Too short, poor writing. Had to struggle to stay awake. No replay value here at all. I'm hoping that this is underwhelming because most effort is being put into 'Victory is Life.'
With auto fire all we need now is auto pilot and the game won't even require players.
Reran it on my F2P and I thought I spotted the issue with the snoozefesty space combat.
Some of the ships you face (freighters) are level -60 for whatever reason.
Thought this was maybe why it was so bland but then spotted that the defense fleet ship levels were all on par with neths.
Pardon the pun, running the episode twice did things to my brain. Anyway obviously that was not the reason, so seems it was just really bland, dull, boring test of the autofire. Not tedious though, it didnt last long enough for that to be applicable.
As a test I tried to ignore the freighters and despite them being alive and well they filled the airwaves with their pleas and bribes for mercy. Those should be triggered by the kill not some random trigger that ignores whats actually happening.
Also spotted that we fired very normal looking torpedo's at the moon and planet rather than the glowy balls of death we've been chasing down for the past few months.
Won't play it more than once because it's one of those "mess up the trays I took time to set up" missions. If you were to ask me if I'd like to go dancing, but while dancing I would have my legs broken, and when it was over the contents of my pockets would be rearranged (with only a few things missing,) I would say "no thank you."
I love Star Trek i always have for a real long time. Saddened that Cryptic went the genicide route with this mission.
It really didn't highlight any other part of the Tzenkethi's action or character. This simply reinforced what we already knew about the species, while undermining Neth Parr's later rebellion with a series of passive reactions to villainous orders (making these flash backs more about her cartoonish commanding officer.) She never takes initiative, even in a small way (ex. rescuing any of the 4 billion lost on the last map) which could have made for a much more compelling and climactic set of objectives to end the mission with (and justify why we're going back to genocide after triumphantly stopping it over the course of the last season.)
It seems like Cryptic banked on the technical novelty of a playable Tzenkethi carrying the mission through, without fully developing the story or characters beyond Draconis. Interesting premise, but it needs more (to be more than just a downer at the end of the series, reminding us of who our villains were before we're shuffled on to ViL.)
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
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!
I love Star Trek i always have for a real long time. Saddened that Cryptic went the genicide route with this mission.
It really didn't highlight any other part of the Tzenkethi's action or character. This simply reinforced what we already knew about the species, while undermining Neth Parr's later rebellion with a series of passive reactions to villainous orders (making these flash backs more about her cartoonish commanding officer.) She never takes initiative, even in a small way (ex. rescuing any of the 4 billion lost on the last map) which could have made for a much more compelling and climactic set of objectives to end the mission with (and justify why we're going back to genocide after triumphantly stopping it over the course of the last season.)
It seems like Cryptic banked on the technical novelty of a playable Tzenkethi carrying the mission through, without fully developing the story or characters beyond Draconis. Interesting premise, but it needs more (to be more than just a downer at the end of the series, reminding us of who our villains were before we're shuffled on to ViL.)
Alright i will give you that. Only think i guess that disturbed me was seeing it........(WIll i get over it yes. Just caught me off guard.....)
If they'd actually used a glowly ball style protomatter torpedo in the episode, the type we've been seeing ever since these guys turned up, it would have been an opportunity to show some guts and make a stand.
Moon gets nuked and admiral gives the order while we're still a ways away then parr could have tried to make a stand flying in to try and stop it but ultimately fail.
Had she succeeded then she'd have been shot as a traitor and world would have burned anyway. The failure saved her life but burden of shame from both admiral leapy pants racial honour code on the one hand and the loss of the 4 billion on the other.
This arc really needed some sort of EPIC moment as those have been kind of lacking. DS9 losing a leg was close but happens during a fight so it's actually fairly easy to miss for anyone that hates having cutscenes appear in the middle of combat.
And I've seen better ground weapons used against me when fighting them then what we was given on the ground part.
Felt like I was equipped with a pea shooter. Just pop-popping and lacking the strength of their real weapons.
Ability 1 is a pea shooter, 2 is a pea devastator, 3 puts melee enemies in their place, and 4 is the doom turtle bringing the pain. I favored 2 and 4 and had fun with the section.
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
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!
I get that FPS perspective of rampant slaughter of civilians, planetary genocide, and mowing down low-tech fighters with spears was meant to be provocative. But that didn't make it less unpleasant. This wasn't a poorly constructed mission, just a poorly conceived one. I've certainly played evil characters in RPGs before, but this seemed different: less an exploration of darkness than a rail shooter through pointless slaughter with no means of getting out other than dropping it and giving up on the storyline and rewards.
