Oh: a faction leader in a very bipolar alliance suddenly flips out and destroys a major civilian target? Gosh, in what world have we seen this kind of warcraft before?
*facepalm*
Um, TNG and DS9 - It was a Cardassian hallmark and hell even Sisko himself took out a colony to spite ONE person.
Sisko deployed a very slow-acting chemical weapon to drive the Maquis' people off a colony. Didn't actually kill anyone and the displaced colonists took the Cardassian colony Eddington had done the same thing to. (And while getting Eddington was a big part of his motivations, it wasn't the only reason -- he had to balance what Eddington had done to prevent the Cardassians from going to war.)
The Cardassians were never allied with the Federation at any point in the broadcast series, even during the rather brief period when the civilians displaced the Cardassian military junta.
The Sisko's plan, while referred to in the TV show as a "Biogenic weapon" in the short term was more like tear gas than nerve gas. Presumably long term exposure would have had severe consequences, but short term wasn't a major problem. Also "tear gas" IRL can cause deadly lung inflammation if exposure is heavy enough or long enough. This particular agent was chosen because it's effects were less pronounced on Cardassians.
Being railroaded in siding with someone who has promised genocide is better narrative development?
Grey morality situations, where everyone is something of bad choice, is better narrative then the early game stories which were nearly Saturday morning cartoon level villainy, with black/white morality. Also, we were forced into helping Obisek, who attempted the same thing.
The difference is twofold:
Obisek felt like he and the Remans were forced to it by the very real threat posed by the Tal'Shiar, who legitimately wanted to reduce the only recently freed Havranssu back to slavery. Thalaron weapons for them were just a way to even the odds against a significantly more powerful opponent.
In contrast, Droola, based on all previous characterization, is an ultranationalist reactionary who wants to go back to the conquistador days and is only mildly less of a complete assf**k than her opponent. This isn't anti-hero versus villain, it's villain versus mildly less nasty villain. I.e. Either way, we lose.
When given a cooperative, non-WMD alternative, Obisek took it pretty much without question beyond initial mistrust, and evinces no further interest in it.
No evidence whatsoever is given that Droola has changed her mind about her goals. She still wants to Make Qo'noS Great Again, she just balked at bombing a civilian target. Now the game wants to give her the Order of the Bat'leth for basic decency.
Grey morality isn't "both sides are equally bad", it's "both sides have understandable motivations and sympathetic aspects". This is black-and-black morality. It shouldn't be a binary choice between Jimmy Pok/Aakar or Droola, bad or less bad; that's lazy writing. Smart writing is the PC saying "yInga'chuq all y'all" and working with the moderate Houses to defeat both of them, e.g. Martok, Grilka etc.
The lesser of two evils is still evil. Let's pick the greater good for a change.
"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"
It's only a hyperbole when you are exaggerating something that is a true statement. Going by missions before DR for example...since that is a benchmark a lot of us old timers use for old content...we have something like 60 missions not including the tutorials. It might be considered a hyperbole if say only 10% of those mission (i.e. 6 of them) had the traits that was mentioned into 99%. Not when that number is almost a quart of the missions. You could have said the majority...or even the vast majority and not been in the wrong here...but yeah...no...what you said is what we non white knights like to call a lie.
So...how about YOU try again.
And its true that most of the older missions in the game don't have said features.
The rest of your post is you just saying "its not a hyperbole because its too hyperbolic" which is just silly, and contradictory.
A lot of them don't but on the other hand a lot of them do far more then your 1% . All those tools and examples you gave to counter my point actually agree with me when you look at the dates. As I said before Quarks Lucky Seven was a top notch mission and the quality at that point and before was very good. Everything you listed is from the timeframe of good and great mission design. As far as I remember everything you listed hasn't been used in years.
There was a period of design that lasted over a number of year that included new and revamped missions all of which had the positive features both what you listed and I listed. Somewhere along the line I think it was just over 2 years ago those features started getting dropped and since then new missions have been extremely basic with the narrative and gameplay taking a nose dive. I am not saying everything has been dropped only that I find the new missions boring and simplistic for the most part compared to what I see as the previous story arc missions. There are for me perhaps 1 or 2 good missions of note in the past few years and even those could have been much better with small changes from the list of positives in old mission design.
While I wasn't 100% positive on Victory is Life overall it was very good and to me things have taken a turn for the worse since then from a narrative and gameplay point of view. Not to mention bugs and lag as well. I feel like STO peaked at ViL and has been going downhill since with player quality of life being the worst its ever been.
The Federation being an invading, imperialistic, state, that uses subterfuge, and the illusion of cooperation, to break down opposing cultures, and change them into something more appealing to the Federation mono-state, has been something pointed out since TOS. It was an even a major plot point in DS9, with even former Federation officers like Eddington pointing it out, and even the writers of DS9 admitting it was a problem with the Federation, hence why they did that plot.
I don't accept any of that.
The Federation made no attempt to alter e.g. Vulcan culture. The Tellarites of the TOS era are indistinguishable from those of the "modern" day. (Same for the ones of ENT times but that's being disingenuous as they were written after the fact.) For that matter, Andorian culture has been left alone and they are a warrior people with a strong code of honor.
