Don't think that mission has hit consoles yet. Generally, we're several months to a year behind, from what I've read on the wiki.
Anyway, for my characters;
My main is a human female named Serena Blake, tactical specialty. Flies the Jack Rabbit-F (all of her ships leveling up were the Jack Rabbit, with a letter added, per Starfleet's naming convention), a Defiant Class Escort. Or as that class is better known around here, the U.S.S. Ben Sisko's Mother Fuckin Pimp Hand. On the ground, I've actually turned her into a melee specialist, using a Tsunkatse Falchion of Epic quality, something which amuses me given how much stronger many aliens in the Trek universe tend to be than humans, I get a kick out of this human girl kicking their asses consistently.
On the Romulan side, a Reman Science officer named Heila. She rocks a T6 Scimitar Dreadnaught.
For the KDF, An Orion engineer named Zaslu. Currently using a Destroyer, though I haven't been able to find a Klingon ship I'm completely happy with.
And my TOS era Captain is a Vulcan science officer named Araal, flying an Intrepid class Science ship, with a TOS era interior. In fact, the whole crew are still wearing TOS era uniforms (I like the mini skirts). My head canon is that the entire crew is actually temporally displaced in some way, even those who didn't originate in the 23rd century.
Star Trek Online
Re: Star Trek Online
Subtle is exactly the word I'd use for describing absolutely no aspect of STO. The writing in that game aspires to be as good as that on Voyager.
Every mission arc I've played reads like meandering "wouldn't it be great to see X again?" fan fiction, intent on weaving every aspect of every one-off episode in the franchise into these "Hidden Mastermind Villain" stories, or else it's just surfacing some forgotten side character to exposit and subsequently disappear back into a Deus Ex Machina ending. Antagonists always beam away cackling while the player is helpless to stop them. There's certainly a place for this kind of thing, and it obviously has an audience, but to me it's always felt out of place because Star Trek very rarely attempted to tell larger stories and certainly never the sort of never-ending escalation of threat that seems more at home in Western Comics than on primetime TV of the 1990s. It's hard to not feel dramatically cheated at the end of even their better stories.
This is a game where the developers had to be nagged by players into even adding the ship interiors as an explorable location, and when they did it was as barebones as possible. It's no surprise then that they have deliberately changed the franchise setting to be one of perpetual war and focused the game largely on combat (and this has only gotten worse over the years as they remove more of the non-combat missions). The galactic political map has become so convoluted that it's barely recognizable to a Trek fan, except in name only. The primary interactions of the game are either scripted sequences, or shooting.
Your character starts (through the usual antics of an emergency field promotion) as the Captain of a starship despite being a Lieutenant in rank, working your way up through all the sub-types of Admiral, and every promotion brings with it a brand new ship. You're expected to constantly be churning that ship, and your bridge officers, replacing them as ones with better stats come along. Absolutely no attachment to ship and crew (like the sort seen in every incarnation of the show and movies) is permitted; doing so will hamper your ability to play. At no point is it obvious that Star Trek was considered in how it might be implemented as an MMO. Instead it seems far more that the WoW-style MMO formula was roughly thrust into a Starfleet uniform and shoved out into space.
Playing it during the beta, it was painfully obvious that they had taken their previous game, Champions Online, and placed a very very thin skin of Star Trek visuals (which at the time were not even particularly evocative of Trek -- something they have improved upon since a great deal) over that existing system. It has thankfully evolved much, but it retains enough of that foundation that it still never truly feels like Star Trek.
Despite getting actual professional actors (cynically reprising their on-screen roles as marketing stunts) they sound so unnatural and stilted they are often unrecognizable. It's consistent with the rest of the incidental voice acting in the game, so I can only assume the voice director is to blame.
At best, the game feels like a Trek game made and written by people who are more familiar with Trek through cultural memes than the actual material, could only stomach watching parts of Voyager for reference, and get all of their ideas by skimming Memory Alpha for dropped plot threads they can turn into strange, new, gnarled stories. Once it went free-to-play, the addition of a fourth-wall-breaking store where every interesting aspect of game was placed behind a paywall made it clear that the people running it are also aspiring Ferengi.
