades to come. Along with organizing the construction of the most legendary ship the Klingons have ever made, the D7. She, quite literally, made the Klingon Empire that we see from TOS to Undiscovered Country.
And what other Klingons would take the role? Worf? The Federation puppet? Martok? The old man who never wanted the job and was already outed for being a Federation puppet? Kagran? A captain for the Alliance that has shown no real diplomatic skills?
L'rell who apparently also used the bomb to take power. Its almost like J'mpok was following her example.
Kagran's closest real world analogue is Eisenhower. Please tell me how organizing a military response to a common threat with different militaries doesn't involve diplomatic skills. Oh also what qualifications are required to be chancellor? I thought killing the previous one was sufficient.
Kagran is easily the best, but of course there are other Klingons too, like Rodek/Kurn or Koren. Any of them could believably be chancellor. Why did we need to resurrect L'rel and ruin the mystery about the Klingon afterlife?
The reason they don't use homebrewed characters like koren is that cryptic somehow think that because they've not been in a show they mean nothing to those who have played the game and interacted with the characters. This arc had koren, someone we knew and had worked with in previous mission arcs, suddenly throw a wobbly and turn on us without even trying to find out what her former comrades in arms were doing. That is typical of cryptics writing, they have characters that aren't half bad but will happily dump them for a "big name" voice actor from a series. They also have some god awful characters that appear and thankfully don't come back, like the yeehar ridem cowboy bunch in the rehash of nimbus bar.
Using characters from disco trek relies on players not being on the discotrek is badly written shtako side of the fence. It relies on people having access to the shows, I watched up to the botched timeloop episode on telly here before saying enough was enough and it looks like channel 4 decided not to do a deal for disco beyond series one. They consistently bumped it later and later until it was in the the wee hours of monday morning timeslot while batwoman inexplicably maintained its timeslot and got renewed.
The problem with J'ula is simply nothing involving her felt earned. And L'rel fails several concepts of good storytelling. "Chekov's Gun" being the big one.
Chekov's gun is a fundamental aspect of bad story telling because it implies that the only things that can exist in a narrative are things that directly contribute to the plot. Any well written narrative, especially in a visual medium like a TV show, movie, or video game, does its best to create a living breathing world that people can buy into. And real worlds are full of ancillary details that don't matter to the plot. Hence why games, movies, and TV shows are full of misc objects and information that just exist to flesh out the world.
First, that's Chekhov's Gun, not Chekov's Gun, which is an insignificant gun inwented by a little ensign in Russia. That's a rookie mistake not to correct the mispell.
Second, Anton Chekhov was focused on SHORT stories, so of course, you had to focus on not adding unnecessary stuff in your stories.
Third, creating a rich universe has nothing to do with Chekhov's Gun, it's not about "that object exists and thus it must be used eventually", it's "if you specify the existence of this particular object for no apparent reason yet, it better be used later". You can have a room full of objects, but if the character looks and mentions one only, it's likely to set a payoff for later, unless it's a red herring, which is still some kind of Chekhov's Gun since it turned out to be important but not for the correct reason.
Fourth, you of all people saying Chekhov's Gun is bad story telling is downright ironic and borderline hypocritical since you just love to tell people things like "actually in the second lore blog of June 2016, this 2021 ingame ship is mentioned and thus it proves you don't pay attention on the long term and you're a double-dumbass."
First, that's Chekhov's Gun, not Chekov's Gun, which is an insignificant gun inwented by a little ensign in Russia. That's a rookie mistake not to correct the mispell.
Pointing out people's typos instead of focusing on the actual argument. What a very 4chan thing to do.
Chekhov's gun is a dramatic principle that states that every element in a story must be necessary, and irrelevant elements should be removed. Elements should not appear to make "false promises" by never coming into play.
Fourth, you of all people saying Chekhov's Gun is bad story telling is downright ironic and borderline hypocritical since you just love to tell people things like "actually in the second lore blog of June 2016, this 2021 ingame ship is mentioned and thus it proves you don't pay attention on the long term and you're a double-dumbass."
