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Why do we have to side with the Turei?

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  • ltminnsltminns Member Posts: 12,569 Arc User
    Too risqué for a PG game. ;)
    'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
    Judge Dan Haywood
    'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
    l don't know.
    l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
    That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
    Lt. Philip J. Minns
  • warpangelwarpangel Member Posts: 9,427 Arc User
    starswordc wrote: »
    warpangel wrote: »
    patrickngo wrote: »
    There's a REASON this has to be a third-person rails-shooter, it's just that "Because it's a better story" isn't one of them.
    Yes, it is.

    Because having a single consistent story is infinitely better than an exponentially growing morass of player choices that ultimately can't have any effect on the plot anyway, simply because there are too many combinations to write.

    Fact is, basically no RPG has much real meaningful player choice, not even the ones that go to great lenghts to pretend to. Take Mass Effect for example. In the end of the first game you can actually decide the fate of the galactic government. And come the sequel what difference does that decision actually make? A different wording in the way they dismiss you as a fraud.

    Here's a counterexample. Back in high school I played a lot of this browser game called AdventureQuest (I think it's still around although I haven't played in over a decade). It was Flash-based and pretty low budget. And yet one time (that I'm aware of), they held this cool event in the game, a war between the local paladin order and a group of necromancers, where player characters were invited to fight mobs allied to either side. The side that won the most victories dictated the direction the devs would take the story going forward (it was the necromancers as it turned out).

    See that? That's a way to do player agency in an MMO. And on a budget and team size that makes Cryptic look big, at that.
    Except that's not player agency in an MMO, it's a metagame event. It's like when Cryptic got us to vote on the lukari ship designs. They could've put that vote in the game and gave people extra votes for playing some content, which would've been awesome, but still ultimately an out-of-character reward.
    And since you bring up Mass Effect: the first game is weaksauce when it comes to player agency, but the second game presents a great deal of it. Choices you make throughout the game can affect how many casualties you take to both crew and squad members in the suicide mission (up to and including a secret ending where Shepard dies, although you practically have to seek that ending out on purpose), as well as affecting what options are available in 3 (the "golden ending" of the quarian/geth storyline is only available if you made specific choices in 1 and 2 and then make a counterintuitive moral decision during the Battle of Rannoch).
    Except that's not story branching. Shepard dying is just a game over, party members dying doesn't affect anything else as long as there are at least 2 left when it's all said and done. Getting your crew liquefied by wasting time before the final mission affects nothing. There are only two real endings, one in which you destroy the Collector base, and one in which you give it to TIM, and it's all of one question after the final boss to decide that.

    Now, I never played 3, partly because of the well-publicized lack of a good ending and partly because of their decision to integrate the (paid) multiplayer into the singleplayer campaign. But from what I've read about it most if not all of your choices, even the big ones like that Collector base, get reduced to just statistics. A few less points you need to grind from that multiplayer to unlock the endings. There is no decision you could make anywhere during the story that wouldn't lead you through the same missions, the same bosses and ultimately the same choice of 3 endings.
    Now, maybe it's prohibitive to do a significantly branching story in STO, but at least presenting the illusion of choice and letting the player character have an opinion other than "the boss is always right, Federation über Alles" does help. The Temporal Accords mission is a great example: I was pleasantly surprised that they actually gave us the option to sympathize with the Na'Kuhls' position before all hell breaks loose.
    Sometimes they have that. Other times they write the player as noncommittal. It's a matter of opinion. Personally, I can just as well imagine my character saying something, which would probably be something different than what Cryptic would've written anyway.

    Like, I would've told the na'kuhl that I offered my help after the attack occurred, as did the Alliance, and their government refused it like petulant children, so there's your problem.
    Other examples:
    • In the Kobali situation, the Federation may have to follow the Prime Directive (although I find it very questionable to apply it there, given that A| all participants in that goat-rope are warp-capable and B| we were invited in by one of them), but neither of its allies do. Take the conversation with Captain Pompous Benzite out of the cutscene and allow A| Starfleet toons to point out that they significantly outrank Captain Pompous Benzite, and B| Romulan and Klingon toons to point out that they not only outrank them, they don't even answer to the same government as her.
    Sure, I'd like the option to tell off the benzite too, but to what end? We are going to continue the mission chain the same way anyway, so obviously someone in charge has told/will tell us to go along with it whether we want to or not.

