Star Trek Online Volunteer Community Moderator and Resident She-Wolf
Community Moderators are Unpaid Volunteers and NOT Employees of Gearbox/Cryptic
Views and Opinions May Not Reflect the Views and Opinions of Gearbox/Cryptic
Adding the few extra lines to a text box giving a nod to what the player is doing what they have with them who they are can make a little bit of content go a long way. Making one new mission for the alliance is one new mission. Make a mission that responds to the differences in a player adds several new missions as in what happens if i make a new player only this time its a Klingon or next a joined trill or a Vulcan. And each new one will need there lobi ships there lock box rewards and ect.
Otherwise after you have had one play thru. The mission may as well say "hi im generic npc 1. Please rescue generic npc 2 from Random bad guy." Press f to continue.
Why should the NPCs waste time giving "nods" to the player's race when there are lives at stake? Who does that? It's like in hospital shows there's always an episode where some moron refuses treatment because the doctor is black or a woman or whatever. The audience is expected to think "what an idiot."
While there will no doubt still be racists in the future, that kind of behavior shouldn't suddenly become standard just because the races are fictional.
Racist? How in the world did you come up with it being racist to acknowledge a culture and its differences in star trek to be racist. I mean is that all you managed to get out of my post?
You didn't answer the question. Why should "generic NPC 1" acknowledge the player's race (or indeed any other personal attribute) before asking them to rescue "generic NPC 2?"
You know what go back and read the post. or better yet here...
Otherwise after you have had one play thru. The mission may as well say "hi im generic npc 1. Please rescue generic npc 2 from Random bad guy." Press f to continue.
Notice i said "after one play thru". As to why should the game respond to what i am playing. I don't know how about it adds diversity and replay value.
Not every mission needs it not every mission choice needs 20 different outcomes to have replay value. But i can see how some parts can have value in altered text based on your players attributes.
For instance on vulcan when you need to get clearance for lack of a better word for it to take the vulcan to the monastery. A vulcan could indicate that they question the logic of preventing the visit. Any one from the klingon empire could indicate annoyance at having the delay to deal with. When the imposter is exposed any telepathic race could indicate that they had a feeling of unrest from the imposter.
On the mission you are fixing sela's ship when you locate the saboteur a romulan could indicate displeasure in adopting these tactics. Klingons could chose to leave him in sela's hands.
On any mission. A tac officer could indicate they have a bad feeling and are on alert. a sci could indicate a discrepancy in reading or the bio filter having a issue. An engineer could indicate a alteration to a item not the norm.
You may find and of these possible examples a useless addition and a wast of time so be it. I am not interested in arguing any of this with you. To me it would seam a compromise that would end all this crying for faction content as it would provide it why letting them make a faction agnostic story for the over all picture. Is that not what this thread is about ending the argument about faction agnostic content?
None of these examples i have given are out of the realm of possibility for the mechanics of the game It can already as we have been shown support player career specific interactions. When being notified of in mission instructions the game draws from our own selected officers to deliver the message. During mission briefing the game draws upon the name ship and rank already in a attempt to personalize the interaction.
All i have suggested is a possible expansion on the preexisting framework to promote replay and diversity that may maintain players need for lockbox and cstore purchases why at the same time provide for players needs of faction, career, and race specific content.
And yes this is long winded and i feel like i'm writing a book to augment what i thought was a self evident ideal.
In the mission frozen, they had a unique option for reman characters. They could add certain objectives like that for Joined Trill, Cardassians in one or two missions. I can see why they do not but maybe going back and adding in those options. Could make the pay to unlock races more unique. It would make sense for Joined Trill to know something about something that they have encountered before with a previous host. Maybe a more klingony dialog and objectives for missions involving the Klingon with Federation Klingon.
For instance on vulcan when you need to get clearance for lack of a better word for it to take the vulcan to the monastery. A vulcan could indicate that they question the logic of preventing the visit. Any one from the klingon empire could indicate annoyance at having the delay to deal with. When the imposter is exposed any telepathic race could indicate that they had a feeling of unrest from the imposter.
On the mission you are fixing sela's ship when you locate the saboteur a romulan could indicate displeasure in adopting these tactics. Klingons could chose to leave him in sela's hands.
On any mission. A tac officer could indicate they have a bad feeling and are on alert. a sci could indicate a discrepancy in reading or the bio filter having a issue. An engineer could indicate a alteration to a item not the norm.
ANYONE could have all of those responses, it doesn't need to be tied to race or class or whatever.
