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tentonhammer The Klingon Kontroversy
Focus*Bankai
Member Posts: 219
www.tentonhammer.com/node/78277
the absolute BEST part of the whole article and they sum it up quite nicely.
Getting back to the 2,000 replies, this sort of forum overreaction embodies what a mockery beta has become. Every gasbag thinks he or she has the complete picture of the game by virtue of focus-testing a small part of the game a few hours each week, then reacts with outrage when the overall reality doesn't fit the picture in their head. What's the endgame? Developers will be increasingly unwilling to talk to anyone about their games in the future for fear of a sales snarling, pre-launch insurrection, and absolutely everything they say will pass through the PR filter. That means less information of any kind, even honest-to-goodness info, in favor of a sliced-and-diced, pre-packaged glib perception of the game prior to launch.
If that's what you all want, keep flaming. Keep interpreting dev comments on in-development games as gospel truth, instead of a snapshot of their current thinking. They're just after your pre-order money and box costs, right? Nevermind that they only make money with ongoing monthly subscriptions, threaten to cancel your pre-orders before you have the whole story
. In other words, be the asshats the Internet allows you to be, and see if devs don't give you less of a say in how these games turn out.
Comments
Am a Huge Star Trek fan and sadly they lost me at instanced pvp, as this in my opinion takes away from the idea behind Star Trek combat, in that you could be surprised at any moment by a Borg cube or a Romulan Warbird decloaking next to you.
No player Borg cubes
No player Romulan Warbird
No Cardassian Cruisers
Or at least none for players.
All of which is a bigger problem for many critics.
there are tons of room in the st universe for expansions to include the different races. however i dont think they will let a player become borg thats like giving him a I WIN button.
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
Final Fantasy 7
Edit: I am withdrawing my complaint since it turns out there will be a story reason for why the borg are so weak.
To clarify, I was so much refering to the lack of factions, but more to the pvp game mechanics, as in you will have no surprises because you know you are in a pvp area which is equivalent to dualing someone in my opinion.
Well, they kinda have to have limits on where you can and can't pvp, that's just what most MMO players prefer. Even on WoW's "pvp servers" there is only pvp in designated areas, otherwise you have to "flag" yourself first.
As far as Romulans and Borg and the like, there are perfectly valid story reasons why those factions aren't playable and are sorta "sitting out" of the whole galactic conflict at the moment. (ie, the Romulans recovering from the destruction of their homeworld, the loss of their leaders, etc) Though it is quite possible these could become available down the road.
I think the writer of the article has a very good point. Klingons are supposed to be a hardened warrior society, they don't do diplomacy or deliver care packages or anything like that. They conquer, and the strong survive. PvP based gameplay just makes sense for them.
"Because it's easier to nitpick something than to be constructive." -roach5000
I think it's absolutely moronic. Just because the Klingons have a warrior society doesn't automatically translate to a PvP gameplay marriage. Klingons have plenty of diplomats. They have plenty of folks flying transports. They have plenty of people making buildings and other infrastructure. Ships, weapons, raising animals for food, making bloodwine.
No, there is nothing attached to "being Klingon" that translates to PvP only or PvP predominantly. The Klingons have a thriving culture from which a ton of episodic content can be made.
Now, I understand the time constraints that Cryptic is under and why they are, in my view, short changing the Klingon faction. I don't agree, but I understand. That said, for some to try to sit there and justify that because the Klingons have a warrior society it makes sense for them to be PvP heavy...ludicrous. Completely, utterly, ludicrous.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Chavez y Chavez
That reasoning is heavily flawed.
Klingons DO deal with primitive cultures. They don't engage in Fed-style diplomacy, but they add new worlds through conquest/vassalage/etc. That can only be done via PvE. They ARE having a conflict with the Romulans in the Lore of the game, that can't be done without PvE atm. This conflict is WHY they and the Feds aren't friends anymore, yet you can't even experience that conflict. They Klingons have a rich culture and PvP has always been a crappy way of detailing any sort of story, and there's certainly a lot going on in Klingon society atm. That needs PvE.
To say nothing of the fact that the "strong survive" bit and attacking the Federation (and other houses) can also be shown with PvE (but no, you can't fight the Feds unless players are around...so even though Klingons do raids, you can't do those without the Federation magically having enough people there to defend).
Overall this doesn't fit the Lore even of the game, let alone fit Klingons well. The idea that it does is a myth that falls apart after a fairly trivial amount of thought.
