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sphere of influence, my thoughts.. (possible spoilers)
puttenham
Member Posts: 1,052 Arc User
ok.. so I went into this with an open mind trying to give this an honest review..
firstly I would like to say it is a fairly well written episode. and as I have come to expect, the eye candy is stunning especially in 3d (when it allows you to play in it, well talk about this in a little while). having micheal dorn as worf is nice (better than yar, cause really, shes c list in the star trek community lol)..
that being said, lets look at the pros..
1. well written, great story line, and interesting.. kept my attention, and made me want to actually read the 14 chapters worth of text layed out for us.. lol..
2. I liked the landscapes, the art and what not, very nice..
3. I really liked the special abilities from worf and captain shon.. that was a nice touch and something I hope to see more of.
ok, getting onto the things I didn't like (and this isn't doom or anything, its just id rather right a constructive critisizm that cryptic can actually take something from, rather than just I didn't like it.. )... cause they don't know its broke unless someone tells them it is...
ok, first off, I will say I am super disappointed in the new carrier.. while its got cool abilities and what not, it is not nearly up to par graphically as all the other ships cryptic has designed.. this is the first ship I can really say looks like garbage from cryptic.. but the problems are merely asthetic in my eyes..
secondly, while I like a story, there was entirely too much kibble and way too much info.. I log onto to a video game to play a video game, not read a book (I do that too, but not while im online playing games lol)... shure some people like it, but I would say the majority of the video gamers playing would appreciate the cliff notes rather than the thesis version of events..
on the topic of the actual written story.. it was awesome to hear worf.. however, my immersion kept getting broken by the fact that he was one of the only people actually talking.. sure, dtan and shon, and what not said maybe a sentence here and there, but that was the problem.. it made the story feel all broken up.. it would have been better to have voice overs for all of the content from the major characters.. especially when say captain shon would say his sentence, and not bother speaking the only other sentence of dialogue after..
and further moving on this point.. I have waited a full day to post this cause I packed my comp up and went to a friends house to test something.. I kept getting severe lag with the sound in the mission, both music, sound effects, and even voice over.. and at first I thought maybe it was my internet, (cause my computer is space age at this point (running a new rig with all the newest toys.. lots of ram, high end graphics card, gaming mother board even. nice soundcard, top of the line).. but when I played at my friends, who had a much better internet service, I still had the same problems.. lets say id walk through a door, and it would say to scan something.. I would go and scan it, and that is when all the soundeffects for the room would trigger.. ie, worf would talk, the music would cue, the door opening and closing sounds would suddenly happen, scanning, and other barckground noise.. this was very much limiting myself.. (and my friend who even played it on his character, said the same thing..)..
the only other thing was even on elite mode, it was still mind numbingly easy.. first of all, 3/4's of the mission is a click fest.. go click this, scan that, walk here, walk there, go click something, extend ramp. run to next platform. click something, extend new ramp, go to next platform.. click something and so on and so forth.. (although I did love playing simon lol)..
cryptic has shown that they know how to do more.. look at the puzzle on defera, which was a postitional thing.. look at the end of infected ground.. you had to know how to jump and activate things as a team, (timing).. even in the foundry missions, there is a lot of cool ways of doing stuff without making a run here and there and click a button.. I don't mind doing it a little, but this mission is second only to the bajor mission in the amount of running around to just click a button.
my only other gripe, is if we are admirals, why do I feel like captain shon is looking down on me, like im a subordinate, and why am I not giving him direct orders (like admirals always have done in star trek.. ). im not his equal, I am his superior officer. and why is worf comfortable talking to me (a Starfleet admiral) but not to captain shon, (a Starfleet captain)..
out of a score of ten, I would give this a 5, right in the middle.. 2 years ago, it would have gotten a much better score, but this type of play is getting old and needs to be revamped.. and I am being fair by giving it a five, I neither felt the episode sucked, nor did I feel it was the best in the game.. it has its ups and downs, and is definatly worth playing, but I wont play it more than once on each of my characters..
firstly I would like to say it is a fairly well written episode. and as I have come to expect, the eye candy is stunning especially in 3d (when it allows you to play in it, well talk about this in a little while). having micheal dorn as worf is nice (better than yar, cause really, shes c list in the star trek community lol)..
that being said, lets look at the pros..
1. well written, great story line, and interesting.. kept my attention, and made me want to actually read the 14 chapters worth of text layed out for us.. lol..
