A Matter of Ethics...

[Christian M. Hanson]

http://startrekonline.com/node/3068

Hearts and Minds

Sometimes exploration of new ideas and new technologies leads to dark places. In Star Trek, we’ve seen many a cautionary tale about omniscient supercomputers, time travel, genetic manipulation, and telepathic oppression. The pursuit of knowledge isn’t always safe or pretty.

Hearts and Minds is a new mini-mission that explores the consequences of some unconventional research gone awry. This mission is a “story in one act,” so you can easily finish it in a quick play session, and it’s easy to complete it with any additional characters that you may have on your account – which is handy, because the mission offers some special unique rewards.

Since Hearts and Minds is a horror story, it will only be around for Friday the 13th, whenever that may fall on the calendar – and perhaps another sufficiently horrifying day that we might choose! Fortunately for the squeamish, Hearts and Minds is creepy, but not graphically gruesome.

After all, what you can imagine is sometimes more horrific than anything you can be shown.

Hearts and Minds takes place in the Donatu sector of the Eta Eridani sector block, at a lunar research station in the Donatu system. Both Starfleet (level 5+) and KDF officers (level 21+) can accept this mission. Hail Franklin Drake (Starfleet officers) or K’Men (Klingon officers) to undertake this mission. It will be available this time from around 6pm PDT on Thursday, April 12, until around 6am PDT on Saturday, April 14.

[Dr. Collin McGee]

I played through it and to tell the truth it was a bit of a let down. Very short and overly simplistic... although one of the mission rewards is very cool.

[Morgan Shackelford]

I thought this was a pretty neat mission, myself

[Christian M. Hanson]

sparrow794 wrote:

I thought this was a pretty neat mission, myself

It was a let down for me.

[Christian M. Hanson]

People on the forums are unhappy with this mission, and this was DStahl's response.

dstahl
Cryptic Studios Team



Join Date: Aug 2008

In defense of the kind soul who spent their own personal time making this mission quite some time ago but was asked if they would hold of publishing it so we use it for a fun little Friday the 13th event - that person doesn't deserve the crap laid on them by this thread.

Since F2P launched we have seen one of the most intense 5 week Feature Episode series, a new fully produced KDF episode, a remade KDF Fleet Action, an updated FED/KDF Fleet Action, a Star Trek themed Holiday accompanied by a sale, entirely new worldwide missions on Defera, a fun little friday the 13th episode, and next week you are getting a level 51 shuttle 5 man mission.

On top of that Season 6 is under heavy development which will bring a new Defera like ground invasion, several new 5 man events, new 20 man Fleet events that take place at your starbase, along with starbase construction missions, the start of the PVP overhaul, new Foundry content and anything else like tonight's episode that someone on the team wants to spend their own after hours time making.

So while I can understand the frustration of the last year, since we launched F2P, it has been a lot more content and a lot more on the way.

I can appreciate skepticism, but the hate dumped on an employee who made something fun for everyone to do on Friday the 13th is a bit much.

p.s. lock boxes and rewards in them don't take "mission" resources - they take systems and costume resources (some of which can even be outsourced). Software and Content teams are doing nothing but making new game features and mission content every day = i.e. Season 6

[VADM pRett]

About time he gave the whiners a "Come to Jesus" talk.

[EvildeadXL]

Now i'm not one for spewing hatred at someone, but i would avree that this "fun" mission was quite a letdown. There really wasnt any substance to it imho.

[Morgan Shackelford]

And not every single mission has to be a 5 act dramatic opera. I went in with absolutely no expectations; and was able to enjoy it for what it was. To me, it was kind of an STO dinner mint. You spend so much time doing the same thing, over and over; whether it's replaying certain missions, grinding STF's, flying around looking for Doff assignments - this provided a quick refreshing change from the cycle without detracting too much time from achieving my other goals.

[Dr. Collin McGee]

Here's my point... the story idea was an intriguing plot theme, but it was so underdeveloped that it didn't tell the story they intended. I try to avoid the Foundry missions that stretch longer than a feature length film. Most of them have little to no substance, anyway. But this one never got off the launch pad, before I was collecting my rewards. There was no character or plot evolution. There was no setup for a decent climax or resolution. It was all of a sudden, I'm shooting a bunch of people and "class dismissed". Cryptic needs a good author, not a developer, creating these stories. Someone who has a sense of pacing in novella, episodic and short story formats.

[Anton Mercer]

Being a foundry author I can see why people saw this as a letdown, BUT AS a foundry author I can also see that the dev who made it was trying to utilize the foundry to make something that was a short diversion from everything else. I have to agree with Shack on this one. It was a nice, short diversion from the norm/grind of STO.

(Apparently this WAS mostly done with the foundry... but with some added elements that are dev only privileged such as VO and npc pathing that will be added in season 6(not VO just pathing )

[Morgan Shackelford]

I think you have to look at the criteria you're judging it on versus what the goal of the author was. If the goal of the author was to have something on par with a Featured Episode - or even a standard storyline episode - then sure, it's a miserable failure.

If the author's goal was to create a short 30 minute mission with a pervasive spookiness to it for release on days like Friday the 13th or Halloween; then I think that goal was certainly accomplished and the mission was a success.

I enjoyed it; but, as I said, I had no set expectations going in. When it comes to missions that can be completed in 30 minutes or less; this thing had way more story to it than most of the dailies we end up doing.

[Dr. Collin McGee]

LOL... all in all, it was a starting effort and i hope they become more skillful at this type of mission. I am looking forward to more of these.