Episode 4

[Quarto]

Say, do we get a different introduction to episode four if we survive episode three's losing track? I ended up going down that path just a few minutes ago - ironically, I found it easier than the winning track... but that's me.

That depends if you won or lost in episode 3 (which is, admittedly, somewhat hard to tell on the losing path, because in either case, you jump to Sirius - so you gotta pay attention to the music during the jump-out scene). Episode 4 has two separate intros - one for the winning path, and one for the losing path. Additionally, the losing path intro is slightly different depending on whether you played the losing or winning path of episode 3, but it's a very slight difference - I wouldn't want to get into the habit of making four different intros per episode, after all .

And yes, the losing path is not necessarily harder than the winning path. They are simply different. I mean, fighting alone against a Kilrathi cruiser in a backwater system might seem like it should be hard... but would it really be harder than taking on a Kilrathi fleet carrier during one of the greatest battles ever fought in the 27th century?

 

[ChrisReid]

Personally, I think that's the best news update I've ever written.

Hehe, even before I saw this, I was going to post something about how lacking I found that update to be. Quarto's post directly above yours here is a better update (and that's what I chose to quote). Quarto's couple sentence says the same thing, but it does so without little corny quips and tongue-sticking-out smileys. Also, since you don't sign the updates, when you refer to "I personally," it's unclear who is doing the speaking. Only by process of elimination after Quarto, Pete and so on get mentioned can we guess it's you.

As for the screenshots, three weeks from now I should be back to working on Standoff full-time, so there *may* still be something I can screenshotize without giving too much away... maybe.

And I really don't buy this part at all. The one screenshot you posted isn't ground breaking, and you could do a bunch more like that of stuff going on in Episode 4 with a comment or two about what's happening and that'd do the trick nicely. There's plenty of screenshots you could take without giving stuff away, and I really don't think you have to worry about that to begin with. We already know there's Hakagas and giant battles to come. Picturing some of that in screenshots would do a lot more to whet people's appetites in these slow months than it'll ultimately detract by having given anything more away.

 

[Quarto]

Also, since you don't sign the updates, when you refer to "I personally," it's unclear who is doing the speaking. Only by process of elimination after Quarto, Pete and so on get mentioned can we guess it's you.

Well, Standoff's updates aren't signed because they're always done by Eder - he's the one responsible for maintaining the site. This has been the case since the very beginning of Standoff.

And I really don't buy this part at all. The one screenshot you posted isn't ground breaking, and you could do a bunch more like that of stuff going on in Episode 4 with a comment or two about what's happening and that'd do the trick nicely. There's plenty of screenshots you could take without giving stuff away, and I really don't think you have to worry about that to begin with. We already know there's Hakagas and giant battles to come. Picturing some of that in screenshots would do a lot more to whet people's appetites in these slow months than it'll ultimately detract by having given anything more away.

Well, if we had one of those giant battle missions ready, we'd certainly post screenshots of it. I wasn't kidding when I said things had been slow in the past few months. As far as the campaign is concerned, we've really shown everything worth showing at this point.

We did, in fact, forget about a bunch of sim-related stuff that we could have shown in the update (more specifically, things that were done back in January and February immediately after the patch, and then forgotten about in the next few months of Standstill... err, Standoff). That's ok, though - as I said, we'll be doing updates more frequently from now on, so you'll see more screenshots next week.

 

[ChrisReid]

Well, Standoff's updates aren't signed because they're always done by Eder - he's the one responsible for maintaining the site. This has been the case since the very beginning of Standoff.

Yeah, I'm aware of that, and I still find it a bit awkward. People who are just visiting the news site and haven't followed it closely won't have any idea who's speaking though.

Well, if we had one of those giant battle missions ready, we'd certainly post screenshots of it. I wasn't kidding when I said things had been slow in the past few months. As far as the campaign is concerned, we've really shown everything worth showing at this point.

I think you guys are overanalyzing what you deem worthy screenshot material. It can be anything as long as you talk about what it is. I've managed to post more than three dozen different screenshots for Prophecy multiplayer, and that's all from a simple 30-second deathmatch with nothing but a few fighters in empty space.

 

[Quarto]

I think you guys are overanalyzing what you deem worthy screenshot material. It can be anything as long as you talk about what it is. I've managed to post more than three dozen different screenshots for Prophecy multiplayer, and that's all from a simple 30-second deathmatch with nothing but a few fighters in empty space.

Well, we'll see. We do try to put up some screenshots with every update, really - it was just rather difficult to find more than one screenshot to go with this one. At the rate we're going now, though, it hopefully won't be an especially big problem with the next few updates.