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Review: Temporal Front [Spoilers]

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  • jim625jim625 Member Posts: 907 Arc User
    wish I could play as a gorn on the fed side after seeing that Gorn captain in the 29th century :smiley:
  • sheldonlcoopersheldonlcooper Member Posts: 4,042 Arc User
    The sphere builders will be the main enemy in this story with Noye assisting.

    I really liked the mission. I noted one huge spoiler. Walker says 'looks like we'll have to recruit more temporal agents.' Heck yeah!
    Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."

    "With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."

  • saber1973asaber1973a Member Posts: 1,224 Arc User
    edited April 2016
    My main issue - we got many non-skippable cutscenes, where my ship is sitting on it's a.... and doing absolutely nothing (like just after destroying that portal station), straight in (example) center of a darn plasma cloud!

    Now make the cutscenes skippable, or make us invulnerable while you freeze us - please....

    For now - only 2 runs through that episode (thanks to daily patch in middle of day in Europe) with Engineering toons on Normal difficulty -in fully kited T6 Exploration Cruisers - full of set gear and Blue/Purple Mk XII - and both times i exit that cutscene in exploding ship - it's annoying.
  • semalda226semalda226 Member Posts: 1,994 Arc User
    Actually that cutscene got me killed lol. I didn't think activating 5 skills (GW1/SV3/DRB3/TBR1/Temporal Rift Console) would kill the station as the 5th skill activated [like 5 seconds]
    tumblr_mxl2nyOKII1rizambo1_500.png

  • mustrumridcully0mustrumridcully0 Member Posts: 12,963 Arc User
    semalda226 wrote: »
    Actually that cutscene got me killed lol. I didn't think activating 5 skills (GW1/SV3/DRB3/TBR1/Temporal Rift Console) would kill the station as the 5th skill activated [like 5 seconds]

    Yeah, it exploded quicker than I thought, and after the cut scene I was exploded.
    Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
  • mustrumridcully0mustrumridcully0 Member Posts: 12,963 Arc User
    edited April 2016
    My main complaint was that the final battle seems more or less unwinnable. Kill one ship before it gets to the gate? Sure! Oh, wait, it used emergency engines and got there in 1.1 seconds? Too bad my science ship doesn't do 11 billion dps. Unlike the enemy fleet that spawned and oneshotted me over and over, until I destroyed the gate... when they oneshotted me during the cutscene.

    Otherwise, a decent outing. I still say they should not be trying to write time travel stories, there's just too many landmines in them for most writers. It takes a level of skill most writers, and STO writers, simply don't have.

    Your Science Vessel can however slot Gravity Well, Tractor Beam Repulsors or Tractor Beam and has Innate Subsystem Targeting. Stopping an enemy from reachinig a location without kiling him in 1.1 seconds is quite possible for a Science Ship.

    At least it is for mine.
    Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
  • nateham101#2745 nateham101 Member Posts: 420 Arc User
    apulse wrote: »
    One of the highlights for me to play Star Trek Online is everytime when a new mission comes up.
    We know by now that we will have VO, and the missions are about 30minutes if you don't rush it through.
    Perfect time to sit down at your computer with hot coffee and just enjoy a Star Trek experience.

    Anyway, enough of that.
    I liked the mission overall, it was funny to finally meet the President of the Federation, even though I expected someone with more.. personality.
    Meeting Vosk and fighting the Nak'hul was very refreshing from the Iconians who jus grinded my gears (urgh).

    The Good
    • The Voice over
    • The story
    • Space Combat
    • Ground combat
    • Graphical design
    • Nak'hul are awesome designed, a interesting villan.

    The Na'kuhl themselves have very neat appearances. Their ugly ships, not so much. The color choices are horrible. The design is horrible. Looks like they took some random scrap book projects and threw them together.
    1Wlp6QH.gif
  • mrspidey2mrspidey2 Member Posts: 959 Arc User
    J'mpok Is NOT dead. He's the mission accomplished contact, complete with Liam McIntyre VO. He is, in fact, so badass that he doesn't even bother to mention the attempt at his life.
    2bnb7apx.jpg
  • antonine3258antonine3258 Member Posts: 2,391 Arc User
    tenderbits wrote: »
    unotetsu wrote: »
    risian4 wrote: »
    I agree that some voice overs sounded a lot different than what they used to. Also, the Tellarite guard was anything but a Tellarite. Unless they've developed such that they no longer insult other people for no particular reason. Hearing all these positive words and basically being treated as a saint or something while expecting a real Tellarite was a bit strange though.

    I mostly say to myself that it's because she's in fangirl mode to care about proper Tellarite manners.

