262 – Hugh Gotta Be Kidding Me | Priority One: A Star Trek News Podcast

1. 

   Xeres on 2016-03-30

   The premise to me of Star Trek is seek out and explore not seek out and kill.. A ship of that magnitude will have civilians and you as a Federation officer just killed innocent people.

2. 

   seannewboy on 2016-03-27

   wonderful show everyone.

   CG’s) No, Rewards better matched to time played, small amounts can be made as per replication, too many possibilities.

3. 

   myeyesaverted on 2016-03-25

   WARNING! THERE BE WORDS

   Hello Priority One,

   I recently finished the Breach event (yay!). During my last run through I took the time to admire the scenery so to speak, realistically after doing the mission 14 times you could almost do it in your sleep. Something (finally) caught my attention and made me think a little bit more about the mission and the reward. I wanted to present those thoughts in your forum, as they might find an ear and open minds.

   The reward for the event was pretty descent, but it lacked a title or accolade.
   That title or accolade being…. War Criminal.

   Our mission briefing reads…

   “The Voth Fortress Ship is vulnerable. It’s time to attack. Our plan is death by thousand cuts. We’ll disrupt the Fortress’s integrity field by destroying multiple nodes across the hull. Once that’s complete, we’ll be able to breach the hull and attack from the inside. Use the trenches to navigate at speed around the Voth Fortress. Destroy Hard Points. Destroy Integrity Field Nodes.”(1)

   As Alliance members (FED,KDF,ROM) rush into to do combat with the Voth city ship to cause “Death” and “destroy” within the ships landscape take a look around at the ships details ask yourself are all those greenish colored lines actually large windows? In canon when we first see the Voth city ship in VOY episode: “Distant Origin” we see that this is not a ship primarily dedicated to war, but contains a large population possibly in the millions or billions of civilians, scientists and non combatants. It is quoted as being “the center of the Voth civilization” (2). BY the Alliance going into this ship and causing havoc are we not endangering those very civilian lives? This is not Trek…its genocide.

   Star Trek has always been about moving beyond our current human limitations and becoming something better as a species. The greatest case of genocide in Human history was the Holocaust, roughly 11 million people killed (3). Radovan Karadžić was recently put on trial and convicted (4) for the Bosnian Genocide, roughly 8,372 people killed (5). How many Voth non-combatants were on that ship?

   Article II of the International Criminal Court (ICC) defines genocide as:
   …any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
   (a) Killing members of the group;
   (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
   (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part (6)

   Ask yourselves Captains when you are old and gray and on trial will you say; “I was just following orders”, “we were at war” or any other of the myriad lines that have justified such actions in history. We have gone from explorers to murderers.

   I understand STO is a game, its entertainment, so were all the Star Trek series and movies, but how do we expect to achieve the dream of a better species when we don’t question the ethical and moral implications of that entertainment.

   Thank you for listening

   “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
   – Bishop Desmond Tutu

   (1). http://sto.gamepedia.com/Mission:_The_Breach
   (2). http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Voth_city_ship
   (3). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust
   (4). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radovan_Karad%C5%BEi%C4%87
   (5). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_Genocide
   (6). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide#International_law

   • 

     TylerMaxwell on 2016-03-28

     Yeah…I think you might be reading a bit too much into that with the whole war crimes thing.

     1) There’s no mention or indication ever that there are any civilians or families or innocent Voth-owned kitty cats aboard this particular Fortress ship. I mean, why in the world would the Voth take potentially millions of families aboard this ship on what is a very obvious mission of war into an unknown alien construct that, if handled incorrectly, becomes the Star Trek-equivalent of a mushroom cloud? They’d have to be REALLY stupid to do that.
     2) Also, the Fortress ship is not the City Ship from the Voyager episode (that ‘might’ be the Citadel Dreadnoughts from in-game, though there’s no direct confirmation on that part either..could just be a lookalike); rather the Fortress seems like a ship devoted entirely towards the Voth war efforts, like a super-ultra-aircraft carrier, maybe with on-board shipyards and factories for making new ships to continue the fight…again, no need for civilians or families.
     3) Finally, I think in the past some dev mentioned that taking out the Fortress ship doesn’t ‘destroy’ the ship with all aboard, but merely ‘disables’ it, after which the Voth fix it (and we join a new Queue to disable it…again :p ).

