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Is Andoria now off-limits?

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  • phoenixc#0738 phoenixc Member Posts: 5,889 Arc User
    If it all happens in 2 years then, half of these storylines aren't even major events and must have happened so quickly that they're not important. If the klingon civil war is over and done with in what, a fortnight? would most klingons have even had time to hear about it before it was over? The storyline says it's a huge, empire spanning civil war with countless battles offscreen, which should imply months or longer.
    Most arcs in STO aren't really meant to be that huge of events.

    Like, the Wasteland arc on Nimbus would take, at most, a few days. Same thing with like the 2800 arc, the Breen arc, the Spectres arc, etc. most of the game's early arcs are really short events. And by the time STO begins both the Federation, and Klingon Empire, have transwarp gateway networks, linking most of their major worlds together, so travel across a large part of the known galaxy is pretty quick.

    Another important point is that the Klingo-Federation war was already in full swing before the game starts and has been for a while, by the time the character is captaining a ship the war is almost over since it is discovered that both sides were being played for fools by the Undine, and later that the Undine themselves were fooled by the Iconians, etc. Once everyone stops fighting each other and turn their attention to finding out what is really going on it all unravels fairly quickly.
  • edited November 2021
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  • phoenixc#0738 phoenixc Member Posts: 5,889 Arc User
    Story driven MMOs pretty much have to use "comic book" time where everything is floating and comparisons are all relative instead of absolute because new players are constantly starting from the beginning.

    No they don't. They can still start a new player with Year One's content, and upon complete it, move into Year 2. They could make it so that all Year One content must be completed before Year 2's content can be started. Just like a multi-season TV show that is still running. Previous seasons can be binged, but the current season can only be binged up through its most recent episode.

    STO should have been produced like a Star Trek series. 10 episode per season, each designed to last at least 45 minutes and no more than an hour. And dammit, SELL episode tokens and give LTSers a free one each time an episode is released. No more than 200 Zen per episode token and no more than 1800 Zen for a season token. INCENTIVIZE the development of REGULAR playable content. Unless it's monetized, Cryptic won't be incentivized to prioritize.

    Oh yeah...

    I forgot...
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    "WAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!! I WANT EVERYTHING FOR FREEEEEEEEE!!!!!! WAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!! IF I HAVE TO BUY MISSION CONTENT, I'LL QUIT!!!!!!! WAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!"
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    Oh yeah...
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    There's a Dilithium Exchange that lets you use something gained just by playing the game to trade for Zen so you still don't have to pay a dime of your own money...

    Of course it won't happen. Not because people will cry about it, but because it would mean that Cryptic would have to do some real work throughout the year releasing more than just a few episodes. If they had a larger team, they could probably pull it off, if they streamline their process. But that would mean that PWE would have to give them the budget to hire those team members, which they won't do because they can't be bothered to care about anything other than what they rake in from loot box key sales...

    You mean turn STO into a nickle-and-dime the player to death Jack Benny skit of a game like ArcheAge, a game that very few can stand for long. Yeah, I can see how that would have worked MUCH better... in a pig's eye.

    And rigid zoned-level games like you are suggesting are so old-hat that the hat is petrified, and most of them are long dead. Single-path games like that have very limited replayability because after going through it with one character it is a boring slog doing it again with another, so people just don't stick with it for long. And it takes a huge team, like WoW has, to even come close to churning out enough new stuff to keep people interested year after year.

    In general players seem to prefer more flexible format, like open world games, a trend that has been going on for years, just like how PvP has been slowly loosing favor across the industry. While STO is a hybrid of open and lobby it is multi-pathed so you can play it in all sorts of different ways.

    How do you think a game with rather klunky combat (especially on the ground) has lasted for so long? The Cryptic engine is lackluster at best nowadays but the company knows how to follow the trends effectively.
  • naabal421#0722 naabal421 Member Posts: 162 Arc User
    Another important point is that the Klingo-Federation war was already in full swing before the game starts and has been for a while, by the time the character is captaining a ship the war is almost over since it is discovered that both sides were being played for fools by the Undine, and later that the Undine themselves were fooled by the Iconians, etc. Once everyone stops fighting each other and turn their attention to finding out what is really going on it all unravels fairly quickly.
    Yeah.