    I mean, her ancestor was the one who signed the signing of the Coalition of Planets and she gets to witness its successor. Squee!
    Then, she gets to meet the President, and all those distinctive figures and leaders of each main faction. Squee!
    Then, she gets to meet the Captain Kirk of the current time. Squee!
    Then, she gets to save the President! Sque*dead*
    She may have been the assassin's TRUE target. What better way to kill a supposed nobody who would later influence events than to mask their killing using an aborted assassination attempt of a powerful political figure like Okeg and J'mpok...

    ^ I was thinking this my self.


    I really like this - there was, after all, a history blip - Jm'pok's fine, and Walker showed up after Okeg was saved, so anything he does particularly in office should be all right. And the conference is continuing (As a Romulan captain, D'Tan indicated the Klingons calmed down - he did not indicate if he got them boozed up until they forgot the assassination attempt, or simply the Klingons realized that if they were fighting something, the best weapon was continuing history, but eh) so her death is the major change.
    Fate - protects fools, small children, and ships named Enterprise Will Riker

    Member Access Denied Armada!

    My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
  • apulseapulse Member Posts: 456 Arc User
    Though it would be a nice turnaround if J'mpok did infact die, jus think of the termoil in the Klingon Empire.
    21ajpqt.png
  • gradiigradii Member Posts: 2,824 Arc User
    thay8472 wrote: »
    The Nak'hul sent a lot of sips through that gateway before we destroyed it ... where were they in Enterprise? :open_mouth:

    Does this mean the Temporal Arc is over? :hushed:

    I wish.

    "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."
  • nightkennightken Member Posts: 2,824 Arc User
    apulse wrote: »
    Though it would be a nice turnaround if J'mpok did infact die, jus think of the termoil in the Klingon Empire.

    no, we'ld just put worf in charge.


    if I stop posting it doesn't make you right it. just means I don't have enough rum to continue interacting with you.
  • voiddweller#2714 voiddweller Member Posts: 114 Arc User
    It's fine except:
    1. Fighting in a confined space inside Destiny, isn't what everyone can enjoy.
    2. If you come to close when portal station is about to go boom you'll be paralyzed by cutscene and will die.
    3. Golden Shield id too determined to take YOU down, makes this battle much more difficult. Though you can lure it out, finish off it's support, and your immortal allies will help you.
  • equinox976equinox976 Member Posts: 2,265 Arc User
    edited April 2016
    What did I think of it?

    I thought it made absolutely no sense at all.

    The last episode 'cliff hanger' was a terrorist attack on a 'conference' the next episode introduction was terrorist attack on another conference...

    Then we interrogate the would be assassin who insists they are trained in resisting ALL types of torture and will not answer our questions... and then answers all of our questions, without anybody resorting to any kind of torture...

    Then we arrive at a random space station and are asked to identify ourselves, then when attempting to identify ourselves we are told "SILENCE!" in mid sentence...

    All in all? The entire episode feels like it was written by Ed Wood and his efforts with Plan 9 From Outer Space.
    And remember my friends... future events such as this... will affect you... in the future!

    Unfortunately... Cryptic s efforts where not 'so bad' that they 'were good'. In this case... they were just... bad.
    God help us... in the future.
  • gradiigradii Member Posts: 2,824 Arc User
    equinox976 wrote: »
    What did I think of it?

    I thought it made absolutely no sense at all.

    The last episode 'cliff hanger' was a terrorist attack on a 'conference' the next episode introduction was terrorist attack on another conference...

    Then we interrogate the would be assassin who insists they are trained in resisting ALL types of torture and will not answer our questions... and then answers all of our questions, without anybody resorting to any kind of torture...

    Then we arrive at a random space station and are asked to identify ourselves, then when attempting to identify ourselves we are told "SILENCE!" in mid sentence...

    All in all? The entire episode feels like it was written by Ed Wood and his efforts with Plan 9 From Outer Space.
    And remember my friends... future events such as this... will affect you... in the future!

    Unfortunately... Cryptic s efforts where not 'so bad' that they 'were good'. In this case... they were just... bad.
    God help us... in the future.

    LMAO at that fairly accurate description.

    "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."
  • stobg2015stobg2015 Member Posts: 800 Arc User
    The wonderful thing about time travel is that Archer may have neutralized Vosk, but it doesn't necessarily mean that Vosk won't still show up. ;) Depends on what his personal timeline looks like before that happens.

    And the wonderful thing about fiction is that Vosk's demise can always be retconned into something less permanent.

