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The Armitage, and Why There Will Never Be Romulans in STO
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Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
This is not a whine post this is an observation from a KDF-centric player.
There has been a lot of talk regarding pricing models, profit, and the player base.
The recent release of an escort with a hanger bay for the Federation basically a carrier without the turn rate limitation is very telling. I think I am providing a new perspective on exactly what this means if not, I apologize.
Obviously, as has been pointed out in other threads, this is a profit-making strategy. The Federation player base is the largest in the game. That is why there will never be a Romulan, or any other faction developed and the release of this vessel is an indicator of that.
Got your attention? Good the writing was on the wall some time ago when they changed game progression to where you had to play Federation for 20-some odd levels first before rolling a Klingon character. If I remember correctly, the perception was that this was a restriction that was only temporary until the Klingon Faction can be fleshed out, and yet, we have not seen any move towards removing this restriction.
First, gamers can be very pragmatic and if you are forced to play Federation for twenty or so levels, just so you can have an opportunity to play a race that has fewer ships with lesser capabilities because nearly every console or ability that makes Klingon ships unique can now be replicated better on the Federation side then why waste your time? By the time you reach level 20 you have invested a lot of effort into your Federation character. That is the first piece of evidence what Cryptic and Perfect World are doing is hooking players into a single faction in order to maximize online sales to that faction. I believe this to be part of their pricing and profit model.
Secondly as a corporate online game company managing an MMO, you want to do everything you can to preserve that profit-generating base. That is at the heart of my theory for this post calls for a third Romulan faction have been in the game since day one. The only real promise that we have heard is that there will be a Romulan faction once the Klingons are finished. That is not a lie it is not even deception, because the Klingons will never be finished and so there will not be a Romulan faction, ever. The reason why is not hard to understand -- put yourself into that pair of corporate shoes who only cares about profit margins, not gameplay .and ask yourself, why on earth would I seek to split or fracture my primary profit base the Federation faction? If there was a Romulan faction, a significant number of Federation players would switch not enough to form any sort of majority, but enough to decrease your main profit-making base by a substantial percentage and then, what you end up having three factions that would require new content (which costs money), rather than one The Federation. Bottom line from a corporate perspective, developing a third faction in this game is equivalent to shooting yourself in the foot, because your profit margins will drop like a rock as your costs for developing new content increase.
Do you see how it works out? Bringing in a Romulan faction could possibly decrease their profit margin somewhere between 40-60 percent. I arrived at that number using the following elements:
1. Content development eats into your profit margin if you are only producing real content for one faction, you are being cost efficient and resource allocation (artwork, content, scripting, etc) is more focused if you create a third faction, you will have to support the second faction more (because you have been ignoring it in any case), develop content for the third, while still cranking out content for the primary player base. This is a major reduction in the allocation of programing, scripting, and artwork resources to the prime profit player base, which will in turn slow down pushing content to your perceived money maker the Federation faction.
2. A third faction will take a significant number of players away from your money-making faction, the Federation. Even if only 10% of the Federation player base goes Romulan, a potential 10% loss in profit is significant in corporate circles.
And that, sadly, is why you are not going to see any significant Klingon content and likely will never see a Romulan faction, either. It all boils down to what is cost effective, and what will increase profits. Right now Cryptic and Perfect World are milking the Federation faction for what they can get that is their money maker and as their money maker, that faction needs to be protected and preserved competitive interests, such as a stronger Klingon faction with solid content, and a third faction that they know would likely be wildly popular -- the Romulans -- cannot be allowed in the game because it will destroy their profit-making models.
In closing I really, really want to be wrong on this but it just makes too much sense and after reading Mr. Stahls State of the Game I am about 90% convinced that the theory presented above is spot-on, because unlike last engineering reports, there is absolutely no mention of a Romulan or third faction not even a hint and I think that is on purpose.
There has been a lot of talk regarding pricing models, profit, and the player base.