    I think the first arc that was really a big thing was the Undine attack on Earth/Qo'nos. Delta Rising was mostly just flying around doing diplomacy stuff to stop the Vaadwaur. Then we had the Iconian War which was THE real big war arc. The temporal stuff was "big" in that it could desotry the Federation, but it was rather small in what we actually did since it was a cold war, and so we were mostly doing counter espionage missions rather then like big battles until Procyon V. The Tzenkethi stuff really wasn't that big either. But the Hur'q and Klingon Civil War stuff was big. Most arcs in STO aren't really that big, theres been maybe 3 of the what? 30 arcs between all the factions that could be considered really big?
  • starshine#7408 starshine Member Posts: 127 Arc User
    Too many arcs have major attacks with really big casualties given for it on named worlds to all take place within two years
    It should just all be set the + years it came out since release. It'd give it more weight and make the characters meteoric rise seem serious not silly, and allow for escalation without it becoming meaningless?
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  • naabal421#0722 naabal421 Member Posts: 162 Arc User
    Too many arcs have major attacks with really big casualties given for it on named worlds to all take place within two years
    Not really. No major world has suffered any real mass attack/casualties that was successful except during the Iconian War. There were several attempts, like Sela's attempted attack on Vulcan in the Romulan arc, but that was quickly countered with minimal, if no real loses on the Federation's side.
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  • rattler2rattler2 Member, Star Trek Online Moderator Posts: 58,688 Community Moderator
    Maybe you should take a breath and step back for a bit. You're getting kinda agressive in your stance to the point where you're starting to attack other people over not sharing your views. At least from my perspective.
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    I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something CRAZY happens again?!
    The nut who actually ground out many packs. The resident forum voice of reason (I HAZ FORUM REP! YAY!)
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  • naabal421#0722 naabal421 Member Posts: 162 Arc User
    Before Discovery, Cryptic went on record to say that they were running out of ideas. How the hell can you run out of ideas when you've got one of the biggest IPs in the world and the ability to tell whatever stories you want (with CBS's authorization). Why don't CRYPTIC use the alien character creator to invent a new species we can encounter while exploring a new sector block?
    As I recall, back when I was a lurker and people were throwing around those quotes, they only said they were out of ideas for larger story arcs, not any ideas for story content in STO.
    That is of course if Cryptic could resist the urge to make it a thing that gets resolved in a single season's story arc...
    The J'Ula/Klingon Civil War arc went on for three years, across three separate arcs, and people got tired of it fast. And thats fiarly typical of what I see in other games also. Most people don't want arcs that go on for more then 7-8 releases, as you start having to really reach to try to make them take that long while progressing the story in a meaningful way each episode.
  • crypticarmsmancrypticarmsman Member Posts: 4,115 Arc User
    jslyn wrote: »
    protoneous wrote: »
    From ten-forward weekly 11-3-21. No non-scripted fun allowed as a couple of players might have their space barbie interrupted -


    They have before, but not in a very long time. I think that there are still youtube videos of when the Devs were playing as the Borg and invaded Earth Spacedock.

    That used to happen more often on the Test Server in teh 'early days' of STO, but yeah when Daniel Stahl was the STO overall lead producer, he'd often show up on ESD/SFA/Qonos, and ESD space or Qonos space with something that 'surprised' players, and we all chased/tried to kill, etc. for anywhere from 15 - 30 minutes at a time.

    But yeah, once players realized they could use some combat powers to still do a form of griefing in social zones, they went with not allowing those powers to be usable in social zones, and after Daniel Stahl moved on, there wasn't really another lead who took the time to occasionally do things like that. It's definitely been MANY YEARS since something like that has happened again in STO.
    Formerly known as Armsman from June 2008 to June 20, 2012
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  • jslynjslyn Member Posts: 1,790 Arc User
    That used to happen more often on the Test Server in teh 'early days' of STO, but yeah when Daniel Stahl was the STO overall lead producer, he'd often show up on ESD/SFA/Qonos, and ESD space or Qonos space with something that 'surprised' players, and we all chased/tried to kill, etc. for anywhere from 15 - 30 minutes at a time.

    But yeah, once players realized they could use some combat powers to still do a form of griefing in social zones, they went with not allowing those powers to be usable in social zones, and after Daniel Stahl moved on, there wasn't really another lead who took the time to occasionally do things like that. It's definitely been MANY YEARS since something like that has happened again in STO.



    Too long, in my opinion. An unexpected Dev Versus Players Event was always amusing. Just be hanging around, checking the Mail and the BOOM! "I'm not equipped for this!" Then it was either "Escape And Regroup!" or "Get To The Bank!" in order to be able launch a counteroffensive with the correct weapon. I miss those.


