Heck, convert their OWN missions. Once you get our of the KDF arc, pretty much all of the Rom/Card missions could be playable by the KDF with slight dialog changes.
I still advocate for an end game only faction (possibly starting at RA equivalent rank). A couple of social places (home base and a Dronza equivalent) and maybe a few missions, if we are lucky, and that's enough.
The real diferentiator would be from adding a new class or two of ship that doesn't exist for the Federation or KDF. That could make much of the old content feel fresh again.
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I would love to see the RSE as a full blown faction. The ships they have now are, to say the least, inadequite for a faction. 4 ships for a full faction will not cut it. Then as others say, customisation for the ships and characters, hubs, starbases, missions. There is a lot of work to be done. I would like to see the KDF finally fully fleshed out before starting the RSE. It is possible, they are already working on the RSE but most likely not.
One question though, How would you adapt the Cloaked Intentions series to Romulan play?
How about they don't adapt it and just give them new content. I HATE how the KDF got screwed into having the majority of their missions as copy/pasted rubbish.
Cloaking generators break down at first sign of language.
There isnt going to be a full-blown faction or making the KDF a full faction due to the game's numbers not really supporting either unless a rapid number of users enter the game and spend mega tons of money.
There in lies Cryptic mistake. They rely soley on the fedfans to fund what exists for STO and the fact that the federation is well known as a Social term to draw new players into STO without offering much of anything else to keep the players interested.
Star Trek/Fed fans stay becuase they see a Star Trek centric game that feeds thier fandom to a point. That point will dull over time as they start buying less and less fluff items.
New players are drawn in buy the Name or by rumor, find STO fun to play and iether quickly burnout on the money grab tactics or storyless grinding that eventually peters out, try the KDf and find it worse, go back to fed and soon leave.
The one dimensional design of STO can not hold itself together forever. STO needs multifactional play and story to offer enough content to support its Free/Pay to play design.
Factions are an MMO trope. You're never going to see that gone. Too many games have the Red and Blue side; and all MMOs need to be similar enough so that its easy to understand for new MMOers coming to the game.
There are examples in the industry. Look at The Secret World; it's got three factions, but they're not always opposed. The Templars promote "good", the Illuminati promote "order", and the Dragon promote "freedom", but they're all interested in stopping the bad guys first, and work together toward that goal.
Except when they don't.
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Factions are an MMO trope. You're never going to see that gone. Too many games have the Red and Blue side; and all MMOs need to be similar enough so that its easy to understand for new MMOers coming to the game.
Well...
No, I think done right factions would be good for this game. I'm against a merge that doesn't make sense, and merging Fed and KDF does not make sense. There is simply no good way to capture a Klingon "feel" if the storyline is all bland and generic; it will never be satisfying to a KDF player.
I disagree that factions are an absolute requirement for an MMO. It depends on the MMO. DDO for example does not have true factions. I imagine that Neverwinter will not either (although there's no real reason it couldn't).
STO is one MMO where a multi-faction (more than 2) environment might actually make sense. IDIC and all that.
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I'm of two minds when it comes to the Rommies; on one hand Cryptic can't/will never finish KDF so who's to say Rommies won't get the same treatment. On the other I would like to see Rommies and I'm starting to get tired of the faction being anchored by the problems of the KDF. I'm not frustrated enough to spout a full blown outburst about this but I'm gettin there.
Well th reasons here are pretty obvious, Romulans would take alot (and i mean ALOT) of work,
1- they need to make a whole new caimpain based differently from the other two factions because both other factions are hostile to the Romulans.
2- the Romulans only Have 6 ships counting the dreadnought and fighters, so class variations would be deeply hindered and whole new ships would have to be created.
Now, this being said, it is possible but it will take extensive work and possibly and entire Season 7 Update.
But with Cardassian Gamplay Caimpain would be made easier because Cardassians are nutrel/allied with the KDF and Feds, Not only That but they have a previous long history with the Dominion and could very well have access to dominion ships on top of their own.
However Both Factions would hinder both from not having many races to choose from, you really only have for the cardassians the Cardassians Race and the Bajorians weras Romulans have a slight mix with both remen and hirogen support.