I do not agree with making Klingons this way. All races need to be able to do what the others can, with exception of classes but you should still be able to perform all the same functions. I really think they need to give this another six months. Star Trek is an American legacy, it is huge, and should be given a proper MMO.
I understand their thinking about the klingon faction but I really do think this was just a matter of not enough time to do all the federation PVE story line and to be able to do a klingon story line. They couldn't just cut and paste the federation pve into the klingon pve because they are so different culturely. I suspect if there is enough demand for it that it will be added over time. Its a shame they couldn't get it in at the start though, but at this moment, I plan on playing federation anyway and any further delay would sadden me. So i feel for those folks wanting to play klingon but I am selfish and want to play the game now and not wait for 1-6 months for them to do the stories for klingons.
This game has been riding the hype cycle since it was announced. That hype cycle comes from the developers who are trying to whip up interest in their game in a market that is 1) getting saturated and 2) dominated by one game that shows no sign of going away. But here is the problem with the Hype Cycle. It can backfire and in this case it did. It blew up in Cryptic's face like a warp core breach. Why? There are several reasons.
First stop viewing this in a vaccuum. Look at the state of the MMO industry as a whole at the moment.
You've got a player base that is pretty restless at the moment. The playerbase of MMOs has been badly burned by the turkies that have been foisted on them as MMOs recently. It's caused a lot of rancor and, rightly or wrongly, it's gotten to be an "us" vrs. "them" mentality. It's a general perception that developers and development companies are trying to shove crap down the throats of the gaming public and as a result the gamers now completely mistrust the developers and the development process.
Now lets focus a little more on Cryptic themselves. Cryptic basically turned STO beta testing into nothing but an extended advertising campaign. They used it as a way to accelerate the hype surrounding a game building toward launch. Cryptic basically sold closed beta spots in STO by telling people "Buy a lifetime subscription to Champion's Online and we'll put you in Closed Beta for STO!" Maybe I'm just cynical but that seems a little cynical on the part of Cryptic, using the hype for STO to drive sales for CO. Maybe it's good business, but it can definately leave a bad taste in consumer's mouths.
And lets not underestimate the impact of that little tid bit. Cryptic Studios recently released Champions Online and it was something less than a raging success. Now they've sold people lifetime subscriptions to CO so they can log into closed beta and find out that they don't want to play STO either. I can't say I'd blame those people if they had something foul to say if STO didn't exactly floor them.
Add this to the fact that Star Trek might be one of the most iconic IPs available. People are wild about Star Trek. It's become a piece of Americana. A lot of people feel vested in this and if someone doesn't, in there opinion, do justice to Star Trek then by gods their going to let that person know it.
Now comes the members of Cryptic Studio spewing damage control with classic doublespeak, vague statements and promises to make it all better. Doesn't it defy credulity to imagine that anyone would believe the crappy line that, "well Klingons should be PvP centric" when Cryptic has been touting how wonderful it's Genesis PvE content is. Let me translate this into a language someone who isn't in the business can understand and maybe it will make sense why everyone is up in arms. "If you buy the game you can either play one race and have access to all the content, or you can play another and not have access to the content. Either way you pay the same amount for the box and the subscription." Then after that they have the nerve to say, "Oh, you want some of that too? Well just tell us what you want and we'll put it in because that's the wonderful thing about MMOs!" And this is the final slap because when you have "haves" and "have nots" classically the "have nots" want what the "haves" have and if you ask the "have nots" what they want they're going to scream, "Dummy we want what you gave the other guy! Aren't you the developers? Aren't you getting paid to figure this out? Why do I have to ask for what the other side got without asking?"
Add all this together and you've got a nice foundation for a PR disaster. Say what you want, but against this backdrop a development company and every other development company has to expect problems if they're not going to deliever the goods originally advertised. Maybe, since everyone is so keen on copying Blizzard, they should follow the Blizzard model and not release something before it's ready to be exactly what Blizzard and it's customers expect it to be.
So excuse me if I don't get all weepy and chastened by the predictions of this article. In my opinion for too long we gamers have settled for increasing hype of decreasing quality and if Cryptic is getting kicked in the wallet because they failed to see what is so plain to everyone else then that's their business SNAFU. In my opinion people in the media that cover the genre have been softballing this stuff for too long and have been complicit in driving the hype cycle for the studios.