     So in the end, yeah we blow up some Voth…but only the ones who shot at us first; doesn’t make us a war criminal.

4. 

   Citizen Coolguy on 2016-03-23

   Q3: already been said but replicator technology would explain a FEW things, but the holodeck programming would have to be pretty smart to decide on the fly what gets holo-emitted and what gets replicated.

   Q4: my ideal holodeck program would probably involve a certain On Screen host in a bikini. And maybe Cookie would be there too!

   • 

     Marcase on 2016-03-25

     Elijah in a bikini? Riiiight… :o)

5. 

   Matthew Goetz on 2016-03-18

   Holodeck remnants that are seen beyond the emitter range (lipstick, snowballs, water) were probably created using replicator/transporter tech rather than holoemitters alone.
   That’s my handwave, and I’m sticking to it.

6. 

   GavinRuneblade on 2016-03-17

   1. I don’t do DIY anything, ever.
   2. Add non-damage-based objectives. Make optionals, actually optional, for example, add a side area that only gets activated if someone clicks a glowie. If no one does, it never comes into play and the queue goes as normal. If it is triggered, there’s more enemies, or the boss has different powers, whatever. Optional. A time gate is not optional, that’s just a DPS check.
   3. Handwavium.
   4. I really don’t know if I would enjoy a holodeck regardless of what it had for the program. For me it seems like it would be in that same weird zone as a strip club: if the girls are ugly why go, if they’re pretty, you can’t date them so why go? Therefore I never go. A holodeck seems like it would be the same. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect I would rather watch a movie or read a book than LARP with holograms.

7. 

   TylerMaxwell on 2016-03-17

   Thanks Elijah for the dramatic reading of my last comments; I couldn’t have done it better myself. 🙂

   2) As far as I know the underplayed raids/PvE queues problem is not an uncommon one in theme park MMOs like STO; once the novelty of the new content wears off, players tend to go back to the old reliable standbys, ones with plainly easy mechanics and time requirements, for their 1337 loot grinding needs. Many players say they want more choice, more variety, more challenge, blah blah….but the majority of the time they still default to the one they see as the ‘BEST’ choice, the one that gives them the most rewards while minimizing the time and skill/effort spent. Nothing wrong with that necessarily, that’s just what they’ll do. And there will always be one or a few ‘BEST’ choices for queue rewards in a game, no matter how many times the devs might up, nerf, or equalize the rewards on certain queues (and I think STO has had that happen at least a few times), as the soothsayers among the playerbase will just put that new data in their Excel sheet calculations for 1337 resource grinding, and come up with a new ‘BEST’ choice to be played for lootz ad nauseam, and the cycle continues.

   I believe that the solution to this issue then is not to try to equalize rewards across queues again (which has so far been ineffective), nor is it to simply remove queues from the game as Geko has proposed a few times; although the “too many choices prevents players from making any choice” argument has some merit, it still seems like the wrong answer for a game that is meant to allow players to explore a wide breadth of content at their own volition, instead of corralling players into the same few queue instances in perpetuity. Not to mention that for the most part the playing the same 2 or 3 queues issue is not born out of indecision due to variety, but a self-inflicted choice in of itself by the grinders in the playerbase in the name of the most easy lootz. The solution then is not to equalize or remove choices from players, but to give them one clear ‘BEST’ choice for reward grinding…then rotate it on a daily basis. 😉

