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Okay, the plot is a mess.
kestrellius
Member Posts: 462 Arc User
So, I'm playing through the various story arcs again on my new Federation toon. However...it seems that in updating the various missions and shuffling things around, the developers kind of broke the narrative.
Now, I will be the first to admit I haven't been paying particularly close attention, so it's possible I've just been missing some things. But still, I've noticed some discrepancies.
First thing was Franklin Drake's introduction, or lack thereof. You just finish the previous mission, and then suddenly he shows up and gives you the next one, without any explanation of who he is or works for. More recently, I just finished Taris, and at the start of that mission, somebody offhand mentions Taris's "Iconian masters". Now, as I recall, the Iconians were only properly established as being active and behind everything at the end of the Undine arc originally. I don't think the Iconians have even been mentioned before this.
Anyway. I guess this is the problem with a setting as temporally vague as an MMO's -- it's never clear what exactly constitutes the "present", and when events are taking place, because you have so many player characters everywhere doing things in different orders. But anyway, anyone know what the deal is? Have I just skipped over a bunch of vital dialogue, or did the updates accidentally break the plot?
Now, I will be the first to admit I haven't been paying particularly close attention, so it's possible I've just been missing some things. But still, I've noticed some discrepancies.
First thing was Franklin Drake's introduction, or lack thereof. You just finish the previous mission, and then suddenly he shows up and gives you the next one, without any explanation of who he is or works for. More recently, I just finished Taris, and at the start of that mission, somebody offhand mentions Taris's "Iconian masters". Now, as I recall, the Iconians were only properly established as being active and behind everything at the end of the Undine arc originally. I don't think the Iconians have even been mentioned before this.
Anyway. I guess this is the problem with a setting as temporally vague as an MMO's -- it's never clear what exactly constitutes the "present", and when events are taking place, because you have so many player characters everywhere doing things in different orders. But anyway, anyone know what the deal is? Have I just skipped over a bunch of vital dialogue, or did the updates accidentally break the plot?
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BTW, you might also want to check your expectations. It seems you're looking for something like, say, an FPS campaign (which follows a very narrow, tightly focused, plot thread from A to B ) rather than an RPG (which indulges in the places in between.) And, hey, not everyone has to appreciate the latter style but complaining about it (when the first seems eminently more suitable to your tastes) as if there's an objectively appreciable problem with, say, using offhand references to build a story over time (and not presenting players with an info dump every time something noteworthy happens) is a little suspect.
That said, the STO plot isn't a shining example of interactive story telling but it works competently. I really do recommend paying closer attention in your next run through (or just with the later missions, because missing offhand references won't kill your experience later in the game.)
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
It gets worse later on with the Iconian gateway on New Romulus. We're told it exists, but now how or when it was found. Only players who have completed the Romulan Reputation beforehand know, and I think it's safe to say the vast majority of new players will not have done that.
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them."
-Thomas Marrone
Considering STO had a reasonably narrow and tightly focused plot for 4+ years that doesn't seem like a fair thing to say. Its only the past year with the Iconian's that the plot got messed up and stopped making sense. Before that it was pretty good.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
As for the rest, the "problem" is the game and the writers expect the players to play all 3 campaigns, including the Delta recruitment (at least until all 3 factions have the same missions) and figure out the chronology, even when it's just implied.
For the "Iconian masters", I believe Jarok thinks Taris is nuts. Which is why she says "her Iconian masters" like one would say "her alien overlord" if Taris was a Scientologist in the real world.
I won't say you're wrong, but I doubt it's that safe to say. I played more slowly than others maybe, but a mission every other day plus doffing meant I was at level 50 and "rep ready" way before I was through the storyline. I don't think I had even completed the Cardassian arc but didn't take any notes. Since Rom rep comes quickly for an exploring player (Tour of NR already awards a bunch, the three missions (plus two unlockable ones) give some more, throw in some red alerts/Tau Dewa patrol and I was close enough to completing it that I started tagging Nanovs regularily). I am fairly certain that players playing multiple missions per session at the beginning will be less advanced at RomRep when they reach the sphere, but slower ones may easily finish the latter first.
I guess it's all the time travel going on these days.
I'll absolutely disagree with that. It is unfair in the extreme to suggest that STO had a narrow and tightly focused plot for 4+ years. For god's sake just look back at the Cardassian mission series that just got revamped! How much irrelevant fluff was part of the old chain, and consider that the early Romulan series was no better off. And of all that how much actually contributed to an Iconian background theme?