This has nothing to do with Chekhov's Gun. For example, pointing out that the crew of the O.S.S. Coldstar appeared in some lore blogs back in 2016, 2017, and 2018, isn't an example of Chekhov's Gun, because Cryptic wasn't using it to set up them appearing in 2020 in the "Partisans" mission. That's just expecting people to know the damn lore of the thing they are playing.
I also like the childishly passive aggressive thing you seem to be doing recently where you want to reply to my posts, but cut out my tag from said posts so I don't get pinged by it, that way you can try to skirt around actually having a response, made and make it seem like you one upped me to the point I didn't respond. You just get more pathetic and cowardly as time goes on huh?
Can you two please get a room, I can cut through the sexual tension like butter, you guys don't need to make a huge deal out of this, just agree to disagree and leave it at that.
Pointing out people's typos instead of focusing on the actual argument. What a very 4chan thing to do.
[...]
You want to try that again m8?
[...]
I also like the childishly passive aggressive thing you seem to be doing recently where you want to reply to my posts, but cut out my tag from said posts so I don't get pinged by it, that way you can try to skirt around actually having a response, made and make it seem like you one upped me to the point I didn't respond. You just get more pathetic and cowardly as time goes on huh?
Again with the personal ad hominem attacks, the real reason I stopped using your tags because I just know you love to throw these around, instead of trying to keep a polite discussion and allow to have your claims challenged, just like you did again:
By all means, cut the second, most relevant part of my reply that directly addresses this:
it's "if you specify the existence of this particular object for no apparent reason yet, it better be used later". You can have a room full of objects, but if the character looks and mentions one only, it's likely to set a payoff for later, unless it's a red herring, which is still some kind of Chekhov's Gun since it turned out to be important but not for the correct reason.
Can you two please get a room, I can cut through the sexual tension like butter, you guys don't need to make a huge deal out of this, just agree to disagree and leave it at that.
Depriving Som of a public for their arguments? Now that's just mean to them.
Lying about your intentions just makes you look worse. If you actually believed this you wouldn't reply to my posts at all to minimize the possibility of being responded to, and thus getting these sort of comments. Have you ever maybe considered the way people treat you is a reflection of your own actions, and, if you want to be treated better you should act better?
Talking about polite discussion in the same sentence you lie about your intent in discussing is just insanly hypocritical. Typical of you though.
You're the only one actually antagonizing people disagreeing with you that hard, really. If you check my post history, which I know you definitely did, you'll notice they were really only 2 groups of people I tend to confront the most: the now-gone Starfleet Dental and you.
Also, I hope you don't mind, but I'm keeping some receipts as you tend to quickly edit the more personal attacks after posting (as seen in this quote).
My primary beef with J'Ula and the arc as a whole was the railroading. Being framed as a terrorist at the start of that arc would work if you were a KDF, fed klingon, or KDF-aligned Romulan, and ONLY then, and the last one is pretty shaky. As those, the twist works fantastically, and the visuals and gameplay are amazing, but content has to be able to survive repeat viewings. When I played through on my starfleet romulan and disco captain, I was at first like "Fun! A plot twist!" but the second time had me going "What."
The reason for this is simple. Federation characters of any origin, but especially a disco captain, had no reason to work with J'Ula. There's no way a frame-up job could have possibly worked with them. I would have liked there to be a point where my disco captain got to call her out for attacking a cadet training cruise and killing its captain in cold blood in front of the recruits. Or heck, change it to Aakar.
If either of those happened, I wouldn't have as much of a problem with J'Ula.
The other two low points for me during all of this were as follows.
1- the mission where we play as J'Ula. This could have been a fantastic time for her to undergo some proper introspection. All of this was on her head. She made the weapon, she kept firing it regardless of the damage it did, and she's the one that had punted all of them into 2409. She's attacked Lukari science expeditions, federation outposts, and drove the Elachi up the wall. Yet nowhere during that time spent in her head did we see her express any regrets for that. She was trying to depose J'mpok even before he decided that he should try to frame a war hero as her lackey, so her goals don't change ultimately.
