Voyager ep: Unimatrix Zero = Voyager jumps the shark

[AGNT009]

And THIS is why TNG will always be the better series. Now dont get me wrong, I am loving Voyager via Netflix after discriminating against it during its original run. But Unimatrix Zero went too far.

Janeway, Tuvok, and Torres DELIBERATELY get themselves assimilated and then the doctor is able to A: give them a neural inhibitor to prevent their minds going drone and B: when they get back to Voyager they make a 100% recovery? Now as I gripe about this, I know Picard made a near 100% recovery, but we all know, there was always a bit of Borg somewhere inside him, heck First Contact was based off that, as are some of the novels with Picard's Borg intuition.

Then the very next episode, Imperfection, Seven nearly dies from a failing cortical node. Its funny how they could basically completely cure Picard, but not Seven. And then they go and unBorg Janeway, Tuvok, and Torres like its a walk in the park. I dont recall it ever being said, but I guess there are DEGREES of assimilation, and the less amount of time you are Borg the easier it is to remove all that junk from the body? Its all a bit suspicious, and hardly logical.

As is Voyagers love for going up against cubes BY THEMSELVES several times in the series, and TACTICAL CUBES no less. When in the movies one cube does a TON of damage to a small fleet of ships. Watching Voyager has made me even LESS afraid of any Borg invasion that STO tries to throw at us. The Borg are the pussycat villains that refuse to die. They are easy whipping boys, yet they cant come up with anything new to be afraid of?

Well, I only subbed From Dec 2010 - May 2011, then I pulled my sub for a substandard game. I feel better now that its going to be FREE when I come back, lol. But it saddens me that Dstahl basically brought this mighty franchise to its knees and allowed itself to be assimilated into the F2P category. I always said that the Cryptic staff were unworthy to run a Star Trek game, and Im being proven right. They've already been bested by Star Wars Galaxies, a game thats ALREADY DEAD. I cant wait to hear that the next decision the Chinese make is to fire Dstahl out the torpedo bay. Ive always hated Dstahl, and I always will, I can never forgive him, for the failings of STO.

[JeremyR]

Ive always hated Dstahl, and I always will, I can never forgive him, for the failings of STO.

And yet practically every one of your major gripes regarding the game, were the fruition of decisions that were made before he came to be in charge of the direction of the game.

Nice.

[treky1134]

And THIS is why TNG will always be the better series. Now dont get me wrong, I am loving Voyager via Netflix after discriminating against it during its original run. But Unimatrix Zero went too far.

Janeway, Tuvok, and Torres DELIBERATELY get themselves assimilated and then the doctor is able to A: give them a neural inhibitor to prevent their minds going drone and B: when they get back to Voyager they make a 100% recovery? Now as I gripe about this, I know Picard made a near 100% recovery, but we all know, there was always a bit of Borg somewhere inside him, heck First Contact was based off that, as are some of the novels with Picard's Borg intuition.

Then the very next episode, Imperfection, Seven nearly dies from a failing cortical node. Its funny how they could basically completely cure Picard, but not Seven. And then they go and unBorg Janeway, Tuvok, and Torres like its a walk in the park. I dont recall it ever being said, but I guess there are DEGREES of assimilation, and the less amount of time you are Borg the easier it is to remove all that junk from the body? Its all a bit suspicious, and hardly logical.

As is Voyagers love for going up against cubes BY THEMSELVES several times in the series, and TACTICAL CUBES no less. When in the movies one cube does a TON of damage to a small fleet of ships. Watching Voyager has made me even LESS afraid of any Borg invasion that STO tries to throw at us. The Borg are the pussycat villains that refuse to die. They are easy whipping boys, yet they cant come up with anything new to be afraid of?

Well, I only subbed From Dec 2010 - May 2011, then I pulled my sub for a substandard game. I feel better now that its going to be FREE when I come back, lol. But it saddens me that Dstahl basically brought this mighty franchise to its knees and allowed itself to be assimilated into the F2P category. I always said that the Cryptic staff were unworthy to run a Star Trek game, and Im being proven right. They've already been bested by Star Wars Galaxies, a game thats ALREADY DEAD. I cant wait to hear that the next decision the Chinese make is to fire Dstahl out the torpedo bay. Ive always hated Dstahl, and I always will, I can never forgive him, for the failings of STO.

