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Okay -- this is not a whine or a troll post.
These observations need to be made.
I play both sides of the game -- Klingon and Federation. I PvP with both. Others do as well, so what I am about to say is going to make sense to those that do the same -- I would encourage those that play both Klingon and Fed to contribute to this thread - especially if you disagree.
First Observation: What I am seeing in PvP is this -- extremely long queus for Feds...non-existent queus for Klingons. When I play Klingon, I can get into back to back PvP games instantly. When playing Fed...well....it takes a while.
Second Observation: When I play either Fed or Klingon in PvP, I see MANY of the same Klingon players, time and time again. I rarely see the same Fed players twice.
What does this mean? Now it is time to state the obvious -- There are WAY more Federation players than Klingon. Period. This is no secret. The question is, why is this the case? One theory might be that people tend to play Federation naturally -- they identify with the Feds -- after all, that is what the show was all about. However, we are talking about a game. The Klingon side of the equation can be equally fascinating. The culture of honor, the warrior spirit, the spit-in-the-face-of-death mentality. Why do you think Worf was so popular? He boiled every situation down to a simple, basic equation -- violence and the practical applicaiton of force can and will solve any problem.
Here is another theory that I think hits closer to the mark -- because ALL of the recent patches and additions to the game tend to favor the Federation, interest is dropping off for Klingon players. Many of the Klingon players may in fact be playing Federation now -- after all, when so much effort is made to improve the game for one faction of that game, the tendency will be to play that faction in order to experience the new cool stuff. I am guilty of that as well.
Now....I have read that in the back rooms of Cryptic, there is a team busily putting together ship plans to make Gorn and Orion ships available for the Klingon faction. That is definitely a step in the right direction...but what is equally clear at this point is that none of these rumored ships will be part of Season 2.
As has been pointed out in many threads, Season 2, which was supposed to advance the Klingon faction towards parity with the Federation, does not do that. No need to make the comparisons here to justify the why -- anyone can see the problem. No Klilngon refits, and a new ship type that almost no Klingon player plays, while the Federation gets three refits, all three of which have special abilities, and all three of which have an additional Commander level slot. The only trade off really is the loss of an Ensign slot in terms of Bridge Officers -- but that one level 1 skill gets replaced by a level 4 skill. Nice trade.
Cryptic -- I like this game, but it is obvious that with your updates, new C-Store items, and patches, you are pandering to your greatest population in the game. There is no balance. That is why Klingon numbers are falling off. That is why eventually, if you continue down this path, you will only have FvF PvP, because Klingon players, despite their patience and stubborness, are eventually going to get tired of being second class game citizens. If you continue down this path, balance within the game will be severely skewed, and it will essentially become "Federation Online" instead of "Star Trek Online." Even hard-core Federation players need to realize that without a strong Klingon (or in the future, Romulan) faction, what do they have? How can a Federation player truly enjoy the game when there is no enemy? Nobody to test your skills against except the AI?
Cryptic -- Keeping the Klingons healthy is basically in your best interest if you truly are taking the long view.
If you want to see a resurgence in Klingon interest...if you can manage to get one or two of those Gorn or Orion ships out prior to Season 2 going live, that would be a step in the right direction. If you can provide at least one or two refits -- especially a Bird of Prey refit -- that is also a step in the right direction.
I apologize for the long post...but I don't post often, and I thought that maybe some of this should be pointed out in a rational way. No flames, no whining...just observations...and a concern about the future of the game.
These observations need to be made.
I play both sides of the game -- Klingon and Federation. I PvP with both. Others do as well, so what I am about to say is going to make sense to those that do the same -- I would encourage those that play both Klingon and Fed to contribute to this thread - especially if you disagree.
First Observation: What I am seeing in PvP is this -- extremely long queus for Feds...non-existent queus for Klingons. When I play Klingon, I can get into back to back PvP games instantly. When playing Fed...well....it takes a while.
Second Observation: When I play either Fed or Klingon in PvP, I see MANY of the same Klingon players, time and time again. I rarely see the same Fed players twice.