Of course, honor is something the Andorians practice and the Klingons just talk about.
The races that complain about the Federation "erasing" cultures are entirely made up of those with cultures badly in need of being erased.
As for what the writers of DS9 or any series did, keep in mind that they're the same people who couldn't keep the sex of Data's cat straight.
@Venture-1. @Venture from City of Heroes if you remember that. Yes, that Venture. Yes, I probably trashed your MA arc. You'll have to be specific; for me it was Tuesday.
> @dheffernan said: > (Quote) > > I don't accept any of that. > > The Federation made no attempt to alter e.g. Vulcan culture. The Tellarites of the TOS era are indistinguishable from those of the "modern" day. (Same for the ones of ENT times but that's being disingenuous as they were written after the fact.) For that matter, Andorian culture has been left alone and they are a warrior people with a strong code of honor. > > Of course, honor is something the Andorians practice and the Klingons just talk about. > > The races that complain about the Federation "erasing" cultures are entirely made up of those with cultures badly in need of being erased. > > As for what the writers of DS9 or any series did, keep in mind that they're the same people who couldn't keep the sex of Data's cat straight.
It's pretty much a "death of the author" theory based on unintended audience interpretation.
"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"
with player quality of life being the worst its ever been.
I can't agree. Ever since the Discovery content started Cryptic has put more effort into improving the general QoL of the game then they had in many YEARS beforehand
The RTFO system revitalized queues, making it much easier, and more rewarding, to play a wider range of TFOs.
The Event system revamp has made playing events far less of a hassle, since progress is automatic instead of having to slot projects and tokens. The scaling buyout options makes getting the reward if you missed days significantly less costly. The merging of all the reward stores makes finding, and reclaiming, your earned rewards, a breeze. And events now offering multiple ways to complete them has reduced burnout.
The Endeavor system has pointed people to many unused areas of the game, bringing a lot more life into them. And the account wide bonuses make making an alt less of a hassle.
The Patrol system revamp makes it easier to get to, and play, patrols. And the exp bonuses make leveling ship masteries much easier then before.
The scaling T6 ship update lets people now use the ship the want the whole game.
Them bringing down the walls between Romulan, and allied faction, ships has given players a much wider range of ships to use.
The T6 Reputation update removed the sponsorship token hassle, and offered players a much easier access to fleet ship modules, captain retrain tokens, and account wide store discounts, making it easier, and less costly, to equip your main/alts.
Various other QoL updates like the item stacking increases, admiralty card auto claims, lower tier ships being moved to dil instead of zen, the fill all button for rep projects, and others, have removed countless long standing headaches/announces people have been complaining about for years.
And we know Cryptic has eyes on a few remaining larger problems, like working on a dedicated EV suit slot to get rid of the EV suit hassle, and wanting to revamp how reputations are progressed so they work more like the event system does now, where you don't need to be constantly slotting and filling projects, and making crafting more useful.
I find it odd anyone can say player QoL is the worst its ever been when Cryptic has spent the last nearly two years systematically going through nearly every major player complaint, and making efforts to eliminate or reduce them. Player QoL is easily the best its ever been, after years of basically no progress on any of these issues before the Disco content started.
As you know the RTFO revitalized some queues for some people but due to bad design killed off around 40% ish of the queues that didn’t need to be killed off. Ever since the terrible UI change I find it harder and longer to get into queues I want to play and less rewarding per queue. Due to worse QoL I play 90% less queues then I did before that change. RTFO failed to be a complete success making some players gameplay expreince worse due to poor design that would be easy to fix. We have been over this before surly you get it by now? I don't deny some queues are easier to access, why is it so hard for you to understand that while around 60% ish are easier to access the other 40% ish are harder to access? That change forced me from running multiple daily TFO's to less then 1 TFO a week. How can you call that better QoL. That's way worse QoL.
As for the rest not all of it but many elements are from when I said STO was at its peak. The Endeavor system falls within when I said STO was at its peak. I always said that is an amazing system but it seems to have been abounded when it could be so much more than it is. I would love to see Epic endeavors based around team work.
Patrols and the new event system I love the idea behind this but many are poorly implanted. If it had been implanted correctly it would be a very positive feature. As an example for the current event only 2 patrols out of 3 are playable for me. So that’s 1 broken TFO, 1 broken patrol and the missions are just the patrols stitched together. So I have no choice in different content to play which is what the system is meant to offer. Instead I have to play the same two bits of content every day. That is not an improvement.
What I see as bad either due to worse QoL or worse expreince.
All the TFO that I try to play are harder to play now and take forever to start.
Many new missions are a step backwards over the better older mission design
Many of the revamps give worse QoL and/or a worse expreince like SB24, NWS, CE to give examples which I now find now much worse than before. EDIT: Colony Defense as well that was amazing some of the best content in a long time then we had a patch to change it and players abandoned it by droves. Due to worse QoL changes I don't play it anymore.