The recent release of an escort with a hanger bay for the Federation basically a carrier without the turn rate limitation is very telling. I think I am providing a new perspective on exactly what this means if not, I apologize.
Obviously, as has been pointed out in other threads, this is a profit-making strategy. The Federation player base is the largest in the game. That is why there will never be a Romulan, or any other faction developed and the release of this vessel is an indicator of that.
Got your attention? Good the writing was on the wall some time ago when they changed game progression to where you had to play Federation for 20-some odd levels first before rolling a Klingon character. If I remember correctly, the perception was that this was a restriction that was only temporary until the Klingon Faction can be fleshed out, and yet, we have not seen any move towards removing this restriction.
First, gamers can be very pragmatic and if you are forced to play Federation for twenty or so levels, just so you can have an opportunity to play a race that has fewer ships with lesser capabilities because nearly every console or ability that makes Klingon ships unique can now be replicated better on the Federation side then why waste your time? By the time you reach level 20 you have invested a lot of effort into your Federation character. That is the first piece of evidence what Cryptic and Perfect World are doing is hooking players into a single faction in order to maximize online sales to that faction. I believe this to be part of their pricing and profit model.
Secondly as a corporate online game company managing an MMO, you want to do everything you can to preserve that profit-generating base. That is at the heart of my theory for this post calls for a third Romulan faction have been in the game since day one. The only real promise that we have heard is that there will be a Romulan faction once the Klingons are finished. That is not a lie it is not even deception, because the Klingons will never be finished and so there will not be a Romulan faction, ever. The reason why is not hard to understand -- put yourself into that pair of corporate shoes who only cares about profit margins, not gameplay .and ask yourself, why on earth would I seek to split or fracture my primary profit base the Federation faction? If there was a Romulan faction, a significant number of Federation players would switch not enough to form any sort of majority, but enough to decrease your main profit-making base by a substantial percentage and then, what you end up having three factions that would require new content (which costs money), rather than one The Federation. Bottom line from a corporate perspective, developing a third faction in this game is equivalent to shooting yourself in the foot, because your profit margins will drop like a rock as your costs for developing new content increase.
Do you see how it works out? Bringing in a Romulan faction could possibly decrease their profit margin somewhere between 40-60 percent. I arrived at that number using the following elements:
1. Content development eats into your profit margin if you are only producing real content for one faction, you are being cost efficient and resource allocation (artwork, content, scripting, etc) is more focused if you create a third faction, you will have to support the second faction more (because you have been ignoring it in any case), develop content for the third, while still cranking out content for the primary player base. This is a major reduction in the allocation of programing, scripting, and artwork resources to the prime profit player base, which will in turn slow down pushing content to your perceived money maker the Federation faction.
2. A third faction will take a significant number of players away from your money-making faction, the Federation. Even if only 10% of the Federation player base goes Romulan, a potential 10% loss in profit is significant in corporate circles.
And that, sadly, is why you are not going to see any significant Klingon content and likely will never see a Romulan faction, either. It all boils down to what is cost effective, and what will increase profits. Right now Cryptic and Perfect World are milking the Federation faction for what they can get that is their money maker and as their money maker, that faction needs to be protected and preserved competitive interests, such as a stronger Klingon faction with solid content, and a third faction that they know would likely be wildly popular -- the Romulans -- cannot be allowed in the game because it will destroy their profit-making models.
In closing I really, really want to be wrong on this but it just makes too much sense and after reading Mr. Stahls State of the Game I am about 90% convinced that the theory presented above is spot-on, because unlike last engineering reports, there is absolutely no mention of a Romulan or third faction not even a hint and I think that is on purpose.
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Romulan faction requiring Level 25 Federation character for unlock, your Romulan captain will start at level 25 - this means levels 1-24 don't need content/ships developed.