What does this mean? Now it is time to state the obvious -- There are WAY more Federation players than Klingon. Period. This is no secret. The question is, why is this the case? One theory might be that people tend to play Federation naturally -- they identify with the Feds -- after all, that is what the show was all about. However, we are talking about a game. The Klingon side of the equation can be equally fascinating. The culture of honor, the warrior spirit, the spit-in-the-face-of-death mentality. Why do you think Worf was so popular? He boiled every situation down to a simple, basic equation -- violence and the practical applicaiton of force can and will solve any problem.
Here is another theory that I think hits closer to the mark -- because ALL of the recent patches and additions to the game tend to favor the Federation, interest is dropping off for Klingon players. Many of the Klingon players may in fact be playing Federation now -- after all, when so much effort is made to improve the game for one faction of that game, the tendency will be to play that faction in order to experience the new cool stuff. I am guilty of that as well.
Now....I have read that in the back rooms of Cryptic, there is a team busily putting together ship plans to make Gorn and Orion ships available for the Klingon faction. That is definitely a step in the right direction...but what is equally clear at this point is that none of these rumored ships will be part of Season 2.
As has been pointed out in many threads, Season 2, which was supposed to advance the Klingon faction towards parity with the Federation, does not do that. No need to make the comparisons here to justify the why -- anyone can see the problem. No Klilngon refits, and a new ship type that almost no Klingon player plays, while the Federation gets three refits, all three of which have special abilities, and all three of which have an additional Commander level slot. The only trade off really is the loss of an Ensign slot in terms of Bridge Officers -- but that one level 1 skill gets replaced by a level 4 skill. Nice trade.
Cryptic -- I like this game, but it is obvious that with your updates, new C-Store items, and patches, you are pandering to your greatest population in the game. There is no balance. That is why Klingon numbers are falling off. That is why eventually, if you continue down this path, you will only have FvF PvP, because Klingon players, despite their patience and stubborness, are eventually going to get tired of being second class game citizens. If you continue down this path, balance within the game will be severely skewed, and it will essentially become "Federation Online" instead of "Star Trek Online." Even hard-core Federation players need to realize that without a strong Klingon (or in the future, Romulan) faction, what do they have? How can a Federation player truly enjoy the game when there is no enemy? Nobody to test your skills against except the AI?
Cryptic -- Keeping the Klingons healthy is basically in your best interest if you truly are taking the long view.
If you want to see a resurgence in Klingon interest...if you can manage to get one or two of those Gorn or Orion ships out prior to Season 2 going live, that would be a step in the right direction. If you can provide at least one or two refits -- especially a Bird of Prey refit -- that is also a step in the right direction.
I apologize for the long post...but I don't post often, and I thought that maybe some of this should be pointed out in a rational way. No flames, no whining...just observations...and a concern about the future of the game.
Post edited by Unknown User on
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that's my vote.
I Dont PvP in any of the MMO's I play, the community is better in PvE in my opinion.
and yes, that is my opinion and vote.
no response needed.
.
this is the second update and it brings whats needed most are can be made fast.
federation will remain the biggest faction but with the addition of more factions like romulans the portion of federation players will decline.
best would be the addition of the terran federation faction. the more factions the more possible pvp battles are there.
You make a good point -- and I also do not believe that 50% of the player base should be Klingon. I agree with you -- that probably is not possible or even likely.
However - without any quantitive numbers to play with, and based on observation only, It looks like the Klingon player base may be 20% or less. Probably more like 10-15%. That is skewed a bit by the fact that a lot of Federation players might have Klingon alts...but they mostly play Federation as their primary faction.
In the sense of "balance" I am thinking that the Klingon Player base would be more healthy if you had about 30-40% of the players as full time Klingons -- roughly double the numbers that play now as Klingon Primaries. Future factional expansions, such as the Romulans, would even things out even more. The optimal percentages might be 40% Fed, 30% Klingon, 30% Romulan, if all factions are opposed to each other. As it stands now, a 60-70% Fed player base to a 30-40% Klingon base would still be a healthy alternative.
