Anyone else disappointed that they lightened the story?

Personally, I always thought it was kinda weird how you could pick Stormcloaks or Imperials, but you could never go after the REAL enemy - the Aldmeri Dominion - at least not on any real sort of scale. And don't try to tell me they're beyond the scope of your conquest either - not for the DRAGONBORN, who has fought GODS and prevailed...

Of course, that's not the worst that game did... for example, once you complete the story for your chosen side, Stormcloaks or Imperials, then they tell you "there are still enemy camps, go eradicate them" but then you can't do that because every camp has one unkillable NPC who gives you tons of bounty for attacking them... Skyrim was a well-polished turd IMO.

...I'd say we're getting off topic, but I'm no longer clear on what the topic is.

 

They are next

 

Pfft. Originally, I wanted to go either with Morrowind (Three Great Houses (other three are unplayable tho), also Tribunal/Imperial Cult), second Fallout (four different ways of resolving quest about filling the tanker, for instance) or Deus Ex (in IW you can go with Illuminati, Apostle, Omar or Templar), but chances that not much people will get a refrence.

Topic, AFAIK, is whining about game lore and discussing other games.

 

hope new arc without buy DLC addon

 

Unless the entire CF staff are on drugs, not likely to happen. They're already suffering quite significant case of broken fandom thanks to 1.0 half-baked storyline, poor optimisation and inexplicable cuts of content (racial weapons where?), imagine the shitstorm that will happen if they would just ANNOUNCE, let alone make, a DLC.

 

They're not going to make a DLC... they promised to continue updating the game past 1.0.

Though, it would be nice if we'd have a new Dev Blog one of these weeks. Before 1.0, we were getting them weekly and this is what, two weeks in a row and no dev blog? And no, I don't count the Mod Spotlight as being a Dev Blog. I am not against posts like Mod Spotlight, but yet we have to face the fact that it is not a dev blog in any way.

 

Or the third. "Do you sacrifice yourself by going into a radiation zone, or be the worst leader ever by ordering one of your people to do something you wouldn't do? Oh, you have a follower who's immune to radiation? Oh... he doesn't want to do it.

 

Actually, for the most part, we don't really see them doing much in the way of doing good things for their people. At most, they give them houses, so does almost all factions, not to mention the implication of Big Ape having been modified into a security system after uploading his mind (Apparently, that is why Big Ape is an hologram, althrough I struggle to find anyhting that explicitly says so in-game, but judging by how TV Tropes managed to find that out, it seems it's either stated but is difficult to miss, or it is heavly implied) so, for all we know, the Miniknog is likely doing things that would have appaled him in his own name, and the fact that the whole "Every single Miniknog faces the same punishment" would be pretty false in practice, since it would be easier to control the upper echelons of their society by not punishing them for anything they do unless they try to go against the government, which, considering that IRL authoritarian governments tend to be highly corrupt, actually makes quite a bit of sense.
As for the VEP (Note that this is Epileptic Forest Zone), all we get to see is that it improved their brains...But it sounds a bit suspicious for the Miniknog to do that, since that means rebel groups are more difficult to deal with. In fact, considering that they likely were already very advanced before undergoing it and the 1984 inspirations (Or, in other words, they might be engaging in doublespeak), it is possible that the 300% brain efficiency might be either a false figure or a half-truth ,which would explain the rush to get their original from back (Namely, their brains could be 300% more efficient than the brains of their ancestors that naturally looked ape-like, but that could be because their brains didn't change, so they were just as intelligent back before taking the VEP; and the main reason could be to make Apex more hierarchical so controlling them would be easier).

 

I wouldn't mind the story if it was any good. And I mean any good. Right now, it just seems like a handful of tropes thrown together with no rhyme or reason. You're a Chosen One, Humans are Special {because I dunno}, magical artifacts from a Good God to seal away {but never destroy} the Bad God, and the plot which basically boils down to collecting a disconnected series of plot coupons. Worse still, it looks like a lot of earlier - and much more interesting - content was removed to bring everything in line with the nonsensical "Protectorate" plot element. The fact that you were an utter nobody was a good thing. You were thrown into a spaceship held together with duct tape and bubblegum fleeing from your race-specific doom in an unimaginably huge and most importantly, uncaring universe.

This, I think, is the problem that a lot of writers don't see - being able, let alone required to save the universe inevitably makes that universe that much smaller, not to mention make the requirements for the reader to invest into it that much higher.

 

Fixed.

 

So, you know, bringing order and security, protecting them from the bandits and alien monsters that control 99% of the universe, that doesn't count as doing anything? Just saying.

I mean, I honestly can't believe I'm defending the Miniknog, but I do feel like this needs to be said: It's easy to look like the good guy when all you ever do is complain about the bad stuff other people do. You don't have to do anything but whine, and you never risk running out of targets because hey, ANY leader can be made to look corrupt if you remove the context behind their actions.

Actually leading is much more difficult. You have to make the decisions yourself. You have to come up with plans and you have to make those plans happen all the while dodging political attacks. If you make one minor slip all of a sudden you're accused of crimes against humanity... or ape...anity... whatever. The point is, it's easy to look like a hero when you're not doing anything. Actually do something and you risk being the villain.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to defend corrupt authority figures. There absolutely are a lot of corrupt politicians out there, and I think most of them are running my own country. All I'm trying to say is that you have to maintain your perspective and your open mind, and judge whether someone is ACTUALLY corrupt, or just... well, ruthless.

As for the Miniknog... if there's two things people despise, one of them is change and the other is feeling like they're being railroaded... and being railroaded into an unwanted change, that's the worst. Imagine if one day you woke up and heard that you and the rest of your species were going to be forced into taking a drug that would turn everyone into ape monsters, and that you had no choice in the matter... even if you were told it was for the greater good, or that it was to stop a plague...