This was very possibly the least enjoyable mission in the game to date so far as I'm concerned.
On top of that, you get no chance to say something appropriate to the monster when the mission ends, and Quinn's debrief suggests the defector is being considered for amnesty when you ought to be contemplating a war crimes tribunal and her in the dock.
Background was ok, but overall i found the story lacking. Combine this with OP space combat in which one shot kills all and annoying ground combat (even for a FPS player) and i cannot say this mission is gaining high marks.
Unless the trait rewards are really worth it then i will only play this mission to grab the spec point each week.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
Officer Ro got told something by another officer called Chief Ro! Guess thats the bajoran equivalent of Smith then
Look at it this way, Ro Laren looked around her late 20-early 30's when she left for the Maquis, a few years had past and she probably either ended up in a federation stockade or repatriated to Bajor somewhere in her mid 30's when DS9 had ended so she would be around 70 years old by 2410, if she was still active and on the job.
In any event it is the only thing i found interesting in this episode as the rest has been covered by others and that it was already known before hand with the other episodes.
i wasn't so much concerned with the simulated genocide of a race because it is typical of Cryptic to make a captain a mass murderer anyway. They kind of bitten themselves here with the inflexible approach to designing a mission.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
I didn't make any real connection between Ro Laren and the NPC's other than the name.
What got me was that from a whole planet worth of surnames, they picked Ro twice.
The devil is in the details when it comes to storytelling and STO writers don't seem to have grasped that.
This is an episode where we are re-enacting a tale being told to us by parr. I'm fairly sure in a real situation they wouldn't be saying well we massacred a load of ships then demonstrated our lack of physical prowess while we slaughtered primitives then nuked a moon and for the lulz the planet it was orbitting.
As I said LOTRO has had session play for years where you experience a story from someone elses viewpoint. Cryptic could have learned a lot from that but they didnt seem to bother to try and find any inspiration from anywhere to make it something special.
Funnily enough LOTRO also had levelling weapons for years and blizz ignored pretty much all overlap when they brought out the expansion with the pretty awful setup for the levelling weapons they introduced. Odd as blizz do love to copy ideas and expand on them.
Very frustrating to have to spend so long setting up space and ground trays again. I don’t want to play this mission anymore. Missions should not leave a player feeling so frustrated afterwards. Elite was also broken.
Sto really needs to work on its playtesting. Far to many basic problems slip though that should have been picked up with the most basic of in house testing.
The mission itself was an interesting take on storytelling. I didn't like that I couldn't put rearrange the tray icons to better suit my normal setup, and the space combat was strangely easy, while the ground combat (the last part) nearly killed me through numbers and lack of being able to setup an autofire.
"..and like children playing after sunset, we were surrounded by darkness." -Ruri Hoshino
Not a bad mission and I even found myself a bit disturbed with some parts of the mission, especially the first one where you slaughter helpless civilian ships and having them so weak compared to the ship made it worse, which was the intention of the mission, so a good point. Also, Neth's VA did a good job at portraying how more and more distressed and horrified she's getting.
That said, the on-foot mission was OK, but compared to the space parts, Parr felt seriously underpowered facing a primitive species with only spears as weapons.
In my opinion, instead of more resilient enemies, they should have been weak like the previous civilians ships and have some agony dialogue as well to unnerve the player more. Maybe, since Neth is isolated in this part, have her progressively grow even more distressed, like begging the natives to just stop as they absolutely have no chance against her.
Also, the mission was too short and had an abrupt ending to the flashbacks. It'd have been nice to see more of her inner struggles, as opposed to just 3 parts.
Quite simply the worst episode by a long way. The annoying auto-fire and locked tray icons were bad enough, but the story was weak and linear. Being forced to commit acts of genocide was thoroughly unpleasant and distasteful. I will not be playing it again.
Wasn't a bad episode but I noticed as I was flying the ship an AI was doing the shooting for me. I just had to steer the thing towards enemies and it was almost as if the ship was scripted to shoot like crazy and blow up stuff. That part was boring.
Also it messed up my UI trays after the mission. You folks need to do more testing before releasing stuff that rewrites users UI bars.
Quite simply the worst episode by a long way. The annoying auto-fire and locked tray icons were bad enough, but the story was weak and linear. Being forced to commit acts of genocide was thoroughly unpleasant and distasteful. I will not be playing it again.
You have to remember you were living that officers recollection of their experiences. That means you can't change what happened as far as the genocide goes. Though I do agree with you about the auto-fire thingy.