And now this article tells me, "shut up, nOOb. You should be glad for the scraps they throw you"? I don't get it. What are you pissed because we gamers are not playing our roll in driving the hype cycle to suck other gamers into these vortexes of bad games and just sitting down to another night of half baked and half produced gaming? You're kidding right? Did you even think about it? Try this analogy on for size. If you sit me down to a nice steaming pile of horse apples am I going to just eat them with a big grin on my face? Hell no! I'm going to say, "Hey those are horse apple and I won't eat them" and then I'm going to tell my friends, "Hey don't go in there! They are serving horse apples and what's worse, even though they game me free horse apples, they expect you to pay for them!" They half baked up a load of crap and served it and when someone says, "hey, that's crap" you say, "Shut up fool! They'll stop letting us taste the crap for free!" Well, pardon me all to heck if I think you've eaten one to many horse apples for your own good.
And so my answer to this article is "SO WHAT?" So what if gaming developers stop putting out press releases. So what if they stop letting players do the beta testing. I guess I won't have to eat any more horse apples then. Oh darn. Seriously though something has got to change and maybe that's just the change that's needed. Maybe these changes wouldn't be so bad, because it will certainly slow down the hype cycle surrounding games that lead to high expectations and raging disappointment.
How's that for nerdrage? Now you go have yourself a sparkling weekend as well.
Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.
Truly a great post, Tanemund. I would only add that STO is a game that took a ridiculously short amount of time to make (2 years). No good MMOs have ever been made in remotely this short amount of time Good ones take 4-5 years. Now sure, bad games have been made over a long time, but never a good one over a short time, despite other games having randomized content and using an already made engine. One should not be surprised by the Klingon thing, but I'm am a bit saddened by how many people defend it.
And you think a rushed game is only going to show signs of being rushed with one faction? This is CO all over again except with a much popular IP. There will be things lacking, poorly balanced, and poorly tuned all over the place. Superficially Cryptic is pretty good, CO looked and played good superficial, but after people bought it and sat down with it....that's when the cracks in the foundation started to show.
basically your saying everyone should boycott it and not play it. I agree with most people that taking an entire race to a non PvE centric route because they basically don't have the time to make the content is shafting them. None the less I hope people play the damned game as ... Eve is too old and no other games about space ships has my interest so I will give this game a go.
"Sometimes people say stuff they don''t mean, but more often then that they don''t say things they do mean"
basically your saying everyone should boycott it and not play it. I agree with most people that taking an entire race to a non PvE centric route because they basically don't have the time to make the content is shafting them. None the less I hope people play the damned game as ... Eve is too old and no other games about space ships has my interest so I will give this game a go.
I'd love a good sci-fi MMO. This isn't going to be it, and I don't see why one should advocate putting a bad game on welfare when one actually wants to play a good game.
Why string fans a long? Are you trying to create a buzz? Are you using news updates as cheap advertising?
I disagree with the tone of the writer in this snippet. Game developers weren't always using trickles of information to market their titles.
This trend is new, and the developers are finding out that its a tricky tool to use.
There was a time people would make games as good as they could, and release them without all the pre-release info, discussions, podcasts, twitters, open forums, etc.
You think World of Warcraft got popular because Blizzard was so open with their information during development?
In my opinion developers should stay tight lipped. I like surprises.
Nothing excites jaded Grandmasters more than a theoretical novelty
And you think a rushed game is only going to show signs of being rushed with one faction? This is CO all over again except with a much popular IP. There will be things lacking, poorly balanced, and poorly tuned all over the place. Superficially Cryptic is pretty good, CO looked and played good superficial, but after people bought it and sat down with it....that's when the cracks in the foundation started to show.
BTW, some of this is directed at you and some is directed at other posters. so dont be to confused if I am rambling on about something you haven't said.
So what do you think is going to be poorly balanced? It is obvious to me that this is a PVE game with PVP added in to appease the masses. While I enjoy PVP in certain MMO's, I have to say that I was hoping that pvp would not even be in STO.
The only thing pvp does for me is to keep me always looking out for some asshat thats decided to wait till you engage in pve and then swoop in and try to kill you while your down in health. I dont consider that fun at all, no matter if its being done to me or if I do it to someone else. Or worse, the dreaded gank squads, hellbent on doing their best to harass people till they simply quit playing.That is what pvp has boiled down to in todays mmo. you want to talk about balance yet go figure, no company has ever put in balance against gank squads. Wouldn't it be wonderful that your out happily grinding and a group of 20 people come storming over to you and just as they are about to beat the crap out of you, a repulsive force knocks all of them away except for 1 that is near your level. I call that balance. The problem is that with the exception of eve, darkfall, and kinda, daoc, I don't think any game has ever attempted to have pvp be the for front of their system. Due to this, pvp generally sucks and is always unbalanced in every single one of them. So, personally I think developers need to quit trying to appease the masses and go one way or the other and quit trying to dabble in both.