   This ‘Featured Daily Queue Rewards’ system would work like this: each day of the week would have a selection of queues at featured at the top of the PvE menu, one for each mark type, that are boosted to offer the most reward/time spent out of all the queues for that day, far above and beyond what Infected Space or Crystalline Catastrophe could give alone even on an amazing run. For instance, on Monday the Featured Queues might be Cure Space, Azure Nebula, Undine Assault…Tuesday it’ll be Khitomer, The Vault, Viscous Cycle, etc., and so on and so forth through the week. Each of the queues in the game gets a turn as the one awarding the most lootz per time spent; this way, players are motivated to rotate through the different queues in order to keep getting the max rewards per amount of time possible. As players consent to going through the other queues for those extra rewards, more players will then actually know how to complete those queues successfully instead of defaulting to Infected for the easy effort/rewards factor; this will hopefully even increase play on those other queues on their off-peak days, since more players can do them. At the end of the day, many players’ choices are dominated by chasing the lootz carrot, so don’t leave it static…keep moving it around, and they will follow it wherever it goes.

   3) How does material exist outside the holodeck? Isn’t it obvious? You never left the holodeck!!! You thought you left the holodeck, but you did that while in yet another holodeck; your whole supposed life outside that one checker-boxed room is a LIE. All your galavanting around the galaxy saving it from imminent catastrophe, your life on your favorite ship, the people you know and love, dealing with impish alien omnipotents, even your space canoodling adventures (for those Kirk and Riker wannabes out there 😉 )…are all holograms and illusions. Perhaps even YOU are a hologram, and the minute some passerby notices the lights have been left on, they’ll shut it all down, and your life as you know it will CEASE TO EXIST! #HolodeckConspiracy

   Honestly as far as the Borg Queen, while I agree that having her in some ways kinda ruined the Borg as a credible villain in the TV series, for the movie at least it probably makes more sense and I think I get why they did it: there aren’t many movies (not good ones anyways) without a clear central antagonist character. Seriously, as awesome as the Borg on their own are as recurring enemies in a TV series, having them as a villain in a one-off movie without a singular head bad guy is kinda hard to make a general audience swallow. Try removing the Queen from the First Contact storyline, what do you get? Besides removing an interesting and scary character in her own right (regardless of how she altered the characterization of the Borg as a whole), other plot elements in the story go out right with her: Data’s romantic tango with the Queen, even Picard’s PTSD thing probably would have been less effective. Without the Queen as a central villain to play off of, it just becomes Picard and the gang being OMG scared and shooting up no name techno-zombies for 2 hours. Even in Best of Both Worlds, while the idea of the Borg themselves was quite scary, having them take Picard and turn him into their one lead guy of destruction against his own people made the Borg that much more compelling than if it had just been a disembodied collective voice terrifying the ships at Wolf 359, or taunting Riker and the Enterprise. All that said, maybe if the Borg Queen had just been a one-off thing in First Contact (maybe an adaptation to the drones on the Enterprise being cut off from the rest of the Collective in the past) it would have been better; definitely having the same Borg Queen repeatedly shake her fist at how Janeway and those meddling kids foiled her plans yet again really took the coolness out of them. 🙁

   • 

     Kenna on 2016-03-23

     I gotta say…thank you for taking the time to write this!! I think you’re bang on with saying that as much as we “want” diverse content, we’ll default to the best rewards, especially at endgame when the novelty’s worn off. I like the idea of a rotating featured queue.

     And as for the Borg Queen – I do think you make a good point that maybe the Collective wouldn’t translate to the big screen (where there’s usually A villain). BUT…It worked for zombie films so I would have liked to see them have a go!

8. 

   LleutenantDan on 2016-03-17

   Kenna: I completely agree regarding the event queue. Optional is a generous word for it. I have tried to keep up with the event on 4 toons, and it is physically painful. I only have 90 minutes a night to play, so this soaks up that entire time-stamp. And I’m a slave to the event for whichever 14 of the 21 days I have time to do it. Agh!

   On that note, there are better ways to revitalize old queues. For example, I feel like each night of the week, they should make a featured queue that warrants bonus rewards just for that one PVE Queue, for that one night. This would make the non-ISA borg queues relevant again. It also would entice players to try a new queue each day rather than doing the same repetitive queues to farm marks.