If she had, she would have been a very 3-dimensional character, much like J'Mpok. Yes, he started a war with the federation and killed Martok for his office, but according to Martok, he won their duel fair and square, and it turned out that he was right about the Undine (even if his methods for trying to deal with them were idiotic). When he takes over the Gorn Hegemony, their king impresses him so much that he not only spares his life, but grants the gorn a non-voting seat on the council. He brought the Orions and Ferasans in as vassals, along with the mercenary races, as well as discommendate one of his biggest allies when Torg's dirty laundry was aired. He was willing to sign an alliance with the Romulan Republic, and probably the biggest feather in his cap, he actually is willing to bury his feud with the federation after Captain Shon and the Admiral saved Kronos from being cracked like an egg by an Undine planet killer.
All of those actions added depth to him, but we don't see anywhere near as much with J'Ula. She stays a vicious ultranationalist terrorist willing to use a weapon of mass destruction towards her own ends, only for a switch to suddenly flip, and her and J'Mpok's characterization to do a complete 180.
2- The other low point, and this one is a big peeve for me since I know you guys can do great dialogue for differing races and factions, was at the end of the mission where we yoink L'Rell's soul from Gre'thor. Our last words in our conversation with J'Ula, regardless of our faction (I know this because I did this on my disco captain), was to say Qapla. Why on earth would a Federation captain, and a discovery one at that, who probably holds J'Ula right next to Aakar on their personal hit list, say that?
In short, the problem I, and probably many people, have with J'Ula is she is a boring character that we have to play second fiddle to. She changes, but it feels rushed, unearned, and out of character with what we saw previously, and all of this comes at the expense of the player.
Our captains are supposed to be the heroes of these stories. I mean, a huge part of Legacy of Romulus was dedicated to the romulan captain's apocalyptic feud with Hakeev. And the cutscene even plays so that you get to blow his brains out instead of Obisek. That is what you guys should have been aiming for. This is a fantastic game when it fires on all cylinders, and I was a person who had to be dragged into this game kicking and screaming. The fact that you've kept me hooked since legacy of romulus tells me you guys can do better. Live up to that expectation, don't subvert it.
BTW, back to the subject.
What is Daniels going to do now about the whole situation?
After all, when she was thrown into the 25th century, he was concerned she could cause some serious damage to the timeline.
Now that due to her actions, many Klingons are dead, some Elachi are friendly, J'mpok is gone and L'Rell was cloned and back as Chancellor after a deal with the literal Klingon devil was made...
What is Daniels even supposed to do at this point?
I guess the potential for her to cause serious damage to the timeline was always there. I mean, whilst she didn't actually press the button, the weapon that she brought to 'our' time came pretty close to bringing our adventures to an end in “The Khitomer Discord”.
Or it could've been convienient excuse to both make us (i.e. our character) aware that she'd time-travelled and to get us involved in the whole series of events that followed.
"I hate temporal mechanics" and the more time-travel happens in Star Trek, the more I'm convinced temporal agencies have ZERO ideas how the timeline is supposed to unfold... or their higher-ups know and they just troll the soldiers by withdrawing information, like how Walker was apparently unaware Archer's crew killed Vosk, despite this happening in an alternate 1944 with a 22nd century crew aided by a 31st century agent they know.
Given that J'mpok was already a tyrannical idiot, bordering on psychosis, before J'ula showed up, the whole Klingon Civil War thing was bound to happen eventually anyways.
You know, @kranfordtbutcher just presented a great argument that this had not actually been the case.
Until the latest story arc, where suddenly it turns out he is, so J'Ula can look like she's less of a bad dude than him. For reasons.
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
I forgot to mention the brushfire thing. That is another pet the dog moment for J'Mpok, seeing as the return of Martok would have raised countless doubts about his legitimacy as Chancellor. In fact, it does, as J'Ula tries to use that during her speech back at the start of the civil war arc. He could have avoided quite a few headaches if he'd just left Martok there.
While there were plenty of story blog entries, and J'Mpok did have his head lodged firmly up his rear during Victory is Life, the trouble is not everyone reads the supplementary stuff. I admittedly am guilty of that a lot of the time. Plots in a game or a movie have to be able to stand on their own. There should have been a few more missions where J'Mpok does some shady stuff. This arc definitely needed more meat on the bones.