Plot? That's completely out of the question. What we had was a few gateways and consoles (as part of the Romulan liberation FE series and the last old Undine mission), Sela's abduction, the FED mission with Taris, and a couple of insubstantial comms with the Obex Iconian concept cruiser. Nothing else (bar one or two potential oversights) could be considered as directly connected to an Iconian story. Then we started getting something with Season 7 (ie. the New Romulus gateway complex cutscene) but in what way [compared to the rest of the content for that season and onward] was even that directed approach tightly focused? It wasn't (see. Voth), the Iconian's involvement was just with more background detail (quite literally in that case too).
Background detail all there was to the Iconians until very recently when Cryptic took a stab at developing an Iconian War arc to fill in the hopeful gap previously occupied by the players' generous creative interpretation of the "4+ year plot arc" (which, from my chair, didn't really exist in the zeitgeist until people started complaining about combat difficulty in the first proper Iconian war mission [and needed a good, off-hand way to express their soul-crushing disappointment at not having chosen the right menu option. "Five years of waiting and this is all I get?!" is a very useful opening remark after all. :P])
What we have now is more focused. It's not much more focused but it is more focused than much of what we had in the 4+ years of STO's life. Not only is there less fluff in the new early mission series but the new mission with Taris gets more to the point, makes better Iconian references [if I recall correctly], and there's also a few more references in the Romulan faction's exclusive series. And even if you chose to include Delta Recruitment objectives [which were ostensibly intended to highlight foreshadowing for the Iconian War] these are still very much background details, not plot elements. But otherwise it's the same or better as we've had for the past 4+ years. The Iconians, until later Delta Rising missions, are a background theme while the plot (in true RPG fashion) gets on with other things in the STO universe (because what's Role Playing in a Role Playing Game without a flushed out place to play in?) Then when things need to be elaborated on (see. Uneasy Allies) we definitely get the exposition. The plot works, the right characterizations are made when necessary, and we aren't burdened early on with a lot of [then] meaningless detail as to, say, the Iconian grand plan when what we should be worried about are the pointy-eared TRIBBLE with a super-weapon fixation.
Bleh...after all that here's the point: it's fine. Again, it's not stupendous but STO most certainly works as a story (and works better now than it used to in my opinion).
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
Would be a pretty boring story if everything were to be fully explained to the audience at first mention. It would make no sense for someone to tell the player how or when it was found, when it was in fact the player who found it.
It is, obviously, possible even likely that players will run the missions in the wrong order. But short of preventing players from continuing the plot until they're done with the Romulan rep there is no solution. You just have to think of the rep mission as a flashback episode.
The Iconians were mentioned in the Romulan arc ground episode where you escape from prison with the Reman guy. That episode has been around a long time. I think it's at the part where you go through Hakeev's computer.
I believe Hakeev refers to them as his "Dread Masters" or something.
@duncanidaho11 That’s not how I remember it. Back when we had the muti hour long STF’s with space and ground parts the Undine and Borg storyline and plot was great. None of it contributed to the Iconian background but the plot made sense and followed on from one mission to the next.
“Bleh...after all that here's the point: it's fine. Again, it's not stupendous but STO most certainly works as a story (and works better now than it used to in my opinion).”
That I do not agree with. The plot is a right mess now with the Iconian stuff but at one point the plot was good. Now big sections are removed like the Terradome, STF got dumbed down and shorten from 2+hours to 5min’s. The old story made far more sense and hold everything together better then now.
But that's after Taris. Look, I'm not confused. I already know how this all fits together. I'm talking about the narrative that emerges from playing through the missions, in order, as they exist right now.
Oh, and I meant that in this playthrough, the Iconians haven't been mentioned prior to Taris. They were of course mentioned prior to the reveal in the Undine arc in the original storyline.
Concerning Franklin Drake: I don't expect them to explain that he's part of Section 31 right away. Really, considering the nature of the organization, that would probably be bad storytelling. What I would kind of expect is for them to explain why my character is willing to take orders from this guy I've never heard of before. Like, Admiral Quinn or someone saying "yeah there's this Drake guy who works for [whatever cover organization]; you're going to be getting a couple missions from him". And then at some point it's revealed who he really is. It's just all very disjointed, and, you know, whatever. But I felt like pointing it out.
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