test content
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Options

Butterfly - Remarkably awful *spoiler warning*

The sheer level of incompetence in the writing for this episode was... most impressive.
I can forgive the predictability of it, of course, and I can forgive introducing a character just to immediately kill them off... but the sheer level of plot hole the story left behind is gigantic.

I would submit that if you write a story about butterfly effects you should actually understand butterfly effects.
I can buy the Iconian delay somehow suping up the Borg, fine. But how in the holy mother of frak did erasing a transwarp conduit restore everything the way it was?
Did they not double check their own writing? Is the Yamato still out there now?

Now yes, this might all be answered cleverly in the next episode. But I somehow doubt it.
The only thing that saves this poor showing is that for one brief moment I was in a timeline where the JJverse didn't exist. And that was glorious.
«13456

Comments

  • Options
    gradiigradii Member Posts: 2,824 Arc User
    Hope you like the borgverse.

    "He shall be my finest warrior, this generic man who was forced upon me.
    Like a badass I shall make him look, and in the furnace of war I shall forge him.
    he shall be of iron will and steely sinew.
    In great armour I shall clad him and with the mightiest weapons he shall be armed.
    He will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight him.
    He shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best him in battle.
    He is my answer to cryptic logic, he is the Defender of my Romulan Crew.
    He is Tovan Khev... and he shall know no fear."
  • Options
    sixofussixofus Member Posts: 7 Arc User
    I personally very much enjoyed the episode. I found that the lack of unnecessary combat and the solid amount of dialogue felt like a great departure from the usual episodes we are provided. Kudos to cryptic on a job well done.
  • Options
    chiyoumikuchiyoumiku Member Posts: 1,028 Arc User
    Sometimes predictability is good. The Original Series was fraut with Predictability yet it managed to secure an entire franchise that's beloved by all. Was this episode stellar? No, but it was good regardless. However, someone over at Cryptic needs to clean the *SPOILER ALERT* guts off my ship.
    Sekhmet_Banner.jpg
    Defending The Galaxy By Breaking One Starfleet Regulation After The Next.
  • Options
    lizweilizwei Member Posts: 936 Arc User
    sixofus wrote: »
    I personally very much enjoyed the episode. I found that the lack of unnecessary combat and the solid amount of dialogue felt like a great departure from the usual episodes we are provided. Kudos to cryptic on a job well done.

    You're speaking of mission structure, I'm talking anout the writing. They're two different thinga.
    And honestly the episode was passable, mostly. But that ending was utterly silly.
  • Options
    chestertrekchestertrek Member Posts: 59 Arc User
    I think the destruction of the time ship caused the timeline reset rather than the destruction of the gateway. (Like in the Year of Hell episode - the dubious ending.)

    Hold on... was the timeship destroyed?

    Yeah, that episode was rather a mess.
  • Options
    walligigwalligig Member Posts: 308 Arc User
    edited August 2015
    At least this mission with be easy to grind for the weekly rewards. The mission was pretty much what I expected to be. You trying out simulations in the holodeck. I didn't think we were actually going to use the weapon in this episode though. I literally laughed out loud when we discovered that Romulus was assimilated by the borg. lol fail Nog. Anyways I agree that deleting a borg transwarp conduit restoring the time line didn't really make sense. Especially sense the Krenim whatever his name specifically said that it was something in the Delta quadrant that gave the borg an edge in technology that aloud them to get that far in Romulan territory. Did they story all that technology in that one borg conduit? Anyways I guess I'll just go with it for now.

    By the way did Jarok's voice seem different to anyone else? To me she sounded a lot like Seska for some reason.
    sstosig2.png
  • Options
    blassreiterusblassreiterus Member Posts: 1,294 Arc User
    sixofus wrote: »
    I personally very much enjoyed the episode. I found that the lack of unnecessary combat and the solid amount of dialogue felt like a great departure from the usual episodes we are provided. Kudos to cryptic on a job well done.
    I agree. it wasn't as horrible as the OP claimed it to be.
    I think the destruction of the time ship caused the timeline reset rather than the destruction of the gateway. (Like in the Year of Hell episode - the dubious ending.)