I know there are a lot of people who enjoy it, but for me, every time I've played it I've been left with a deep disappointment at nearly every aspect of its execution.
Every mission arc I've played reads like meandering "wouldn't it be great to see X again?" fan fiction, intent on weaving every aspect of every one-off episode in the franchise into these "Hidden Mastermind Villain" stories, or else it's just surfacing some forgotten side character to exposit and subsequently disappear back into a Deus Ex Machina ending. Antagonists always beam away cackling while the player is helpless to stop them. There's certainly a place for this kind of thing, and it obviously has an audience, but to me it's always felt out of place because Star Trek very rarely attempted to tell larger stories and certainly never the sort of never-ending escalation of threat that seems more at home in Western Comics than on primetime TV of the 1990s. It's hard to not feel dramatically cheated at the end of even their better stories.
This is a game where the developers had to be nagged by players into even adding the ship interiors as an explorable location, and when they did it was as barebones as possible. It's no surprise then that they have deliberately changed the franchise setting to be one of perpetual war and focused the game largely on combat (and this has only gotten worse over the years as they remove more of the non-combat missions). The galactic political map has become so convoluted that it's barely recognizable to a Trek fan, except in name only. The primary interactions of the game are either scripted sequences, or shooting.
Your character starts (through the usual antics of an emergency field promotion) as the Captain of a starship despite being a Lieutenant in rank, working your way up through all the sub-types of Admiral, and every promotion brings with it a brand new ship. You're expected to constantly be churning that ship, and your bridge officers, replacing them as ones with better stats come along. Absolutely no attachment to ship and crew (like the sort seen in every incarnation of the show and movies) is permitted; doing so will hamper your ability to play. At no point is it obvious that Star Trek was considered in how it might be implemented as an MMO. Instead it seems far more that the WoW-style MMO formula was roughly thrust into a Starfleet uniform and shoved out into space.
Playing it during the beta, it was painfully obvious that they had taken their previous game, Champions Online, and placed a very very thin skin of Star Trek visuals (which at the time were not even particularly evocative of Trek -- something they have improved upon since a great deal) over that existing system. It has thankfully evolved much, but it retains enough of that foundation that it still never truly feels like Star Trek.
Despite getting actual professional actors (cynically reprising their on-screen roles as marketing stunts) they sound so unnatural and stilted they are often unrecognizable. It's consistent with the rest of the incidental voice acting in the game, so I can only assume the voice director is to blame.
At best, the game feels like a Trek game made and written by people who are more familiar with Trek through cultural memes than the actual material, could only stomach watching parts of Voyager for reference, and get all of their ideas by skimming Memory Alpha for dropped plot threads they can turn into strange, new, gnarled stories. Once it went free-to-play, the addition of a fourth-wall-breaking store where every interesting aspect of game was placed behind a paywall made it clear that the people running it are also aspiring Ferengi.
I know there are a lot of people who enjoy it, but for me, every time I've played it I've been left with a deep disappointment at nearly every aspect of its execution.
Re: Star Trek Online
Guys, the word subtle was in quotes for a reason. It was a rather blatant allegory for the US, conflicting news stories, Trump in charge, and showing how that can affect a place.
Re: Star Trek Online
Painfully, I must concur with Deledrius (in general: I mean: I got the sarcasm about "subtle", even though I'm not familiar with that particular mission). I've played the game on-and-off for years, and it just never entirely worked for me. It's a VERY theme park sort of game in ways that not only prevent immersion, but actively contradict the feel and look of the source material, and the writing is SUPER cheap and shallow.
As a Trek fan, I really, really wanted to like it, and still re-download it every once in a while to give it another go. But I always end up playing it for only one or two sessions before deleting it off the hard drive again. Pretty much everything Del said, while harsh, is true. The only thing in his post I'd disagree with is the bit about having to churn through bridge officers. I suppose a power gamer might do that, but it isn't necessary unless you're trying to climb the PVP lederboards or something like that. I've kept with all the ones the game randomly assigned me as I rose through the levels, and it never hurt me. In fact, that sense of familiarity with my bridge crews is probably the most legit Star-Trek feeling thing about my experience with the game.