STO should have never even considered putting in pvp. But to appease the masses, its there in all its glorious klingon form. Am I expected to care or shed a tear because some person or persons on the internet is pissed because their idea of pvp was not implemented up to their ideals. I think not. Now lets take these same people who are pissed about how the pvp system is in the game and watch how they will now take great pleasure in trying to trash everything about the game in hopes that it either A) gets their pvp system reworked or
causes people to believe the half backed truths that are thrown out there about the rest of the game, to turn their back on it and not even buy it.
Star trek has always been about the federation. Show me one tv series that was all about the klingons and their strife to expand their territory, or say another tv series about what happened during those 50 years that the romulans retreated and was rebuilding their empire.
Now, dont get me wrong here. What cryptic did was wrong. They touted from the start about you being able to play pretty much any race and they talked about the huge war between the klingons and you were told you would get to play them. It was wrong to advertise it like that and I can certainly understand people being pissed over it, especially if they wanted to play on the "evil" side per say. They should have been more up front about those details. But does that really mean the game itself is going to suck or fail or even be unbalanced? Well, we can conclude that the pvp portion will probably be but lets just stick to the pve segment for now.
What information is there that states that the pve portion of the game is going to be hugely unbalanced? Seems to me that all the information I have seen has said it was a lot of fun and I haven't seen anyone state that it was unbalanced in any way. Will areas hav problems? I am sure it will. No mmo has ever released that didnt have fine tuning issues or lacking content in certain areas. Its a freaking MMO, its been that way since the dawn of mmos and will probably always remain that way. It is a freaking huge undertaking, there are bound to be issues.
I can also fully understand voicing concerns about gameplay elements. I mean, for me, I think they went the wrong way with how the ship flys in space. Its not true 3d as you can't really fly your ship up and down per say, and I personally think that ship control should have been more computer oriented in that you should have been able to set patterns on how you wanted your ship to move during combat, leaving you more time to deal with the actual battle instead of having to guide the ship and hit the freaking fire all button. Is that a valid concern? in my mind yes, however, I have not actually gotten to play it like they currently have it and I might find out it actually works good the way it is. But I am not here doomsaying on the game because I didn't get what I wanted. Unlike a lot of folks on here.
The game will either be fun or it wont and that will be highly subjective by the people playing it because fun is different for everyone.
I find it quite amusing how some people can read the lore that Cryptic have written, interpret it their own (possibly wrong) way, and then claim that Cryptic is implementing it all wrong despite the fact that they don't know what can and can't be done ingame.
We all know Klingon culture is dominated by their ideals of the warrior society. That's the majority of what they do in the IP. Sure there's got to be a klingon pig farmer down there, but I'm sure the second there was one in STO, someone would cry out that Cryptic was ruining the IP.
Now people who have a hate on for the game will quickly claim that Klingons are mostly pvp because Cryptic wants to release with only half a faction for whatever reason. This is pretty wishful thinking on their part. Cryptic is trying something new here. What other game has two main factions where one is primarily pve and the other is primarily pvp based? I can't think of one off-hand, but would love to hear about one that does. The truth is you can't really know how it's going to turn out unless you've played the game. The doomsayers will have you believe they've experienced everything intimately and know exactly what they're talking about, despite the fact that they most likely haven't seen anything beyond trailers and released screenshots. I certainly get quite a laugh when they come in complaining about logic this and that when they don't know how the game actually works. Many of the same doomsayers will say that the Klingons need to be full of pve quests and diplomacy just like the Federation, but that starts to turn the Klingons into just Federation with a different skin and exclaimation points on their dialogue. Of course, if they had their wish, the doomsayers would then be quick to claim it was being turned into WoW in space, which some people still try to claim. I enjoy all the conspiracy theories that doomsayers will come up with, too. Like that Cryptic is rushing out a copy of CO with a Star Trek skin just to get all the dollars from the people who will pay for anything labeled ST. It's funny that they seem to know exactly how much (and what) content is in the game before even open beta.