Some of the Featured Episodes can be made available to Romulan captains with a little word-work for it to fit in with the Romulan faction and like with the Klingon faction, the Romulans can have 10 or so faction specific missions to keep them happy and events/fleet actions can be copy and pasted with a little word-work or slight alteration
Have you thought about what youre saying at all?
Do you think that Fed players (or KDF) who started playing the Romulan faction would suddenly stop buying cpoints?
If anything, adding a Romulan faction would make for an instant surge in profit that would (probably quickly, over the course of a month or so) taper back down to something higher than what is 'normal' for the current number of subscribers.
And since putting in more content to a game with no appreciable end game or much of anything to do after hitting level 50 would generate more interest and more opportunities for people to purchase things, like that sexy as hell D'deridex for their Praetor (or whatever the hell they call the top Romulan rank, I know praetor is the CnC or whatever) Romulan Eng.
Seriously, the space between your ears is not a radiator.
My, I sort of expected knee-jerk rude responses...glad I am fated to not be dissapointed.
What is it about people who simply do not understand the mechanics behind resource allocation and profit margins?
drasketo -- note that in my post I don't discuss c-store at all...what I do discuss is the cost of content development -- this does cost money. From a company perspective, you allocate your resources to support the element that will provide you with the highest profit margin -- the costs of content development, often referred to as operating costs, or in some companies, "overhead" is prohibitive. You want to allocate that resource to the player base that will give you the best profit margin. The key to maximizing your profit margin is to keep overhead costs down...producing a third faction -- even if it is wildly popular -- is counterintuitive to that economic strategy.
I agree that a third faction -- if done correctly -- could provide a temporary boost in profit...the problem you run into at the corporate level is sustainability...right now Cryptic can keep pumping out Federation starships and content and be garunteed a certain profit margin based on their profit models...a third faction though would complicate that model -- and once players start playing Romulan, I can garuntee that there will be a decrease in Federation ship sales, because those players will identify themselves with that faction...and they will reserve their own limited funds for items for that faction.
EDIT -- do you see how that works? Basically, Cryptic has to spend money on content development in order to make money...name me one logical reason why they should spend money developing a third faction when they can spend the same amount or less for developing ONE faction with some minor spin-offs to a second, unfinished faction, and have a much higher profit margin with lower operating costs. Why spend money to create yet another "minority" faction in the game you have to allocate resources to?
That is how many KDF players play. I have not purchased a Federation ship in the past year. I don't have any of their new cruisers. I do have every KDF ship though - to include the ones in the C-Store. If a Romulan faction does come into being...I think most of your defectors are going to come from the Federation camp -- all that remains of the KDF faction at this point are the die-hard KDF players....and they represent a solid core of gamers who probably won't leave until the doors shut on the game...but Feds -- that is different.
No matter how you slice and dice it...operating costs would increase due to the fact that you have a third faction -- and a second unfinished faction -- that would require resources to sustain them...and that takes away from the resources that are supporting your primary profit-making enterprise -- the Feds.
Of course...they could release the Romulan faction and simply not support it. What a goat rope that would be....
Look at how sloppy the release of the T5 Akira was, and still is; far as I know the graphical meshing issues still exist. You're acting like they have development teams hard at work, slaving away on Fed side content 'upkeep.'
L. O. L. is about the only reasonable response to that.
In any case saying anything more is pointless because you made up your mind long before you hit the submit button.
Toodles.
The talk I last heard from Cryptic was that you get 5 levels of being a Romulan than you take your ship and defect to the KDF or Federation, and that they weren't sure you'd keep your ship.
KDF doesn't have many players because the barrier to entry (L25). KDF doesn't have much stuff because it has few players. KDF has trouble holding players due to low content.
I do believe that is a Vicious circle.
And it worked as DStahl admitted that there wouldn't be any ressources used for KDF development.
Cryptics/ PWs masterplan worked quite perfectly.