J'Mpok is scheming and manipulative, but he's also a pragmatist. His whole scheme just seems ridiculously sloppy when he does it, and came off to those that skipped the blogs as rushed and sudden. In turn, we weren't really given much development for J'Ula other than she hated what the Klingon Empire had become and was willing to attack anyone and everyone with a WMD that could damage or destroy the multiverse, whether they were federation, romulans, or other klingons. At no point did she ever come off as pragmatic. That she seems shocked that nobody likes her is amusing, and makes me wonder how the heck she got as far as she did.
2409 federation captains got to avenge Taggart and vaporize Kadek in the tutorial. All we wound up doing as a disco captain in the same situation was give J'Ula a bloody nose in the tutorial before she decides to cook up her fungus cannon of doom. The vendetta a disco captain has with her is personal, but we never get to even do a "This is for Schaeffer" one-liner. It's as if the captain we saw her gut in front of us on our maiden training voyage has been completely forgotten.
I like unique dialogue. It bumps up replay value. If everyone's dialogue is the same regardless of occupation or faction, there's not really much reason to really go through it again. Plus it's a neat touch. I don't want my federation or romulan captains to have to say Qapla because it's the only dialogue option. What they say should make sense for their faction.
But back on topic. A lot of people didn't like J'Ula because she came off as a creator's pet and a lot of her development felt rushed and unearned. There needed to be more missions for her to develop and to better demonstrate J'Mpok's jump into the deep end. If the characters had been given room to breathe instead of sticking us with these patrols inside missions, I'm sure the reception to the character would have been much better.
I forgot to mention the brushfire thing. That is another pet the dog moment for J'Mpok, seeing as the return of Martok would have raised countless doubts about his legitimacy as Chancellor. In fact, it does, as J'Ula tries to use that during her speech back at the start of the civil war arc. He could have avoided quite a few headaches if he'd just left Martok there.
While there were plenty of story blog entries, and J'Mpok did have his head lodged firmly up his rear during Victory is Life, the trouble is not everyone reads the supplementary stuff. I admittedly am guilty of that a lot of the time. Plots in a game or a movie have to be able to stand on their own. There should have been a few more missions where J'Mpok does some shady stuff. This arc definitely needed more meat on the bones.
J'Mpok is scheming and manipulative, but he's also a pragmatist. His whole scheme just seems ridiculously sloppy when he does it, and came off to those that skipped the blogs as rushed and sudden. In turn, we weren't really given much development for J'Ula other than she hated what the Klingon Empire had become and was willing to attack anyone and everyone with a WMD that could damage or destroy the multiverse, whether they were federation, romulans, or other klingons. At no point did she ever come off as pragmatic. That she seems shocked that nobody likes her is amusing, and makes me wonder how the heck she got as far as she did.
2409 federation captains got to avenge Taggart and vaporize Kadek in the tutorial. All we wound up doing as a disco captain in the same situation was give J'Ula a bloody nose in the tutorial before she decides to cook up her fungus cannon of doom. The vendetta a disco captain has with her is personal, but we never get to even do a "This is for Schaeffer" one-liner. It's as if the captain we saw her gut in front of us on our maiden training voyage has been completely forgotten.
I like unique dialogue. It bumps up replay value. If everyone's dialogue is the same regardless of occupation or faction, there's not really much reason to really go through it again. Plus it's a neat touch. I don't want my federation or romulan captains to have to say Qapla because it's the only dialogue option. What they say should make sense for their faction.
But back on topic. A lot of people didn't like J'Ula because she came off as a creator's pet and a lot of her development felt rushed and unearned. There needed to be more missions for her to develop and to better demonstrate J'Mpok's jump into the deep end. If the characters had been given room to breathe instead of sticking us with these patrols inside missions, I'm sure the reception to the character would have been much better.
