With the season 10.5 release, we had the character artist joejing to do a pass on lower-parts of our characters’ costumes. It includes belts, pants and footwear. I’m almost saddened by the fact, that while they’ve added few more options for us – they also managed to take several from us, while implementing even more restrictions; contrary to rather popular demand.
WARNING: This post is toned in more in negative light. Proceed cautiously. Despite of the tone – I stil want the game to thrive, though.
This is more akin to a personal rant – but, it seems that the dev team just blatantly seems to be overlooking (ignoring?) the fact, that quite few players would love to see the customization to be more free, not the opposite direction the team seems to be going. The fact, that they have for example, removed ‘bare feet’ from off-duty costumes entirely & it can now only be used with ‘Swimwear’, which can basicly only be worn on Risa? The fact, that my recently & imho reasonable suggestion to give us Borg-Body suit basicly led to being even one customization option removed (See HERE), instead of the idea being implemented… or at least just ignored? What motivation do I have to even try & come up with ideas, when not only they ignore it, but instead of expanding our options, they reduce them?
And that’s just one of few. People have also reported restrictions being tighter on the Orion loin-cloth belts, among some others.
My personal gripe is, that the devs are (at least based on the stuff happening, seemingly, I do apologize if that’s not their intent, but evidence suggests otherwise currently) currently basicly catrering to people who are OK with dictating standards not only for themselves (that’s perfectly fine), but also feel entitled to have any say in what characters other players want to portray. Ie. the kind of mindset – ‘I want canon Trek, and I don’t want to see you wear this, because it’s not MY vision of MY Trek and MY canon’. This is, where I feel is the biggest hurdle – people being too entitled, that they have any say in other people’s vision of Trek and their characters; rather than just being fine with the fact they can make their own characters as canon as they want. Forcing their ideas on others. I am firmly behind the mindset of ‘It is MY character, you or anyone else do not get a vote what it looks like’. And that’s all I feel entitled to. My character, my ship, my crew, my theme for them. Again, how difficult is to accept this?
Some people just fail (or don’t want) to understand, that when someone else’s character is not according to their *personal* vision of Trek, it is not forcing anything on them, as it’s *not* their character. They don’t have to copy that theme/character. They don’t have to interact with them or include them in their storylines/roleplaying. Just walk on, and don’t worry? Why is that so hard? Do I personally dislike the blatantly sexualized Orions? Or the Bikini-barbie squads in the Battlezones? Yes. I do. But, as long as that’s not forced onto MY crew? Let people have characters they want, for Kahless sake.
STO has always been more concepted around the Star Trek Theme-park. Make it what you want, make the Trek you want, kind of mindset. So, this intent of devs restricting costumes? I can’t wrap my head about it. Especially when more mind-boggling stuff like people flying outright-nonsense-ships from ‘canon’ standpoint are occuring, left & right. So, why this fear of offending these rather self-entitled people, who are OK to impose their own version of Trek/canon on others, when it’s already happening, in (imho) much worse scale, with the ships? I see this as a double-standard; frankly as that.
I honestly hoped the new changes would be entirely positive and/or a middle-ground, having the trust in the Character artists. But instead, it seems that more restrictions & control over what outfits we wear were implemented. I may be overreacting, and they may be changing things around; but… I just don’t like the blatantly conservative and limiting approach on these things.
I love the game, and recently, there have been more disappointments for me, than there were the brightsides, so it’s easy to slump into being more negative. Likewise, offering constructive ideas brought no fruits or responses, instead, restricting things more. I really hope this is just a stage – but at this point, I am severally demotivated to attempt to continue offering constructive ideas & positivity – because it achieves basicly the exact opposite of the intention, from the developper team.
Maybe taking a break (at least in trying to bring ideas) is in order to let the dust to settle, a state I thought I’d not reach – but probably a better option than to become outright negative, bashful Forumite, without any constructive feedback or words left to say…?
Captain Jan's Musings 