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The revamped Tutorial from a long time players PoV and other issues. Spoilers
talonxv
Member Posts: 4,257 Arc User
Ok I've been playing this game since it launched F2P all those years ago. That being said this revamped tutorial for Federation(again) I think some of the additions was needed, some of it was not.
1. The Markers. For newer players this is good and hell for older vets like me, it's helpful so good on the devs for this one. This is actually a good change.
2. Making the mission straight borg. This is kinda meh. And it was a lame excuse to shoehorn Janeway into the mission. Which is actually from where I am sitting quite annoying. Mileage may vary but for me, a bridge too far. Plus you cut down poor Nog and considering Mr Eisnberg is gone now, cutting down his content is bad from my PoV.
3. The new ship interiors are quite nice. So on those I have to give thumbs up.
4. Ok this has been a thing since the game has been a thing, but I know for the tutorial for brand new players you're stuck with a Miranda. But for us longer term players, or the ones who bought the Federation startup kit for 20 bucks, we should be able to start with the Reliant instead of mid mission jumping to said reliant class for a better ship. It's a nitpick and I know it is, but come on already Cryptic. This is asinine at this point.
5. Event rewards reclaiming. Look graying out episodes and not allowing veteran players to reclaim equipment to make said tutorial easier is just flat annoying. Come on now Cryptic, that's just again asinine.
6. Caught a glitch when claiming the phaser sniper rifle. Doors wouldn't open till I had to walk away from that character from a while(like over night) then I logged in and the doors finally opened. This is even exacerbated since I was able to reclaim my platinum phaser sniper rifle and was still forced to equip the common phaser rifle. Look Cryptic, you should of programmed(yes I know it can be a nightmare) for vet players like me who are going to have unlocked account wide equipment that we can partially get to through the Zen store or under the dil reclaim(really asinine again I can reclaim some but not all.)
7. Overall you left most of the elements of the story alone which is good. But again I liked the Klingons in the opening part plus you make the break even just there without having someone like Quark be there which was kinda funny. Plus it makes the intro to the Klingon War probably a bit more jarring. You could of left that part alone, still had Nog come help us, then Janeway show up over Pollux if you truly wanted to.
8. Story continuity error. Why is Janeway on Voyager. Shouldn't that be Tuvok's ship? Why isn't Janeway on the Dauntless like on Prodigy? Wouldn't that make more sense?
I don't like the changes since Janeway's involvement was minimal and really wasn't needed. Plus some of this is a tad lazy if you ask me. But the visuals are shaper which are nice and some of the quality of life changes are good. I just ask myself, why? And at this point what's the point of the opening arc of the Federation story if the Klingon War is just being relegated more and more to the background?
1. The Markers. For newer players this is good and hell for older vets like me, it's helpful so good on the devs for this one. This is actually a good change.
2. Making the mission straight borg. This is kinda meh. And it was a lame excuse to shoehorn Janeway into the mission. Which is actually from where I am sitting quite annoying. Mileage may vary but for me, a bridge too far. Plus you cut down poor Nog and considering Mr Eisnberg is gone now, cutting down his content is bad from my PoV.
3. The new ship interiors are quite nice. So on those I have to give thumbs up.
4. Ok this has been a thing since the game has been a thing, but I know for the tutorial for brand new players you're stuck with a Miranda. But for us longer term players, or the ones who bought the Federation startup kit for 20 bucks, we should be able to start with the Reliant instead of mid mission jumping to said reliant class for a better ship. It's a nitpick and I know it is, but come on already Cryptic. This is asinine at this point.
5. Event rewards reclaiming. Look graying out episodes and not allowing veteran players to reclaim equipment to make said tutorial easier is just flat annoying. Come on now Cryptic, that's just again asinine.
6. Caught a glitch when claiming the phaser sniper rifle. Doors wouldn't open till I had to walk away from that character from a while(like over night) then I logged in and the doors finally opened. This is even exacerbated since I was able to reclaim my platinum phaser sniper rifle and was still forced to equip the common phaser rifle. Look Cryptic, you should of programmed(yes I know it can be a nightmare) for vet players like me who are going to have unlocked account wide equipment that we can partially get to through the Zen store or under the dil reclaim(really asinine again I can reclaim some but not all.)
