But then this boils down to what Kirby said, and I agree with him fully. The Protectorate is not a well-executed, well thought out faction, and the lore behind it is nigh-nonexistant. It's just a boring hugbox of a faction. Including it may not harm any RP, but it also won't have any gain that is reasonable enough to make us include it.
You would prefer if there was more lore around it? Its a sandbox full of pre-made assets and a unique idea. There is very little established which means we can draw our own conclusions and create our own ideas about it. It will create RP and If it doesn't harm RP, I see no reason why is shouldn't be implemented by community support.
... Because as I said, it's an unoriginal and uncreative idea. It's a generic group of "goody goodies" with no motivations beyond helping people, and beyond getting destroyed by tentacles has no flaws or anything to make it unique. And putting forth the effort to shoe-horn it into our own lore seems pointless given the work that would go into building them into something worthwhile would mean nothing since they all got wiped out.
I concede. You are correct. Maybe what would be better is building from the ground up. I find far too many factions are suffering from USCM Syndrome 'Grrr, military Human fight shoot bang bang'. I think a more altrusitic faction would be an excellent change of pace and attract some of the less militant characters like farmers, research doctors, and students. But we're getting off topic. If this isn't resolved in two more posts I think we should move it either to another thread, chat, or a pm.
What kills me is that people think that the lore has changed. Guys. Before 1.0-- there was no story. At all. Like, there was a mission here and there with no purpose-- recently they started unloading quests into the early access (which were early renditions of 1.0's quests), but there was no story. No lore. There was backstory. History. Backstory. This is also lore-- but it isn't active lore. It isn't the story. The six unique races? With all their differences and their ways of life? It's still there. It isn't going anywhere from what I can see. It is the backstory and the foundation of the game's world. The terran protectorate you all abhor for being generic, typical, bland, whatever-- (which is really just insane how you people can blurt that out. How have you not given up on anything in media when everything follows the same tropes always and forever? Or do you choose to ignore it sometimes but not other times like now?), is just the active story. The Playable Story. It is the now, the here, the present (or rather the present 8 years ago which starts the player's adventure). The Terran Protectorate-- does not undo Kluex, it does not undo savage floran tribes, or the hyotl being forced from their world-- or big ape, or even medieval glitch. It is the most recent story to the actual play experience and only serves to ground the player and give them a starting point in a non roleplaying game-- but instead a sandbox RPG builder's fantasy. It really spins my head around to hear you guys complain like-- "Wow, WoW sucks. Why must my Night Elf wake up in Night Elf lands a memebr of the alliance. This is so generic and stupid, one big good guy faction." "Why even play Aion, we all wake up in the same stupid village. This is dumb, the writing is terrible." Even though Starbound isn't actually an MMO-- and isn't designed to be either. It's more of a single-player experience with a stretch-multiplayer so it'd be more like... "Wow, Fable sucks. Why do we all descend from a hero. So cliche." "Mass Effect is really boring, why is earth always getting destroyed." Regardless, there was way too much hate-mongering for Starbound and I feel like it's really clouding people's judgement. To the point where they won't even play devil's advocate to reach some kind of understanding or see a bright side. (Hell, half the people can't pick out actual problems-- they just throw words and phrases they can't fully explain and divert to chucklefish PR animosity) It's just too much man, no matter how many people respectfully disagree. P.S: I'm not trying to insinuate that it will errode the community and tear us apart not to use the lore-- I'm just saying that the lore isn't bad, and that people who join starbound may be really into it. With 1.0 released, you're going to get people who didn't have early access trying the game out and finding things awesome-- because they don't have the old jaded tired eyes of... Well, this community, who's jaded eyes only see a burning hatred for Chucklefish when they look at things rather than grateful/humbled eyes on their effort to accomplish their goals. Anyways, roleplayers from the 1.0 generation may come looking for a place to RP, and have to be dealing with the shit-flinging of this community (which is discouraging), as well as being influenced to hate something they actually like, and they may even feel put off because of such bad reception to the game from a group who-- quite honestly seems pretentious and ungrateful (no matter how justified), thinking they know better and destroying the story they know to make another story (which isn't bad on its own, but given the reasons, it can get murky). P.P.S: There's a lot of controversy over story which didn't exist prior to 1.0 and story of Antares which-- to this day I am convinced doesn't quite exist anyways. 80% of the RP I see is slice of life with no evolving/advancing plot or any references to any kinds of plots. Edit: P.P.P.S: I don't think we have the full story on the TP. Chances are, we see only form the perspective of our aspiring Protectorate Trainee who idolizes them and thinks them amazing heroes that can do no wrong. It's the butterflies phase of infatuation-- these stories (when not left overly simplistic and near mary suey), tend to show a darker and more grim side to these plot entities that shatter the world our protagonists (characters) know.