But unless saying those things actually meant something, it would still be just buttons that do nothing but continue the NPC monologue same as ever. And it is indeed a waste of dev time to go through missions adding buttons that do nothing.
You may find and of these possible examples a useless addition and a wast of time so be it. I am not interested in arguing any of this with you. To me it would seam a compromise that would end all this crying for faction content as it would provide it why letting them make a faction agnostic story for the over all picture. Is that not what this thread is about ending the argument about faction agnostic content?
Nothing will end the arguments over faction content, certainly not any kind of compromise. Cryptic declaring they didn't intend to make anymore faction content after the war was over should've ended it, but here we are years later still going at it. The complainers claim everything is "too Fed" just because it's not neck deep in their preferred stereotype of klingon. Not much to do about that. Even if Cryptic added real exclusive content (which they won't), the complainers would still say it's "Fed sidekick" or whatever.
For instance on vulcan when you need to get clearance for lack of a better word for it to take the vulcan to the monastery. A vulcan could indicate that they question the logic of preventing the visit. Any one from the klingon empire could indicate annoyance at having the delay to deal with. When the imposter is exposed any telepathic race could indicate that they had a feeling of unrest from the imposter.
On the mission you are fixing sela's ship when you locate the saboteur a romulan could indicate displeasure in adopting these tactics. Klingons could chose to leave him in sela's hands.
On any mission. A tac officer could indicate they have a bad feeling and are on alert. a sci could indicate a discrepancy in reading or the bio filter having a issue. An engineer could indicate a alteration to a item not the norm.
ANYONE could have all of those responses, it doesn't need to be tied to race or class or whatever.
But unless saying those things actually meant something, it would still be just buttons that do nothing but continue the NPC monologue same as ever. And it is indeed a waste of dev time to go through missions adding buttons that do nothing.
You may find and of these possible examples a useless addition and a wast of time so be it. I am not interested in arguing any of this with you. To me it would seam a compromise that would end all this crying for faction content as it would provide it why letting them make a faction agnostic story for the over all picture. Is that not what this thread is about ending the argument about faction agnostic content?
Nothing will end the arguments over faction content, certainly not any kind of compromise. Cryptic declaring they didn't intend to make anymore faction content after the war was over should've ended it, but here we are years later still going at it. The complainers claim everything is "too Fed" just because it's not neck deep in their preferred stereotype of klingon. Not much to do about that. Even if Cryptic added real exclusive content (which they won't), the complainers would still say it's "Fed sidekick" or whatever.
I only pointed out a possible compromise with in the confines of the system. I only play fed in any case so this is simply me arriving at the proverbial table with an attempt to help.
So get over it already and stop trying to put words in my text i did not even indicate. I was clear in saying a change of text only. Not branching dialog. Not yet more buttons to press. Not even a change in the outcome of the overall story. I used the word nod to the player in my other post.
Definition of nod part 1
lower and raise one's head slightly and briefly, especially in greeting, assent, or understanding, or to give someone a signal
nod
noun
Definition of nod (Entry 2 of 2)
1 : the act or an instance of nodding
//gave a nod of greeting
2 : an indication especially of approval or recognition
Why do i need to provide definitions for some people to get what i clearly said in English? I give up to many cherry picking context to provide a rebuttal to people in the forums that for some reason can't appear to understand the entire post.
F-O-U-N-D-R-Y. Foundry is your friend if you are looking for "Faction" related missions. Matter of fact, they just did a entire series of them for Jem'Hadars and Cardassians.
"Spend your life doing strange things with weird people." -- UNK
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
Besides, there should be a theoretically endless supply of Tox Uthats available, as the TLF could send agents to Kal Dano's lab right after he constructed it, or anywhere else that Kal Dano was in time/space where it would be in his possession, and take it. Heck, the TLF could have taken it from the Tholians before we stole it back or even before the Tholians could ever use it (and how was it that we couldn't transport ourselves into Kal Dano's vessel but the Tholians could?).
That isn't how time travel works in the slightest. Taking it from Kal Dano's lab right after he got it would create a paradox, which everyone knows is bad.
1) "This isn't how time travel works at all" is ludicrous at it's face.
Time travel doesn't work. It's entirely made up.
CBS might say that there are rules, but I contend that those are arbitrarily enforced.
If it's kept on the fringes then it can get a pass if the story is okay. If it becomes a focus, though, then I am going to look at it more critically, and the more Trek has leaned on time travel the less sense it makes, especially if there are some people in the far future working to "preserve the timeline".