The new UI’s are often a step backwards with a worse QoL expreince. Mission Journal, Mission queues UI, group forming page, reputation page as examples of what is all worse now. Yes the sponsorship token is better but that has zero impact on me and QoL in regards to the UI of the the revamped reputation page is much worse then the older one.
Then we have the just general lack of care. Constant blogs come out with the wrong event times, wrong information and without the most basic proof reading. I don’t mind a few things slipping through but the rate it happens is unprofessional. Followed by what appears to be a lack of basic quality control and testing which lowers players QoL. Many of the bugs that come out should be picked up by the most basic of QA testing and worse we report them on tribble and they still go live. We are how long into this event and I still cannot play 1 patrol nor the TFO without it breaking.
“I find it odd anyone can say player QoL is the worst its ever been when Cryptic has spent the last nearly two years systematically going through nearly every major player complaint, and making efforts to eliminate or reduce them. “
Its not been all bad some like the stacking, admiralty card auto claims, auto fill dIll is better but that is all minor stuff. Others like the Mine revamp and getting a ship with 5 rear slots for me was a very positive expreince but again the devs sort of only did half a job leaving some mines broken. ViL was overall a positive expreince and while I didn't like some elements overall I see that as a great time for STO. EDIT: ViL was that good that I brought the high end expansion package that came with it to support the devs. Since ViL I have not spent a penny which is a shame. My QoL expreince right now is to bad at the moment to spend money like I did with ViL.
The problem today is the bugs, lag, rubberbanding and many of the systems the devs systematically went though they made worse than what we had before. This has all led from my point of view to QoL being overall worse for players then when they started the process to improve QoL.
The overall problems with the game today are a lot worse than 2 years ago. In fact since launch the QoL and gameplay expreince I have right now is an all time low and I know I am not alone based on what others are talking about in chat channels and reasons why they stopped playing.
Which is why I have given feedback in this thread about what I miss from old missions and want to see back in new missions. I want to go back to the days where I buy ViL style content again to support the devs.
“Every time you bring it up you go on about Elite TFOs, and every time you do, a number of people, not just myself, point out that people didn't pug elites in the first place, they made pre-made teams”
Which I prove wrong and you conveniently forget every time just like you conveniently forget the people who backed me up and said the same thing as me. Like last time you are objectively wrong because we did pug them and I was part of that community. It wasn’t just Elite TFO’s it also covers some normal and advance TFO’s. You know full well I am talking about the UI change that came with RTFO and the UI change did nothing but lower QoL. Which is why I call it a terrible design choice because the UI change could be fixed without having any negative impact on RTFO. The UI change was negative towards QoL.
I used to run CE every single day even the advanced version but due to the CE revamp that made QoL worse and the negative UI which again lowered QoL I gave up running it. In fact I completely gave up trying to run daily TFO’s because QoL is so bad now.
Speaking of pre made teams another area that the devs revamped and QoL got worse. The older per made teams system functioned much better than the new pre made team UI which lowered QoL. One example being how the teams formed in a separate window with its own separate chat box that didn’t require extra clicking or constant flipping between channels which again lowers QoL.
“The only change that could have occurred is if those people you normally played with stopped playing.”
Which is the bit you don’t seem to understand. We stopped playing because the UI change lowered QoL and stopped us from playing even when we wanted to. There was a great system in place which wasn’t perfect but worked where we could find strangers and play together. Now that system has gone and we are left with worse QoL and in some cases the worse QoL has driven some of those players away to other games.
I used to be able to see when other people wanted to play content I liked and I could choose to join them or they could choose to join me. Now both them and myself lose out as we are unable to do that which is objectively worse QoL. RTFO doesn’t cover our need so we are flat out worse off. The reason we stopped playing was because QoL got worse and forced us to stop playing.
“There are already endeavors based around team work, its called the TFO endeavors, which require teams to complete.”
Yes and I don’t think that goes far enough. We all pretty much agree Endeavours is one of the top features added to the game and is a real positive. I would love to see an expansion to Endeavours to take it further. An expansion that is focused on more complicated longer goals and focused around working with other people. Hence why I would call it epic endeavours. STO should be about working as a team which is a big part of the Star Trek lore yet the bulk of current Endeavours are quick solo tasks. Keep those solo tasks but expand Endeavors with a new category built around team work.
Instead of complete a TFO, its complete a TFO +an extra task(s). Or Epic endeavours could be the old-style raids. Form a team that go through a set of matching missions without a break or change in team. Some of the most fun times I had in STO was doing the corresponding Space+Ground Borgs STF’s in the same group and same run. For me one of the worst QoL changes to STO was removing end game content and removing end game style raids. I would love to see something like that returned. I think it would be a really positive feature. Build it around team work, create epic endeavours to encourage working as a team over a raid style content. We know it’s possible as we used to have space+ground raids in the game in the past.
Alright this thread has been derailed from its purpose of talking about the House Divided season update and should be closed unless people get back on the right track again. Thanks.
I have to be honest, I kinda hate the new missions. The environment art was phenomenal, and I loved the VAs and setpieces, but story wise the whole thing is one gigantic pile of garbage. There's constantly some new McGuffin pulled out of left field the second we come close to winning, and the player is forced into a position of such powerlessness that they can't even open a door.