    Instead of always a "Spam A TFO" Event, how about a nice "Versus The Devs" Weekend? Each Dev could have an overpowered Locutus Cube against 10 Players, with no Respawns in the match. Perhaps with a Win/Loss Counter in the top of the screen with a scaling reward based on the Ratio of Player Wins to Dev Wins. I think that would be fun.
  • fleetcaptain5#1134 fleetcaptain5 Member Posts: 5,051 Arc User
    edited November 2021
    Story driven MMOs pretty much have to use "comic book" time where everything is floating and comparisons are all relative instead of absolute because new players are constantly starting from the beginning.

    No they don't. They can still start a new player with Year One's content, and upon complete it, move into Year 2. They could make it so that all Year One content must be completed before Year 2's content can be started. Just like a multi-season TV show that is still running. Previous seasons can be binged, but the current season can only be binged up through its most recent episode.

    STO should have been produced like a Star Trek series. 10 episode per season, each designed to last at least 45 minutes and no more than an hour. And dammit, SELL episode tokens and give LTSers a free one each time an episode is released. No more than 200 Zen per episode token and no more than 1800 Zen for a season token. INCENTIVIZE the development of REGULAR playable content. Unless it's monetized, Cryptic won't be incentivized to prioritize.

    Oh yeah...

    I forgot...
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    .
    "WAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!! I WANT EVERYTHING FOR FREEEEEEEEE!!!!!! WAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!! IF I HAVE TO BUY MISSION CONTENT, I'LL QUIT!!!!!!! WAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!"
    .
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    Oh yeah...
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    There's a Dilithium Exchange that lets you use something gained just by playing the game to trade for Zen so you still don't have to pay a dime of your own money...

    Of course it won't happen. Not because people will cry about it, but because it would mean that Cryptic would have to do some real work throughout the year releasing more than just a few episodes. If they had a larger team, they could probably pull it off, if they streamline their process. But that would mean that PWE would have to give them the budget to hire those team members, which they won't do because they can't be bothered to care about anything other than what they rake in from loot box key sales...

    You mean turn STO into a nickle-and-dime the player to death Jack Benny skit of a game like ArcheAge, a game that very few can stand for long. Yeah, I can see how that would have worked MUCH better... in a pig's eye.

    I call what they do NOW nickeling and diming. We pay upwards of 25 - 30 dollars for FLUFF. Ships are not content. They just let us do the same content over and over while looking a little different. And when you figure up how much on average is spent on lockbox ships, we move away from the microtransaction scale and into the macrotransaction scale. Sure, special consoles and seating does impact gameplay, but it does not add more gameplay.

    In my personal economy, I cannot reconcile my entertainment dollars being spent on fluff. But I would buy playable content in a heartbeat, because that is what would add new experiences. But like I said, with the Dilithium exchange, people who don't want to spend money can still get whatever they want if they want to grind RD for it.
    And rigid zoned-level games like you are suggesting are so old-hat that the hat is petrified, and most of them are long dead. Single-path games like that have very limited replayability because after going through it with one character it is a boring slog doing it again with another, so people just don't stick with it for long. And it takes a huge team, like WoW has, to even come close to churning out enough new stuff to keep people interested year after year.

    I am not talking about rigid zone-based gaming. Look at an episode of Star Trek TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT. They were all over the place in any given season. Sure, DS9 had long-running story arcs, and ENT's 3rd season was one long story arc. But even then, there was enough variation in what was going on that the episodes could stand on their own, except for the "To Be Continued..." ones.

    It has been Cryptic's choice to pick one narrative and stay with it all year, but if they would write their seasonal content episodically, rather than Part 1 2 and 3 of the same story, then A 10-episode season of gameplay could have us going all over the place. The REASONS for going could still tie into a centralized story,

    And really, STO by design is zone-based, if you play start to finish. First you gotta do this series of missions before you can do that series of missions, etc. And each series of missions is tied to a specific region of space. Cardassian arc. Romulan arc, blablabla arc. When a featured episode series launched, we could jump right into it no matter where we were on the progression path. Then when the next one came the previous one gets rolled into the linear progression path.

    So the very thing you say is old-hat is what STO already is. What I propose would shake up that status quo, IF the episodes of a season involve going to a wide variety of places.
    In general players seem to prefer more flexible format, like open world games, a trend that has been going on for years, just like how PvP has been slowly loosing favor across the industry. While STO is a hybrid of open and lobby it is multi-pathed so you can play it in all sorts of different ways.

    I'm sorry. But I do not define STO as open-world in any way. Everything you do has an A to B to C to D format. True open-world gaming lends itself to emergent experiences, where things happen that aren't scripted. Believe me, I WISH STO was an open-world game.
    How do you think a game with rather klunky combat (especially on the ground) has lasted for so long? The Cryptic engine is lackluster at best nowadays but the company knows how to follow the trends effectively.