SB's plotline is about as generic as sci-fi plots come. You're a member of this powerful group of peaceful, prosperous races all co-existing in harmony together, when suddenly, disaster strikes! You, as the main character, witness the destruction firsthand and escape alone and, for the most part, unharmed. After this, you survive for a short time on your own, experiencing the sandbox elements of the game until you stumble upon the outpost, which just so happens to contain Esther, the plot device used to push the plot forward with a single cutscene that you can't skip, chock-full of convenient exposition. From her, you find out that there was this progenitor being that kept the universe safe and protected all life, but there was also this terrible life form that sought to destroy everything. The progenitor being fought this life form and sealed it away, but because of this, disappeared/died/went away for the sake of the story. Now you, one of the few survivors of Earth, must use this progenitor's power to destroy the ultimate evil in the universe and save everyone, because for some reason this progenitor decided not to and just seal it away instead. After that, you go on to speak to others, complete somewhat interesting but static instanced dungeons in an otherwise procedurally generated universe, and progress through the plot. The plot is very typical, and very reminiscent of other sci-fi stories, but much less fleshed out and interesting. There's not much mystery behind it, not much to discover on your own; instead, you're led through it by a senile woman and a ragtag group of strangers. It feels rushed and a lot of it unplanned, and what you just said only reaffirms it; Chucklefish did not have a plot before, and they created one in a matter of months without any dedicated or talented writer, resulting in a jumbled mess. They made something up for the sake of rushing Starbound to its 1.0 release. The fact that you would defend this uninspired story, to a community dedicated to writing an interesting story, is shocking.
PSA: You can skip all cutscenes in Starbound (except for maybe the title one) by pressing escape. On a more serious note: I think you both bring up good points. Chucklefish's plot was bland and unoriginal, but the ideas were there. Ideas that can be built upon. With 1.0 bring a excellent opportunity to add variation. We now know more about the races. Personally, I think the race lore in 1.0 is the best it's ever been. This leads to more varied characters instead of everyone being a Human, but ____. We can definitely use some of Starbound 1.0s lore, but some if it needs to be discarded. I think Jet realizes Starbound doesn't have the strongest plot, but those just playing it for the first time (assuming they invest in it enough to look for RP Servers) will have some conclusions and ideas they drew from Chucklefish's bases that enrich writing. There's not an easy answer for this that doesn't involve CF scrapping the story and starting again, but I don't think this debate needs to be so polarized.
The issue is, 1.0 did NOT improve on the races or their lore. In fact, by making all the races friendly with one another and having everyone live in harmony (minus small pockets of bandits/savage Florans/etc.) and everything be all happy happy joy until the Protectorate collapses, that completely whitewashes and distills all the races and leaves zero interesting conflict or interactions between characters of separate races. Why would a Hylotl hate a Floran if the 'Floran Menace' was largely not even present, and in fact the Protectorate was chock full of Floran troops? There's nothing inspired or original here whatsoever now that the races, and the general plot, have been whitewashed. No mention of the Floran takeover of the Hylotl homeworld, no fanatical, murderous Avian zealots who are willing to kill-on-sight any non-believers, no Apex working under Big Ape out to kidnap or kill potential experiment subjects. Just a massive, bland hugbox minus individual faceless, nameless enemies.