Starting off, we find everyone in the great hall acting a fool. J'Ula cries and whines about her honor and how J'mpok is a coward over the Hur'q crisis, even though J'Ula has constantly been running away from every fight she starts. She talks about how Martok is the true chancellor, even though he himself has said he didn't really care; if he did, he would have done something about it. Then J'Ula calls everyone useless for being friends with the Federation, even though that alliance is what saved the entire galaxy. Then we get the random patrols cut and pasted into the mission. Apparently this old Klingon virus is good enough to completely turn Federation ships against us, even though the player interact takes 2 seconds and purges the virus completely. Then the Starbase is destroyed, and J'Ula gloats about how fun it is to kill humans. That Starbase probably had a few hundred civilians onboard, but whatever. Then, she launches an attack on the Quvat civilian shipyards (Specifically stated in the mission to be civilian shipyards). She's basically evil in every regard. Then they blow up an entire city.
Second mission, my ship is in orbit of the Alliance Headquarters, with absolutely no defensive satellites or stations or anything. We beam down and go through no security checks, and find out that J'Ula is suspected to be on the planet. We threaten to torture and murder a random guard with Martok (I'm a starfleet officer, what the heck?!) unless he tells us what we need to know. We find J'Ula and she's shouting at Aakar for blowing up a city of innocents, despite trying to blow up a civilian shipyard and successfully blowing up a starbase, and also trying to use the superweapon to blow up Starbase 1 (by the way, the starbase commander mentions the Klingons are targeting evac ships and the HABITAT RING) and constantly trying to launch a campaign to kill everyone in the Federation. But hey, they just have to use the magic H-word and suddenly they can do no wrong.
Then Aakar joins J'mpok somehow? As if that would help either of them? Also you're locked in a basement, and you can't just override the door controls like you've done millions of times in the past? We hail our ship, but DON'T tell them to stop J'mpok before he uses the weapon? J'mpok has a fleet in orbit now, and beams in a million troops to start murdering everyone there, including Romulan and Federation security teams and even their delegates? But no alarm sounds and the CHAIRMAN OF THE ALLIANCE doesn't know what's happening outside his door? Also he sold out the Alliance to J'Ula (the person who criticized the alliance and hates the Federation) to stop J'mpok from...doing something, even though there is no evidence he had done or would do something heinous. Reminder that 1 week ago in game time J'mpok was in a somewhat stable position with the Alliance backing him and his only threat being an old man who doesn't even want the chancellorship, and a wild terrorist hellbent on destroying the empire's greatest ally. But sure, instead of just waiting for J'Ula to leave the planet surface, or even just sending the same troops down but telling them to not murder their allies is a bad decision, and he instead wants to kill...everyone, including the many people who support him, as if Alliance headquarters is such an easy place to raze (Which it is, what the flying frick?!)
So the player is suddenly great chums with J'Ula (Again, we still hate her, but her character feels like it's someone else entirely). And we go talk to the traitorous Chairman. Then J'mpok blows up the entire HQ. With the weapon on his ship. In orbit of the Alliance Headquarters. With a full fleet of ships alongside him. And my ship. The player character decides now is a good time to grab a vulcan meditation sesh, and just stares at the wall of death as if this was something we hadn't seen before (I've faced down imminent doom plenty of times, why am I just standing here?!) Then we trip walking up a flight of like 2 stairs. And then we keep sitting there, even though standing up takes two seconds and the wall of death is slower than a Pakled's train of thought. But then J'Ula comes to the rescue! "This is no way for a warrior to die." (She tried to use this same weapon against a shipyard and an entire starbase, alongside poisoning the elachi and creating numerous rifts across the galaxy) We stare longingly into each other's eyes, because we have all the time in the world I guess, then finally WE STAND UP AND MOVE! We get to the stupidly tiny transporter room (this is a massive conference hall, right?) and stand around for a few years waiting for the wall of death to approach from the other end of the continent. Why didn't we use the front door? I dunno.
We finally get into our ship, which has just been sitting there for a while at this point, and immediately we have to blast our closest comrades out of the sky. Even though my ship was almost certainly running sensor sweeps and would have obviously tried to investigate the massive buildup of mushroom energy on the chancellor's ship that then hit the planet like some kind of weapon. And there was an entire supposed fleet alongside J'mpok. Nobody saw it? At all?
We try to talk our way out of things, considering we're supposed to be trusted companions to these captains, but they don't listen to us. We turn our friends' ships into swiss cheese, and now that there's nobody to stop us, we can send them all the evidence to show we're not guilty, including sensor data, firsthand witnesses, and the very obvious logic of "I'm Starfleet. Not only do I have no interest in Klingon Empire affairs, J'Ula also wouldn't trust me in a million years. Plus, I have a service record longer than the Lord of the Rings from just the last 2 years in the fleet, so it's reasonable to assume I can be trusted over a man who has the mycelial weapon on his ship right now."
And you know what we do? We run away. Despite insurmountable evidence and a ship strong enough to take on 3 fleets and multiple flagships, we run.