7. Overall you left most of the elements of the story alone which is good. But again I liked the Klingons in the opening part plus you make the break even just there without having someone like Quark be there which was kinda funny. Plus it makes the intro to the Klingon War probably a bit more jarring. You could of left that part alone, still had Nog come help us, then Janeway show up over Pollux if you truly wanted to.
8. Story continuity error. Why is Janeway on Voyager. Shouldn't that be Tuvok's ship? Why isn't Janeway on the Dauntless like on Prodigy? Wouldn't that make more sense?
I don't like the changes since Janeway's involvement was minimal and really wasn't needed. Plus some of this is a tad lazy if you ask me. But the visuals are shaper which are nice and some of the quality of life changes are good. I just ask myself, why? And at this point what's the point of the opening arc of the Federation story if the Klingon War is just being relegated more and more to the background?
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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To me it makes sense to differenciate the various tutorials so they don't feel like copy/paste jobs with different paint. Each one now has its own story to tell.
At this point the only real mentions of said Klingon War that a 25th c Fed player deals with are 4 episodes in the very first story arc that mostly bring it up tangentially. They can be forgiven for not being aware that there even was a Fed-KDF War going on. The KDF starter missions aren't much better as you spend most of your time hunting traitors and going to Klingon Hell. OK you do get to raid mars. But there is not really a lot of Klingon War content anymore unless you specifically seek it out. And I'm okay with that.
The revamped Fed starter missions actually start to make the initial Borg storyline make sense once again. Almost. It would still be nice to see the whole mysterious time loop laid out somewhere so those that never experienced it as a single story can figure it out. For newer players not aware the Borg Probes you are trying to prevent from going through the vortex in Khitomer Vortex are the ones that are showing up over Vega. You're fighting the Borg tomorrow in order to prevent them from going back via a time vortex and invading Vega yesterday.
> This is the second time the Fed tutorial has been revamped. The original Tutorial had you as an ensign aboard your starter ship responding to Vega Colony and fighting the Borg. The first revamp added in elements of the Fed-Klingon War, including the Captain giving you command. Since then we had Discovery era Feds added, which has just about the same tutorial minus the Borg. This revamp has gone back to the Borg being the reason you gain command of your first ship, only you're a cadet rather than an ensign.
>
> To me it makes sense to differenciate the various tutorials so they don't feel like copy/paste jobs with different paint. Each one now has its own story to tell.
Which Rattler I do remember the OG tutorial. But I liked the one that had the Klingons first then you deal with the Borg. Made the war with the Klingons feel like an actual war.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1
Actually - as someone playing since closed beta in 2009 - this is the third revamp of the tutorial, not the second - and no you really don't want to know what the original tutorial was like - but it too was ALL Borg.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
We lost a lot of Nog and all of Quark and the Klingons, but I feel like this current tutorial is overall, a much better story. Our captain being killed was a fantastically defiant cutscene ("Lock on to my comm-badge and fire!") which the new "captain's abduction" doesn't have anywhere near the same impact. However, the new scene in Engineering with Zarva taking out the invading Borg is, quite frankly amazing, astonishing and somewhat chilling. Nicely done!
Unfortunately, it now feels very much like part 1 of a larger story arc which the "Borg Advance" storyline does nothing to resolve. The various Borg TFO's don't add anything either.
We need a second Borg story-arc which deals with a proper return to Vega to retake the colony and push back the invading Borg. Having a 4 or 5 episode arc, perhaps set after the "Terran Gambit" arc to fully resolve this story would make sense.
- What specifically was it about Vega colony that the Borg wanted the system for?
- Why was Pollux chosen as the beachhead?
- When do we get to team up with the recovered Capt. Taggart, risking a court martial to assist him in his revenge plan that Starfleet has turned down?
I started just before F2P. So unless the Beta Tutorial was completely different from what was around in I wanna say 2012... I've been through 2 tutorial revamps.
The tutorial back then was all Borg, had more stuff with the Khitomer, and everyone above Ensign player was killed by the Borg.
First revamp I know of brought in a Captain with a name who gets killed by the Klingons, who are DEEP in Federation territory I might add and are responsible for killing your Captain, and then a sudden Borg attack on Vega.