    Overall, I liked it. Now I have to play it through with my KDF and see if it plays any different.
    (The Guy Formerly And Still Known As Bluegeek)
  • semalda226semalda226 Member Posts: 1,994 Arc User
    See that's 1 thing that irks the TRIBBLE out of me. The 29th century uses warp drives!!! The Temporal Drive they use allows them to move to any Point AND Place in time. What's the point of Warp 10 when you can just time shift to a location instantly?
    tumblr_mxl2nyOKII1rizambo1_500.png

  • stobg2015stobg2015 Member Posts: 800 Arc User
    I love how Walker says "Time is of the essence, we need to leave soon..." to get to the 29th century. Four centuries from then. Man, they'd better hurry or they'll be late to 400 years later! *facepalm*

    Even Marty McFly figured out that if you have a time machine you have all the time you need for whatever.​​

    Not exactly. At best, you have the length of your natural lifespan, which time travel alone does not extend. A time traveller's subjective clock keeps right on ticking away like it always does. Or you could get killed, which means you're done changing anything.

    The other thing about time travel is that if you don't time it right, the bad guy gets his thing done before you stop him and then maybe you can't stop him because the timeline changed and took away your ability to do anything about it at all.

    But yeah, the writer couldn't resist throwing in a time travel meme, as if we didn't know the mission was about time travel, duh-uh.

    Christopher L. Bennett even wrote about the phenomena in "Watching the Clock". The characters found themselves using time-related aphorisms, memes, and puns constantly... they couldn't help themselves.
    (The Guy Formerly And Still Known As Bluegeek)
  • shadowfirefly00shadowfirefly00 Member Posts: 1,026 Arc User
    I mostly say to myself that it's because she's in fangirl mode to care about proper Tellarite manners.

    I mean, her ancestor was the one who signed the signing of the Coalition of Planets and she gets to witness its successor. Squee!
    Then, she gets to meet the President, and all those distinctive figures and leaders of each main faction. Squee!
    Then, she gets to meet the Captain Kirk of the current time. Squee!
    Then, she gets to save the President! Sque*dead*
    Thanks; I got a good chuckle out of this. Overall, the mission was fun to play, and you'll note that the Na'kuhl officers do in fact seem to use the very same set associated with the episode (Vosk himself seems to use a sniper rifle instead of the minigun, though). Also, this interesting bit of writing:
    Spc. Krog accuses you of interfering 'again'. Her doing so is justified... when you storm Vosk's ship and force him to flee, take a good look at who's telling him it's time to bug out.

    However, there is one very annoying thing which might be a bug...
    When you destroy the timegate, the action does not pause while the cutscene plays. With the expected annoying results.
  • jarfarujarfaru Member Posts: 572 Arc User
    sophlogimo wrote: »
    Hm. My main issue is: WHY WOULD THE 29th CENTURY EVEN ASK ME TO HELP OUT?

    My ship will be inferior (I mean, just look at the technological progress from the beginning of my career to now - Mk I to Mk XIV equipment... not to mention the ships), my information hopelessly outdated, and it risks a paradox for no reason whatsoever.

    Yeah i laughed at this through the whole episode. The 29th century feds. need my help in my outdated ship to deal with this. Why does anyone think this is good writing. It all just seems so lazy to me now. I think that's why i can't get hyped for this storyline. Its just so bad and without any Trek lore thought behind it.
  • feiqafeiqa Member Posts: 2,410 Arc User
    jarfaru wrote: »
    sophlogimo wrote: »
    Hm. My main issue is: WHY WOULD THE 29th CENTURY EVEN ASK ME TO HELP OUT?

    My ship will be inferior (I mean, just look at the technological progress from the beginning of my career to now - Mk I to Mk XIV equipment... not to mention the ships), my information hopelessly outdated, and it risks a paradox for no reason whatsoever.

    Yeah i laughed at this through the whole episode. The 29th century feds. need my help in my outdated ship to deal with this. Why does anyone think this is good writing. It all just seems so lazy to me now. I think that's why i can't get hyped for this storyline. Its just so bad and without any Trek lore thought behind it.

    No no. It is perfect writing. Look back at history. The further back we go the more heroes and notable personalities are there for us to remember. Now look today. Not so many song written about heroes coming home from the wars. Step forward in Trek verse now. Kirk, and crew. Not much on the next two Enterprises. Then Picard and crew. Sisko and a lesser extend Janeway. I say lesser extent because less of what she did was at home so less history locally. Step forward again you have our characters and crews. They are supposed to be singular so the bean counting bureaucrats of the 29th century need to come back and find someone that knows how to get dirty and get the job done. They don't have a true contemporary hero.

    Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
    Network engineers are not ship designers.
    Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
  • saurializardsaurializard Member Posts: 4,385 Arc User
    edited April 2016
    jarfaru wrote: »
    The 29th century feds. need my help in my outdated ship to deal with this. Why does anyone think this is good writing. It all just seems so lazy to me now.