    If STO did not have the Star Trek name slapped on it, and it did not have any trek-specific elements and was just a space version of Champions Online, then it would not have lasted this long. How many people who play it are not here because of Star Trek? It's the only Trek MMO that exists. If some other company were to obtain a license to create a Trek MMO and they actually wrapped that MMO's mechanics and systems AROUND Star Trek, rather than trying to stretch Star Trek around their mechanics and systems, then I promise you, STO would be dead in a month. This is all we got, so we're here.

    Cryptic has said that they don't believe that a STO 2.0 is needed when they are perfectly capable of adding to this game. I was watching one of their live feeds where they said this. Only they are NOT adding to the game. Every story arc plays the same. Hill the baddie of the year and blow up baddie of the year's ships rinse and repeat. And do A B C and then D to do it... Oh... and buy a new ship and go back through it, rinse and repeat.

    Before Discovery, Cryptic went on record to say that they were running out of ideas. How the hell can you run out of ideas when you've got one of the biggest IPs in the world and the ability to tell whatever stories you want (with CBS's authorization). Why don't CRYPTIC use the alien character creator to invent a new species we can encounter while exploring a new sector block?

    To tie this back to the topic of Andoria... that disaster I mentioned could have been the result of a hostile alien attack. So alongside the rebuilding scenario I outlined, there would be a new threat on the radar that nobody knows where they are from or when they will turn up again. Maybe they aren't even from the Milky Way. What do they want? Why did they attack Andoria? Why not Earth? Or Vulcan? Or Tellar Prime? Or Kronos? How can they be dealt with. Can relations be established? Or does it have to be war? I cam up with that in the time it took to type this paragraph. It's open-ended enough to wrap several seasons of Storytelling around. That is of course if Cryptic could resist the urge to make it a thing that gets resolved in a single season's story arc...

    Right now, story content feels like a bone Cryptic throws us every once in a while, when Stories were what Star Trek is driven by. If it had a revenue stream attached to it, it would be a bigger priority.

    Two things I'd like to say:

    1. Yes, I think you're right about the game only surviving this long because the name Star Trek is tied to it. As great as the ship designs, gameplay options and some zones are, those alone don't justify the huge prices for the things we pay for that are apparently required to keep it going.

    2. Those prices also mean that it's very unlikely that bought content would keep the game going for a long time.
    If they

    - need to ask $30 for a ship
    - are constantly driven to sell even more expensive ones
    - are constantly creating boxes and everything in it so they can sell the keys required to open them
    - and are now driven to re-sell older stuff for even higher prices in the Mudd store

    then I don't want to know how much we'd have to pay for a single season of content. Keep in mind, they need to sell multiple of the things above every season to keep the game going, apparently.
  • fleetcaptain5#1134 fleetcaptain5 Member Posts: 5,051 Arc User
    To put it differently:

    More content would be great. But it is doubtful whether shifting from selling other stuff to selling actual content would bring improvements in terms of quality or quantity.

    It's fine if you think the pricing in this game is ludicrous. I can't say I disagree. But if they aren't going to demand those prices for those things anymore, they'd have to do so for the content they're going to sell henceforth. Or they'd have to make sure more people are paying smaller amounts of money - but it is more likely that making such changes now would only drive people away from the game.
  • crypticarmsmancrypticarmsman Member Posts: 4,115 Arc User
    To put it differently:

    More content would be great. But it is doubtful whether shifting from selling other stuff to selling actual content would bring improvements in terms of quality or quantity.

    It's fine if you think the pricing in this game is ludicrous. I can't say I disagree. But if they aren't going to demand those prices for those things anymore, they'd have to do so for the content they're going to sell henceforth. Or they'd have to make sure more people are paying smaller amounts of money - but it is more likely that making such changes now would only drive people away from the game.

    Most F2P games don't sell playable content because they ultimately use the playable content to drive sales of items from their RMT stores. Cryptic experimented with selling playable content when Champions Online first went F2P. The result was that it in the long run just divided/stratified the playerbase, and left LESS people playing the new 'for pay' content, and that lead to other negative knock on all other aspects of the MMO and their RMT Store.