However...the numbers -- in terms of player population -- are going to shift further and further to the Federation if something is not done soon, and this will all be moot.
That alone makes playing a Klingon a less desirable choice for most STO players and virtually assures that there will never be any semblance of balance when it comes to doling out content, upgrades, etc. To get that balance, Cryptic would have to consciously divert the lion's share of development time to bringing the Klingon faction up to Federation's depth and breadth; something that at this stage of the game's growth would probably be a risky and unwise business move.
it will result in fed against a bunch of other factions in the far futur as fed portion will never fall under 50%and other factions will hardly pass 10%.
you cant bring more players to the klingon side nomatter what you do.
there are players that want to play klingon, so they do. there are players that want to play romulan, borg or evil federation(terran fed) who still play fed waiting for the new factions.
but noone will start playing klingon because he can do the same stuff he can do when playing federation.
example, adding dabo for klingons will not make lots of federation players say:"oh klingons got dabo ill play klingon now because their dabo is much better because they are klingons." it wont harm anyway.
the only other way to solve the problem with factions is to make them obsolete. if they just make 2 copycat factions one evil, one good. allowing any combination in any faction, so feds on klingon side and stuff you can get 2 factions with the same size but will loose players overall. i think its the best way to make a big fed faction and a bunch of small faction that dont have the stuff the feds have but own unique stuff thou in smaller numbers. considering the size of factions they cant make all faction unique with the same amount of stuff as this would mean a harsh decline in fed content and probably kill the game soon. consider the klingons would have as much content as the fed and the fed only the content the klingons have, the game would be dead by now. they cant go in that direction even if they want to.
I agree that more factions will tend to spread things around a bit and I also agree that different ship types for klinks would be warmly greeted as well. Lets all hope the STO membership thrives, that the devs to actually read these forums so that revenues will flow in and continued improvement in content, factions, ships and those really cute Orion slave girls "uniforms" will keep on coming.
How long since "go live"..? 7 Months? Not bad I'd say.. B+ trying hard, could use some improvement in some areas.
There are people who wrongly believe that MMOs are about PvE, when infact they aren't about anything. PvE in Star Trek Online is not a challenge. The AI is dumber than a sea slug, even with the recent improvements, and I suspect it's because the AI learns from the players who, largely, are not that bright either. As Ron White so eloquently put it, "You can't fix stupid. Stoopid iz fowevuh!" I can't hold that against people, they can't help it. What can be helped is that a bunch of college graduates who speak multiple human and machine languages, and who make a significant amount of money, and who are capable of rational thought... are dumbing themselves and their product down in order to attract yet more stupid people, while driving away anyone with half a brain from a title that naturally attracts a ton of them.
These dumbing-down patches are narrowing the consumer base to only those already in the game who are willing to put up with yet more stupid, and blocking entry to anyone interested in the title for its potential in an MMO format. Making a few dramatic changes to the game's dynamics, increasing the potential for space PvP in particular, and to a lesser extend space-PvE that doesn't require ground-game (turdbucket) monotony, bringing a little intelligence to the artificial stupidity that drives the enemies and signficiantly reducing their numbers so it doesn't feel like 'mowing the lawn' and starts being an actual fight that requires thought, adaptation, strategy, and possibly a bit of team work... would bring in a lot of customers that have already left, a lot of people who are sick to death of 'mowing the grass' in other games, and a lot of people who haven't bothered trying STO yet because "the reviews I've heard all make it sound like Hello Kitty Island Adventure in space." Possibly even run another TV ad campaign on SyFy during the new Futurama and re-release a boxed set, and if the game is functional you will see a MASSIVE surge of population that will stick around for a VERY long time. Especially if you impliment the UGC immediately in the following update.