    The real argument the player character should have over the issue is not with some random captain misquoting the Prime Directive, but with the Alliance leadership. Who actually made the decision. That's the part I would really like to see added to the arc, even if only as a cutscene in which the big bosses give us our marching orders.

    It would be inappropriate for the benzite to lecture the player character, who outranks her. But if we assume the player as a flag officer already knows the Alliance wouldn't authorize acting against the kobali over this, it's entirely appropriate we say nothing about her lecturing Kim. Whether we agree with our orders or not, debating them with a subordinate is not going to change them (not to mention, they may be classified). And of course, an KDF/RR officer wouldn't likely even care about two Starfleet captains arguing by themselves.

    And again, players are free to imagine whatever they want for their character to say in that spot. Either way, we're obviously not going to get a mission to liberate the hostages in the temple.
    [*] There needs to be an option to approve of Rai Sahen's gambit in the DQ patrol "Operation Cooperation Conspiracy. Justifications:
    • A Starfleet toon may be more of a Sisko than a Picard, willing to take pragmatic action and play head-games rather than deal completely above-board.
    • Klingons value victory in war, not merely battle. This is a pretty big deal in their storyline in DS9.
    • The Romulan Republic is far from a political monolith: they're a coalition of any number of dissidents against the ancien regime, not just Unificationists (for Pete's sake, the leading Republic Intelligence officer in the theater is openly ex-Tal Shiar, and the supreme commander of its military is a defector from the Imperial Fleet). You should have the option to play a Romulan of classical outlook (even potentially very classical: there's an argument to be made that the false flag gambit plays perfectly into mnhei'sahe).
    I've probably done that mission once in 2014 and don't remember at all what it's about so can't comment.
  • trennantrennan Member Posts: 2,839 Arc User
    warpangel wrote: »
    starswordc wrote: »
    warpangel wrote: »
    patrickngo wrote: »
    There's a REASON this has to be a third-person rails-shooter, it's just that "Because it's a better story" isn't one of them.
    Yes, it is.

    Because having a single consistent story is infinitely better than an exponentially growing morass of player choices that ultimately can't have any effect on the plot anyway, simply because there are too many combinations to write.

    Fact is, basically no RPG has much real meaningful player choice, not even the ones that go to great lenghts to pretend to. Take Mass Effect for example. In the end of the first game you can actually decide the fate of the galactic government. And come the sequel what difference does that decision actually make? A different wording in the way they dismiss you as a fraud.

    Here's a counterexample. Back in high school I played a lot of this browser game called AdventureQuest (I think it's still around although I haven't played in over a decade). It was Flash-based and pretty low budget. And yet one time (that I'm aware of), they held this cool event in the game, a war between the local paladin order and a group of necromancers, where player characters were invited to fight mobs allied to either side. The side that won the most victories dictated the direction the devs would take the story going forward (it was the necromancers as it turned out).

    See that? That's a way to do player agency in an MMO. And on a budget and team size that makes Cryptic look big, at that.
    Except that's not player agency in an MMO, it's a metagame event. It's like when Cryptic got us to vote on the lukari ship designs. They could've put that vote in the game and gave people extra votes for playing some content, which would've been awesome, but still ultimately an out-of-character reward.
    And since you bring up Mass Effect: the first game is weaksauce when it comes to player agency, but the second game presents a great deal of it. Choices you make throughout the game can affect how many casualties you take to both crew and squad members in the suicide mission (up to and including a secret ending where Shepard dies, although you practically have to seek that ending out on purpose), as well as affecting what options are available in 3 (the "golden ending" of the quarian/geth storyline is only available if you made specific choices in 1 and 2 and then make a counterintuitive moral decision during the Battle of Rannoch).
    Except that's not story branching. Shepard dying is just a game over, party members dying doesn't affect anything else as long as there are at least 2 left when it's all said and done. Getting your crew liquefied by wasting time before the final mission affects nothing. There are only two real endings, one in which you destroy the Collector base, and one in which you give it to TIM, and it's all of one question after the final boss to decide that.