We run like honorable Klingons.
All this and a bag of chips...
Plus i'm not a huge fan of the new Klingon looks. I know probably the wrong place but... Seems like they tried to add in DSC aesthetics with regular ones... if you go to the remastered Klingon missions it's even worse... with one exception. Worf looks so freaking awesome...(and his son looks so much older than him )....
Alright this thread has been derailed from its purpose of talking about the House Divided season update and should be closed unless people get back on the right track again. Thanks.
I wasn't aware that you're either a moderator or a community manager nor that you had such power to dictate what moderators should do or refrain from doing.
I never stated that I was a moderator or a community manager. I only suggest what I think should be done, I do not dictate to the mods what to do, they can reject my advice as is their prerogative as a mod. This thread is about House Divided content, The Centre Cannot Hold, and Khitomer Discord feedback. That is the title of this thread. If this thread does not return back to that title, what is the point to it continuing?
A lot of people here in these forums see to forget that there are times when a Klingon can say "now is not the time to fight" and not loose their honor.
I'd agree with that except for one thing... Alexander. The whole point of his story line is he's trying to say, "now is notthe time to fight each other" and that seems to turn everyone, even his father for a time, against him... or at least that's what i get from that....
[*] The Event system revamp has made playing events far less of a hassle, since progress is automatic instead of having to slot projects and tokens. The scaling buyout options makes getting the reward if you missed days significantly less costly. The merging of all the reward stores makes finding, and reclaiming, your earned rewards, a breeze. And events now offering multiple ways to complete them has reduced burnout.
I have a question about that. When the new event system started Day one buy out was 6k zen, half way was 3k and so forth. ( see THIS blog ) . Have they changed that?
Before they changed to the new event they were offering a "buyout" option of 10(of 14) event tokens/rtfo tokens plus an ultimate upgrade for 1k. Yes you would still need to slot the project and play 4 days, but that's about what 100 zen per token..(1000/10); where as a new event that needs 14 days participation is about 429(6000/14) zen per day. Meaning if you did the same effort...4 days and buyout the rest, it would be about 4285 Zen...
That is NOT an improvment...
I pretty much agree with the rest of what you said....
Really, the old Featured TFO Token Buyout always released when the Featured TFO started at 20% off, or 80 Zen per day with an Ultimate Upgrade.
Also, don't forget that the old Weekend Events like Kobayashi or Sompek are now 14 (21) day Events and the First Contact DAY Event of a limited duration (longer Weekend), has now joined its 14 (21) Day Brethren (or Siblen if you must).
The Summer and Winter Events went from 25 days needed to 20 but have dropped to a 50% cushion from an 85% one. The Anniversary also went from 25 days needed to 20 but lost the 10 day edge (40%) that running the Featured Episode (or 2) would provide to being worth 5% Daily.
Winter, Summer, and Anniversary were/are the Lobi Buyout Events, all the others are Zen based. The old Zen based Buyouts were considerably cheaper and gave you an Ultimate Upgrade Token (or a considerably less worthy Upgrade Token for First Contact Day).
Yep, they made it easier for us, that's for sure.
'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.'
“And, as not only I, but other people, and Cryptic themselves, have pointed out numerous times, the counter number on the old TFO menu were always wrong. So no, you weren't using them to see when other people wanted to play the content you liked, as they were never accurate to how many people were playing.”
They were never 100% accurate as there was a delay before it showed people but that doesn’t matter. So what if it showed 3 people when there was really 4 that was enough for them to be useful and allowed people to play more TFO’s together.
That UI change has had a negative impact and made QoL worse for people like me and caused us to play less TFO’s of the ones we like. It is a fact it is now harder to find strangers to play the TFO’s that I like to play and it now takes longer to get into those TFO’s because like minded people cannot find each other anymore. How ever you look at it the UI change made QoL worse with no single positive feature. It was just flat out worse. We could have all the positive features of the UI back without any negative impact on Random Task Force side.
They moved the spawn point too close together so when people start with large ships you get stuck on each other and cannot move. They added a horrible static effect a few revamps ago which hurts some people’s eyes and makes no logical sense.
They removed tactics and dumbed down gameplay mechanics so swapping weapon choice and damage type don’t matter which makes the entire thing simpler and more boring to play.
They made it so more then half the TFO is sitting AFK with nothing to do but watch 3 different timers. Yes the briefing timer is good but its way to long and could but cut in half which would give it the same positive outcome with none of the negative outcomes. When a TFO has 3 long timers with a player spending 50% of the TFO watching a timer QoL is worse.
“which only means you actually have to adhere to the mechanics, instead of just being able to sit there and vape it without a care in the world.”
That is wrong and funny because that’s precisely the opposite of what happened for me and others. Before I changed tactics to adhere to the mechanics which was fun. Now its fly forward, sit their AFK vaping without a care in the world bored stiff spending 50% of the TFO doing absolutely nothing but watching 3 timer count down and the other 50% just sitting there watching a hitpoint bar count down without moving. They very thing you say they fixed is the very thing they caused to happen. Which is why I went from playing it daily to never going near it again and it wasn't just me but many of the regulars ended up doing the same thing and then abandoned it because Qol was worse.