2. I liked the landscapes, the art and what not, very nice..
3. I really liked the special abilities from worf and captain shon.. that was a nice touch and something I hope to see more of.
ok, getting onto the things I didn't like (and this isn't doom or anything, its just id rather right a constructive critisizm that cryptic can actually take something from, rather than just I didn't like it.. )... cause they don't know its broke unless someone tells them it is...
ok, first off, I will say I am super disappointed in the new carrier.. while its got cool abilities and what not, it is not nearly up to par graphically as all the other ships cryptic has designed.. this is the first ship I can really say looks like garbage from cryptic.. but the problems are merely asthetic in my eyes..
secondly, while I like a story, there was entirely too much kibble and way too much info.. I log onto to a video game to play a video game, not read a book (I do that too, but not while im online playing games lol)... shure some people like it, but I would say the majority of the video gamers playing would appreciate the cliff notes rather than the thesis version of events..
on the topic of the actual written story.. it was awesome to hear worf.. however, my immersion kept getting broken by the fact that he was one of the only people actually talking.. sure, dtan and shon, and what not said maybe a sentence here and there, but that was the problem.. it made the story feel all broken up.. it would have been better to have voice overs for all of the content from the major characters.. especially when say captain shon would say his sentence, and not bother speaking the only other sentence of dialogue after..
and further moving on this point.. I have waited a full day to post this cause I packed my comp up and went to a friends house to test something.. I kept getting severe lag with the sound in the mission, both music, sound effects, and even voice over.. and at first I thought maybe it was my internet, (cause my computer is space age at this point (running a new rig with all the newest toys.. lots of ram, high end graphics card, gaming mother board even. nice soundcard, top of the line).. but when I played at my friends, who had a much better internet service, I still had the same problems.. lets say id walk through a door, and it would say to scan something.. I would go and scan it, and that is when all the soundeffects for the room would trigger.. ie, worf would talk, the music would cue, the door opening and closing sounds would suddenly happen, scanning, and other barckground noise.. this was very much limiting myself.. (and my friend who even played it on his character, said the same thing..)..
the only other thing was even on elite mode, it was still mind numbingly easy.. first of all, 3/4's of the mission is a click fest.. go click this, scan that, walk here, walk there, go click something, extend ramp. run to next platform. click something, extend new ramp, go to next platform.. click something and so on and so forth.. (although I did love playing simon lol)..
cryptic has shown that they know how to do more.. look at the puzzle on defera, which was a postitional thing.. look at the end of infected ground.. you had to know how to jump and activate things as a team, (timing).. even in the foundry missions, there is a lot of cool ways of doing stuff without making a run here and there and click a button.. I don't mind doing it a little, but this mission is second only to the bajor mission in the amount of running around to just click a button.
my only other gripe, is if we are admirals, why do I feel like captain shon is looking down on me, like im a subordinate, and why am I not giving him direct orders (like admirals always have done in star trek.. ). im not his equal, I am his superior officer. and why is worf comfortable talking to me (a Starfleet admiral) but not to captain shon, (a Starfleet captain)..
out of a score of ten, I would give this a 5, right in the middle.. 2 years ago, it would have gotten a much better score, but this type of play is getting old and needs to be revamped.. and I am being fair by giving it a five, I neither felt the episode sucked, nor did I feel it was the best in the game.. it has its ups and downs, and is definatly worth playing, but I wont play it more than once on each of my characters..
Post edited by puttenham on
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The criticism regarding the Obelisk is also very dependant on personal taste. I think it actually looks fine for an alien vessel and it would serve great for an enemy or ally NPC faction. I find it absolutely hideous to see players in those things, however. I was never a fan of lockbox alien ships and whatnot and I personally find it annoying that the bulk of Starfleet and the KDF, in this game, is made up of randomly scavenged alien ships. This is a poor gameplay choice to begin with.
I do agree with you, however, on the overall mission so far. I was actually surprised. The writing was okay, I loved seeing a fully voiced Worf by Mr. Dorn and I even liked the references to the show. Unlike other times it didn't feel forced, I don't know where the difference is this time. I like the slower, non combat heavy exploration gameplay. We shoot enough drones and mobs already, I like to take a look around and piece everything together before I pull out my disruptor or phaser once again. I do agree on your criticism regarding the voice acting, however. I don't understand why everyone except Worf only has one voiced line of dialogue. It seems rushed, unfinished and certainly unpolished to me.
The visuals are fine, although I don't understand why Cryptic didn't use the opportunity to change the default Starfleet uniform to the Odyssey model they showed on the promo picture. From all the NPCs, those randomly thrown together ugly stock uniforms Starfleet personell runs around in really disrupts an otherwise fine visual artwork, at least to me.