    Now, I never played 3, partly because of the well-publicized lack of a good ending and partly because of their decision to integrate the (paid) multiplayer into the singleplayer campaign. But from what I've read about it most if not all of your choices, even the big ones like that Collector base, get reduced to just statistics. A few less points you need to grind from that multiplayer to unlock the endings. There is no decision you could make anywhere during the story that wouldn't lead you through the same missions, the same bosses and ultimately the same choice of 3 endings.
    Now, maybe it's prohibitive to do a significantly branching story in STO, but at least presenting the illusion of choice and letting the player character have an opinion other than "the boss is always right, Federation über Alles" does help. The Temporal Accords mission is a great example: I was pleasantly surprised that they actually gave us the option to sympathize with the Na'Kuhls' position before all hell breaks loose.
    Sometimes they have that. Other times they write the player as noncommittal. It's a matter of opinion. Personally, I can just as well imagine my character saying something, which would probably be something different than what Cryptic would've written anyway.

    Like, I would've told the na'kuhl that I offered my help after the attack occurred, as did the Alliance, and their government refused it like petulant children, so there's your problem.
    Other examples:
    • In the Kobali situation, the Federation may have to follow the Prime Directive (although I find it very questionable to apply it there, given that A| all participants in that goat-rope are warp-capable and B| we were invited in by one of them), but neither of its allies do. Take the conversation with Captain Pompous Benzite out of the cutscene and allow A| Starfleet toons to point out that they significantly outrank Captain Pompous Benzite, and B| Romulan and Klingon toons to point out that they not only outrank them, they don't even answer to the same government as her.
    Sure, I'd like the option to tell off the benzite too, but to what end? We are going to continue the mission chain the same way anyway, so obviously someone in charge has told/will tell us to go along with it whether we want to or not.

    The real argument the player character should have over the issue is not with some random captain misquoting the Prime Directive, but with the Alliance leadership. Who actually made the decision. That's the part I would really like to see added to the arc, even if only as a cutscene in which the big bosses give us our marching orders.

    It would be inappropriate for the benzite to lecture the player character, who outranks her. But if we assume the player as a flag officer already knows the Alliance wouldn't authorize acting against the kobali over this, it's entirely appropriate we say nothing about her lecturing Kim. Whether we agree with our orders or not, debating them with a subordinate is not going to change them (not to mention, they may be classified). And of course, an KDF/RR officer wouldn't likely even care about two Starfleet captains arguing by themselves.

    And again, players are free to imagine whatever they want for their character to say in that spot. Either way, we're obviously not going to get a mission to liberate the hostages in the temple.
    [*] There needs to be an option to approve of Rai Sahen's gambit in the DQ patrol "Operation Cooperation Conspiracy. Justifications:
    • A Starfleet toon may be more of a Sisko than a Picard, willing to take pragmatic action and play head-games rather than deal completely above-board.
    • Klingons value victory in war, not merely battle. This is a pretty big deal in their storyline in DS9.
    • The Romulan Republic is far from a political monolith: they're a coalition of any number of dissidents against the ancien regime, not just Unificationists (for Pete's sake, the leading Republic Intelligence officer in the theater is openly ex-Tal Shiar, and the supreme commander of its military is a defector from the Imperial Fleet). You should have the option to play a Romulan of classical outlook (even potentially very classical: there's an argument to be made that the false flag gambit plays perfectly into mnhei'sahe).
    I've probably done that mission once in 2014 and don't remember at all what it's about so can't comment.

    One has to take in to account here. The story only use's you rank cause it's easy to just slap the [rank] command in to the story. It's used in the foundry.