At some point the most cash strong Federation players will have purchased more or less all that draws their attention on the C-Store. They cease to be an income factor, beyond new releases which may or may not catch their eye. By introducing a new faction and splitting the market you create a new revenue of income, where Federation players wanting to test out the new faction are drawn to new deals, new ship designs and new options. This reinvigorates the market.
Also, players who go to the Romulan side will not necessarily stop using their cash on the Federation side. I myself am a Klingon primarily, but this has not stopped me from getting the occational Federation gadget as well. I believe I have purchased more stuff Federation side for the simple reason its more stuff there. I believe for many players a Romulan faction will become a secondary, and not a main faction, yet they will spend there before returning and perhaps spending more on their main characters.
Certainly, a lot of players, will try out Romulans though. There are a large amount of both Klingon and Federation players who wish for a Romulan faction and the possibility of making their way in space flying a warbird.
While in the short term a Romulan faction would blunt Federation sales a bit, in the long term Romulans would equal more C-Store options. And more C-Store Options equal more sales, for the simple reason there are more things to buy.
Splitting the market into different groups becomes iinconsequential, since all sales end up in the same pocket. A splitting of the markets is only a consern if the cash would go to a competitor, but here this is not the case.
Since a Romulan faction would probably lead to a better long term income, and long term income is what counts in the MMO world, any loss of the short term profit should not really matter.
That said, I agree with ZTempest, I too believe a Romulan faction is now a remote possibility at best. I am simply arguing that splitting the market shouldn't be the reason.
For STO, they are focusing very much on the C-store right now (up-sell/cross-sell), however, this is the last stage of marketing and promoting a product, they are not really that focused on the retention (this would be content that keeps you occupied in the game, fleet starbases however do fall under this). Now this is where the problem comes in. For an F2P game, one of the most important stratagies is to aquire customers, on average only 3.5% - 10% of players in an F2P game pend any money, so you need a huge playerbase to sustain the model, more so if you take into account player turnover.
Right now, the KDF does not actually help with aquiring new customers, since you need to grind up another charactor to get them unlocked, and due to the fact that cryptic doesn't focus that much on the c-store or content for Klingons, they fail onretaining custoemrs that want to play them, as well as up-selling/cross-selling to those customers. It is well known that in MMO's, some people hate playing the percieved good guys (hence why you get so many people playing Horde in WoW, Sith in ToR etc). If Cryptic can't get this right with the main antagonist faction in the game, then the future for the Romulan faction is certainly doomed.
So what can Cryptic do to fix this? Well, put simply they need to invest money into fleshing out the KDF faction so that is playable from the very beginning. That way new customers to the game have a choice of factions. I'd also argue that the Romulans should also be a fully fleshed faction and not a monster play faction, so that when the game adds them and they get advertised to the masses, people can start the game and play them immediatly, if they don't do this, they are quite simply missing out on aquiring lots of customers, infact if anything, all they'll do is shift the balance of players already in the game and not actually aquire new ones.
This..
Simply.. this...
Suricata is right Cryptic, so take heed
Yep. Direct from the man himself:
<Dev> dMorn@dstahl: re: KDF Content - we are focused on all faction end game content for the foreseeable future - no plans to do KDF levels 1 -18 at the moment
1) Be happy for what you do have, not dwelling on what you don't: Cryptic VERY easily could have never considered having any faction other than the Federation, but they decided to add the KDF. Would you rather they never did develop it at all or that they just completely removed it from the game.
2) SH#T Happens: You try coming back from all the issues Cryptic has had to deal with and for that matter lets see just how many of your promises before the sh#t hit the fan you could manage to pull out of your A^% in a time period that would make every single person happy. Changes are you're going to end up short and prioritizing just like they had to do.
3) KDF "Uniqueness": The Only difference between the Klingon Empire and The Federation is that the Klingons use cloaks, while the Federation does not. The Klingons were not and have never been a superior advanced technological race compared to the Federation. In fact, the Klingon Empire and the Federation have/had been allies for so long that it would only be natural that their developments would greatly parallel each other, this is just as true in war as it was in peace.