9. 

   sralbert on 2016-03-16

   It is true that the Borg Queen is an extension of the hive mind/drones trope, but the major issue is the humanizing of the villain. The drones were an emotionless, faceless swarm and this is what was so terrifying about them when they first appeared in TNG. The addition of a Queen that spoke and emoted in a human-like manner made them significantly less frightening. Voyager introduced Seven, Unimatrix Zero, and the Cooperative. All of these made the Borg less mysterious and thus less scary. All of these things were interesting, don’t get me wrong, but they did decrease the fear that the Borg originally evoked.

10. 

    Plain Simple Joel on 2016-03-16

    1. Tried to make a few costumes.

    2. With the queues, now days I don’t play them much except when events are (like the breach now) – as I can rewards from other things like admiralty system and certain events. Could increase the rewards to give more marks.

    3. Not sure

    4. As I am a cricket nut. I would make a holoprogram where all the greats played against each other. Australians (as we’re the best) against the rest of the world team.

11. 

    SImeion on 2016-03-15

    Wow, this is the first episode I have listened to since July of last year. I have not played STO regularly since Aug-Sept. I was hoping that this skill revamp would bring me back to STO, but Cryptic has decided to put negative returns in the Skill Tree AGAIN! This is one thing that could balance this game!, one and most important reason I left. If a Player choice in either being DPS or Tanky they usually choose DPS, with the negative returns on the new Skill tree almost everyone is going to be running the same cookie cutter skill tree.

    The only thing that is going to bring player to STO and keep them here is to rebalance the classes and queues. Each queue should have its own mechanic. Put a longer queue timer and get rid of three difficulties. Change them to Junior Officer and (Field) Admiralty Officer. (I moved to to a game that has content I can not do yet, I am fine with that, I just need to learn the mechanic).

    I use to love PvPing in STO but with the current Meta it is not enjoyable and because player population is so low Cryptic will not fix it. 🙁 When this game is balanced and PvPing can be enjoyable you will see me return.

12. 

    Eklinaar on 2016-03-15

    I back up Kenna 100% on her critique of the Borg. First Contact completely changed the character of the Borg for the worse. It was clearly an attempt to Hollywoodize the Borg to make them a more appealing villain for an assumed “dumber” audience. Come on, making the Borg seductive? That’s just ridiculous and completely unnecessary. I think the Voyager episode Unity is a good example of how the Borg story could have progressed without the queen nonsense. That episode is solid, with a new interesting twist on an old villain and a complex moral dilemma. If this had been explored further, it could have become a really interesting recurring plot. Instead we got the queen rubbish.

13. 

    Stephan on 2016-03-15

    Seriously, do *any* of you actually watch Star Trek?!? Of course Hugh is TNG. Picard was all about loading some wacky graphic into Hugh’s visual sensor that would blow the Collective’s mind or some such thing, but then Hugh got all cute and cuddly and they decided to send him home in the hopes that his individuality would spread to the rest of the Borg. That Spock line about “gas” was from the scene where Enterprise is getting pounded by the cloaked bird of prey and Uhura says, “the thing’s gotta have a tail pipe”.

    For the holodeck question, I think material remaining after someone leaves the holodeck is purely for the convenience of storytelling and not the science. The overarching thread through all the series is that material created in the holodeck can’t leave the holodeck because it’s just a solid hologram composed of light and force fields. If anything (lipstick, water, etc) stays on a character after leaving the holodeck, it’s an exception to that rule for storytelling purposes IMHO.

    Last note, I love your show, but please watch the “acronym soup”. I play STO regularly, but I’m not so into it that I know all the lingo. When you were referring to the queues as ISA and CCA, I had no clue what you were talking about and I’m sure other new or casual players did either. This happens a fair amount on the show, and it would make the show a lot more accessible to new players if you cut back on the acronyms a bit.

    Thanks for a great show as always!