    So, on this one has to always keep in mind, they are nothing more than a Captain, via the story line. Because any higher than that in rank, and you're in desk jockey territory. The U.S. Navy Fleets have 1 Admiral per, and he/she is a desk jockey on the flagship, usually a carrier. You'd only find the ranks above Captain out in the field, for inspections or diplomatic negotiations.

    Only in certain circumstances would you find a rank higher than Captain out doing this. That's in the Special Forces area, then is nothing higher than a Lieutenant Colonel or Rear Admiral, Lower Half.
    Mm5NeXy.gif
  • starswordcstarswordc Member Posts: 10,963 Arc User
    > @somtaawkhar said:
    > All of which means nothing because the game can only end in red, blue, and green.

    This, of course, is a pure canard.
    The War Assets mechanic UNLOCKS endings based on your choices throughout the game. In ascending order of War Assets you can select from:
    — Bad ending if you collected basically no War Assets at all. "Destroy", except the Citadel toasts Earth and blows up the entire mass effect relay network in the process of killing the Reapers and every AI in the galaxy.
    — Normal "Destroy". Moots EDI's character arc and two of three possible endings of the Rannoch story.
    — "Control", select from two variations based on your morality meter, which is based on your choices throughout the trilogy.
    —— Blue 1: Shepard acts through the Reapers as a gentle, benevolent guardian.
    —— Blue 2: Shepard rules the galaxy through the Reapers with an iron fist.
    — "Synthesis".
    — Download the Extended Cut and you get "Refuse", because refusing to make a decision is also a decision, and you were warned from almost the beginning of the trilogy that once the Cycle starts, no military victory is possible. So Liara's time capsules do their thing and somebody else does what you refused to.

    By my count, that's six endings.

    And what's with this focus of yours on the ending of the story, anyway? When you read a book, do you skip to the last page? Fast-forward through the movie? Why do you bother wasting your money buying and playing the game when you could just read GameFAQs or watch a YouTube video to find out how it ends for free?

    You must be SO much fun at parties.

    There's this old, old proverb that applies: "It's the going, and not the getting there, that's good."

    @somtaawkhar wrote:
    > That is a rather terrible example, especially for a Star Trek game. How would that even work in Star Trek's Universe?
    >
    > Play as, or against, the Borg to decide if the Borg overrun the galaxy!? Ohh wait, that would be a narrative dead end if the Borg won.

    This is a strawman argument, of the "moving the goalposts" variety. The person I was responding to said you couldn't have player agency in an MMO. I showed a counterexample.

    But since you asked, who said anything about the Borg? We already have two factions in this game: the Federation and the Klingon Empire. And they don't even have to be at war: they could, FOR EXAMPLE, compete to accomplish doff assignments and RNG missions relating to a cluster of colony worlds. (Hell, we even get back some of the game's original premise that way.)

    @warpangel wrote:
    > Except that's not player agency in an MMO, it's a metagame event. It's like when Cryptic got us to vote on the lukari ship designs. They could've put that vote in the game and gave people extra votes for playing some content, which would've been awesome, but still ultimately an out-of-character reward.

    Yes it is. The players were given a choice to side with the paladins or the necromancers. More players sided with necromancers, so the story went one route instead of the other. That's player choice in-game branching the story, albeit a collective choice.
    "Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
    — Sabaton, "Great War"
    VZ9ASdg.png

    Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
  • warpangelwarpangel Member Posts: 9,427 Arc User
    edited February 2019
    starswordc wrote: »
    Yes it is. The players were given a choice to side with the paladins or the necromancers. More players sided with necromancers, so the story went one route instead of the other. That's player choice in-game branching the story, albeit a collective choice.
    Keyword "players." The players got to vote on things as an audience to the story, that's different from characters in the story doing things in-character.
  • ltminnsltminns Member Posts: 12,569 Arc User
    > @patrickngo said:
    > Looks like people are again talking past each other.