My Disco Captain wouldn't feel the same way on the account of being a Vulcan and being the older sibling of my TOS Captain, being kidnapped by Daniels seem to run in the family, but I'm getting ahead of myself and need to get back on topic, personally mine would have most likely wanted to arrest her rather than punching her or straight up killing her, most people probably would have liked her more if she didn't run away from every fight but somehow still managed to get away by sheer luck, like having a ceiling collapse mid-fight or she gets captured by someone else who has a vendetta against her, you know have things happen to her outside her control.
'Only a fool fights in a burning house.' And when we show up with godlike powers of fleetus deletus, the house isn't just burning - it's a goddamn inferno.
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
I forgot to mention the brushfire thing. That is another pet the dog moment for J'Mpok,
Do you mean "wag" the dog?
Nah, I meant pet the dog. It's a tv tropes term for when someone that's villainous or a jerk does something somewhat nice. I'd classify authorizing a mission to rescue a political rival as one.
Comments
nothing at all. continue lol. this is very amusing.
And no Al, the player Hatred of J'ula is not something to be proud of. Because it is a hatred of a bad story that feels force fed. Look the players hate Sela in the way you imagine they hate J'ula. They hate her because they buy into the character. Sela the in game character annoys their characters. But Sela's power, her betrayals and her actions don't feel unearned. They feel organic to the game, the story and the lore. J'ula is not that. To the players observation she barely qualifies as a character. Because she has no real characterization. Certainly none delivered in game, beyond Rage, Cowardice and Stupidity. She would be fine for a bog standard villain that we have to run down and put an end to. But somehow the games writers imagine her on this great redemption arc... which they never bothered to deliver to the players. We go from "Kill the TRIBBLE" to "And Everybody Clapped" in a series of moves so fast that the player gets whip lash. And none of it feels earned.
The sad thing is they could have pulled it out at the end. Right there in that final scene. Even with the horrible characterization of Martok, and roping the player into being J'ula's lackey, they could have pulled it off. If at the end. She dropped the Batlev and walked away from it all, in an example of contrition. Let her follow Kahless's (the Clone's) example and lead a quiet life of reflection on Borath. The key point being she had to show regret for her sins. She had to understand that she was unforgivable and irredeemable. Only then could her redemption begin. What they gave us instead was a Super Villain that won. This is not a good ending. Not even if you are trying to "subvert your players expectations" (which is honestly and idiotic thing to do. Your players expectations are what pays your bills).
If Al here thinks J'ula is a character that the players love to hate, he may need to rethink his own assumptions and expectations a bit. And yeah don't go by the small percentage that post here, or on redit or on twitter. Cryptic has the real data. How often is the new content rerun by players after the first time? How often is it rerun per character past the first time? How does it stack up vs the other episodes? I'm willing to bet that the number of players who have repeated Knowledge is Power or played it more than once per character to get past it is shockingly low. But I will admit that is just a gut feeling. You probably see some replay of Partisans, which is actually a fun episode and is useful for grinding the KDF Recruit goals. But I'm thinking overall the numbers are lacking. Otherwise why even comment regarding the J'ula hate?
And really Knowledge is Power and the very end cutscenes of a Day Long Remembered are the problem. Most of the rest of the content is actually quite good with some of it being among the teams best work. But forcing players to spend an hour per character playing as the cardboard cutout poorly realized villainess, and make her the hero rang not simply hollow, it was infuriating. Telling the players that they just don't get Klingons is simply stupid.
First, I agree with much of what you said.
I'd like to point out however, that Cryptic actually doesn't have as much information as some people on here assume.
Yes, I'm sure they know how often a piece of content gets played. But that doesn't say a whole lot if lots of players are only playing it because they have to do that to get a certain piece of equipment or to reach some other goal.
That's the problem with how Cryptic designs its content: there's no way of telling whether people enjoyed playing a certain piece of content, because playing the content itself usually isn't a goal, it's a means. Which thus results in a lot of 'empty' data that doesn't say a thing about players' appreciation of the content.
So comments on Reddit or this forum are actually the only source of real information (instead of this empty data / Al's little 'metrics' pet) when it comes to determining whether players liked something or not.
L'rell who apparently also used the bomb to take power. Its almost like J'mpok was following her example.