Eddington's final speech in this episode demonstrates Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's move away from the idyllic Federation seen in both Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: The Next Generation. This speech builds upon Sisko's line "it's easy to be a saint in paradise" from "The Maquis, Part II", Quark's speech from "The Jem'Hadar", the 'hell on Earth' of "Past Tense, Part I" and "Past Tense, Part II", and the "paradise never seemed so well armed" line from "Paradise Lost". Of special importance in Eddington's speech is the line "Nobody leaves paradise," implying nobody should have any reason to leave it, nobody should want to leave it, precisely because it is a paradise, and if somebody does want to leave, then obviously, there is a problem somewhere. This recalls Ira Steven Behr's use of the quotation from Harold Pinter and the notion that what may appear to be paradise, actually has weasels under the coffee-table (see 'Background information' for "The Maquis, Part II" for more on Pinter). Taken together, all of these examples serve to further Behr's examination of Gene Roddenberry's utopia and his idealistic view of the future. Eddington's speech however, especially his comparison with the Borg, is perhaps the harshest indictment of the Federation yet seen.
Ira Steven Behr made it pretty clear, both in show, and IRL, that he disagreed with Gene's view of a perfect future, and went to lengths to criticize, and deconstruct it.
DS9 was still being run by Berman and Braga; institutionally it's the same shop.
As for the rest, it's a great explanation of why The Orville is the best Trek show around.
@Venture-1. @Venture from City of Heroes if you remember that. Yes, that Venture. Yes, I probably trashed your MA arc. You'll have to be specific; for me it was Tuesday.
Your maths here need a fine tuning. Not all events have a 6k buyout. Some have 2k, some have 3k and this one has 6k. Plus, not all buyouts are in Zens, as some are in lobbis. I think the general rule is that the 14 tokens 21 days events have a 3k buyout and the 20 tokens month long events have a 6k buyout, while the exceptionnal shorter events have a 2k buyout.
Ahh thanks i didn't know that... but still an extra 2000 zen for 4 more "tokens"(i know we dont use tokens anymore but we did then) and no ultimate upgrade is... not an improvement at all.
That is NOT an improvment...
To me, the worst loss was losing the unfinished events. Before, unfinished events lingered around for as long as you had enough slots, meaning nearly forever, and you could complete them at a later date. Now, unfinished events simply go without a fair notice after the second major update after the end of the event and you can't complete them later on. They made an exception with the Winter Wonderland rerun, but people who didn't finish the other events simply lost their chance and their progress.[/quote]
Can't you buyout whats unfinished? Or is it limited?
Comments
My character Tsin'xing
The difference is twofold:
In contrast, Droola, based on all previous characterization, is an ultranationalist reactionary who wants to go back to the conquistador days and is only mildly less of a complete assf**k than her opponent. This isn't anti-hero versus villain, it's villain versus mildly less nasty villain. I.e. Either way, we lose.
No evidence whatsoever is given that Droola has changed her mind about her goals. She still wants to Make Qo'noS Great Again, she just balked at bombing a civilian target. Now the game wants to give her the Order of the Bat'leth for basic decency.
Grey morality isn't "both sides are equally bad", it's "both sides have understandable motivations and sympathetic aspects". This is black-and-black morality. It shouldn't be a binary choice between Jimmy Pok/Aakar or Droola, bad or less bad; that's lazy writing. Smart writing is the PC saying "yInga'chuq all y'all" and working with the moderate Houses to defeat both of them, e.g. Martok, Grilka etc.
The lesser of two evils is still evil. Let's pick the greater good for a change.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
There was a period of design that lasted over a number of year that included new and revamped missions all of which had the positive features both what you listed and I listed. Somewhere along the line I think it was just over 2 years ago those features started getting dropped and since then new missions have been extremely basic with the narrative and gameplay taking a nose dive. I am not saying everything has been dropped only that I find the new missions boring and simplistic for the most part compared to what I see as the previous story arc missions. There are for me perhaps 1 or 2 good missions of note in the past few years and even those could have been much better with small changes from the list of positives in old mission design.
While I wasn't 100% positive on Victory is Life overall it was very good and to me things have taken a turn for the worse since then from a narrative and gameplay point of view. Not to mention bugs and lag as well. I feel like STO peaked at ViL and has been going downhill since with player quality of life being the worst its ever been.
I don't accept any of that.
The Federation made no attempt to alter e.g. Vulcan culture. The Tellarites of the TOS era are indistinguishable from those of the "modern" day. (Same for the ones of ENT times but that's being disingenuous as they were written after the fact.) For that matter, Andorian culture has been left alone and they are a warrior people with a strong code of honor.
Of course, honor is something the Andorians practice and the Klingons just talk about.
The races that complain about the Federation "erasing" cultures are entirely made up of those with cultures badly in need of being erased.
As for what the writers of DS9 or any series did, keep in mind that they're the same people who couldn't keep the sex of Data's cat straight.