    Hold on... was the timeship destroyed?

    Yeah, that episode was rather a mess.
    No, The time ship wasn't destroyed.

    Star Trek Online LTS player.
  • Options
    drakethewhitedrakethewhite Member Posts: 1,240 Arc User
    edited August 2015
    I considered this to be greatly improved over the last two FE offerings.

    Yes, I don't understand or believe that removing a single Borg Transwarp Conduit (or even all of them) completely reset the timeline back to normal as it implied. Makes no sense. Nor does trusting those holodeck simulations which are full of unknown unknowns. One would have to be able to model the entire universe to even have a shot at a reasonable sim- and as far as we know that is still outside the knowledge (i.e. they don't know everything in order to plug the data in) as well as technical abilities of any except perhaps beings like the Q.

    But the main thing is, it didn't make me angry like the last two FEs did.

    Yes that's a low bar, but it was nice not to see this move it even lower. I can have alts replay this one which is good because the rewards look to be excellent.
    Post edited by drakethewhite on
  • Options
    oridjerraaoridjerraa Member Posts: 313 Arc User
    I thought the episode was terrific. It's rare in MMO's to feel like you can change the world, or in this case the universe!
    Well Done Crptic.
  • Options
    lucho80lucho80 Member Posts: 6,600 Bug Hunter
    Well, no transwarp conduit means it was never built which means the Borg never invaded Romulus. Now, how does erasing it destroy Romulus again is a whole other matter. Frankly, they looked for a gimmick so that you can mess with time and not do anything which in the end, keeps the map as-is. I wish they had come up with better scenarios. I particularly liked the first incursion simulation.
  • Options
    coupaholiccoupaholic Member Posts: 2,188 Arc User
    Should've just shot the research facility, get the alliance back their refund.
  • Options
    drakethewhitedrakethewhite Member Posts: 1,240 Arc User
    coupaholic wrote: »
    Should've just shot the research facility, get the alliance back their refund.

    It is giving me sweet consoles and DOFF missions... and that's all that left in this game. So let's not.

  • Options
    woodwhitywoodwhity Member Posts: 2,636 Arc User
    edited August 2015
    It was very predictable, and the changes in the timeline shouldnt have had any influence on the crews of the ships even after the failing of the temporal shields (which interestingly seemed to like an extend shield from 30km in the borgverse... since we were unaffacted while the krenim ship was away... but in Voy you dont need a temp-core to create temp-shielding, hence the flagship and our ship shouldnt have been affected even after the krenim ships shield failed... which shouldnt have affected anyone in the first place (since time was already altered, it shouldnt matter wether you have a shielding or not. It should only matter if the changes are made after the shield fails)).

    Its just so badly written, one has to wonder who writes those stories. They are almost as badly written as the code of the game. Almost...
  • Options
    kitsunesnoutkitsunesnout Member Posts: 1,210 Arc User
    edited August 2015
    It's certainly no logic to be able to retrieve info from an erased time while it's impossible to retrieve someone if I understand all this correct, information retrieval from a temporally shielded computer is no different than bringing someone out of a temporal shield. WE are also information as far as the universe is concerned.

    Edit: I suppose I forgot a little something about how the Krenim tech works, I think I see now, but I'll go with Janeways opinion on all things temporal.... It's a headache....
  • Options
    coupaholiccoupaholic Member Posts: 2,188 Arc User
    coupaholic wrote: »
    Should've just shot the research facility, get the alliance back their refund.
    It is giving me sweet consoles and DOFF missions... and that's all that left in this game. So let's not.

    I think we've found a use for that convenient temporal shielding fellas! :smiley:
  • Options
    lizweilizwei Member Posts: 936 Arc User
    sophlogimo wrote: »
    Thinking about it, it may have been the destruction of the timeship itself that did all that repairing. At least that would make sense... but then, why even mention the transwarp gateway?

    The problem with that idea is that the timeship wasn't destroyed and Romulus was back to being rubble even before the temporal shielding failed.