    That's like every MMO (and even every game ever):
    No matter what, you're better than a whole army and the contacts send you alone (or you can choose to have a team, sometimes, but only if you want or if the mission truly requires a team) expecting you'll succeed even if it would be impossible.

    "CAPTAIN RAMIREZ, DO EVERYTHING!!"

    Also, hey, my ship takes offense to that "outdated" remark! She don't need no fancy 29th century tech to take names and kick temporal terrorist butts!
    #TASforSTO
    Iconian_Trio_sign.jpg?raw=1
  • stobg2015stobg2015 Member Posts: 800 Arc User
    jarfaru wrote: »
    sophlogimo wrote: »
    Hm. My main issue is: WHY WOULD THE 29th CENTURY EVEN ASK ME TO HELP OUT?

    My ship will be inferior (I mean, just look at the technological progress from the beginning of my career to now - Mk I to Mk XIV equipment... not to mention the ships), my information hopelessly outdated, and it risks a paradox for no reason whatsoever.

    Yeah i laughed at this through the whole episode. The 29th century feds. need my help in my outdated ship to deal with this. Why does anyone think this is good writing. It all just seems so lazy to me now. I think that's why i can't get hyped for this storyline. Its just so bad and without any Trek lore thought behind it.

    I wouldn't be so quick to appeal to Trek lore. By the same logic, Daniels didn't need Archer at all.

    It wasn't the fact that Archer's technology was good enough... it was the fact that Archer was an important figure in the historical timeline that was the reason Daniels wanted his help. The same reason why Picard had to be the guy who destroys the Tox Uthat.

    I choose to think that it's the same reason why my character is getting tapped by Walker. In STO terms, in my personal game timeline, I'm one of the most historically important people of my time. Anything I do is going to have far more historical impact than if Commander Joe Smith-Nobody does it, and over time I become even more likely to do things that are pivotal for the whole timeline.

    That makes me something of a temporal lightning rod. I'm a target. At the same time it's dangerous to mess around with me; it's even more likely that interfering with my history burns the future opposition's history and becomes self-defeating.

    In summary, I'm Walker's rabbit's foot and four-leaf clover.
    (The Guy Formerly And Still Known As Bluegeek)
  • stobg2015stobg2015 Member Posts: 800 Arc User
    Been thinking about this a bit more.

    Temporal entanglement.

    If the Na'Khul take me out now, they'd likely cause the Alliance to fail and there will never be a Captain Walker of the U.S.S. Pastak -- who comes back in time to correct the history where I ended up serving the Tholians, which would have insured that I never recovered the World Heart and stopped the Iconians from conquering the galaxy... including the Na'Khul. Then they'd never be around to kill me and -- temporal reset.

    That my history is tied up with Walker's is a bit of protection for both of us.

    See, you too can come up with pseudo-scientific justifications if only you try! ;)
    (The Guy Formerly And Still Known As Bluegeek)
  • antonine3258antonine3258 Member Posts: 2,391 Arc User
    I mostly say to myself that it's because she's in fangirl mode to care about proper Tellarite manners.

    I mean, her ancestor was the one who signed the signing of the Coalition of Planets and she gets to witness its successor. Squee!
    Then, she gets to meet the President, and all those distinctive figures and leaders of each main faction. Squee!
    Then, she gets to meet the Captain Kirk of the current time. Squee!
    Then, she gets to save the President! Sque*dead*
    Thanks; I got a good chuckle out of this. Overall, the mission was fun to play, and you'll note that the Na'kuhl officers do in fact seem to use the very same set associated with the episode (Vosk himself seems to use a sniper rifle instead of the minigun, though). Also, this interesting bit of writing:
    Spc. Krog accuses you of interfering 'again'. Her doing so is justified... when you storm Vosk's ship and force him to flee, take a good look at who's telling him it's time to bug out.

    This was a nice touch with the weird cause and effect going on.

    Fate - protects fools, small children, and ships named Enterprise Will Riker

    Member Access Denied Armada!

    My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
  • voyagerfan9751voyagerfan9751 Member Posts: 1,120 Arc User
    The sphere builders will be the main enemy in this story with Noye assisting.
    This.

    Even in ENT, the Na'Khul were never the big bads of the temporal cold war, the Sphere Builders were. Not to mention we have yet to see the Suliban, nor have we dealt with all the Na'Khul ships that already went back in time.

    The thing about the Suliban is, they aren't actually a faction in the cold war. They were proxies. Basically Weird shadow guy was using present day (22nd century) Suliban to conduct his part in the Temporal War (sorry I will never call it a "Cold War").

    I admit, seeing the Cabal might be interesting, but much of that was covered in Enterprise, Not sure how much of a story is left there. With regard to the Suliban anyways.
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