    So, yeah, Cryptic won't go back to 'selling' playable content. What they'll try to do is tie new RMT items to said always free new playable content and get their money that way. They found it just works better for them and the games the make and run.
    Formerly known as Armsman from June 2008 to June 20, 2012
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  • phoenixc#0738 phoenixc Member Posts: 5,889 Arc User
    Microtransactions are things that are priced in the impulse-buy range, the equivalent of the racks of chewing gum, magazines, and other checkout-line junk at the grocery store. It is defined as "about the cost of a cup of coffee", and even the low-tier c-store ships back when they had them were more than that.

    STO (and Cryptic in general) were never really big on microtransactions, only a few things in the c-store would qualify, such as the basic doff packs and very few other items. Ships are (or rather start at) low-end luxuries, like ordering a pizza delivery or dinner in a family style restaurant, but there is nothing forcing a player to buy one in order to play the game (or more to the point), to play a new part of the game like bought DLCs would be.

    In a few games, of which ArcheAge is the poster child, they arrange things so that unless you pay a fee you are blocked in some way from even some of the basic features.

    AA does this mainly via the storage crunch and weird action caps. As you progress you have to collect things to assemble into other things and whatnot, and inevitably the further you go the more parts you have to store, which forces you to either abandon that aspect of the basic game and play with a big handicap or buy more storage.

    The same goes for the action caps and timers, they don't cost much to circumvent once, but they keep cropping up constantly and unless you want to drag all your projects out for ridiculous amounts of time you have to keep paying. And to top it off, even most regular gear drops are a form of lockbox and you can only open a few a day unless you pay to open more.

    Some are not quite as blatant (or as bad) but still have practices a lot worse than STO, for instance SWTOR was pretty restricted for non-subscribers with small budgets (and still is in some ways though they are slowly improving). Another example is DCUO, it used to be pay-to-win once you hit endgame in it because the only way to keep from getting one-shotted constantly in endgame was to buy their endgame armor from the cash shop (though I hear they are not quite as bad anymore).

    STO's all content free policy was an innovation when it debuted and is still a significant draw to players, it is not just the Star Trek name that does it all.

    While level-zones do tend to be geographic in a lot of games (especially fantasy ones) they don't necessarily have to be map areas, they can also be blocks of items on a quest list that are level gated, the function is the same. Similarly, the ability to go anywhere and start any quest is a form of open world, and while STO does have a few arbitrary restrictions (the ironically named "available" tab is the worst, but that something for another thread) you can skip around and do just that with almost every mission in the game.

    For example, very few of my characters have gone straight down the mission list after the obligatory starting missions, they are spread out following their own paths very nearly as much as my characters in ESO do. For instance one of them I have is a Kobali captain, who I jumped straight to the Delta quadrant missions at the very first opportunity to play it as much like her bio (which has her starting off in the Delta quadrant and being assigned to the Alliance combined fleet instead of the Kobali home defense fleet) as possible, returning to the Alpha/Beta missions afterwards (and yes, there were a few annoying roadblocks there, but not as much as I expected).

    As for running out of ideas, writers block is a real thing and sometimes there seems to be very little left to write about which causes those kind of choke points. Sometimes it takes writing out that story/script/scenario/whatever before new ideas start coming.

    In fact, that is why the Lost in Space episode The Great Vegetable Rebellion came about, due to schedule upsets the writer had only one weekend to write an episode before the deadline and couldn't think of anything but that silly idea. He struggled with the writer's block until he decided to try writing it to get it out the the way so a real idea would come, but ran out of time and had to turn it in (expecting it to be rejected), but the production side had no other option and had to run with it.

    Had DSC not come along the devs would have thought of something new after (or during) production of the ones they already had ideas for, it is just how storymaking often goes. I ran paper-and-dice RPG campaigns for years with "only a few ideas left" at a any given time for a large part of that time for instance.

    The Andoria under attack idea is good, though I am not sure how successful the rebuilding via contribution thing would be. Logistically it would probably have to be more like another reputation, (completely individual and unlocking areas and visuals for the character along the way instead of gear), rather than it being like projects in EVE Online since it is not something required for the economy to function like it is in EVE. It could work, but I don't see a lot of people actually using it.
  • paradox#7391 paradox Member Posts: 1,800 Arc User
    [STO should have been produced like a Star Trek series. 10 episode per season, each designed to last at least 45 minutes and no more than an hour. And dammit, SELL episode tokens and give LTSers a free one each time an episode is released. No more than 200 Zen per episode token and no more than 1800 Zen for a season token. INCENTIVIZE the development of REGULAR playable content. Unless it's monetized, Cryptic won't be incentivized to prioritize.

    Right now, story content feels like a bone Cryptic throws us every once in a while, when Stories were what Star Trek is driven by. If it had a revenue stream attached to it, it would be a bigger priority.