4) Romulan Faction: A homeworld map, a starbase or two, PVE, PVP, STF, ships, Foundry, Duty officer system, modified UI, Fleet base system.
New Content/assests:
A) Homeworld Map
C) Ships
D) Fleet base interior/exterior
Modified:
A) UI
C) Fleet Base System
D) PVP
E) PVE - Initial NPC contact modified to Romulan contact, minor cosmetic changes.
F) STF - Romulan Star Empire Recognizes Borg threat is a threat to all and decides to lend what resources they can to the effort to stop the Borg.
Storyline:
Add additional romulan assets to the foundry and let the community at large create their own storylines. Perhaps in the future some official Romulan missions added, but not necessary. Steal Proto-matter technology/device from Federation to reconstruct Romulus.....possible Romulan Star empire, Tal'shiar, Reman civil war over which holds the true seat of power Romulus or Rator III Romulan capitol.
_____________________
A Third Romulan Faction is easily doable upon some very basic truths:
Once the basic ground work is down it will be the communities responsibility to create the mission content as it is Cryptic's responsibility to give use the tools and assets to do so. This would be the perfect opportunity for an unprecedented Developer/Player relationship level of cooperation.
This would relieve the resource strain on Cryptic beyond the inital set and new foundry content could be developed alongside other FED/KDF foundry content. It doesn't even have to be completely new, even just appropriate items being retextured.
The Die Hard KDF players will never be happy with anything they get, the Romulan hopefulls have a chance to stand apart and prove you give us the tools and we'll show you our appreciation.
You put a Romulan D'derix class warbird (Cruiser/Escort hybrid stats) and a Romulan shuttle Both with unique bridges/interiors and the ability to Covertly use the lockbox ships and you've got all we need to go.
Cstore bundle the Warbird, shuttle, interiors, and a romulan weapons pack for 4000cp and market it as a Romulan Expansion pack and I'd buy it no question
Very well said.
Look at the link it my Sig VoicesInTheDark to prove you wrong.
Cryptic's history with the KDF is a shameful one, nobody could be happy or either grateful for.
Exept the greedy Federation players.
If creating content is to the benefit of the company they will do so.
Tah dah!
I've already read it before, and quite frankly, I disagree on just about everything you've said so far. There is absolutely no reason for the situation to be set in stone, whatever that situation may be. If more fed players would play KDF, the percentages would change, the balance would shift, and Cryptic would have to either ban KDF entirely or start finishing it.
It's that simple!
I would like to think that they will eventually get to that "moment". Unfortuantely that moment seems to ever escape into the future on the back of neccassity.
so wouldnt that mean they DO plan on making them, jus that its not a "Right this minute" priority?
While I would love for there to be L1-20 KDF content and that you absolutely do not have to unlock KDF side, there is a bit of a flaw here.
L1-20 (25?) Fed side does not take long at all, unless you are completely new to the game or generally have no clue.
In fact getting from 1-50 for any experienced player is so fast, its generally recommended over buying a respec token that you could earn for free using dilithium.
To reiterate, time spent farming dilithium is considered more valuable (it is) than time spent leveling from 1 to 50, much less 1 to 20.
See, Hawks? I told you there was a silver lining somewhere, you just have to dig in the right place - as long as there are no X-faction ships in lockboxes, it may yet appear.
Completely agree with this, by not working on the KDF they are also polluting the players. Im not really having fun anymore...why? IDK, the little things mabye, chances to improve the KDF that were swept
by. What happens when more of us leave? will sto be the next starwars?
Your entire response proves yet again goes to prove that the die hard Feddie fans still haven't learned some very important lessons, even after all this time.
1) You try being happy with the ships you have for even a one day length period. For every one ship you get you are immediately begging for six more before the last one even hits the C-Store shelves.