I haven't heard anyone here say anything along those lines, and if they did, then they're an idiot. Anyway, my compromise would be that the protectorate died with earth. It was a relatively small group of people with good intentions (and often mocked for being human-run), but was unable to reform after the fall of earth. However, with appearance of "the ruin" (better name pending) the major civilisations of the galaxy decided follow in the protectorate's footsteps to a degree, and create the council. That way, protectorate assets still have a place in the server lore, but the faction as a whole doesn't exist. Also, the lore was dumbed down for 1.0's release, the six races still have their backstory, sure, but it's a much simpler, shallow husk of what it was, with many of the mysteries removed. Seriously, check the wiki and see all the codices they removed.
Huh, I thought The Protectorate was the small pocket of good while Miniknog has been oppressing Apex for decades (centuries?) and there are dozens of roaming bands of evildoers per system. But that's not what I'm talking about (Each race's place in The Protectorate). There are a bunch of new codex entries about all kinds of new things. I'm not saying Chucklefish lore is perfect, but saying all of it is trash isn't right either.
This seems like a good idea. Going with the "it's an overblown Red Cross" idea that never got off the ground before Earth blew up. Just a planet-wide good Samaritan group that went poof. It makes them insignificant enough to not interfere with the rule of the United Systems, but just relevant enough to fit into the puzzle.
It still baffles me how people act like the protectorate's reaches expands all across space and serves as the norm for all of Starbound. Gonna use another WoW reference-- Like someone bitching about how dumb Warcraft is because there are "sanctuaries" where the two factions are neutral to each other (dalarand or w/e it was called); and talking about how goodie and friendly everyone is ignoring that these sanctuaries are small independent neutral places with different (although relatively good) intentions, and not the status-quo of the entire mythos.
... That's not what we're "bitching" about at all. We're not bitching period. We're all saying that the Protectorate is bland, un-creative, and a lot of us don't want it implemented because it would serve little to no purpose as an addition beyond just being slotted in to accommodate to Chucklefish's whitewashed new lore and storytelling.
I haven't played much into it yet, as I was put off by the story after I talked to the old woman at the gate. Seems like more generic "chosen one" drivel to me. I felt the game was a lot better when it just dumped us into our ship with no real starter quest other than fighting the Penguin in the UFO. Hell, if they wanted to put story into it, they could have had each race start out in a different area themed around them. All the assets for that have always been there, they never would have had to make the Protectorate assets.
They didn't remove that stuff to my knowledge-- and you're saying a lot more than the story is bland and uninspired. You personally, and several people across different chats like to imply that the universe is now one big giant hugboxes and that every race is just a suit for humans because of the TP. http://starbounder.org/Lore Yes, it's generic. It doesn't do anything to stand out or challenge norms. It was never meant to nor expected to-- and if you really expected that then I don't know what to say. But yes, I would defend this "uninspired story," and I'd argue that they didn't "rush some story" out of nowhere last minute like you implied. The assets and the quests that would be a part of this story-- as well as the conceptual designs of the characters have been around for a long time, at least a year. But again-- this is a community dedicated to writing-- and not the writing of any particular game they may be using, but the writing they themselves contribute to it. The game doesn't need some spectacular story, especially given the game it is, all it needs is a stable and preferably diverse foundation. And it provides that.
Okay, so all your points you're raising are that this community relies on our writing, and not Chucklefish's. So why are you arguing with us and trying to defend Chucklefish when most of us clearly don't want to integrate their bland, uncreative writing into our own lore? The entire reason we're disregarding most of, if not all, lore changes/story implemented with 1.0 is that it's stale, uninspired, and would only serve to muddy our own writing and ideas on the server.