What we're really talking about here is two fundamentally different societal outlooks, and two fundamentally different directions of gameplay. Claiming they made the Klingons mostly PvP because they didn't have enough time seems like a lot of wish and very little evidence.
"Because it's easier to nitpick something than to be constructive." -roach5000
Why string fans a long? Are you trying to create a buzz? Are you using news updates as cheap advertising?
I disagree with the tone of the writer in this snippet. Game developers weren't always using trickles of information to market their titles.
This trend is new, and the developers are finding out that its a tricky tool to use.
There was a time people would make games as good as they could, and release them without all the pre-release info, discussions, podcasts, twitters, open forums, etc.
You think World of Warcraft got popular because Blizzard was so open with their information during development?
In my opinion developers should stay tight lipped. I like surprises.
I think I have to agree with this. But lets look at the problems of them staying tight lipped. People can't even start working on a new game now a days without the media digging deep into other areas and going, Hey, Look here. game company X has just filed such and such paper about game X with some comity some where. Or look, game company X just filed a patent on XYZ. We are just as much at fault as the game companies when it comes to game hype. Then look at the game companies that sees this out pore of support for their games and want to try and get the community involved. If they stay tight lipped about everything then rumors run rampant. If they try to tell us what is going on, then accusations fly when something is not the way people think it should be. It is a no win situation for the game companies. We are as much to blame for this as they are. We crave information, any information, and when we are given a tiny bit, we want more, no, we demand more. In this day and age it is almost impossible for people to stay tight lipped about a project. Frankly its amazing any game survives more than a few weeks with all this crap going on.
Yet another gaming site article which sucks up to the companies buying ads and handing out freebies. No big surprise.
If companies DO stop making grandiose proclaimations about all the uber-goodness their latest hack-job will offer, it would be a big step in the right direction. Mind you, it means a lot fewer screenshots and demo videos for the gaming sites to display. Not to mention, fewer PR trips to the HQs to stuff their faces while fawning over the devs.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
That will be in the cash shop, then.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
If they are weak, they aren't Borg.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
I will be the first to admit that it was only my opinion that klingons being pvp seemed to be a time constraint. It never even crossed my mind that they could be trying out something new with one side being pve and the other being pvp. That is a very good point. It saves on having pve only and pvp only servers. It gives pvp people what they want, pvp and gives the pve folks what they want, pve (hey, thats me!).
Claiming they didn't give the Klingons episodic PvE content due to time is taking words directly from Cryptic's interviews. Especially the part where Craig said that after launch if players want episodic PvE content for the Klingons they would incorporate it.
And again, on the theme of player feedback, Emmert hopes that their next step with Klingons comes from the community. Will there be an advanced territory control PvP game with the Federation? Will they have full “episodes” of PvE content? He wants the players to tell them once they’ve tried the game.
www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/352/feature/3847/page/2
Claiming this is some brilliant "design schema" is certifiably delusional at best. Leaving out the PvE episodic content shaves tons of time off getting this thing out by Feb. Taking the bait, though, LOTRO has two faction like this. The Free Peoples which are Book Quest (episodic) PVE heavy and the Creeps which you have to level up to a certain level as a Freep to roll a Creep. Creeps have full skill advancement trees and are 99% PvP. There's a handful of quests, but no equivalent Book content like the Freeps have.
It wasn't a highly successful way to do it. Heck, Turbine hasn't done really anything else with it, choosing to focus more on the Freep side and more Book content.
There's no conspiracy here. It is what it is. For someone who hasn't seen alot of the genre it may be a new deal, but many of us have seen things like it and how they turned out. It may be tough for the unimaginative to see, but PvE episodic content can be done for the Klingons with a Klingon flare using severely different tones appropriate to Klingons and foreign to the Federation.
Here's hoping they start the fires under the Klingon Episodic content launch day +1. It's very clear that it is a favorable move and adds that much more to the game.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Chavez y Chavez
Firstly - I have seen nothing that indicates that Federation players will have fewer PvP options than the Klingons. So, the Federation side does have more content. A lot more. That is going to cause a major population imbalance between the factions, which means a real disadvantage for the Klingons when they do compete with the Federation.
Frankly, this design shocks me after seeing what population imbalance did to Warhammer Online. It's like they want the imbalance that plagued that other game.
Secondly - Klingons don't just want to fight other Klingons. That doesn't serve the Empire. Conquest does, and that requires fighting non-Klingons. Whether in PvP or PvE.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2