    No just talking...

    and talking...

    and talking...

    and talking.
    'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
    Judge Dan Haywood
    'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
    l don't know.
    l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
    That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
    Lt. Philip J. Minns
  • starswordcstarswordc Member Posts: 10,963 Arc User
    edited February 2019
    warpangel wrote: »
    starswordc wrote: »
    Yes it is. The players were given a choice to side with the paladins or the necromancers. More players sided with necromancers, so the story went one route instead of the other. That's player choice in-game branching the story, albeit a collective choice.
    Keyword "players." The players got to vote on things as an audience to the story, that's different from characters in the story doing things in-character.

    Actually I was using the terms interchangeably: AQ's grasp of the fourth wall is iffy. :tongue: Point is, it was things the player characters did (killing mobs in the name of either the necros or the pallies) that affected how the game proceeded afterward (just not something any individual player character did).
    patrickngo wrote: »
    snip
    The vast majority of these proposed things make zero sense to happen.
    Then how about you propose some examples you think would work. :trollface:
    -Why would killing a Ferengi in the Gamma Quadrant affect the number/type of allies you have while in the Federation's top secret super max prison when everyone there has been there for years, and said Ferengi has no logical reason to be there, or affect anything there?
    Security leaks.
    -Why would Daniels' existence be changed by killing or not killing some prisoner in said super max?
    You killed one of his ancestors and he ceased to exist because technobabble.
    -Even if it was, why would Daniels not take steps to ensure his own existence by making sure said prisoner isn't affected?
    Why would he not take steps to prevent the Mary Sueperweapon from getting stolen out of dock? Why would he not take steps to adhere to the Temporal Prime Directive and not make himself known to down-timers, thereby changing the timeline from what he remembers anyway?

    Correct answer: because he's an incompetent Gary Stu.
    -How would that work for TOS era Federation characters who have to start the game with Daniels, since they haven't made the choice yet, when preventing Daniels from existing would mean he wouldn't have been there in the TOS start? That would just be a paradox.
    Maybe they get sent forward in time by a swirly energy thingy instead of by an incompetent Gary Stu kidnapping them.
    -Why would the pirates know that you killed their friend in Facility 4028 when its a top secret super max, and details of said event are unlikely to get out?
    Security leaks. Also, in the event of a prisoner's death in custody they're required to notify the next-of-kin.
    -Why would you be able to refuse additional aid to the Kobali when you are not in charge of the operation, Alliance Command is, and THEY get to make the final call?
    Because the Kobali are committing war crimes, and Starfleet personnel frequently go against the letter of their orders on moral, ethical, and legal grounds. Reviving enemy dead, altering their bodies, and brainwashing them into being your own soldiers qualifies on both counts.
    -Why would the Voth, EVER, LITERALLY EVER, help you given their incredibly xenophobic, and dogmatic, state?
    Realpolitik. Also, they seem to like the reptilian Turei just fine, so I propose we give Ambassador S'taass the job of approaching them.

    And now I'm imagining Charlie Adler's VO as S'taass. "Do I look like a damned mammal to you?" :D
    -Why would you saying anything to Captain uptight on Kobali change anything period? If Alliance command thought that they needed him to complete some mission with you, they would assign him to you and you would do the mission regardless. At most, all that would have is that said captain make some snide comments about telling him off on Kobali(or is it a her I forgot?)
    Then you kick her off the mission for disrespecting a superior officer.
    "Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
    — Sabaton, "Great War"
    VZ9ASdg.png

    Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
  • baddmoonrizinbaddmoonrizin Member Posts: 10,247 Community Moderator
    Hey! Does anyone remember those old "choose your own adventure" books, where you'd be reading along and then be given a choice, so you'd go to page X or page Y to continue the story until you came to an ending that was influenced by all those decisions? Yeah, this isn't that. This is like any other book, movie, or TV show. You might not agree with the actions the characters take, but that's how the author wrote the story. This is a circular argument that keeps coming up with regard to game play in STO that eventually just leads nowhere. /Thread
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