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[PODCAST] [INTERVIEW] Tribbles in Ecstasy Take 228: Content Tardiness

midniteshadow7midniteshadow7 Member Posts: 787 Arc User
edited August 2016 in Starfleet Media Corps
Tribbles in Ecstasy Take 228: Content Tardiness has warped on to Holosuite Media, you can download and stream it from:
Tribbles228.png


We have a fantastic chat with Kate Bankson and Jaddua Ross, Content Designers from Star Trek Online.
Following the interview we talk about this week’s news from Star Trek Online (3:13:00), Star Trek Timelines (3:56:00), Star Trek Discovery (4:00:35) and more!!

Our community questions this week are:
1. Have you attended STLV50 – if so, what did you do?
2. What did you think of Star Trek Beyond?
3. Any furter thoughts on Agents of Yesterday?


Please reply to this post with any feedback you have about any topic we've covered or even about the show in general, we'd love to hear what our listeners have to say. And feedback to us now and be entered in to a prize draw to get yourself a Star Trek Online Legacy of Romulus Starter Pack, Zen and Lockbox keys. Rules are here: http://holosuitemedia.com/tiefeedbackgiveaways2016/ - Just reply to this post to enter.


Please help friend of the show and fellow Star Trek Online player and podcaster Mav with donations to support his recovery with his current health situation here: http://www.gofundme.com/tomsrecovery.

LLAP

Comments

  • alex1geralex1ger Member Posts: 141 Arc User
    Let's get the easy stuff out of the way...



    Community questions:



    1.) I do/did not attend STLV.



    2.) I still haven't watched it.



    3.) You really should not have asked... So on top of the stuff I said last week, a few more thoughts:

    The TOS "faction" is not a faction. It's like the Bloodelves, Draenei, Worgen and Goblins in World of Warcraft. New playable races/species with their own (more or less) exclusive starting areas. And like the Worgen and Goblins, you can't go back to the starting area. I'll talk about some of the details later.

    Btw. do you remember the launch of Delta Rising and how people yelled at Cryptic because the patrol mission wrappers were injected into the story arc and the leveling curve got so much steeper (without warning) that people started hitting leveling walls left and right, because they wanted to play like they did before, just doing story missions?
    You could argue that Cryptic "stretched out" the content like that because otherwise Delta Rising could have been seen as being... "light on content". Now if that were the case, what would that mean for Agents of Yesterday?



    Feedback:



    Okay, MidNite, it seems you misunderstood me, so to be perfectly clear... I come from a background of Blizzard games. I'm used to a certain amount of polish. And yes, Blizzard did put a lot of polish into their games even before World of Warcraft turned them into this kind of a juggernaut. So the excuse that Cryptic does not have that kind of money does not fly, because Blizzard did that kind of polish even before they got filthy rich. I mean, they scrapped the next-gen MMO they had been working on ("Titan") and supposedly turned the scraps into Overwatch, but way before that they also scrapped "Starcraft: Ghost" AND the warcraft adventure game "Lord of the clans", because according to them none of these games would have lived up to their standards.

    Yes, there is a difference between a "perfect" game (that does not exist) and a polished game. I mean, some games are unplayable at launch. STO was playable, but it was not polished. And when I look at some of the games that are available out there today, it still isn't.

    Let me remind you of something... The fire caves on Bajor. There was a mission during the old cardassian story arc taking place in those fire caves and if you wanted to play it with BOffs, it got painful, because the AI's path finding was, well, still is in need of improvement. On maps with a lot of doors, there is a rather high probability that at least one of your BOffs will get stuck and if you notice it in time, you can/have to go back and try to move them through the door using the move command...
    And don't get me started on BOffs happily standing in red areas of death when fighting the Heralds or the Na'kuhl or even the Breen AoEs that do not get telegraphed via red areas of death.
    Or the fact that I have to either re-target them or try to quickly take out the distortions myself when fighting the Na'kuhl. I mean, when something is "immune", choose another target. That is not... let me rephrase that... that SHOULD not be that hard to implement.
    Or how long it can take for my BOffs to pick me up after something killed me... I mean, how often do I have to call for help until one of my BOffs remembers that ignoring my orders like that could get them court-martialed?
    Maybe @sunseahl wants to chime in and talk about hangar pets? I don't play around with those nearly enough to talk about them, but their AI should have similar issues...

    Another example for lack of polish would be the already mentioned "Safty first!".
    Or how about you log in on a KDF char (or KDF-aligned Rom Rep char) and beam down to the first city. Go to the memorial plaque. Look at the monument behind the plaque. The klingon symbol is mirrored. (If you don't know what I mean, look at the symbol and then look up at the banners hanging from the front of the great hall. See the slight difference?) People have told Cryptic about that issue when it went live. Cryptic still couldn't be bothered to fix it.
    Just like they still haven't done anything to improve performance in a few of the Delta Rising patrol mission maps. (I can't name all of them, but I distinctly remember the Ocampan freighter map being one of the worst offenders. And there were threads naming all of them at launch of Delta Rising...)
    When this stuff launches on consoles, those things "should" be fixed. That's the kind of "polish" I'm talking about. Will it be fixed? We'll see, but I kinda doubt it.