As one of my fleet officers puts it, there is a language to MMOs, and a lot of people who bought STO have never even played a computer game before. They bought it because they buy everything Star Trek. They need personal tutelage, and without a gaming community present that is never going to happen. This means making the game playable for a gaming community, which further means setting it up so that PvE grind-heads are somehow supporting a dependant PvP community (give the feds batteries already, my god) that makes enough resources from just fighting eachother and trying to control some kind of PvE-based resource that they can generate the income to keep the PvE-heads well funded and well informed. Once that ecosystem has been established, rather than abused by what is commonly known in the MMO world as "carebears" (I'm pointing at you, people who suck at PvP and wish it would go away) who tend to be gold farmers anyway, and will literally destroy your game once they get it how they want it. They are well-practiced, systematic, and bent on making more money than you with your own game. Have a look at GuildWars, it's a great example of what NOt to do. Then have a look at EVE:Online, it's a wonderful example of how to build a sustainable community with a plethorah of options for DIFFERENT KINDS OF COMMUNITIES TO FUNCTION TOGETHER WITHOUT BEING A PAIN IN EACH OTHER'S COLLECTIVE BUTT.
It's not an easy thing to balance, and all of us understand that. Some of us would like you to try. I personally think the UGC is going to revolutionize the entire MMO industry, if you can keep this game alive long enough to impliment it. That will be your bread and butter, it will give Cryptic a solid name in MMO legend, and your praises will be sung from the rafters of the Church of Nerd. I desperately want to see that work out, for you and for all of us, Cryptic.
To make the game last long enough for the UGC to matter, you need to get a lot of things done in a very short amount of time. PvP balance is ultimately key, as PvP players tend to be your bug testing community and you as well as we all know that. PvP players put up with a TON of nonsense in the name of improving the game, and we PAY YOU for the priviledge of being able to participate. Win win, for you guys.
What you seem to have missed with all your statistical analysis is that every decision that you finalize alters the playerbase, and schews your statistics further and further from True. You need to get some people back, and to do that you need to stop paying attention to most of the playerbase, and start paying attention to the consumer market. I'm not talking about trying to snipe more people from WoW, I'm talking about putting yourself into the position you think you're already in. The Star Trek IP has ENORMOUS potential to draw in customers who have never played MMOs, and maybe never even played a video game before now. Use that to your advantage by making the game so awesome they will want to keep buying it every month, not just for content updates and weekly episodic content, which is an incredible idea... but because of peer pressure to remain in the game provided by US, the customers who already play. Cultivate the consumer, don't just tailor the product to feedback. When you rely exclusively on feedback you narrow the sample until it's gone, like Matrix:Online did. Expand, don't contract. Think of more ways to get people to sign up, get the ecosystem functional, and stop pandering to numbers. You KNOW that at least half of all people are below average, you guys are good with statistics.
I don't think that it will pull so much from the Klingons. I think for the most part people playing Klingons really like Klingons. Why else would they put up with the lack of content and general level of abuse that I have seen described across these forums?
we take it as a challenge, and fight on against ridiculous odds because that sense of superiority when you beat an obviously superior foe is just sooooo sweet. "The day of the Galaxy-X" as an example... my fleet went out with the specific intent to make people who bought that ridiculous ship feel stupid, and we succeeded excellently. It's an amazing ship, way overpowered, but even if you gave most feds a Borg Tactical Cube, they'd still suck and we would still crush them like bugs. It's not so much fun beating up obviously inferior opponents, but it's even less fun knowing they stand a snowball's chance in Vesuvius to win in spite of having no skill whatsoever at piloting a ship so incredibly powerful it can solo the entire Klingon Empire in one shot. So, dramatic imbalance does not make up for bad players, and now that everyone can see that, let's get some balance back so the feds can perhaps learn to fly instead of whining for the win.
I'm not. PvP is an important part of the game. Not a dominant portion but an important portion. By leaving PvP to go to the wayside the Klingons are being dismissed as complete fodder, which they are not. I am not "a Klingon" but I am a fed that see the Klingon faction needs more Federation players to be involved in PvP. Right now Federation players are SO damn bad at PvP they blame it on an imbalance. The only real imbalance is that Federation players never cooperate while Klingon players nearly always cooperate.