This second revamp sounds like it kinda goes back to just involving the Borg, as the DSC Fed tutorial also has the Klingons being responsible for your sudden ascention to Command of a starship. Having two Tutorials with almost the exact same detail on how you got command would probably feel like a copy/paste with a different coat.
Also as someone who didn't play the original Borg one it kind of flows better as you go from a Borg threat into dealing with another Borg threat rather then going from a Klingon Threat with no indication of Borg presence into a full on Invasion by the Borg.
Also it matches the story better as the UFP/KE war was at point of stalemate so them sending attacks to system that was fairly close to Sol and SF HQ not being aware and telling cadet cruises to stay clear of the system doesn't really make sense (we don't know just how old the debris field is).
However if it's either an older battle or bigger battle that was repulsed with casualties it would explain why the system was considered safe enough to not be out of bounds for a training ship and would explain why Borg were there too (harvesting the wrecks of technology they could use on their ships).
The first was all Borg, you started as an ensign watching a fight between a whole Starfleet Fleet and the Borg from a lounge (and I think the Vega colony was already being attacked and assimilated), then you boarded the Khitomer and interacted a lot with the EMH (who was incredibly arrogant, even saying in the end "I'm sure you now consider me as a mentor or even father figure")), before coming back to your ship only to have the senior crew killed/assimilated while you were away, then you helped some ships before heading to Vega, except you weren't the only one to have arrived to help (which is where the last scene of the (severely outdated) trailer/intro comes from) and you disabled a thingie and were ordered to report back to ESD.
Also, the monologue of Spock/Nimoy directly mentioned the Vega colony getting attacked before it was removed with the revamp.
The second was similar to the third one as it involved the Klingons capturing and killing your Captain before the Borg showed up, except it had basic animations, non-canon VA and you had a career-specific objective during the ground part on your ship.
The third was similar but with better cutscenes, Qwark as the captain of the Break Even, and Nog in the Chimera.
And now, the current one, where Janeway is added, the Break Even is a lure, and your assimilated captain is fought and survives.
I don't recall Q ever having been part of the tutorial not even the first version I never played myself, there did use to be a Q based mission where you were ported to the Battle Wolf 359 on the Saratoga, you might be mixing the old tutorial with that as they both involved fighting the Borg on a Starfleet ship
Yea. We did have a mission involving Q and the Borg. If I recall... Q said something about the Iconians sending 25th Century Borg Drones back in time to Wolf 359 aboard USS Saratoga to disrupt the timeline by removing Sisko. But given what we know of the Iconians now... it doesn't make sense.
i swap miranda to prototype cruiser from discovery sp at first opportunity, because 4/3 weapon slot is sure better than 2/1 on miranda. this makes playing tutorials and low levels really fun, especially if you stuff it with prolonged engagement set from dil store reclaim and plasma weapons from Mudd. for same reason i got myself "light" gamma vanguard pack. default ship is trash placed there to make you think that you need better ship as soon as possible. why i can't chose what ship to fly like Jem'Hadar, B4 i get to space???
also there is annoying detail regarding romulan start of game. when we'll be able to discard Tovan? i don't like him, i don't care about him, i found his sister and now i want him out of my ship. if you force me to have him, i would like you to forse yrself to add me a free boff slot.
Refer to the FCT thread regarding the removal of Tovan Khev. Thank you.
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The tutorials are short enough not to need an introduction to the full "rogue's gallery". Give us a single enemy and try to craft a story around them.
Janeway? Yeah, not so much.
They had already done one revamp and added Nog and LaForge and so on to the tutorial, so if you are keeping those components in, why change out the voice actors?
And while I see the rank appeal to nostalgia, as mentioned previously the Voyager is now Tuvok's ship so Janeway has no business on that ship anyway. Poorly done there. Should have left the other voice actors and their ships in there.
You can (and have) added more Janeway elsewhere. The only "official" Nog voice acting is what has already been recorded. You can, I suppose, add recorded dialogue from the show as you have done in some other episodes, but removing it here just because you think that Janeway is the new hotness is short-sighted and even disrespectful in my opinion.