I completely agree! Voyager is my least favorite Trek series. The only way I can stomach it is because I'm a fan of Kate Mulgrew. The only reason they brought in the Borg was to give Jeri Ryan more screen time. I hate how Voyager would always defeat the Borg. It made the Borg look soooo weak. TNG depicted the Borg much better.

And now on to STO, yes it is a huge disappointment. It seemed like Cryptic, Atari, and CBS had two directions to go, the right way and the wrong way. It is amazing how often they chose the wrong way. i.e. putting sooooo much Borg content in the game. Hey Cryptic it's so simple. Not putting a lot of Borg content in the game makes the Borg a special and exiting experience JUST LIKE IN TNG! Putting too much Borg in game LIKE WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW, makes them look like just another bad guy. Way to go Cryptic you took one of the most iconic and power enemies to be seen in over 40yrs of Trek and turned them into just another bad guy. And for those of you who are saying "We'll what was Cryptic supposed to do?" How about new content involving one or more of the dozen or so other enemy forces in the game. Like the other playable faction, The Klingons! At this point the damage is done. Too much fluff too little content of substance. Players will opt for SWTOR or GW2.

P.S. That's why STOs Chinese overlords decided to make the game F2P.
I do agree with Jeremy though, many of Cryptics bad decisions either started or took place before Dstahl.

[Stingray10]

Ive always hated Dstahl, and I always will, I can never forgive him, for the failings of STO.

And yet practically every one of your major gripes regarding the game, were the fruition of decisions that were made before he came to be in charge of the direction of the game.

Nice.

Didnt see him give any specifics of what he hated about Dstahl. Let alone anything game related. Or since Dstahl hasnt actually accomplished anything of importance since he has been promoted. Journalists are supposed to look at things objectivity even game journalists LOL. Dont get me wrong he hasnt been the sole reason the game is failing to F2P status, but he hasnt righted the ship either. He has ignored the Klingon faction completely "We was promised a WAR!!!!" not a few CRAP BORRING PvE junk. And pretty fluff that has little to no substance....

[AGNT009]

Ive always hated Dstahl, and I always will, I can never forgive him, for the failings of STO.

And yet practically every one of your major gripes regarding the game, were the fruition of decisions that were made before he came to be in charge of the direction of the game.

Nice.

Didnt see him give any specifics of what he hated about Dstahl. Let alone anything game related. Or since Dstahl hasnt actually accomplished anything of importance since he has been promoted. Journalists are supposed to look at things objectivity even game journalists LOL. Dont get me wrong he hasnt been the sole reason the game is failing to F2P status, but he hasnt righted the ship either. He has ignored the Klingon faction completely "We was promised a WAR!!!!" not a few CRAP BORRING PvE junk. And pretty fluff that has little to no substance....

Well, all Ive ever known is Dstahl since I first subbed in Dec 2010. I read all the crap the happened early on, and I never saw him make any real effort to change it. Just actually implementing in game polls and the like would have helped alot. What Ive observed so far this year is a total mismanagement of resources and an inability to determine actual talent needed for the game (his staff is better at programming bugs IN rather than out). When the game is losing subs, and I know it is, otherwise it wouldnt go F2P no matter how much Dan likes to quote a time when they get a sub spike (likely just users coming back for a month, seeing its still bugged and screwy, then leaving again), you start REALLY listening to the fans instead of listening to the dimwitted ideas of his staff and off the wall ideas like DOFs at the worst possible time when his supposed scarce resources then should have been working on stuff the players were actually asking for. I hope the Chinese take a real hard look at Dans executive decisions this last year, and Im crossing my fingers they deem him unfit for command.