    Seems like good way to alienate 90% of Cryptic's playerbase, you do know that the Whales are the minority, if Whales were the Majority the Dil Ex wouldn't have crashed since there would have been an unlimited amount of Zen, Imagine paying for story content in a F2P game like some complete and utter moron, I'm sorry it was uncalled for but it's a stupid idea that only a Pakled would think of, I think I need to relax a bit, I hate calling out other people's BS, Everyone here knows that I rarely throw Insults at other people, but when see a stupid idea I have to call it out.
  • edited November 2021
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  • sukhothaisukhothai Member Posts: 279 Arc User
    I'm surprised players still go to Andoria, now I wish the Devs would do some cool stuff with Andoria.
  • rattler2rattler2 Member, Star Trek Online Moderator Posts: 58,688 Community Moderator
    Well... patch notes say they're fixing it tomorrow so... must have been a bug.
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    I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something CRAZY happens again?!
    The nut who actually ground out many packs. The resident forum voice of reason (I HAZ FORUM REP! YAY!)
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  • psiameesepsiameese Member Posts: 1,650 Arc User
    From tomorrow's PC Patch Notes:
    • Restored the Sector Space door accessibility into Andoria.
    Shall we mass our starships there and hold a gathering to secure planetside? :)
    (/\) Exploring Star Trek Online Since July 2008 (/\)
  • starshine#7408 starshine Member Posts: 127 Arc User
    psiameese wrote: »
    From tomorrow's PC Patch Notes:
    • Restored the Sector Space door accessibility into Andoria.
    Shall we mass our starships there and hold a gathering to secure planetside? :)

    We should all storm it, and hold mock RP battles over it. Complete with making our own phaser noises and writing overly detailed descriptions of kirk punches at each other.
    Before Discovery, Cryptic went on record to say that they were running out of ideas. How the hell can you run out of ideas when you've got one of the biggest IPs in the world and the ability to tell whatever stories you want (with CBS's authorization). Why don't CRYPTIC use the alien character creator to invent a new species we can encounter while exploring a new sector block?
    As I recall, back when I was a lurker and people were throwing around those quotes, they only said they were out of ideas for larger story arcs, not any ideas for story content in STO.

    Like it's easy to come up with ideas for major story arcs but not ones that won't diminish what's already been done, avoid conflicts with other ST projects, be popular with the player base AND have enough new ships to sell/attention grabbyness/etc to justify it to higher ups?

    I want them to a 'all this mirrorverse stuff leads to breaks into other realities' thing so they can do Interstellar versions of characters and ships, and then go wild and do all sorts of other alt-timeline stuff as that'd be easy to design stories and ships around.
    I'd just like to see UFP style ships built on Andorian and Vulcan and stuff model. And there could be lots of fun what ifs, like borgs assimilated iconian tech or stuff, or all the what ifs from that one timetravel mission but, as worlds you travel too and have atleast one mission in?
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  • naabal421#0722 naabal421 Member Posts: 162 Arc User
    edited November 2021
    Like it's easy to come up with ideas for major story arcs but not ones that won't diminish what's already been done, avoid conflicts with other ST projects, be popular with the player base AND have enough new ships to sell/attention grabbyness/etc to justify it to higher ups?

    I want them to a 'all this mirrorverse stuff leads to breaks into other realities' thing so they can do Interstellar versions of characters and ships, and then go wild and do all sorts of other alt-timeline stuff as that'd be easy to design stories and ships around. I'd just like to see UFP style ships built on Andorian and Vulcan and stuff model. And there could be lots of fun what ifs, like borgs assimilated iconian tech or stuff, or all the what ifs from that one timetravel mission but, as worlds you travel too and have atleast one mission in?
    I've seen similar comments made by devs in other games/media based on an existing IP before. The problem tends to come from wanting to respect(not sure if this is the best word) how important something was within the IP originally. Like you could write a story, using a bunch of mcguffins, to make pretty much anything from Star Trek into a big deal, but that isn't "respecting" how it was in the IP.

    There's a lot of known races in the Alpha/Beta Quadrants, but outside a handful of them like the Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, etc. none of them are shown to be a real threat/issue to the Federation. The Federation may be slightly annoyed by their actions, or want an alliance with them for overall security reasons, and they may pose a threat to the Enterprise because the Enterprise is by itself, but overall they just aren't really an issue. The same thing with the Dominion in the Gamma Quadrant. The Dominion is pretty much it, and every other race we see lives in fear of them. On the same token the Devore, or the Son'a, are just bullies in one small area of space. You could write a story about them going all Vaadwaur, but that really wouldn't be "respecting" them as they were on screen, so devs don't really consider that an option for a larger story arc.