Personally I didn't really like playing as a bad guy.
But, as a feature, it was interesting.
I liked the fact that our weapons had four different firing modes - it would be great if we could have something similar to that for our characters in the future.
It was good to see the same story through someone else's eyes for a change.
Though I do wonder where this story will bring us now, given that we'll also likely be playing as Jem'Hadar in the next season - hopefully the story, as perceived by the Alliance, will also progress.
I also hope that we will see the completion of this story; if the Tzenkethi are still destroying planets, then I hope we get a chance to stop them, especially after playing this episode and experiencing the madness first hand.
One last practical thing: I'm glad that this was very different from the mission where we get to fly a Dyson destroyer with a sub-optimal build. This was much, much better and more enjoyable.
I think rather than random NPC chatter coming in at points that don't match to how you're playing, freighters beg for mercy based off a timer and the assumption you will fly near enough for autofire to murder their faces, it'd have been better to have had triggered by events so kill freighters triggers reaction A and defense ships for reaction B and so on.
And also if those were narrated by parr to flesh out what was happening it would have given a better feel of being in their shoes thus avoiding the vibe people are getting of simply being the player massacring aliens because the plot tramlines us down that path. Too much seperation happens.
The episode doesn't really do much to reinforce the fact that we are reliving a fixed set of actions other than the interim bits in the teeny tiny brig section.
If they're going to overuse a voice actress they may as well go the whole way.
Security office map was badly scaled with how claustrophobic the whole area looked compared to odo's office in the show and of course the size of the tzenkethi they somehow managed to shoehorn through the door and passage into the cell that barely fit her.
Neth parr displays the same fixation with my characters body odour as martok when I find myself turning around to stare straight at where there might be a nipple had the world not gone totally mad with political correctness and denial over body parts.
It's not your body odor, it seems she is interested in that button thingy you just pressed. Get out of the way and she will be a normal distance away.
As for the latter part, the nipplephobia in US media seems strange to me, too, but here I would put it down to biology, since nipples are a mammalian feature, which the Tzenkethi are not, so they shouldn't have any. (Don't mention female Saurians now please)
With auto fire all we need now is auto pilot and the game won't even require players.
(Taken as an example for many mentions of this) I may be missing something here, but autofire has always been a thing and can be turned on and off. Or can't it be turned off here as you cannot change anything else? Haven't tried honestly.
As a test I tried to ignore the freighters and despite them being alive and well they filled the airwaves with their pleas and bribes for mercy. Those should be triggered by the kill not some random trigger that ignores whats actually happening.
A common problem, often the other way round: somebody already killed tants you. But yes, that can be grating.
I wouldn't even call them Seasons at this point....so pass the message on during the next meeting of the minds so to speak....start listening more to the player base, lest you lose 'em so much that you can't recover no matter what...and yes even Capt. Kirk himself doing voice overs, etc. in game won't save this eventually.
If you have to charge for true season expansions to get real content beyond a featured episode being sprinkled here or there then do so and get some more butts in the seats developing story arc, etc. instead of the half measures we've seen over the last few "Seasons"....and I use the term "Seasons" while holding back some puke.
I am not entirely certain about the player base being unhappy in general. Yes, the numbers seem to be going down slowly (as far as you can tell from steam numbers which offer a wild guess at best here) but that is to be expected for a game of this age. As far as other indicators go, STO is quite far away from being on the brink of unrecoverable collapse (e. g. overhauling older episodes, bring in expensive VO actors - these things normally don't happen for a failing game).
As for "charge for content": That's how STO started out and apparently it didn't really work, single players feeling otherwise notwithstanding I would say the F2P model is what kept the ship afloat in the first place.
I didn't make any real connection between Ro Laren and the NPC's other than the name.
What got me was that from a whole planet worth of surnames, they picked Ro twice.
The devil is in the details when it comes to storytelling and STO writers don't seem to have grasped that.
Unless that was intentional, which it very well could be, and gets expanded upon. Just like TNG had Crusher twice (Riker as well) and DS9 had Sisko four times I think. But I'd agree that it was probably an oversight.
I don’t understand all the sensitive complaining on the genocide aspect of the story. It’s a flippin story in a universe that’s pretty violent!