And perhaps its out of Dans control, though I think he could have tried, but the game engine needs to be replaced with something that can cater more to the Trek open world exploring lifestyle. I'll never understand the diehard desire to keep an engine that cant really deliver on what the IP needs from it. Having said that, its hard to really make an accurate MMO for Star Trek. We are more peace loving. You cant have a peace loving IP game thats based on war, and then BADLY write for it and BADLY deliver on it. Star Wars is all war all the time it seems, it make sense for their IP. With Trek, you cant half ass it, and you have to have Trek style writers for it too, or it gets exposed for the scatterbrained disjointed fluff that it is.

[Stingray10]

Actually it can be set up to have a nice PvP system and remain cannon and completly voluntary. Create a neutral zone with a few planets and space stations to fight for control over, if you win control of the space zone then you beam to the station/planet and fight a ground battle (actually make ground combat needed), If you enter the neutral zone you are open to attack if you dont want to PvP stay out. I dont think the current game engine will support it though, It would be hard to fight over control points in 10 instances LOL.

[Armitage]

It's amazing how easy people think things are when working on a game... AGNT009 you're complaining about programing bugs in and the game engine. Come on you can't just revamp or make a new game engine out of no where it's not realistic it takes a lot of time and effort to change a game engine so you don't just brake it for each change and if you want them to just make a new one what time would they have for programing new content. As far as bugs are concerned every time a programmer adds new code to a game there is a chance to cause bugs and while a bug may seem simple to fix on the surface it is usually a lot more complicated then it seems. Testing and test servers are the best programmers can do and bugs will slip through even with test servers. Even though a test server is a copy of the game with the new content the difference in the number of people does make a difference which can cause a bug not to show up until it goes live and sometimes they just don't get noticed for one reason or another.

Stingray10 what you want open world PVP of some sort by the sounds of it. I have yet to see a game pull off open world pvp right. Instanced pvp where you can control the number of players on each side of the game is the best option. Open world pvp will only work if the two factions on each side of the war are even but as seen by STO the KDF have far fewer player then the FED so even if STO add an open world pvp area the KDF would always be out numbered and as such would always loose. It does not matter how good you are when a player is out numbered 2, 3, or 4 to 1 they will loose. Now you can say give the team that's out numbered an advantage or a buff or something to give them a fighting chance it just does not work. WoW tried open world pvp twice in wrath and cata and both times failed. The best option is a controlled large scale instance where you have 20-40 players per side but in STO KDF would get in quickly if they could get enough players to que and FED would have to weight hours. So in the long run it's more practical to have small group battles.

Over all you have to remember a game is a business if you devote extra resources to one area you have to take them from another. The larger and more complicated a project the more resources have to be added to it so the less will be available for other projects. The though might be just higher more people but what will they do with the extra people once the project is over just fire them? As far as STO and the KDF are concerned it's the chicken and the egg problem the KDF have so fewer numbers compared to the FED that it does not make good business seance to dump massive resources into a small group of people at the expense of the larger population. Best case they gain as many KDF players as they alienate FED players worse case they loose FED players and don't gain any KDF.

If the game had another year or two of development the KDF would be better off the game as a hole would be better off but it was rushed out thanks to Atari nothing Cryptic could do about that. Is it fair that the KDF is the red headed step child no have things gotten a lot better since launch yes by far. Is the KDF even with the FED in content no will they ever be no and it will not happen because it's just not practical so stop producing FED content just to catch the KDF up.

[Stingray10]

Stingray10 what you want open world PVP of some sort by the sounds of it. I have yet to see a game pull off open world pvp right. Instanced pvp where you can control the number of players on each side of the game is the best option. Open world pvp will only work if the two factions on each side of the war are even but as seen by STO the KDF have far fewer player then the FED so even if STO add an open world pvp area the KDF would always be out numbered and as such would always loose. It does not matter how good you are when a player is out numbered 2, 3, or 4 to 1 they will loose. Now you can say give the team that's out numbered an advantage or a buff or something to give them a fighting chance it just does not work. WoW tried open world pvp twice in wrath and cata and both times failed. The best option is a controlled large scale instance where you have 20-40 players per side but in STO KDF would get in quickly if they could get enough players to que and FED would have to weight hours. So in the long run it's more practical to have small group battles.