    Also what janky shielding is this anyway? Annorax's shields lasted for 200 years and only failed due to internal sabotage.
    Did they outsource to the lowest bidder or what?
  • Options
    thay8472thay8472 Member Posts: 6,101 Arc User
    Maybe my brain is going dead on this one...

    We shot the weapon at Romulus ... correct? I'm going to assume I missed a line somewhere...

    Why did Romulus come back? We just erased it from time.
    2gdi5w4mrudm.png
    Typhoon Class please!
  • Options
    kitsunesnoutkitsunesnout Member Posts: 1,210 Arc User
    thay8472 wrote: »
    Maybe my brain is going dead on this one...

    We shot the weapon at Romulus ... correct? I'm going to assume I missed a line somewhere...

    Why did Romulus come back? We just erased it from time.

    It was never aimed at Romulus, first time an asteroid, second time at a borg gate.
  • Options
    svindal777svindal777 Member Posts: 856 Arc User
    We should have pointed the weapon at Kagran's mother. That would have saved 1000's of lives.
    Well excuse me for having enormous flaws that I don't work on.
  • Options
    mrspidey2mrspidey2 Member Posts: 959 Arc User
    lizwei wrote: »
    I would submit that if you write a story about butterfly effects you should actually understand butterfly effects.
    I can buy the Iconian delay somehow suping up the Borg, fine. But how in the holy mother of frak did erasing a transwarp conduit restore everything the way it was?
    Read the dialogue more carefully. It didn't. We just don't know extent of the changes yet.
    2bnb7apx.jpg
  • Options
    thay8472thay8472 Member Posts: 6,101 Arc User
    Can we just go with the "Trek" and call the Undine to come and save us?
    2gdi5w4mrudm.png
    Typhoon Class please!
  • Options
    lizweilizwei Member Posts: 936 Arc User
    mrspidey2 wrote: »
    lizwei wrote: »
    I would submit that if you write a story about butterfly effects you should actually understand butterfly effects.
    I can buy the Iconian delay somehow suping up the Borg, fine. But how in the holy mother of frak did erasing a transwarp conduit restore everything the way it was?
    Read the dialogue more carefully. It didn't. We just don't know extent of the changes yet.

    Irrelevant, Romulus is drstroyed, which means the Iconians are back, which means somehow the Iconians returned by changing something that had absolutely nothing to do with them.
  • Options
    mrspidey2mrspidey2 Member Posts: 959 Arc User
    It probably had as much to do with them as a butterfly in Australia has with a hurricane in Florida.

    Which is the whole point of the Butterfly Effect. Causal connections that are so complex that you can't see them anymore.
    2bnb7apx.jpg
  • Options
    lizweilizwei Member Posts: 936 Arc User
    mrspidey2 wrote: »
    It probably had as much to do with them as a butterfly in Australia has with a hurricane in Florida.

    Which is the whole point of the Butterfly Effect. Causal connections that are so complex that you can't see them anymore.

    Which nonetheless has a connection.
    Go ahead and tell me what possible connection limiting the Borg's mobility would have with when the Iconians decided to invade the galaxy.
  • Options
    mrspidey2mrspidey2 Member Posts: 959 Arc User
    No Tranwarp network --> Borg use Iconian gateways instead--> Feds catch on and start drawing the Iconians attention.

    There. It's not rocket science.
    2bnb7apx.jpg
  • Options
    lizweilizwei Member Posts: 936 Arc User
    mrspidey2 wrote: »
    No Tranwarp network --> Borg use Iconian gateways instead--> Feds catch on and start drawing the Iconians attention.

    There. It's not rocket science.

    Except for the whole thing about the Iconian space gateway network being down until recently.
  • Options
    mrspidey2mrspidey2 Member Posts: 959 Arc User
    edited August 2015
    That never stopped specific gateways from working. Remember how they were being used decades before we activated everything?
    2bnb7apx.jpg
  • Options
    coupaholiccoupaholic Member Posts: 2,188 Arc User
    I assumed shooting the transwarp gate was just a kneejerk reaction to beat the Borg back, and nothing to do with Iconians. Like a messy Ctrl Z.
Sign In or Register to comment.