> (Quote)
>
> I don't accept any of that.
>
> The Federation made no attempt to alter e.g. Vulcan culture. The Tellarites of the TOS era are indistinguishable from those of the "modern" day. (Same for the ones of ENT times but that's being disingenuous as they were written after the fact.) For that matter, Andorian culture has been left alone and they are a warrior people with a strong code of honor.
>
> Of course, honor is something the Andorians practice and the Klingons just talk about.
>
> The races that complain about the Federation "erasing" cultures are entirely made up of those with cultures badly in need of being erased.
>
> As for what the writers of DS9 or any series did, keep in mind that they're the same people who couldn't keep the sex of Data's cat straight.
For reference, this is what Som said to defend the existence of Section 31 a while ago: https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline#/discussion/comment/13475696
It's pretty much a "death of the author" theory based on unintended audience interpretation.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
As for the rest not all of it but many elements are from when I said STO was at its peak. The Endeavor system falls within when I said STO was at its peak. I always said that is an amazing system but it seems to have been abounded when it could be so much more than it is. I would love to see Epic endeavors based around team work.
Patrols and the new event system I love the idea behind this but many are poorly implanted. If it had been implanted correctly it would be a very positive feature. As an example for the current event only 2 patrols out of 3 are playable for me. So that’s 1 broken TFO, 1 broken patrol and the missions are just the patrols stitched together. So I have no choice in different content to play which is what the system is meant to offer. Instead I have to play the same two bits of content every day. That is not an improvement.
What I see as bad either due to worse QoL or worse expreince.
All the TFO that I try to play are harder to play now and take forever to start.
Many new missions are a step backwards over the better older mission design
Many of the revamps give worse QoL and/or a worse expreince like SB24, NWS, CE to give examples which I now find now much worse than before. EDIT: Colony Defense as well that was amazing some of the best content in a long time then we had a patch to change it and players abandoned it by droves. Due to worse QoL changes I don't play it anymore.
The new UI’s are often a step backwards with a worse QoL expreince. Mission Journal, Mission queues UI, group forming page, reputation page as examples of what is all worse now. Yes the sponsorship token is better but that has zero impact on me and QoL in regards to the UI of the the revamped reputation page is much worse then the older one.
Then we have the just general lack of care. Constant blogs come out with the wrong event times, wrong information and without the most basic proof reading. I don’t mind a few things slipping through but the rate it happens is unprofessional. Followed by what appears to be a lack of basic quality control and testing which lowers players QoL. Many of the bugs that come out should be picked up by the most basic of QA testing and worse we report them on tribble and they still go live. We are how long into this event and I still cannot play 1 patrol nor the TFO without it breaking.
Its not been all bad some like the stacking, admiralty card auto claims, auto fill dIll is better but that is all minor stuff. Others like the Mine revamp and getting a ship with 5 rear slots for me was a very positive expreince but again the devs sort of only did half a job leaving some mines broken. ViL was overall a positive expreince and while I didn't like some elements overall I see that as a great time for STO. EDIT: ViL was that good that I brought the high end expansion package that came with it to support the devs. Since ViL I have not spent a penny which is a shame. My QoL expreince right now is to bad at the moment to spend money like I did with ViL.
The problem today is the bugs, lag, rubberbanding and many of the systems the devs systematically went though they made worse than what we had before. This has all led from my point of view to QoL being overall worse for players then when they started the process to improve QoL.
The overall problems with the game today are a lot worse than 2 years ago. In fact since launch the QoL and gameplay expreince I have right now is an all time low and I know I am not alone based on what others are talking about in chat channels and reasons why they stopped playing.
Which is why I have given feedback in this thread about what I miss from old missions and want to see back in new missions. I want to go back to the days where I buy ViL style content again to support the devs.
I used to run CE every single day even the advanced version but due to the CE revamp that made QoL worse and the negative UI which again lowered QoL I gave up running it. In fact I completely gave up trying to run daily TFO’s because QoL is so bad now.
Speaking of pre made teams another area that the devs revamped and QoL got worse. The older per made teams system functioned much better than the new pre made team UI which lowered QoL. One example being how the teams formed in a separate window with its own separate chat box that didn’t require extra clicking or constant flipping between channels which again lowers QoL.
Which is the bit you don’t seem to understand. We stopped playing because the UI change lowered QoL and stopped us from playing even when we wanted to. There was a great system in place which wasn’t perfect but worked where we could find strangers and play together. Now that system has gone and we are left with worse QoL and in some cases the worse QoL has driven some of those players away to other games.
I used to be able to see when other people wanted to play content I liked and I could choose to join them or they could choose to join me. Now both them and myself lose out as we are unable to do that which is objectively worse QoL. RTFO doesn’t cover our need so we are flat out worse off. The reason we stopped playing was because QoL got worse and forced us to stop playing.
Yes and I don’t think that goes far enough. We all pretty much agree Endeavours is one of the top features added to the game and is a real positive. I would love to see an expansion to Endeavours to take it further. An expansion that is focused on more complicated longer goals and focused around working with other people. Hence why I would call it epic endeavours. STO should be about working as a team which is a big part of the Star Trek lore yet the bulk of current Endeavours are quick solo tasks. Keep those solo tasks but expand Endeavors with a new category built around team work.