    And TV/game audiences have largely moved away from wanting those kinds of smaller filler stories, wanting the more 10 episode, heavy narrative, arcs like we see often in modern TV. So there isn't a lot of room to squeeze a lot of this smaller stuff outside the odd patrol, or like giving us the Nomad probe in K-13.
  • paradox#7391 paradox Member Posts: 1,800 Arc User
    sukhothai wrote: »
    I'm surprised players still go to Andoria, now I wish the Devs would do some cool stuff with Andoria.

    I mean I still visit Vulcan, Andoria isn't too far away, some people like visiting their race's homeworld,
  • fleetcaptain5#1134 fleetcaptain5 Member Posts: 5,051 Arc User
    sukhothai wrote: »
    I'm surprised players still go to Andoria, now I wish the Devs would do some cool stuff with Andoria.

    I mean I still visit Vulcan, Andoria isn't too far away, some people like visiting their race's homeworld,

    I don't even have an Andorian toon, but sometimes I go there too.

    Just like Risa, Starbase 39, Defera and Vulcan. Sometimes it's nice just to enjoy the environment and fly around a bit.
  • phoenixc#0738 phoenixc Member Posts: 5,889 Arc User
    Like it's easy to come up with ideas for major story arcs but not ones that won't diminish what's already been done, avoid conflicts with other ST projects, be popular with the player base AND have enough new ships to sell/attention grabbyness/etc to justify it to higher ups?

    I want them to a 'all this mirrorverse stuff leads to breaks into other realities' thing so they can do Interstellar versions of characters and ships, and then go wild and do all sorts of other alt-timeline stuff as that'd be easy to design stories and ships around. I'd just like to see UFP style ships built on Andorian and Vulcan and stuff model. And there could be lots of fun what ifs, like borgs assimilated iconian tech or stuff, or all the what ifs from that one timetravel mission but, as worlds you travel too and have atleast one mission in?
    I've seen similar comments made by devs in other games/media based on an existing IP before. The problem tends to come from wanting to respect(not sure if this is the best word) how important something was within the IP originally. Like you could write a story, using a bunch of mcguffins, to make pretty much anything from Star Trek into a big deal, but that isn't "respecting" how it was in the IP.

    There's a lot of known races in the Alpha/Beta Quadrants, but outside a handful of them like the Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians, etc. none of them are shown to be a real threat/issue to the Federation. The Federation may be slightly annoyed by their actions, or want an alliance with them for overall security reasons, and they may pose a threat to the Enterprise because the Enterprise is by itself, but overall they just aren't really an issue. The same thing with the Dominion in the Gamma Quadrant. The Dominion is pretty much it, and every other race we see lives in fear of them. On the same token the Devore, or the Son'a, are just bullies in one small area of space. You could write a story about them going all Vaadwaur, but that really wouldn't be "respecting" them as they were on screen, so devs don't really consider that an option for a larger story arc.

    And TV/game audiences have largely moved away from wanting those kinds of smaller filler stories, wanting the more 10 episode, heavy narrative, arcs like we see often in modern TV. So there isn't a lot of room to squeeze a lot of this smaller stuff outside the odd patrol, or like giving us the Nomad probe in K-13.

    They already have the beginnings of that kind of thing in place if they decide to go that interdimensional route, they had to in order to fit the Kelvin, Prime, pre- and post Intrepid Mirror, and some of the other stuff like the temporal cold war and mixing traditional and the new prime stuff.

    And the Mirror campaign starts off in the perfect place for a thin spot in the barriers between realities because the First Federation has all the signs of being aform of Ancient Order of Protectors trope since they don't actually fit as the paranoid hermit type of society otherwise once Kirk and company finally met Balok. The thin spot the Mirror forces are taking advantage of could just be a sideshow on the very edge of the area as far as those go if the devs want to do another major Iconian style multi-year arc again, the really nasty stuff could be at the center of the cordoned off area. It is something TOS hinted at a long time ago but never followed up on.
  • naabal421#0722 naabal421 Member Posts: 162 Arc User
    edited November 2021
    They already have the beginnings of that kind of thing in place if they decide to go that interdimensional route, they had to in order to fit the Kelvin, Prime, pre- and post Intrepid Mirror, and some of the other stuff like the temporal cold war and mixing traditional and the new prime stuff.