=============
*Now my general voice acting rant.
Leonard Nimoy came in early on to provide some general voice-over work (our "State of the Sector" briefings) and a little extra after we saved the Enterprise from time-travelling Klingons if memory serves.
Zachary Quinto was there to play the aforementioned Medical Hologram.
Now even the minor characters can be overpowering and so very unprofessional in their behavior through the power of voice acting. Our Captains have no voice, so having to listen to every minor character spouting off about all sorts of nonsense can be very jarring.
Whenever established characters are brought in it's now, to me, too often to take the spotlight away from our characters.
Janeway had her time. 7 of 9 had her time. All of those characters had their time. Their own shows.
This game is our Captain's show. Let them have the spotlight.
Janeway making an appearance to send our characters on some mission? Reappearing at the end when we report back? Even appearing on comms somewhere in the middle to recieve an update?
All that is fine, but leave her wherever she is.
In general I think this about all "guest stars". It just feels like an excuse to have the actors spout a ton of dialogue during the missions to activate nostalgia.
It reminds me that my Captain has no voice, that my Captain is often forced to act incompetently or at least be clueless so as to allow the "guest stars" to guide me through the mission (and to render my bridge officers useless because they have no voices either and I can not send them to do their jobs... It would be real nice if I could order a tactical BOFF to go and bring the weapons online, a science BOFF to take some readings, or an engineering BOFF to restore warp power, but not only can I not do those things, but the game has largely forgotten specialty-specific missions so my Captain can not detour to do one thing while another Captain might take a different detour based upon their specialty. Too many resources for "limited" benefit, I suppose.
I wonder how many resources go into paying voice actors to speak so much extra dialogue, or how much development time is spent including so many extra characters in all the missions they go on now.
Maybe I am crazy here, but wouldn't it be cool if our BOFFs all had voices? They had a bunch of all-purpose lines that they could speak? "Look out Captain!", "Losing shields sir!", "Effecting Repairs.", and so on?
And wouldn't it be even cooler if we could pick from a number of different voices?
And maybe even have those voices be actors from the shows?
For my part I kinda picture one of my characters sounding like Jewel Staite (Best known for her roles in Firefly and Stargate Atlantis). But that's just me.
From a more practical standpoint... there's less work needed to have every detail of the game fully voiced, and less space required. Because of how things are right now... any VO work has to be from SAG members, hence why we haven't had ANY new VO work for Captain Kurland.
> As a long-time player myself, I like the focus of the tutorial now. Of course, the same could be said of the original tutorial with Zachary Quinto as a medical hologram*.
>
> The tutorials are short enough not to need an introduction to the full "rogue's gallery". Give us a single enemy and try to craft a story around them.
>
> Janeway? Yeah, not so much.
> They had already done one revamp and added Nog and LaForge and so on to the tutorial, so if you are keeping those components in, why change out the voice actors?
> And while I see the rank appeal to nostalgia, as mentioned previously the Voyager is now Tuvok's ship so Janeway has no business on that ship anyway. Poorly done there. Should have left the other voice actors and their ships in there.
> You can (and have) added more Janeway elsewhere. The only "official" Nog voice acting is what has already been recorded. You can, I suppose, add recorded dialogue from the show as you have done in some other episodes, but removing it here just because you think that Janeway is the new hotness is short-sighted and even disrespectful in my opinion.
>
> =============
>
> *Now my general voice acting rant.
> Leonard Nimoy came in early on to provide some general voice-over work (our "State of the Sector" briefings) and a little extra after we saved the Enterprise from time-travelling Klingons if memory serves.
> Zachary Quinto was there to play the aforementioned Medical Hologram.
>
> Now even the minor characters can be overpowering and so very unprofessional in their behavior through the power of voice acting. Our Captains have no voice, so having to listen to every minor character spouting off about all sorts of nonsense can be very jarring.
> Whenever established characters are brought in it's now, to me, too often to take the spotlight away from our characters.
>
> Janeway had her time. 7 of 9 had her time. All of those characters had their time. Their own shows.
> This game is our Captain's show. Let them have the spotlight.
>
> Janeway making an appearance to send our characters on some mission? Reappearing at the end when we report back? Even appearing on comms somewhere in the middle to recieve an update?