Never mind that if the timeline is so delicate that any change can alter the future that it creates an impossible workload on any force, no matter the size, as long as others can travel time to try and make changes to suit their own ends, but they have obviously ignored some changes.
Protecting the timeline doesn't just mean "Stop the Na'kuhl from doing a thing", it means "Stop Kirk from bringing whales to the future", too.
This means that they (Walker and co.) are fine with changing the timeline so long as it works to their favor. It doesn't make the TLF any better, but it does make Walker and co. a bunch of self-serving hypocrites that are fine with changes that benefit them but not those that change the fate of others.
I realize that Cryptic gets their orders from CBS on this stuff, but I think that the quality of stories would be improved if they avoided time travel or, at minimum, avoided the focus on the temporal police and just let our Captains muddle through as best they can.
2) The TLF didn't care one bit about paradoxes. They wanted to change reality through time travel. They wanted to go into the past and make changes that would have not only resulted in their sun not being extinguished, but also to ultimately erase the Federation and Tholians (and presumably every other faction, but I have only played the mission with a Federation character) from existence.
And Picard didn't destroy the Tox Uthat? Okay, if you say so. But I am pretty sure that the game says that he destroyed it.
Maybe it's just that he destroyed it in an alternate reality that, up until that point, was identical to the "real" Trek timeline.
For me? Yes. For some other people? Clearly not... LOL
Had factions existed as origin stories from the very beginning, there would be no argument at all. But that was not the purpose for factions in the beginning. They existed originally as two separate experiences in the game, though the KDF side was PvE content-lite. PWE directed Cryptic to eliminate that disparity. I remember when we were told that they were given the green light to make KDF fully levelable from min to max AND introduce a Romulan faction that could also be leveled from Min to Max, because to PWE "it only made sense." Too bad that it didn't make sense to them to open the purse strings so Cryptic could hire more staff to make them truly independent of each other.
BUT... the answer was already spelled out in Star Trek canon. The birth of a great alliance of sovereign civilizations.
After the Hobus disaster, Romulan isolationism was no longer the answer for the surviving Romulan people.
After the Praxis disaster, Klingon conquest-centric mindsets were no longer the answer.
After the Dominion War, the Cardassian superiority complex was no longer the answer.
And for the Dominion, the fact that when the war was ended, the federation made no attempt to subjugate or persecute Dominion interest was proof that the Founders need not have even started the war to begin with. The Federation was a union of souls that would have accepted Shape Shifters rather than fearing them.
And so now we have the Alliance. And like I said before, its ideals and precepts being Federation-oriented make sense, because they have been proven to WORK. And when we play STO, we are no longer acting as representatives of the Federation, of the Klingon Empire, of the Romulan Republic, or of the Dominion, though we started out as such. We are acting as representatives of the Galactic Alliance.
What I would like to see, when STO eventually shuts down (nothing lasts forever), is the formalization of the Alliance as a real and true galactic civilization. Much like Enterprise ended with the signing of the Federation charter. And it would be cool if the last thing we see is the unveiling of the monument to the Federation that Daniels spoke of...
That's all well and good for thematically homogenizing PvE… But something still needs to be done about PvP. Cryptic may not LIKE it, but it IS a part of this game. A core part, at that. And it cannot be simply removed like exploration was, without Hellfire and Brimstone from the community. The challenge is to reconcile it with the Alliance narrative. But that would be a discussion for another thread.
As far as I am concerned, this one has run its course, and everyone seems to be talking in circles at this stage. Feel free to close it.
Everyone has been talking in circles about this for years. I always promise myself not to respond to it, since it never goes anywhere, but somehow it's a topic that's hard to stay away from. I would expect it's the same for others, which is why it always rears its head again.
But ultimately there is no solution because the argument is just some people not liking Cryptic's storyline and artistic vision. That's just inevitable. Everyone can't like everything.
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You know what go back and read the post. or better yet here...
Otherwise after you have had one play thru. The mission may as well say "hi im generic npc 1. Please rescue generic npc 2 from Random bad guy." Press f to continue.
Notice i said "after one play thru". As to why should the game respond to what i am playing. I don't know how about it adds diversity and replay value.
Not every mission needs it not every mission choice needs 20 different outcomes to have replay value. But i can see how some parts can have value in altered text based on your players attributes.
For instance on vulcan when you need to get clearance for lack of a better word for it to take the vulcan to the monastery. A vulcan could indicate that they question the logic of preventing the visit. Any one from the klingon empire could indicate annoyance at having the delay to deal with. When the imposter is exposed any telepathic race could indicate that they had a feeling of unrest from the imposter.