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keep this kind of stuff coming cryptic. you'll never please everybody. but you can please the lot of folks like myself that want cool things to happen with little to no effort.
wow just wow.. first off, I did not have one once of animosity when I wrote my post.. im known for usually being pretty anti cryptic, but I decided to go in with an open mind.. and gave my opinion.. (which the title states..).. and a lot of my opinion seems to be shared by a large amount of the other forum goers as I have read a lot of the other threads and responses..
now on to your points.. first off, yes the carrier is free, but there is an identical not free version, which can arguably be one of the more expensive ships in the game since you have to open lock boxes to get the lobi and your not always garunteed a good amount of lobi.. so your point, is mute... and im not commenting on ugliness, the ship itself is kinda a cool shape, what I was commenting on is it lacks a certain finish that all the other ships in the game have.. but again, it is up to each individuals taste, this is just my opinion on here..
ok my point about the immersion breaking wasn't about the clicking.. it was the constant start and stopping of the voice overs.. I was like driving on the highway and having to stop every couple of minutes.. if your gonna do that much voice over, you have to go all out.. and make it smooth, this was not smooth.. but neither here nor there, the story was still good..
listen, who knows, maybe cogent is acting up since I live in boston.. but again, that is still their problem, cause they should swith to a different carrier out here if it is consistently gonna be a problem.... I just found it odd that myself, on two different internet providers, both high end connections (as in good dl and upload speeds), and two different computers (my friend being a 3d engineer for a company has a sick 8 core with all the bells and whistles, and mine being an i7 with a brand new top of the line graphics card, and all high end gaming componants ,which I don't lag in any of the other 3 games I play) that we both experienced the same lag... who knows, ill concede that others are not having the problem and maybe something out of either ours, or cryptics hands was happening..
and I didn't say "admirals" were looking down on me.. try actually reading my post.. I said that I am the admiral, and a captain was talking down to me.. that is not how the chain of command works.. also man, no one needs to bring it to a personal bash fest here, criticize my points all you want, tell me im wrong, but don't say im illiterate, and question my intelligence, that only gets you into trouble as im pretty sure that kind of behavior is against forum policy..
also, while i will agree that my grammer is not always up to par, for the most part, that was a decent post, i have read through it a few times, and there is no real reason to jump all over it.
cute how you turned my rating around on me.. I was being fair, you were not, since you decided to not actually read my post, think you knew what I was saying, and then flame me in most cases for stuff that you misinterpreted..
this is my opinion, I am not stating that this is how everyone feels. some will agree, some will not, all I ask is that in my threads, we all get along, and keep it friendly and light heart.. i try not to personally beat on people here, and while very rarely my feelings get the best of me, for the most part i keep it respectfull. so try to give me the same in return...
I have seen this in all game development for the last several years, everything is WAY to easy and nothing gives a feeling of accomplishment any more. Sierra Online's old King's Quest and Space Quest games had more difficult puzzles then this and they are decades old for god sakes.
I agree with the inconsistency on the voiceover. It just doesn't feel like it would take that much more to voice everything.
As for the rest? This is setup for the adventure zone. I THINK it's required to access the adventure zone in S8, in fact.
I see it as an experiment in story delivery. New Romulus doled out story in rep tiers only. Nukara and Deferi/Borg didn't have much of any in-game.
And it's not going to be all story once you're in the sphere. And story mixed with gameplay can bog down gameplay. It's been a problem with STFs since the beginning I think. Readers vs. non-Readers.
Here, you get most of the story read to you and even what reading you do yourself i in a mandatory single player mission so you aren't slowing down other players but you are, hopefully, establishing some rich story connections about what's going on.
Then you get into the adventure zone where, hopefully, there won't be a lot of reading past maybe some optional backstory and you can focus on gameplay when doing gameplay.
And then at the end of the Voth rep and Sphere progression? You get another story dump. Again, in a fairly isolated place so it doesn't slow anyone down.
Story-> Action, Action, Action for 60-90 active days -> Story.
You get all of the story in the game but it doesn't bog down pure gameplay because you get it in singleplayer dumps, bookending multiplayer activity.
Just a note but real chain of command isn't necessarily by rank. For example, when Sisko was allied leader in the Dominion War, he was in a position to order admirals around, theoretically. If somebody who outranks you put Shon in charge of the operation, you answer to him.