>
> All that is fine, but leave her wherever she is.
>
> In general I think this about all "guest stars". It just feels like an excuse to have the actors spout a ton of dialogue during the missions to activate nostalgia.
> It reminds me that my Captain has no voice, that my Captain is often forced to act incompetently or at least be clueless so as to allow the "guest stars" to guide me through the mission (and to render my bridge officers useless because they have no voices either and I can not send them to do their jobs... It would be real nice if I could order a tactical BOFF to go and bring the weapons online, a science BOFF to take some readings, or an engineering BOFF to restore warp power, but not only can I not do those things, but the game has largely forgotten specialty-specific missions so my Captain can not detour to do one thing while another Captain might take a different detour based upon their specialty. Too many resources for "limited" benefit, I suppose.
>
> I wonder how many resources go into paying voice actors to speak so much extra dialogue, or how much development time is spent including so many extra characters in all the missions they go on now.
>
> Maybe I am crazy here, but wouldn't it be cool if our BOFFs all had voices? They had a bunch of all-purpose lines that they could speak? "Look out Captain!", "Losing shields sir!", "Effecting Repairs.", and so on?
>
> And wouldn't it be even cooler if we could pick from a number of different voices?
>
> And maybe even have those voices be actors from the shows?
I'll give you some of the guest stars feel a bit forced and overwehlming. But a few others do blend very nicely into your adventures and add a bit of authenticity. It all depends on how they are used.
The use of Janeway is all over the place. I get why as she is the first of the major Captain's to join us. But some sections with her work better than others. She would have been better left to the mid and late tier stories as something to highlight the gravity of the situation to the player. Throwing her at us in the tutorial, then leaving her silently standing around through everything else was hamfisted.
Not fully voiced.
A selectable voice that would sound off once in a while. A lot of pre-recorded and re-usable comments.
Say one of a few lines whenever you issued an order to one or more BOFFs. One of a few lines when you enter combat. One of a few lines when you accept and turn in a mission. One of a few lines when you activate a Captain power. That sort of thing.
And if you could pick the voice from among a number, a dozen or so male and female voices, I'm sure that most of us could find something that didn't suck, and then if they wanted to add more substantial dialogue for special occasions then that would be okay, too.
But no, not fully voiced. I never said fully voiced.
It's already been mentioned by the devs why they won't be doing this, and at this point, I'm surprised we haven't already added it to the FCT.
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> Not fully voiced.
>
> A selectable voice that would sound off once in a while. A lot of pre-recorded and re-usable comments.
> Say one of a few lines whenever you issued an order to one or more BOFFs. One of a few lines when you enter combat. One of a few lines when you accept and turn in a mission. One of a few lines when you activate a Captain power. That sort of thing.
>
> And if you could pick the voice from among a number, a dozen or so male and female voices, I'm sure that most of us could find something that didn't suck, and then if they wanted to add more substantial dialogue for special occasions then that would be okay, too.
>
> But no, not fully voiced. I never said fully voiced.
They could add 100 male & female voices and you would still have someone complain that there wasn't such & such accent.
A simple way to avoid that problem is to have a checkbox or whatever to turn off character voicing. Also, there are a lot of realistic text readers that can use metadata in the text file to do realistic voice acting (there is even at least one system called Vocaloid that can actually sing by inputting lyrics and melody notation) that could be used and would offer a large number of options without having to bring in dozens of voice actors for every new scenario to voice the player character.
for all she did and happened under her command at delta quadrant, she should be at that iccy klingon hellhole forever. she should be there just because of waking up a race of warcraving maniacal lizards and 7o9 should be her cellmate. UFP/Starfleet command should point finger at them and tell as never do anything like that. whole delta quadrant story arc is about fixing consequenses of her "voyage" but somehow she is admiral...
Tuvok must be at her place in new tutorial. he is reliable, reasonable, trustworthy and he understand importance of doing things right. he is coolest admiral in this game, Tuvok for this game is like Spok for TOS.
Seven of Nine is responsible for waking up the Vaadwaur not Captain Janeway. Janeway opposed Seven's actions. Seven apologized for her actions and tried to make it right.