Kagran's closest real world analogue is Eisenhower. Please tell me how organizing a military response to a common threat with different militaries doesn't involve diplomatic skills. Oh also what qualifications are required to be chancellor? I thought killing the previous one was sufficient.
Kagran is easily the best, but of course there are other Klingons too, like Rodek/Kurn or Koren. Any of them could believably be chancellor. Why did we need to resurrect L'rel and ruin the mystery about the Klingon afterlife?
Using characters from disco trek relies on players not being on the discotrek is badly written shtako side of the fence. It relies on people having access to the shows, I watched up to the botched timeloop episode on telly here before saying enough was enough and it looks like channel 4 decided not to do a deal for disco beyond series one. They consistently bumped it later and later until it was in the the wee hours of monday morning timeslot while batwoman inexplicably maintained its timeslot and got renewed.
Second, Anton Chekhov was focused on SHORT stories, so of course, you had to focus on not adding unnecessary stuff in your stories.
Third, creating a rich universe has nothing to do with Chekhov's Gun, it's not about "that object exists and thus it must be used eventually", it's "if you specify the existence of this particular object for no apparent reason yet, it better be used later". You can have a room full of objects, but if the character looks and mentions one only, it's likely to set a payoff for later, unless it's a red herring, which is still some kind of Chekhov's Gun since it turned out to be important but not for the correct reason.
Fourth, you of all people saying Chekhov's Gun is bad story telling is downright ironic and borderline hypocritical since you just love to tell people things like "actually in the second lore blog of June 2016, this 2021 ingame ship is mentioned and thus it proves you don't pay attention on the long term and you're a double-dumbass."
Can you two please get a room, I can cut through the sexual tension like butter, you guys don't need to make a huge deal out of this, just agree to disagree and leave it at that.
Also, I hope you don't mind, but I'm keeping some receipts as you tend to quickly edit the more personal attacks after posting (as seen in this quote).
are @rattler2 and @darkbladejk still around?
The reason for this is simple. Federation characters of any origin, but especially a disco captain, had no reason to work with J'Ula. There's no way a frame-up job could have possibly worked with them. I would have liked there to be a point where my disco captain got to call her out for attacking a cadet training cruise and killing its captain in cold blood in front of the recruits. Or heck, change it to Aakar.
If either of those happened, I wouldn't have as much of a problem with J'Ula.
The other two low points for me during all of this were as follows.
1- the mission where we play as J'Ula. This could have been a fantastic time for her to undergo some proper introspection. All of this was on her head. She made the weapon, she kept firing it regardless of the damage it did, and she's the one that had punted all of them into 2409. She's attacked Lukari science expeditions, federation outposts, and drove the Elachi up the wall. Yet nowhere during that time spent in her head did we see her express any regrets for that. She was trying to depose J'mpok even before he decided that he should try to frame a war hero as her lackey, so her goals don't change ultimately.
If she had, she would have been a very 3-dimensional character, much like J'Mpok. Yes, he started a war with the federation and killed Martok for his office, but according to Martok, he won their duel fair and square, and it turned out that he was right about the Undine (even if his methods for trying to deal with them were idiotic). When he takes over the Gorn Hegemony, their king impresses him so much that he not only spares his life, but grants the gorn a non-voting seat on the council. He brought the Orions and Ferasans in as vassals, along with the mercenary races, as well as discommendate one of his biggest allies when Torg's dirty laundry was aired. He was willing to sign an alliance with the Romulan Republic, and probably the biggest feather in his cap, he actually is willing to bury his feud with the federation after Captain Shon and the Admiral saved Kronos from being cracked like an egg by an Undine planet killer.
All of those actions added depth to him, but we don't see anywhere near as much with J'Ula. She stays a vicious ultranationalist terrorist willing to use a weapon of mass destruction towards her own ends, only for a switch to suddenly flip, and her and J'Mpok's characterization to do a complete 180.
2- The other low point, and this one is a big peeve for me since I know you guys can do great dialogue for differing races and factions, was at the end of the mission where we yoink L'Rell's soul from Gre'thor. Our last words in our conversation with J'Ula, regardless of our faction (I know this because I did this on my disco captain), was to say Qapla. Why on earth would a Federation captain, and a discovery one at that, who probably holds J'Ula right next to Aakar on their personal hit list, say that?