Just some thoughts, Opinions?
(please excuse the terrible typing as i cant type to save my life)
Dead horse has been said four times in this thread. Kinda gives you an idea of what the RSE faction idea really is. But just for the fun, I'm going to beat the dead horse even more. Here's some of my ideas of ships they could stuff into a Romulan faction.
Ships. There's so little of them the heck, maybe they should make you start at level 50 for RSE because there's not enough ships to put in lower levels. I would actually be happy with that IF they gave us enough warbirds.
The Bird of Prey. Equivalent to the Fed escort and obviously the Klingon BoP.
The Mogai. Sort of like an equivalent to the Klingon raptor.
The D'deridex. A cruiser, obviously, but more like a Klingon cruiser.
Maybe one more they have to make up since with the Federation and KDF you get more than three choices for your free T5 ship. For the C store:
The Scimitar. Assuming the console/boff layout is as good as I hope, I might pay for something like this.
Random and assorted 25th century warbrids they make up.
Variants/refits of the free T5 ships that come with special consoles.
As you can see, there's just too little here to work with. But we can still hope, can't we? Maybe have the Undine join with the RSE (I know it's a stretch, but it might just get us the Romulan faction) or something like that.
All these arguments against the possibility of having a Romulan faction brought into game.
PWE wants to see the 3 iconic factions playable in STO. PWE wants to see more PvP for high-level players. PWE owns Cryptic. Cryptic develops STO.
As has been said by the devs - all content to be generated for STO will be usable/playable by all factions.
STO is getting a new sector with Season 7. STO will be getting some additional story content missions with S7 that involve this new sector.
Personally, I believe that this content will involve the Romulans and the Iconians in the story. Whether or not we get Romulans as a playable faction in at that time is something only the devs know.
A playable Romulan faction that is brought into STO will not be a "full-blown faction". It will probably be some sort of mini-faction with possibly even less content than what the KDF has been given.
So yes, the future of STO, as far as I can see, is looking quite "green"... :P
p.s. the people with the constant "dead-horse" comments are primarily KDF players with the attidude of "if I can't have it, then no one else can have it".
p.s. the people with the constant "dead-horse" comments are primarily KDF players with the attidude of "if I can't have it, then no one else can have it".
Actually, that's quite a wrong statement. I play my Fed character 98% of the time, I hardly use the KDF one. We talk about the RSE faction as a dead horse because when you consider how much Cryptic would need to stretch its development team, and you realize the KDF faction is an underdeveloped thing whether you're a KDF or Fed person. We'll just need to wait for S7, as it was said it's the biggest update since launch. Or so they say...
I don't want to see a Romulan Faction done until they can appropriately give us an equal amount of missions as the Federation side already has.
We've already seen the KDF not being able to be finished. If this is what they'd give us with a Romulan faction, then I say do not do it.
Either do it right, or don't do it at all.
I hear what you're saying, but it seems that STO and some Star Trek fans forget the Romulans do have a scout ship that we have actually seen in STNG "Defector" and a Romulan science ship that was seen in STNG "The Next Phase". Just ideas for two other ships.
That's a nice idea but it will have to wait i think this will be possible but only after that KDF is fully grown (if it ever does) and that the devs imagine enough content even if theres a good part of the main events in the Movies/Series (good part = not all)
I'd love a romulan faction faction as much as I'd love to see the KDF stuff expanded.
Personally speaking I don't think that KDF were ever intended to be a full faction in the same sense as the Feds though. I personally think that they were intended to be used almost solely with the PVP which they had high hopes for but never really got around to developing further.
I think they could kill two birds with one stone here and have the Rommies in a renewed conflict with the Klingons allowing them to work on both at the same time sharing mission content from two different view points.
Work in some of the Tal Shiar elements stirring things up in the Empire pitting house against house and you have a working model for expanding the klingons at the same time.