Over all you have to remember a game is a business if you devote extra resources to one area you have to take them from another. The larger and more complicated a project the more resources have to be added to it so the less will be available for other projects. The though might be just higher more people but what will they do with the extra people once the project is over just fire them? As far as STO and the KDF are concerned it's the chicken and the egg problem the KDF have so fewer numbers compared to the FED that it does not make good business seance to dump massive resources into a small group of people at the expense of the larger population. Best case they gain as many KDF players as they alienate FED players worse case they loose FED players and don't gain any KDF.

If the game had another year or two of development the KDF would be better off the game as a hole would be better off but it was rushed out thanks to Atari nothing Cryptic could do about that. Is it fair that the KDF is the red headed step child no have things gotten a lot better since launch yes by far. Is the KDF even with the FED in content no will they ever be no and it will not happen because it's just not practical so stop producing FED content just to catch the KDF up.

Dark Age of Camelot had a great system for open PvP area.

I dont want open "world" PvP Just a zone we can go to for open PvP. I dont care about balance Klingons have cloak we would pick our fights (besides Ive been against 6 Feds to 2 Klingons and won several times, sometimes not), and alot of Feds would only do PvP casually for most klingons its a way of life (or wouldve been).

At launch Klingon numbers were good, and its not a good business practice to LIE (no war) and ignore a faction STO added. If they wouldve added a PvP zone instead of the stupid KDF PvE missions we didnt care about the Feds and KDF numbers would be alot closer at this point because PvP players would have stayed (instanced crap gets borring). My fleet went from 250 to nill all but 3 said they were quiting the game because of the PvP, and all the other guild leaders I talked to said the same thing.

Well they have already proven they have no direction or business sence they now have to give the game out for free what they used to be able to charge for. But for the KDF it shouldve been F2P from the start. They looked at both factions the same way, but a majority of the KDF players were PvPers. KDF players didnt even want to do the Cure when they opened it up to us.

As for game engines you can find them a dime a dozen to free. Yeah its some work Cryptic changed the game engine to the engine they used for Champions. Games do get upgrades and new engines all the time. Some good ones are even free some cost alot http://www.devmaster.net/engines/list.php . Im not a top notch programmer, but I do have an associates degree in computer information systems. Not trying to say I know everything about game programming but I know a little bit.

[AGNT009]

"Shattered" jumps the shark again. Just finished watching this ep.

Im coming down the homestretch of this series (dont tell me exactly how it ends, I know generally they get back, but Im not sure exactly what Janeway does in the series finale), and I do like the show and its characters, but the shark jumping is a tad annoying. In Shattered (a very cool time travel premise used here, with that All Star troop of heroes from each timeline helping as one), Chakotay practically tells Janeway everything there is to know about their future. Janeway admittedly wants to change it herself. A much as I LOVE Trek time travel eps, this one really does more harm to logic than good. Its VERY hard to believe that Janeway makes all the exact same decisions etc through the years when she knows all the answers. In the end of the ep, she reveals she knows everything still when she tells Chakotay that she knew were he hides the liquor.

And another thing I just thought of, she acts surprised when she hears about Seven. But if the writers were on their game, she SHOULDNT have been surprised at that point, because in an earlier ep, Seven goes back to before they even left spacedock to track down that Temporal bureau director captain. Janeway knew before she left spacedock she would have Seven on board in the future. I liked the idea, but I think the episode, and kind of the series gets ruined by Janeway still knowing everything by the end of it. Sure there are temporal causalities and all that nonsense, but still, Id have rather she just had her mind erased. At that point, she had already held info about Seven coming aboard, and Kes coming back.

[huggy]

Every body has a right to there openion on a series but it tickles me how so many people say voyager was so bad, well it couldnt had been that bad it ran 7 seasons just like tng, and like any show has it good and bad points of the show, personaly i like voyager, yea there where son inconsistancies, but they all had that, oh an some one stated they just did so much with the borg to give jery ryan more to do well that was her job she has stated in several interviews most of her actiong job came from her being added in later seasons to give them a boost to there ratings and thats what she did, and we all know how she gave it a boost lol