In short, the problem I, and probably many people, have with J'Ula is she is a boring character that we have to play second fiddle to. She changes, but it feels rushed, unearned, and out of character with what we saw previously, and all of this comes at the expense of the player.
Our captains are supposed to be the heroes of these stories. I mean, a huge part of Legacy of Romulus was dedicated to the romulan captain's apocalyptic feud with Hakeev. And the cutscene even plays so that you get to blow his brains out instead of Obisek. That is what you guys should have been aiming for. This is a fantastic game when it fires on all cylinders, and I was a person who had to be dragged into this game kicking and screaming. The fact that you've kept me hooked since legacy of romulus tells me you guys can do better. Live up to that expectation, don't subvert it.
What is Daniels going to do now about the whole situation?
After all, when she was thrown into the 25th century, he was concerned she could cause some serious damage to the timeline.
Now that due to her actions, many Klingons are dead, some Elachi are friendly, J'mpok is gone and L'Rell was cloned and back as Chancellor after a deal with the literal Klingon devil was made...
What is Daniels even supposed to do at this point?
You know, @kranfordtbutcher just presented a great argument that this had not actually been the case.
Until the latest story arc, where suddenly it turns out he is, so J'Ula can look like she's less of a bad dude than him. For reasons.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
While there were plenty of story blog entries, and J'Mpok did have his head lodged firmly up his rear during Victory is Life, the trouble is not everyone reads the supplementary stuff. I admittedly am guilty of that a lot of the time. Plots in a game or a movie have to be able to stand on their own. There should have been a few more missions where J'Mpok does some shady stuff. This arc definitely needed more meat on the bones.
J'Mpok is scheming and manipulative, but he's also a pragmatist. His whole scheme just seems ridiculously sloppy when he does it, and came off to those that skipped the blogs as rushed and sudden. In turn, we weren't really given much development for J'Ula other than she hated what the Klingon Empire had become and was willing to attack anyone and everyone with a WMD that could damage or destroy the multiverse, whether they were federation, romulans, or other klingons. At no point did she ever come off as pragmatic. That she seems shocked that nobody likes her is amusing, and makes me wonder how the heck she got as far as she did.
2409 federation captains got to avenge Taggart and vaporize Kadek in the tutorial. All we wound up doing as a disco captain in the same situation was give J'Ula a bloody nose in the tutorial before she decides to cook up her fungus cannon of doom. The vendetta a disco captain has with her is personal, but we never get to even do a "This is for Schaeffer" one-liner. It's as if the captain we saw her gut in front of us on our maiden training voyage has been completely forgotten.
I like unique dialogue. It bumps up replay value. If everyone's dialogue is the same regardless of occupation or faction, there's not really much reason to really go through it again. Plus it's a neat touch. I don't want my federation or romulan captains to have to say Qapla because it's the only dialogue option. What they say should make sense for their faction.
But back on topic. A lot of people didn't like J'Ula because she came off as a creator's pet and a lot of her development felt rushed and unearned. There needed to be more missions for her to develop and to better demonstrate J'Mpok's jump into the deep end. If the characters had been given room to breathe instead of sticking us with these patrols inside missions, I'm sure the reception to the character would have been much better.
My Disco Captain wouldn't feel the same way on the account of being a Vulcan and being the older sibling of my TOS Captain, being kidnapped by Daniels seem to run in the family, but I'm getting ahead of myself and need to get back on topic, personally mine would have most likely wanted to arrest her rather than punching her or straight up killing her, most people probably would have liked her more if she didn't run away from every fight but somehow still managed to get away by sheer luck, like having a ceiling collapse mid-fight or she gets captured by someone else who has a vendetta against her, you know have things happen to her outside her control.
Do you mean "wag" the dog?
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Nah, I meant pet the dog. It's a tv tropes term for when someone that's villainous or a jerk does something somewhat nice. I'd classify authorizing a mission to rescue a political rival as one.