And to his list of issues, I'd add that the game is very poorly maintained on a technical level. Every new wave of content comes with a wave of bugs and broken features. That's kind of normal for MMOs, but where STO is "special" is that none of those ever get fixed. Since I first started the game way back when, the list of broken/bugged stuff has snowballed. Nothing ever gets fixed unless it's urgently game breaking. The sense I gathered from the little bits of info that would filter through from the devs on the official forums back in the day was that the game is run by a skeleton crew. There is no maintenance team, and any bugfixing basically gets done on the occasional lunchbreak by the people who spend all their regular time building the next batch of lock-box ships (or whatever).
One of the coolest features of the game is the Foundry: a system where players can build missions for other players to play. It was a brilliant idea, and the best Foundry missions tended to be head ans shoulders above the official ones in writing and creativity. But the Foundry gets treated even worse than the main game when it comes to dev maintenance. The in-game menu for finding foundry missions practically punishes both players and makers, and the system for actually making missions is a shambles held together with chewing gum. One of the reasons I first left the game after playing for a year was because after deciding to try my hand at the foundry, two of the maps I'd spent hours upon hours building (an incredibly agonizing process with the terrible tools provided) got completely broken by bugs incidental to the (then) latest update. This painfully shattered all the enthusiasm I'd built up while working on those maps. Why bother pouring myself into wrestling with the Foundry, when anything I make it could not only be undone at any time, but undone in a way that made it impossible to rebuild anything like it again?
That was I wanna say at least 5 years ago. I redownloaded the game this week as a result of this thread, checked my old stuff in the Foundry, googled to double check, and yep: those same features are STILL broken (along with a bunch of other stuff broken in the interim which is also apparently never getting fixed). I think in all the time since I first played the game, I've only ever seen ONE non-game breaking emergency level bug ever actually get fixed (the "white-out" nebulae in Borg incursion space).
The sad thing, to my mind, is that there are other MMORPG's I can point to that do well all the Star Trek-ish stuff this game is lacking, so there's no real excuses other than that the company(s) in charge of this one either didn't have the ambition, or didn't have the competence.
As a Trek fan, I really, really wanted to like it, and still re-download it every once in a while to give it another go. But I always end up playing it for only one or two sessions before deleting it off the hard drive again. Pretty much everything Del said, while harsh, is true. The only thing in his post I'd disagree with is the bit about having to churn through bridge officers. I suppose a power gamer might do that, but it isn't necessary unless you're trying to climb the PVP lederboards or something like that. I've kept with all the ones the game randomly assigned me as I rose through the levels, and it never hurt me. In fact, that sense of familiarity with my bridge crews is probably the most legit Star-Trek feeling thing about my experience with the game.
And to his list of issues, I'd add that the game is very poorly maintained on a technical level. Every new wave of content comes with a wave of bugs and broken features. That's kind of normal for MMOs, but where STO is "special" is that none of those ever get fixed. Since I first started the game way back when, the list of broken/bugged stuff has snowballed. Nothing ever gets fixed unless it's urgently game breaking. The sense I gathered from the little bits of info that would filter through from the devs on the official forums back in the day was that the game is run by a skeleton crew. There is no maintenance team, and any bugfixing basically gets done on the occasional lunchbreak by the people who spend all their regular time building the next batch of lock-box ships (or whatever).
One of the coolest features of the game is the Foundry: a system where players can build missions for other players to play. It was a brilliant idea, and the best Foundry missions tended to be head ans shoulders above the official ones in writing and creativity. But the Foundry gets treated even worse than the main game when it comes to dev maintenance. The in-game menu for finding foundry missions practically punishes both players and makers, and the system for actually making missions is a shambles held together with chewing gum. One of the reasons I first left the game after playing for a year was because after deciding to try my hand at the foundry, two of the maps I'd spent hours upon hours building (an incredibly agonizing process with the terrible tools provided) got completely broken by bugs incidental to the (then) latest update. This painfully shattered all the enthusiasm I'd built up while working on those maps. Why bother pouring myself into wrestling with the Foundry, when anything I make it could not only be undone at any time, but undone in a way that made it impossible to rebuild anything like it again?