Keldor,
PvE in STO is not about challenge, it is about story and nothing more. That is why Federation players summarily suck at PvP. Federation players pursue story thinking it is challenging. Then they go into PvP and do that the same way they do PvE and get piszed because they lose so badly. As a Fed player that piszes me off because I know the Fed players are just friken stupid about PvP.
As far as canon goes... everything in STO is approved by CBS. If it is here CBS considers it canon to some degree or another. That canon argument is beyond not holding water; the water is gushing out of it.
It is time to un-handicap the Klingon empire and allow the Federation an opponent worthy of fighting.
Wait now that I PvP I am no longer a carebare. Turn back the hands of time PLEASE! Still Keldor is right, this game offers no challenge without PvP. It's a nice story on the Fed side but PvP is where the real game is being played. Excellent points Keldor, you gave allot to think about.
i now have 3 yes 3 klingon bg5 officers. I sat here playing the grind (omfg the grind) same missions over and over again with some PvP every now and then, but now all i can do is my daily's (yawn) and PvP (which to be honest is what i love.).
Without content for klingons, i believe cryptic are losing out on many like myself with no interest in feds.
Some may give it ago find the grind as i did mind numbingly boring and just quit, some will read the forums and from some of the reads on these just not even give it ago.
I have 2 friends that would give up WOW (maybe for only a few months) for some fun as a klingon but as they keep asking me "how is the gameplay?" i cant lie to them and have to tell them the truth IE you have got a 2 week grind of the same mission types (defend a ship/rock, kill npc on a planet/ship or kill ships in space, goto a planet/ship and kill tribbles/plants/satalite bits.) and maybe if lucky some lower level PvP (which is dieing out as i noticed on my last grind to bg5 as there where never any feds on queues.)
I had high hopes for 2.0 8 new missions 1 new ship, i'll give it more time but i wish cryptic wouldnt think as klingons as just some PvPers that have a small part in this game but like other games the other side that is equal and not as it seems at the moment swept under the mat and forgotten about. This i truly believe more content for klingons would inhance the game and get more into it.
I have grown fond of PvP, not fond enough to join a fleet yet or do much premade stuff, but I like the challenge it can bring. But I really hate the type of elitism that implies anyone not doing PvP is worthless for the MMO or (how we call it in roleplaying game circles) having "badwrongfun".
I also really hate the type of PvE players that imply the same about PvP.
PvE, easy or difficult is just as valid as PvP and no one is wrong to prefer the one over the other. As long as you play the game, you are good for the game. If you're having fun, you seem to be doing things right.
The Klingon faction can and will go stronger with PvE missions. And this will also result in people trying out more PvP on the Klingon side. 8 missions are a good start, but not the end.
On a random note:
Many people enjoy PvE for the storylines. (That's why I enjoy it.) If there was just a way to do PvP missions with a storyline...
PvE for the story and sense of "me" being in it and PvP for the fun of having an opponent who doesn't move 1/4 impulse all the time and can react to my attacks with some common sense and tactics.
Agree completely, but personally I view my Fed Admirals as the 'alts'
All it will take to get a lot more Klingons is to give them something to do!
Only Cryptic has the numbers but there were once *a lot* more K side players. Our KDF fleet alone (SVK) had over 500 people (and realistically over 200 active)... we are down to maybe 15% of that number at best. Why? Well there is only so often you can do the same thing over and over and over again. Old fleeties occasionally swing by, see if anything much has changed, and then vanish again when it is clear we are still in paid beta
If K side can be raised back to the levels of just a few months ago, and I would not be surprised if that was maybe a much as 20% of the total population (when Azlesa first came out, it was like a zoo in there!), queues should be shorter and the whole game would be healthier.
And it can happen. All it takes is content.
Nuff said.
I'll be making a Romie when they are a faction ingame.
damn ALtistis!