    And to be clear, I don't think Cryptic is messing this up out of malice or incompetence, I honestly believe that they tried and just didn't have enough time. But then again, this is like THE common thread running through the game. They tried and ran out of time. How about you stop working on features... a week (or two) earlier than usual and use that one week (or two) exclusively for polishing/bugfixes? I'd really like to see the difference.

    Now don't get me wrong, this does not mean STO is the worst offender. There are far worse games out there, but the very mediocre reviews and scores STO got (and still gets) are not exactly helping to get more people into the game. I'm not saying more polish is gonna turn those into amazing reviews, but it might help to get a few more decent reviews. There are so many F2P MMOs out there, why (except for the Star Trek IP) should you play STO?
    So don't give me this "You're asking for the impossible.", because I am asking for something that is or rather should be very possible.



    And to end this week's feedback, let's compare the TOS "faction" to the romulans... TOS got 5 "exclusive" missions and then everything the real feds get. Except that they start the other story arcs as Lt. Cmdr. (level 10? 11?) whereas real feds start as Lt. (level 2-3).
    The romulans get 6 "intro" missions (From the ashes), 4 missions after choosing their ally (Allies), 5 missions dealing with the Tal Shiar (In Shadows) and 5 missions dealing with the Elachi (Vengeance) for a total of 20 "exclusive" missions.
    If I miscounted something, feel free to correct me. I left out the respective tutorials and all missions that according to my episode overview could not be replayed.

    The romulans also got their own ships with the exclusive singularity mechanic and battlecloak and could buy some of their respective ally's ships (T1 - T4), whereas TOS feds and feds have access to the same ships, the only exception being the starter ships... The Pioneer class for TOS feds and the Miranda class for real feds.
    On top of that, TOS feds get their own social zone but they lose access to it after Caleb IV, whereas romulans got their own private command center on New Romulus. And can anyone except for romulans enter the romulan flotilla?

    Dear TOS feds, we are the one and only real Starfleet. You will be assimilated. Your cultural and biological distinctiveness was nothing more than marketing speech. Complaints are futile.
  • bandit656bandit656 Member Posts: 17 Arc User
    edited August 2016
    1. Sadly not
    2. I liked it quite a bit and would like to see more Kelvin Content
    3. I would really like to see more TOS content before more Kelvin content. TOS is where all this started, shouldn't we get more time to spend in that time period and do what star trek is all about?
    Post edited by bandit656 on
  • chozoelder2ndchozoelder2nd Member Posts: 440 Arc User
    Since the questions are the same, I'll skip them including 3 as I have nothing further to say.


    Before I go off on the USS Discovery, remember that it's all subjective and this is just my personal opinion that anyone has the right to respectfully disagree with.

    I really really don't ever see the design for USS Discovery ever growing on me. Ralph McQuarrie was a phenomenal artist, but I've never liked his design for the Enterprise. My taste in a ship's design is primarily judged by its silhouette. Does its silhouette look good? Heck no! The proportions are a huge eyesore. It's just too... I don't want to come off as mean but its design is seriously too archaic in my eyes. Of course if the show did take place somewhere near TOS era then it would make sense for it to look dated. But even the art team at Cryptic did a fantastic job at making original TOS designs. The Pioneer, Perseus, Gemini, and Ranger all look great while keeping that old aesthetic. If the show doesn't take place near TOS, then that's just even worse. Either way, I am straight up never going to like this design.

    To the people that are rolling their eyes and are thinking "Just like how people hated the Galaxy when they first saw it." Yeah yeah I get it. I'm ok with change. I'm someone who likes both the Prometheus and the Defiant, two ships that radically depart from the traditional Starfleet design. For me, those were also initially liked and it didn't take any time for me to grow on them. I'm still not ok with whatever this abomination is.

    If you like the design for the Discovery then you are a bad person and you should feel bad for having the worst opinions.
    jk :P. I still hate the ship though lol


    As for Sun's comment about Beyond, I find it to be strange. If someone who isn't into a series/franchise, is engaged in the movie as much as you, and ends up enjoying the movie, then it's a good movie? Both my mother and my best friend had little next to no knowledge of Star Trek lore and they both loved the first two films. It was also how I got my friend to watch more Trek with me, which she also enjoyed. Yet a giant fat majority of people (or at least a very vocal minority) seem to not like 09 and think Into Darkness was either below mediocre or would have you believe that it's the spawn of Satan. *shrugs* It's different for everyone. Opinions I guess.

    And no, I'm not one of those people that enjoys the Michael Bay Transformers movies. Neither are my mother or best friend.
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  • daviesdaviesdaviesdavies Member Posts: 277 Arc User
    1. No

    2. Oh, the star trek movie with a villain, who turns out to be an angry black man and who also happen to be a veteran, with serious mental issues... Of all the possible endings: self sacrifice (spock,data), reconsilations (whaleprobe,Vger,Inusrrection), which happen often in trek... this one end up with airlocking a mentally ill black warhero.
    I guess a lot of things Do not Matter in the future.

    3. I like AOY, especialy the part when I gotta storm into the home of some primitive cavemen and wipe them out with my phaser. That was awsome. I guess space exploration pays out, finaly found some primitives to slaughter... "Get some Get some haha get some!" I have really enjoyed the newly added killing sprees in AOY.
    But what happened to Exploration and Diplomacy? I can use some rest between sessions of massmurdering aliens lifeforms.



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