    And the Mirror campaign starts off in the perfect place for a thin spot in the barriers between realities because the First Federation has all the signs of being aform of Ancient Order of Protectors trope since they don't actually fit as the paranoid hermit type of society otherwise once Kirk and company finally met Balok. The thin spot the Mirror forces are taking advantage of could just be a sideshow on the very edge of the area as far as those go if the devs want to do another major Iconian style multi-year arc again, the really nasty stuff could be at the center of the cordoned off area. It is something TOS hinted at a long time ago but never followed up on.
    I think there is a difference between one off jumps to the Kelvin Timeline, and a full on multi-verse mashup sort of thing @starshine#7408 suggested. I also never got that feeling about the First Federation myself, so I would be surprised if Cryptic did something like that. Especially without a canonical enemy force to use.

    I find it more likely they will just bring in the Synths from Picard, or pick up on something from Prodigy depending on how the Diviner storyline goes. Maybe wait for another season or two of the 32nd century from Discovery, and then do something there. Like Daniels calling us up and saying we have to help fix the future or w/e. Would be cool to see Vance and Kovich in STO.
  • rattler2rattler2 Member, Star Trek Online Moderator Posts: 58,688 Community Moderator
    I kinda got the feeling that while the First Federation isn't outright hostile, they kinda wanna be left alone for the most part except for some trade. I mean they love their Tranya.
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    I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something CRAZY happens again?!
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  • phoenixc#0738 phoenixc Member Posts: 5,889 Arc User
    edited November 2021
    They already have the beginnings of that kind of thing in place if they decide to go that interdimensional route, they had to in order to fit the Kelvin, Prime, pre- and post Intrepid Mirror, and some of the other stuff like the temporal cold war and mixing traditional and the new prime stuff.

    And the Mirror campaign starts off in the perfect place for a thin spot in the barriers between realities because the First Federation has all the signs of being aform of Ancient Order of Protectors trope since they don't actually fit as the paranoid hermit type of society otherwise once Kirk and company finally met Balok. The thin spot the Mirror forces are taking advantage of could just be a sideshow on the very edge of the area as far as those go if the devs want to do another major Iconian style multi-year arc again, the really nasty stuff could be at the center of the cordoned off area. It is something TOS hinted at a long time ago but never followed up on.
    I think there is a difference between one off jumps to the Kelvin Timeline, and a full on multi-verse mashup sort of thing @starshine#7408 suggested. I also never got that feeling about the First Federation myself, so I would be surprised if Cryptic did something like that. Especially without a canonical enemy force to use.

    I find it more likely they will just bring in the Synths from Picard, or pick up on something from Prodigy depending on how the Diviner storyline goes. Maybe wait for another season or two of the 32nd century from Discovery, and then do something there. Like Daniels calling us up and saying we have to help fix the future or w/e. Would be cool to see Vance and Kovich in STO.

    I don't think STO will go whole hog like @starshine#7408 suggests either, I just pointed out that they already have the framework and a minimal low-key version of it already. And that kind of thing, if done sparingly, does have a lot of potential (and conversely, too much could just cheapen everything and drain a lot of the drama out).

    As for the First Federation, I missed those clues myself for a long time. It wasn't until years later when I minored in writing and started analyzing plots and whatnot that I noticed that in The Corbomite Maneuver Balok does not fit any of the paranoid isolationist conventions, but rather more a variant of the type that TV Tropes website calls the "Ancient Order of Protectors" trope.

    In any of the paranoid ones Balok would never have taken Baily on as a "cultural exchange" observer, (which implies that there could be a chance of opening their borders to the UFP at some later date), rather he would have rebuffed the offer and warned them to never return. Taken from the AOoP perspective Balok might even have agreed to it in order to test Baily (and by extension the UFP, or at least UESPA) as possible allies if whatever they were guarding broke loose (either as a "passing the mantle" last line of defense or an eventual "strength in numbers" bringing the UFP/UESPA into the fold kind of thing).

    In that scenario, the gate (literal or figurative) that the First Federation would be sitting on and holding closed could even be something canon from TOS or one of the other series that has been seen but not recognized as a threat, whether because they are all dead in Prime and only left ruins, or some debased or devolved versions remained but that local threat was contained and assumed to be over with not knowing there was more of them (and more powerful version) waiting for their path to open up to return.
  • starshine#7408 starshine Member Posts: 127 Arc User
    I don't think they would either, I just want them too. For Federation but Andorian values reasons.
    TOS>LDS>DSC>VOY>DS9>PRO>ENT>TNG>PIC

    Bring the Enterprise XCV-330 to STO
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