Now, you could go to Quinn or whoever Shon answers to and say he's insubordinate. And they'd either say, "Get over it. Captain Shon was your commanding officer on that operation, Vice Admiral." OR "I'll have a talk with him about his attitude. But any complaints you have go through me. And you answer to him when he's in charge of an operation on my authority."
Really, the shows tended to oversimplify CoC in a rather unrealistic way to imply that higher rank made you higher in the CoC (aside from a few TNG and DS9 episodes). But I still think Cryptic should have made the max rank Captain so I blame some of this on the confusion there.
And I may be in the minority here but I think making the Enterprise Captain an Andorian with attitude (largely under the rationale that it was groundbreaking and something "they could never get away with on television") made the decision feel illegitimate because you know you'll never see Shon acknowledged on television. A TV exec who's edgy MIGHT greenlight a Klingon or Vulcan captain of the Enterprise (because casual fans of pop culture know what Klingons and Vulcans are) but all of the reasons why a studio would never greenlight an Andorian Enterprise captain in the show strike me as valid reasons why it is a bad idea here. (And I have the same attitude about the books doing things you'd never see on the shows.)
I can accept action focus and added RPG mentality and some sets/effects that would be budget busters on TV but that when you're talking story or who the Captain is, a direction that a studio exec would avoid for accessibility reasons is something books or games shouldn't do either.
Heck, I still think the ideal would be, at some point, rather than just dropping people on a starship, the opening cinematic or an early mission should address what the heck the game's setting is, to people who never watched Star Trek. It's something the 2009 movie did right to some extent. Those lines like "Starfleet is a humanitarian and peace-keeping armada" tell people what the heck Starfleet is. Virtually all of the movies do this.
It's something I've seen many fantasy games do right. WoW even tells you WHAT HUMANS ARE and what their motivation is when you roll a human.
STO tends to drop you knee deep in game backstory. The F2P opening cinematic was an improvement.
My ideal would probably show WWIII, First Contact with Cochrane, Enterprise, TOS, TNG, the Dominion War/Voyager's return/Nemesis era (with years or "X years later" captions) and then inform the player that this is 30 years after that. Hopefully with some Klingon and Romulan nods in there. We're talking 60 seconds. Requires no actor likenesses (although they have Worf/Scotty/McCoy/Spock). Just people in the various uniforms shown chronologically.
Because someone who is a 21st century human will get that. Somebody who only watched one of the shows would watch that and say, "Ah, that's where those other shows fit and that's where this game fits."
I could get onboard with him being in charge if it was stated that he was put in charge of the operation, but it wasn't.. this is the chief problem witht he ranking system.. they make us admirals (cause its a cool word..) but they want to treat us like captains.. but even then, shon should at least respect a fellow officer. even in the dominion series he is a complete a** hat.. but I guess to each his own..
as for sisko, it was stated that he was put in command of the task forces, mainly because he had the most knowledge and experience with the dominion.. but he always had to go back to admirals for the final approval.. (ie, there were several scenes of him getting permission to embark on a mission, or to move the fleet into action.. )..
and I agree with you whole heartedly about shon. I have never liked that he is the captain of the enterprise.. the flag ship needs a seasoned, well respected, and well rounded captain.. the flag ship (as seen in the series, and movies) usually does a lot of diplomatic missions, and first contacts.. are you telling me that cpt. shon with his pissy attitude, and stand off behavior was the best choice.. no.. its a shame ...
but oh well, this is sto, were the rules are made up, and the points don't matter, I play this game mostly for the foundry at this point, and I pretty much ignore what is going on in the story line, (cause from a star trek standpoint, it is so far off the mark... )..
and as far as the chain of command, I am a navy vet. I was an officer, and thus was very much incorporated into the coc.. it is very very rare, (at least in my travels) that someone of a lower rank, was put in charge of anything while someone of a higher rank was present.. and if it did happen (if a specialist was brought on board) said lower ranking officer still had to respect, and obey the coc, ie, an ensign would never talk down to or "boss" a lt. around.. just like a lt, would never do the same to a commander or a captain.. and in all my years of being on the Anzio, I never saw our captains ever speak badly to an admiral. I know that being a lt. when I left the navy, that it was always poinded into my head that I demand the respect of enlisted and lower ranks, and always respect my superior officers, which sucked cause im so passive that I didn't care about it as much as others.. lol...
I do agree that the Captain should be the end rank, but however, if you are complaining about pointing and clicking while as an Admiral doing stuff, I would hate to see a mission where we actually play our rank as intended and let the subordinates do it (point and click orders extravaganza)