Guild Wars 2 has no factions, just lots of players working together. There's no reason it can't work, most developers are just too lazy to deviate from the basic template games like WoW have created.
guild wars 2 is not STO. and the overwhelming majority of mmos do have factions. its already implemented, its not going anywhere. in STO such a merge wouldn't even be possible. the entire concept of the game centers around the existence of the two factions. if you merged them it would TRIBBLE everything up and require a complete redesign of the current mission set and backstory. thats not practical wow didn't create the faction system by any stretch of the imagination and its not laziness. its the way things have been for a long time. it works. you don't TRIBBLE with what works
Mini-Factions can viable if they are set up right:
1. Make the hub world something small like K-7 or Drozana.
2. Make it a paid expansion pack 2000 to 2500 zen.
3. Make full use of the foundry and have fan delivered story arc with Dev guiding the story.
4. Make use of existing character models in game.
5. Make it level 45 or 50.
Edit:
6. Heavily Promoted with a good backstory and a development blog
7. Add a new themed PvP map: ground and space elements
8. Two new fleet action missions: ground and space elements- these need to have a good tie-in story
9. New STF-like mission: two modes normal and elite- this needs to be the story wrap up
take another look at this. its not even remotely viable to set up a mini faction that way
convert foundry missions.............
this will not happen in this or any other game. there is way too much legal liability in even attempting to do so. they would just end up getting themselves sued at some point when the author didn't like what they did with a mission
There are examples in the industry. Look at The Secret World; it's got three factions, but they're not always opposed. The Templars promote "good", the Illuminati promote "order", and the Dragon promote "freedom", but they're all interested in stopping the bad guys first, and work together toward that goal.
which has nothing to do with merged factions
As has been said by the devs - all content to be generated for STO will be usable/playable by all factions
they never said any such thing. they explicitly said they were developing faction specific content AND cross faction content
p.s. the people with the constant "dead-horse" comments are primarily KDF players with the attidude of "if I can't have it, then no one else can have it".[/qupte]
no. this is not true at all and its offensive
Personally speaking I don't think that KDF were ever intended to be a full faction in the same sense as the Feds though. I personally think that they were intended to be used almost solely with the PVP which they had high hopes for but never really got around to developing further.
what you 'think' on the subject doesn't matter. you are very wrong. take a look at the actual history of the faction. it was intended and advertised for quite some time as an equal faction with the feds. thats a fact. several people here have posted info about it with full listings of everything thats been said about it. later on they started to focus on pvp because they knew they couldn't get the faction done as they had claimed to, and then they claimed they never made such a claim about an equal faction in the first place - until quietly dropping the subject once people started showing them proof that they did. such behavior has been disturbingly common around here
There are enough ships + races to feed off of this. It could also (viably) be a mini-faction.
First the races:
1. Romulan
2. Reman
3. Hirogen
4. Iconian?
Fed / Klingon have 3 main 'classes' of ships. Well as Romulans seem to be portrayed as a Tac/Sci Focus (Klingon are Tac/Eng and Fed are a mix of all 3). There should be more of a focus on Sci/Tac than Eng.
Basically I see there are 3 main classes of Romulan Faction ships.
1. Bird of Prey
2. Escort
3. Destroyer (Not a Cruiser, a Destroyer)
Ships like the D'deridex are Destroyers to me. Very large (Vo'Quv sized) ships that the Romulans seem to have a lot of. Hirogen also have the Apex, which would fit this bill to.
I see these more as Sci vessels than Eng, just like the Scimitar is a full out Carrier.
Escorts would be the Mogai, or the Hirogen Escort.
Birds of Prey are pretty obvious.
There is also the fact that Canonically, the Romulans have D7s, as they share Technology with the Klingons (or have in the past).
I don't want a playable romulan faction. I want a playable borg faction.
1, Probe
2, Sphere
3, Cube
4, Tac cube
We already have all the ships, we even have playable borg characters with all the costume parts there.
Far less work involved in making the borg playable than making the romulans playable.
Unlocked by having a lvl 50 of each class in both fed and KDF
I don't want a playable romulan faction. I want a playable borg faction.
1, Probe
2, Sphere
3, Cube
4, Tac cube
We already have all the ships, we even have playable borg characters with all the costume parts there.
Far less work involved in making the borg playable than making the romulans playable.
Unlocked by having a lvl 50 of each class in both fed and KDF
Borg don't have free will, so when you log in it will just be a video of your character walking around a cube, because you wouldn't be the captain, there is no captain.