14. 

    Chris Keen on 2016-03-15

    Stunt gum!! If Gates goes to either Vegas or Destination Birmingham i’m going to ask if it was staunt gum, gum at all or if she swallowed if it was real gum.
    I will find the answer to this.

15. 

    Chris Keen on 2016-03-15

    2nd Community question: The best and easiest way to fix the older cues being played is…. wait for it…. having the ability to reduce the amount of players required when you create your own private cue. this would be great for new players who can be intimidated by the cued events not knowing what to do and can receive negative comments from vets trying to get through it.
    it would also benefit those few that don’t have a lot of time and can quickly get a team of 3 together and have a stab at it. a win win for new and old players and Big Al’s cheeks in seats. Thank you very much i’m Chris Keen, i’m here all week and please don’t forget to tip your podcaster.

    • 

      Elijah on 2016-03-23

      Wait… you didn’t leave a voicemail?!

      • 

        Chris keen on 2016-03-23

        I know that’s normally the done thing and I would normally get right on leaving one. But I’m currently sick as a dog with man flu and can hardly talk cos my throat is so sore.
        But you can be sure I’ll make up for it when I’m fighting fit.

        • 

          Elijah on 2016-03-24

          Get well soon!

          • 

            Chris keen on 2016-03-24

            Thanks bud.

16. 

    Marcase on 2016-03-14

    Survey filled 🙂

    To break the monotony of doing The Breach on multiple alts, I often break the Wall: bit.ly/1pk3myw

    I agree that there are too many queues; standardize to Normal and Elite – cut Advanced and make Elite really ELITE – need a good team and top tier kit, so we have something to work towards.
    Normal would be for regular players (which I don’t mean in any negative way).

    Community Questions;
    1 – nothing succesfull.
    2 – to reinvigorate older queues, make them featured queues like featured episodes are now, with special rewards – perhaps rewarding Fleet Dilithium or collecting special event/queue marks.
    3 – Like your computer’s sleep mode; program is frozen and saved. So Moriarty is dormant, but still ‘there’ (…)
    4 – Risa and the Goddess of Empathy 🙂

    Kenna you were absolutely right; the Borg didn’t need a Queen, the whole Collective *was* the Queen, if you get my meaning. Adding an individual Borg Queen kinda went against their design (yes, I get it, having a Queen as a coordinator etc etc). But like Kenna, I would’ve liked them Queen-less.
    Though I LOVED Susanna Thompsons as Borg Queen, poor thing.

    Great episode as always *thumbs up*.

    • 

      Marcase on 2016-03-17

      Bound to happen – the Breach glitch got stealth fixed with the latest patch.
      Was fun while it lasted.

17. 

    icn1982 on 2016-03-14

    Not sure where the queue event fits, maybe if they had universal tokens for these events that you could keep (or turn in for a variety of things like we could for the winter/summer event buy backs.

    For queues in general, how about a random queue option that has an option for any of the marks, and have no cool down for it. For me, when picking queues, I go for what marks I can get/need from them. its why borg disconnected is still popular, because of the multiple marks you can pick from.

    If they did have a random queue option, maybe put the Voth queue there.

    Another way to revitalise queues, each weekend, pick a queue and turn them into a bonus xp zone for the weekend.

    Random guy aka red shirt.

    Regarding the holodeck, I always assumed it was a mix of solid holograms (using force fields I understand), and replicator tech. I believe that data even said that about the plants in encounter at farpoint.

    With the hirrodan, why send the Enterprise? They’re and insect race, maybe send an insect race to greet them, or at least an insect ambassador like, I don’t know, the Xindi (yes, I know the Xindi hadn’t been thought off at that time), but the fact that there wasn’t any insect race within the federation??

    As for what I would love the holodeck to create, we’ll move past the rated stuff. Being a history buff, probably recreations of historic events with me in the role of observer – certain key battles of WW2, the building of pirimids, various stages of rome, and Greece at the height of its power.

    Great show all

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