On the mission you are fixing sela's ship when you locate the saboteur a romulan could indicate displeasure in adopting these tactics. Klingons could chose to leave him in sela's hands.
On any mission. A tac officer could indicate they have a bad feeling and are on alert. a sci could indicate a discrepancy in reading or the bio filter having a issue. An engineer could indicate a alteration to a item not the norm.
You may find and of these possible examples a useless addition and a wast of time so be it. I am not interested in arguing any of this with you. To me it would seam a compromise that would end all this crying for faction content as it would provide it why letting them make a faction agnostic story for the over all picture. Is that not what this thread is about ending the argument about faction agnostic content?
None of these examples i have given are out of the realm of possibility for the mechanics of the game It can already as we have been shown support player career specific interactions. When being notified of in mission instructions the game draws from our own selected officers to deliver the message. During mission briefing the game draws upon the name ship and rank already in a attempt to personalize the interaction.
All i have suggested is a possible expansion on the preexisting framework to promote replay and diversity that may maintain players need for lockbox and cstore purchases why at the same time provide for players needs of faction, career, and race specific content.
And yes this is long winded and i feel like i'm writing a book to augment what i thought was a self evident ideal.
But unless saying those things actually meant something, it would still be just buttons that do nothing but continue the NPC monologue same as ever. And it is indeed a waste of dev time to go through missions adding buttons that do nothing.
Nothing will end the arguments over faction content, certainly not any kind of compromise. Cryptic declaring they didn't intend to make anymore faction content after the war was over should've ended it, but here we are years later still going at it. The complainers claim everything is "too Fed" just because it's not neck deep in their preferred stereotype of klingon. Not much to do about that. Even if Cryptic added real exclusive content (which they won't), the complainers would still say it's "Fed sidekick" or whatever.
I only pointed out a possible compromise with in the confines of the system. I only play fed in any case so this is simply me arriving at the proverbial table with an attempt to help.
So get over it already and stop trying to put words in my text i did not even indicate. I was clear in saying a change of text only. Not branching dialog. Not yet more buttons to press. Not even a change in the outcome of the overall story. I used the word nod to the player in my other post.
Definition of nod part 1
lower and raise one's head slightly and briefly, especially in greeting, assent, or understanding, or to give someone a signal
nod
noun
Definition of nod (Entry 2 of 2)
1 : the act or an instance of nodding
//gave a nod of greeting
2 : an indication especially of approval or recognition
Why do i need to provide definitions for some people to get what i clearly said in English? I give up to many cherry picking context to provide a rebuttal to people in the forums that for some reason can't appear to understand the entire post.
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
1) "This isn't how time travel works at all" is ludicrous at it's face.
Time travel doesn't work. It's entirely made up.
CBS might say that there are rules, but I contend that those are arbitrarily enforced.
If it's kept on the fringes then it can get a pass if the story is okay. If it becomes a focus, though, then I am going to look at it more critically, and the more Trek has leaned on time travel the less sense it makes, especially if there are some people in the far future working to "preserve the timeline".
Never mind that if the timeline is so delicate that any change can alter the future that it creates an impossible workload on any force, no matter the size, as long as others can travel time to try and make changes to suit their own ends, but they have obviously ignored some changes.
Protecting the timeline doesn't just mean "Stop the Na'kuhl from doing a thing", it means "Stop Kirk from bringing whales to the future", too.
This means that they (Walker and co.) are fine with changing the timeline so long as it works to their favor. It doesn't make the TLF any better, but it does make Walker and co. a bunch of self-serving hypocrites that are fine with changes that benefit them but not those that change the fate of others.
I realize that Cryptic gets their orders from CBS on this stuff, but I think that the quality of stories would be improved if they avoided time travel or, at minimum, avoided the focus on the temporal police and just let our Captains muddle through as best they can.
2) The TLF didn't care one bit about paradoxes. They wanted to change reality through time travel. They wanted to go into the past and make changes that would have not only resulted in their sun not being extinguished, but also to ultimately erase the Federation and Tholians (and presumably every other faction, but I have only played the mission with a Federation character) from existence.
And Picard didn't destroy the Tox Uthat? Okay, if you say so. But I am pretty sure that the game says that he destroyed it.
Maybe it's just that he destroyed it in an alternate reality that, up until that point, was identical to the "real" Trek timeline.
But ultimately there is no solution because the argument is just some people not liking Cryptic's storyline and artistic vision. That's just inevitable. Everyone can't like everything.