2) Sh#t doesn't happen. The game box shipped with a lot of sh#t missing because Cryptic decided it wasn't worth the resources before the game was even released. This whole 18% sham is just that and is a sham created and perpetuated by Cryptic's intent.
3) There is no real difference between the two because Cryptic designed (realistically lack of design) it that way. Also, I don't recall anyone ever stating that the Klingon Empire was technologically superior to the Federation or the Romulans. In fact, it is spouted quite frequently that the Federation is tech superior to Klingons and that over the course of this game's history that Starfleet should have all these advances while KDF, of course, would be stuck in the relative dark ages.
The Die Hard Feddie players will never be happy with anything they get, no matter how much and how often that getting occurs. Frankly, I find your attitude and the attitude of those like you insulting.
1. If the federation were the single faction one might wonder why STO wasn't simply called FO. It could be the importance of branding or to avoid confusion with something a more ignorant person might tell you to do.
2. When it isn't in your sphere of wants sure.
3. I'm not going to cater to you by responding to this "point"
4. As confident I am there are 10 truly dedicated romulan fans out there you won't have to sweat any cultural details or impressive vistas; The cloak would finally be yours. No halfbaked canon justifications just the pew pew pew of a warbird with a guilt free cloak. Wouldn't that be liberating? You would be so satiated you might even start making less condescending posts on the forums. Wishfull thinking.
Thank you for your opinions. We must agree to disagree.
You don't have to be a "die hard KDF player" to see that. All of my characters but one are KDF, and I still see that Cryptic has short-sheeted KDF as a faction, and as a result people won't play it as often as Fed.
If you want something sweet, and your choices are A) the box of Twinkies already open on the kitchen counter, and
I happen to think, quite frankly, that Cryptic is missing out on some ways to make easy money and make a lot of people happier with STO by just buckling down and fleshing out more missions for KDF. I'm not saying it's easy, but compared to, say, making an FE or producing a new C-Store ship, it isn't nearly as resource intensive. Somebody back there just isn't getting their cost-benefit analysis right, IMO. There's a lot that KDF is missing, but I'll tell you right now, give them enough PvE content, more people will start playing KDF and suddenly your market for existing KDF C-Store items, let alone new ones, goes up dramatically.
It could be telling; I'm just uncertain of the message. In my opinion there are a number of possibilities, some better than others. I'll offer up my own best and worst interpretations although there are many others.
1. Waiting in the wings: What I feel is the best case scenario. With 6th just around the corner this ship may be the sampler of what is to roll out of the fleetyards on either side. Presently this ship is a cut above the performance parameters of vessels in both fleets. Among it's peers this ship doesn't appear to pay a price for the bells and whistles attached (apart from 2000 cp, and this isn't a distinction exclusive to the Armitage so it isn't worth factoring in to the equation). I would still be disappointed if this were the case but there has been talk about the fleet starbases allowing older ships to be improved at their fleetyard so I'll end this possibility on an optimistic note and won't rant on about planned obsolescence.
2. Awesome for sale who's buying?: Yes you too can own the most terrifying vessel in the galaxy. Until next month when we market the next giant-killer/nemesis. The primary means of revenue generation would become an arms race driven by player desire to keep up. The greatest sacrifice here is balanced gameplay where a new design trumps it's forebearers because it was designed to. In this worse case scenario groundwork for the next flavour of the month may already be in the formative stages, "Why will this slap that".
I've been coming and going with this game since it was in beta and the one thing that hasn't changed is cryptic still trying to convince us they "want a romulan faction" 2 years and they haven't even bothered to finish the KDF.
Speaks for itself really.
Romulans aren't going to happen.
DStahl has said and promised many things during the last 2 years which never happened for KDF. I will believe it when i see it, before that it is just once again Stahl talk.
The man has lost my trust and all creditability entirely for his statements during the last 2 years.