You'd have mass hysteria, riots, and anarchy... and I'm not talking about the cool version of anarchy you see on TV where thoughtful loners in long coats steal from the rich and give to the poor... oh no, I'm talking about the horrifying real-world version of anarchy where people eat dog food to survive, and murder each other for fun, and blow up hospitals just to prove they can.

You say the Miniknog never did anything for the Apex? How about preventing THAT from happening?

That said, we could argue that while the Miniknog did save the species that things have cooled off enough now that they are no longer needed and should relinquish power to a more fair government.

 

I dare you to say all this to Lana Blake.

 

Oi.

You should be glad there's a storyline at all, "sandbox" games like this are usually rather light on story in favor of just dropping you into a vast world and saying "HAVE FUN LOL".

And yes, it is trope-heavy but tropes don't automatically mean the story is implausible or "bad" or "not good". A little overdone, but then any "Player-is-the-hero" story tends to be "more of the same", but that doesn't mean it is bad per se.

Eating chocolate icecream every single day for 50 years might make you think chocolate icecream is "bad", but it really isn't. It still tastes good, you're just used to the same thing every day.

The racial stories would have... taken quite a bit of time to implement. Would you want to wait another year for 1.0, so they could fit in all the racial intros? Maybe more racial intros are coming in 1.1? 1.2? Who knows, maybe you'll have a choice of Protectorate or Racial, and perhaps your starting stuff gets changed a bit and some of Esther's dialogue changes? I dunno.

And besides, some people LIKE to be the hero who saves the galaxy.

Some people don't. *shrugs*

If you don't wanna be a hero, then........don't? Again this is a sandbox game. A little lacking in content, but again, 1.0 fresh release blah blah. It takes time to add more content and more things to actually do in-game.

 

That's kind of my point. This is, naturally, just a subjective preference, but I find that, in a lot of cases, it's actually worse to halfass something than not do it at all. Not to mention, there were actually some pretty intriguing elements in Glad Giraffe to build on; the hints of a conspiracy between Thornwing, Greenfinger and Big Ape, genetic experimentation, the hilarious consequences of teaching Florans to write, the sudden desperation of USMC with the loss of Earth, and so on. And, frankly, I wouldn't care much for a storyline based on the species you start with, especially with all the modding possibilities out there.

I wouldn't mind it if Esther's quests were less intrusive, per se. I can't think of anything meaningful that would be lost by scrapping the whole Protectorate angle, given that it's not mentioned or referenced or otherwise acknowledged anywhere outside of the quest chain. Heck, it might be fun if the Protectorate thought it was a grand force for order and protection but nobody else even knew they were a thing. As it stands, it's just an unnecessarily shoehorned bit of a character's forced backstory.

Sorry for the rant.

 

That's a warped way of looking at it. What you fail to understand is that "nothing" is not the worst possible option.

The problem with Starbound's story isn't the fact that it's so cliche-ridden it almost feels like they just browsed a random TVTropes index and picked out tropes they liked. Tropes aren't bad, they're tools.

It's also not that it's the same old story we've heard a million times before, about the unlikely hero who saves the world from a monster. Oldies can be goodies if you give them a fresh spin and imaginative characters.

The problem is that it's HALF-ASS. There, I said it. It's half-ass. They just didn't care, folks. The entire story stinks of having been hammered out over a long weekend. The characters are one-dimensional and unlikable. The plot is recycled. It contradicts its own established lore.

But like you said, most sandbox games don't even have a story. It doesn't detract from Minecraft, or from Terraria. The difference here is they brought it up and then they had nothing to say. They made their story a major part of the game only to have it be the worst part of the game. Like I said, "nothing at all" is not the worst possible option. Zero is still higher than negatives.

As for it taking more time to implement.... so what? It takes longer to cook a steak than it does to just slap a bloody hunk of meat into your face... but you cook it anyway right? Besides, would one more year or so of Early Access really killed you?

"A delayed game is eventually good. A rushed game is forever bad." - Shigeru Miyamoto.

If she were real, sure. I've gotten beat up before. I've had people try to kill me before. I'm not afraid to speak the truth to people who don't want to hear it. For example, I just said all of the above on a forum where I know the devs can see it.

 

Fully agreed. It's like they spent all these years baking a lovely yummy Story Cake then were about 80 - 85% done with it but not 100% done with it when they caved to the Pressure to Full Release before the Game was ready so they pulled their awesome but unfinished Cake out of the oven, threw it into the trash, went to the Store, bought a Bag of Potatoes, & gave us a Bag of Raw Unwashed Uncooked Potatoes for a Story for Full Release.

NEVER RUSH THE DEVS!!!

 

Mind going into how it "contradicts its own lore"? You got me interested.

 

He likely meant lore codices from beta, which got officially retconned, hence is why you can't find them anymore. Shame, actually, old lore may have been more convoluted and silly, but it got a certain charm, it got actually really deep sometimes (Project Incarcerus series, Hiraki Corale misadventures - there were more of them than there is now, Deckard stories, hints of conspiracy between Big Ape, legendary floran scientist Greenfinger [name, not a title] and leader of avian order of assasins Thornwing, also most stories tied in with eachother that way or another) and explained many details which are not covered by current lore (can you say anything about Agaran, you know, those musroom folks? or how exactly Glitch maintain their society through all this time?), so no brainer most fans still consider it valid in Broad Strokes Canon way.

 

Also, as has been mentioned, there's this whole big Protectorate angle that is nowhere in even the current lore.

 

Hard to do when the game FORCES you to to find a gate, power said gate, talk to esther, listen to her tl;dr, and then immediately get sent on some dumb mission to the moon just to fix your dang ship.