Even more so than the original universe, agreed. But still it is not exactly enjoyable to some to do some stuff in a game, even if it is only fictional and "not us doing it". I was merely voicing, and so I understand the others, that we didn't enjoy it for this reason. I did not blame it on some fault Cryptic made but on it absolutely missing my taste of gaming. Thinking of it though, it arguably isn't worse than "Second Star to the Right, ..." for me, so it being the worst episode was wrong. (Also there was, but is thankfully gone, "Divide et Impera")
Haven't checked my tray so far, I just hope it either didn't get affected or got crushed completely. If it is only one or two clickies missing, I will only find out when I miss them. (Well, that or the whole in the row). But yeah, setting up everything again would be a no-fun experience.
My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
Comments
With auto fire all we need now is auto pilot and the game won't even require players.
Some of the ships you face (freighters) are level -60 for whatever reason.
Thought this was maybe why it was so bland but then spotted that the defense fleet ship levels were all on par with neths.
Pardon the pun, running the episode twice did things to my brain. Anyway obviously that was not the reason, so seems it was just really bland, dull, boring test of the autofire. Not tedious though, it didnt last long enough for that to be applicable.
As a test I tried to ignore the freighters and despite them being alive and well they filled the airwaves with their pleas and bribes for mercy. Those should be triggered by the kill not some random trigger that ignores whats actually happening.
Also spotted that we fired very normal looking torpedo's at the moon and planet rather than the glowy balls of death we've been chasing down for the past few months.
Won't play it more than once because it's one of those "mess up the trays I took time to set up" missions. If you were to ask me if I'd like to go dancing, but while dancing I would have my legs broken, and when it was over the contents of my pockets would be rearranged (with only a few things missing,) I would say "no thank you."
It really didn't highlight any other part of the Tzenkethi's action or character. This simply reinforced what we already knew about the species, while undermining Neth Parr's later rebellion with a series of passive reactions to villainous orders (making these flash backs more about her cartoonish commanding officer.) She never takes initiative, even in a small way (ex. rescuing any of the 4 billion lost on the last map) which could have made for a much more compelling and climactic set of objectives to end the mission with (and justify why we're going back to genocide after triumphantly stopping it over the course of the last season.)
It seems like Cryptic banked on the technical novelty of a playable Tzenkethi carrying the mission through, without fully developing the story or characters beyond Draconis. Interesting premise, but it needs more (to be more than just a downer at the end of the series, reminding us of who our villains were before we're shuffled on to ViL.)
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!
If they'd actually used a glowly ball style protomatter torpedo in the episode, the type we've been seeing ever since these guys turned up, it would have been an opportunity to show some guts and make a stand.
Moon gets nuked and admiral gives the order while we're still a ways away then parr could have tried to make a stand flying in to try and stop it but ultimately fail.
Had she succeeded then she'd have been shot as a traitor and world would have burned anyway. The failure saved her life but burden of shame from both admiral leapy pants racial honour code on the one hand and the loss of the 4 billion on the other.
This arc really needed some sort of EPIC moment as those have been kind of lacking. DS9 losing a leg was close but happens during a fight so it's actually fairly easy to miss for anyone that hates having cutscenes appear in the middle of combat.
Ability 1 is a pea shooter, 2 is a pea devastator, 3 puts melee enemies in their place, and 4 is the doom turtle bringing the pain. I favored 2 and 4 and had fun with the section.
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!
This was very possibly the least enjoyable mission in the game to date so far as I'm concerned.
On top of that, you get no chance to say something appropriate to the monster when the mission ends, and Quinn's debrief suggests the defector is being considered for amnesty when you ought to be contemplating a war crimes tribunal and her in the dock.
Did not like, do not want more.
Unless the trait rewards are really worth it then i will only play this mission to grab the spec point each week.
Look at it this way, Ro Laren looked around her late 20-early 30's when she left for the Maquis, a few years had past and she probably either ended up in a federation stockade or repatriated to Bajor somewhere in her mid 30's when DS9 had ended so she would be around 70 years old by 2410, if she was still active and on the job.
In any event it is the only thing i found interesting in this episode as the rest has been covered by others and that it was already known before hand with the other episodes.
i wasn't so much concerned with the simulated genocide of a race because it is typical of Cryptic to make a captain a mass murderer anyway. They kind of bitten themselves here with the inflexible approach to designing a mission.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
What got me was that from a whole planet worth of surnames, they picked Ro twice.
The devil is in the details when it comes to storytelling and STO writers don't seem to have grasped that.
This is an episode where we are re-enacting a tale being told to us by parr. I'm fairly sure in a real situation they wouldn't be saying well we massacred a load of ships then demonstrated our lack of physical prowess while we slaughtered primitives then nuked a moon and for the lulz the planet it was orbitting.