That was I wanna say at least 5 years ago. I redownloaded the game this week as a result of this thread, checked my old stuff in the Foundry, googled to double check, and yep: those same features are STILL broken (along with a bunch of other stuff broken in the interim which is also apparently never getting fixed). I think in all the time since I first played the game, I've only ever seen ONE non-game breaking emergency level bug ever actually get fixed (the "white-out" nebulae in Borg incursion space).
The sad thing, to my mind, is that there are other MMORPG's I can point to that do well all the Star Trek-ish stuff this game is lacking, so there's no real excuses other than that the company(s) in charge of this one either didn't have the ambition, or didn't have the competence.
Re: Star Trek Online
I used to play STO quite heavily, but I burnt out on it back in 2015 and have barely been back. I haven't even tried out the new Tsenkethi-related missions. Some of the stories are interesting, but some are dumb as bricks. The game's got bug issues. The way Borg adaptation works in ground combat makes me want to find the people who conceived it and smack them repeatedly for introducing false difficulty just to "make the Borg like the show" with that fucking magic adaptation bullshit I hate so much.
I think the most fun I've gotten out of it in the last two years was joking around and actually managing to make accurate versions of Korra and Asami from Legend of Korra in the character creator.
I won't entirely hate on them for how obvious their use of the Champions Online engine (and character emotes) is, given what I recall of the reasons. I can't remember my source for it, but IIRC, Cryptic got screwed a bit when they bought the license and rights for STO from Perpetual, with the latter refusing to hand over actual coding work for the game, just the rights and some concept art and such (plus Michael A. Martin's hit-and-miss STO novel, which ended up being out of continuity with Cryptic's story for STO). They were running low on time to get the game on the market before the license expired so they ended up borrowing heavily from CO to get the game out on time. Hence all of the STO emotes with exaggerated movements that fit a Comics homage MMORPG better than Star Trek.
I think the most fun I've gotten out of it in the last two years was joking around and actually managing to make accurate versions of Korra and Asami from Legend of Korra in the character creator.
I won't entirely hate on them for how obvious their use of the Champions Online engine (and character emotes) is, given what I recall of the reasons. I can't remember my source for it, but IIRC, Cryptic got screwed a bit when they bought the license and rights for STO from Perpetual, with the latter refusing to hand over actual coding work for the game, just the rights and some concept art and such (plus Michael A. Martin's hit-and-miss STO novel, which ended up being out of continuity with Cryptic's story for STO). They were running low on time to get the game on the market before the license expired so they ended up borrowing heavily from CO to get the game out on time. Hence all of the STO emotes with exaggerated movements that fit a Comics homage MMORPG better than Star Trek.
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia
Administrator of SFD, Former Spacebattles Super-Mod, Veteran Chatnik. And multiverse crossover-loving writer, of course!
Administrator of SFD, Former Spacebattles Super-Mod, Veteran Chatnik. And multiverse crossover-loving writer, of course!
Re: Star Trek Online
I got the sarcasm. It just seemed like a perfect way to sum up everything that frustrates me with their storytelling, so I followed up from the previous posts...FaxModem1 wrote:Guys, the word subtle was in quotes for a reason. It was a rather blatant allegory for the US, conflicting news stories, Trump in charge, and showing how that can affect a place.
I agree! Even being as broken as it is, some of the things I've played in STO that have come closest to feeling like Star Trek were some missions made by fans. They are still often hampered by the limitations, but I've gotten the sense that at least some of them were desperately trying to make it work.Nessus wrote:One of the coolest features of the game is the Foundry
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KesaraRiku
- Redshirt
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Re: Star Trek Online
I've played it. I had my fun, hate the lockbox stuff and in general I hate Free to play games.
Some of the stories are good, some are meh. But it used to be a lot Worse. Bugs a plenty. Rp is hit or miss with Starfleet Dental still doing their best to be the biggest pricks in the game. If you want the best ships with the best bridge crew layouts, be prepared to shell out.
In general Want to love the game, But I hate Cryptic and their Perfect World Overlords.
Some of the stories are good, some are meh. But it used to be a lot Worse. Bugs a plenty. Rp is hit or miss with Starfleet Dental still doing their best to be the biggest pricks in the game. If you want the best ships with the best bridge crew layouts, be prepared to shell out.
In general Want to love the game, But I hate Cryptic and their Perfect World Overlords.