Instead of complete a TFO, its complete a TFO +an extra task(s). Or Epic endeavours could be the old-style raids. Form a team that go through a set of matching missions without a break or change in team. Some of the most fun times I had in STO was doing the corresponding Space+Ground Borgs STF’s in the same group and same run. For me one of the worst QoL changes to STO was removing end game content and removing end game style raids. I would love to see something like that returned. I think it would be a really positive feature. Build it around team work, create epic endeavours to encourage working as a team over a raid style content. We know it’s possible as we used to have space+ground raids in the game in the past.
All this and a bag of chips...
Plus i'm not a huge fan of the new Klingon looks. I know probably the wrong place but... Seems like they tried to add in DSC aesthetics with regular ones... if you go to the remastered Klingon missions it's even worse... with one exception. Worf looks so freaking awesome...(and his son looks so much older than him
I never stated that I was a moderator or a community manager. I only suggest what I think should be done, I do not dictate to the mods what to do, they can reject my advice as is their prerogative as a mod. This thread is about House Divided content, The Centre Cannot Hold, and Khitomer Discord feedback. That is the title of this thread. If this thread does not return back to that title, what is the point to it continuing?
I'd agree with that except for one thing... Alexander. The whole point of his story line is he's trying to say, "now is notthe time to fight each other" and that seems to turn everyone, even his father for a time, against him... or at least that's what i get from that....
I have a question about that. When the new event system started Day one buy out was 6k zen, half way was 3k and so forth. ( see THIS blog ) . Have they changed that?
Before they changed to the new event they were offering a "buyout" option of 10(of 14) event tokens/rtfo tokens plus an ultimate upgrade for 1k. Yes you would still need to slot the project and play 4 days, but that's about what 100 zen per token..(1000/10); where as a new event that needs 14 days participation is about 429(6000/14) zen per day. Meaning if you did the same effort...4 days and buyout the rest, it would be about 4285 Zen...
That is NOT an improvment...
I pretty much agree with the rest of what you said....
Also, don't forget that the old Weekend Events like Kobayashi or Sompek are now 14 (21) day Events and the First Contact DAY Event of a limited duration (longer Weekend), has now joined its 14 (21) Day Brethren (or Siblen if you must).
The Summer and Winter Events went from 25 days needed to 20 but have dropped to a 50% cushion from an 85% one. The Anniversary also went from 25 days needed to 20 but lost the 10 day edge (40%) that running the Featured Episode (or 2) would provide to being worth 5% Daily.
Winter, Summer, and Anniversary were/are the Lobi Buyout Events, all the others are Zen based. The old Zen based Buyouts were considerably cheaper and gave you an Ultimate Upgrade Token (or a considerably less worthy Upgrade Token for First Contact Day).
Yep, they made it easier for us, that's for sure.
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.'
That UI change has had a negative impact and made QoL worse for people like me and caused us to play less TFO’s of the ones we like. It is a fact it is now harder to find strangers to play the TFO’s that I like to play and it now takes longer to get into those TFO’s because like minded people cannot find each other anymore. How ever you look at it the UI change made QoL worse with no single positive feature. It was just flat out worse. We could have all the positive features of the UI back without any negative impact on Random Task Force side.
They moved the spawn point too close together so when people start with large ships you get stuck on each other and cannot move. They added a horrible static effect a few revamps ago which hurts some people’s eyes and makes no logical sense.
They removed tactics and dumbed down gameplay mechanics so swapping weapon choice and damage type don’t matter which makes the entire thing simpler and more boring to play.
They made it so more then half the TFO is sitting AFK with nothing to do but watch 3 different timers. Yes the briefing timer is good but its way to long and could but cut in half which would give it the same positive outcome with none of the negative outcomes. When a TFO has 3 long timers with a player spending 50% of the TFO watching a timer QoL is worse.
That is wrong and funny because that’s precisely the opposite of what happened for me and others. Before I changed tactics to adhere to the mechanics which was fun. Now its fly forward, sit their AFK vaping without a care in the world bored stiff spending 50% of the TFO doing absolutely nothing but watching 3 timer count down and the other 50% just sitting there watching a hitpoint bar count down without moving. They very thing you say they fixed is the very thing they caused to happen. Which is why I went from playing it daily to never going near it again and it wasn't just me but many of the regulars ended up doing the same thing and then abandoned it because Qol was worse.
DS9 was still being run by Berman and Braga; institutionally it's the same shop.
As for the rest, it's a great explanation of why The Orville is the best Trek show around.
To me, the worst loss was losing the unfinished events. Before, unfinished events lingered around for as long as you had enough slots, meaning nearly forever, and you could complete them at a later date. Now, unfinished events simply go without a fair notice after the second major update after the end of the event and you can't complete them later on. They made an exception with the Winter Wonderland rerun, but people who didn't finish the other events simply lost their chance and their progress.[/quote]
Can't you buyout whats unfinished? Or is it limited?