As I said LOTRO has had session play for years where you experience a story from someone elses viewpoint. Cryptic could have learned a lot from that but they didnt seem to bother to try and find any inspiration from anywhere to make it something special.
Funnily enough LOTRO also had levelling weapons for years and blizz ignored pretty much all overlap when they brought out the expansion with the pretty awful setup for the levelling weapons they introduced. Odd as blizz do love to copy ideas and expand on them.
Sto really needs to work on its playtesting. Far to many basic problems slip though that should have been picked up with the most basic of in house testing.
That said, the on-foot mission was OK, but compared to the space parts, Parr felt seriously underpowered facing a primitive species with only spears as weapons.
In my opinion, instead of more resilient enemies, they should have been weak like the previous civilians ships and have some agony dialogue as well to unnerve the player more. Maybe, since Neth is isolated in this part, have her progressively grow even more distressed, like begging the natives to just stop as they absolutely have no chance against her.
Also, the mission was too short and had an abrupt ending to the flashbacks. It'd have been nice to see more of her inner struggles, as opposed to just 3 parts.
Also it messed up my UI trays after the mission. You folks need to do more testing before releasing stuff that rewrites users UI bars.
You have to remember you were living that officers recollection of their experiences. That means you can't change what happened as far as the genocide goes. Though I do agree with you about the auto-fire thingy.
But, as a feature, it was interesting.
I liked the fact that our weapons had four different firing modes - it would be great if we could have something similar to that for our characters in the future.
It was good to see the same story through someone else's eyes for a change.
Though I do wonder where this story will bring us now, given that we'll also likely be playing as Jem'Hadar in the next season - hopefully the story, as perceived by the Alliance, will also progress.
I also hope that we will see the completion of this story; if the Tzenkethi are still destroying planets, then I hope we get a chance to stop them, especially after playing this episode and experiencing the madness first hand.
One last practical thing: I'm glad that this was very different from the mission where we get to fly a Dyson destroyer with a sub-optimal build. This was much, much better and more enjoyable.
And also if those were narrated by parr to flesh out what was happening it would have given a better feel of being in their shoes thus avoiding the vibe people are getting of simply being the player massacring aliens because the plot tramlines us down that path. Too much seperation happens.
The episode doesn't really do much to reinforce the fact that we are reliving a fixed set of actions other than the interim bits in the teeny tiny brig section.
If they're going to overuse a voice actress they may as well go the whole way.
True
It's not your body odor, it seems she is interested in that button thingy you just pressed. Get out of the way and she will be a normal distance away.
As for the latter part, the nipplephobia in US media seems strange to me, too, but here I would put it down to biology, since nipples are a mammalian feature, which the Tzenkethi are not, so they shouldn't have any. (Don't mention female Saurians now please)
Indeed
(Taken as an example for many mentions of this) I may be missing something here, but autofire has always been a thing and can be turned on and off. Or can't it be turned off here as you cannot change anything else? Haven't tried honestly.
A common problem, often the other way round: somebody already killed tants you. But yes, that can be grating.
I am not entirely certain about the player base being unhappy in general. Yes, the numbers seem to be going down slowly (as far as you can tell from steam numbers which offer a wild guess at best here) but that is to be expected for a game of this age. As far as other indicators go, STO is quite far away from being on the brink of unrecoverable collapse (e. g. overhauling older episodes, bring in expensive VO actors - these things normally don't happen for a failing game).
As for "charge for content": That's how STO started out and apparently it didn't really work, single players feeling otherwise notwithstanding I would say the F2P model is what kept the ship afloat in the first place.
Unless that was intentional, which it very well could be, and gets expanded upon. Just like TNG had Crusher twice (Riker as well) and DS9 had Sisko four times I think. But I'd agree that it was probably an oversight.
Even more so than the original universe, agreed. But still it is not exactly enjoyable to some to do some stuff in a game, even if it is only fictional and "not us doing it". I was merely voicing, and so I understand the others, that we didn't enjoy it for this reason. I did not blame it on some fault Cryptic made but on it absolutely missing my taste of gaming. Thinking of it though, it arguably isn't worse than "Second Star to the Right, ..." for me, so it being the worst episode was wrong. (Also there was, but is thankfully gone, "Divide et Impera")
Haven't checked my tray so far, I just hope it either didn't get affected or got crushed completely. If it is only one or two clickies missing, I will only find out when I miss them. (Well, that or the whole in the row). But yeah, setting up everything again would be a no-fun experience.