Cloaking generators break down at first sign of language.
Borg don't have free will, so when you log in it will just be a video of your character walking around a cube, because you wouldn't be the captain, there is no captain.
what you 'think' on the subject doesn't matter. you are very wrong.
Excuse me for being entitled to and having my own opinion based on my own observations and experience.
Some kind soul posted this on the matter of the KDF development that kinda proves me right actually in terms of pre-launch expectations and Klingons being a PVP faction.
Regardless of what you 'think' I still believe that the KDF faction was shoehorned in. Like much of this game in the early days there were many flash in the pan ideas that were openly talked about that never came into being. In 'my opinion' there was never any strong intention to flesh them out beyond PVP because once under way their resources were focused on the Feds and updating the system with changes such as re-vamped ground combat and the likes of the doff system. Then you have the buy out of Cryptic and development of Neverwinter to take into consideration as well.
Like I say, they need a sound financial reason to include Romulans and piggy backing in on an existing undeveloped faction is the best way to get two bases covered at once. The only way they will get included post f2p is if they know they will be able to generate income from them. Then they also have to consider how far CBS will be willing to let them run with the development of the race.
If they create a sound Romulan/Klingon story arc with Federation involvement building on the Reman episodes then they are in a much stronger position to attract existing customers to the product and begin building a solid foundation. They can't really afford to gamble time and resources on a faction based on the support posted on the forums.
The Romulans COULD be a full blown faction. And so can the Dominion.
But Cryptic's track history of half-assedness with building factions speaks enough volumes about how this will never happen. If it does, it will occur in a terrible, terrible state.
And if everything gets jumbled into 1 faction, that is even more stupid. How ridiculous does it look for the Federation to be a swiss army knife of all the peoples and navies of several quadrants? It's getting stupid enough as it is with Galors, Dakoras, and Bug Ships being used in navies where they have no business in belonging, but going further into it because a dumb precedent has been set is even worse. Stupid...
Only 3 factions were with StarTrek from the very start, the Federation, Klingon Empire and Romulan Empire, these being analogies to the Democratic West, Communist Eastern Europe and Communist East Asia respectively in the cold war era. Borg, Dominion et al, came very much later.
Cryptic is not going to take it on faith that "If They Build it They will come" creating a product based in the Star Trek franchise was already going out on a very thin limb and they are very much constrained by what CBS will allow them to do with the franchise. That is likely one of the reasons why the KDF is getting limited attention, because in spite of it's inclusion the investors and developers are not seeing numbers that would justify investing too much time in filling out the faction. Only a small fraction of the player base post in the forums, so that is not an accurate indicator of community interest. The devs are looking at how much activity and how much revenue is coming from the KDF in game, if there were as many Klingon characters and as active as Federation ones, if there were as many C-Store purchases for KDF items as the Federation they would have the statistical justification for investing the money and resources to complete the faction and the incentive to add additional factions, but that is clearly not the case, KDF is not showing the return they had hoped for, so adding a third faction would seem to be throwing good money after bad.
This is not Star Trek's Universe Online, it's Star Trek Online and Star Trek has always been about the Federation and Starfleet with all other factions being side stories to support the main story from a Federation perspective.
In all of the television series and movies the Romulans were always a semi-mysterious shadowy power that existed as a looming threat to peace in the galaxy and, aside from a very short lived alliance and technology exchange with the Klingons, shunned interaction with other governments, they were decidedly insular and this is not conducive to developing them as a playable faction.
With the Klingons at least there has been a great deal of effort made in TV series and movies to fill in their history, from Kahless to the current time, but with Romulans what if anything is known about how they came to be? Other than the vague possibility that they are of Vulcan descent. All of that would have to be created, probably from scratch to give them an identity other than as a threat, how far would CBS allow such a thing to develop since they would have the last word in these matters?
Borg would be impossible as a faction, no individual has freedom, the collective is under the direct control of the Borg Queen, hence all Borg are her slaves, the Borg have no free will, no commerce, they take or destroy, not faction material.
Likewise with the Dominion, races are the genetically created slaves of the founders, whether the Dominion even has an economy is unlikely, the Founders having no need of it and their slaves perfectly happy with whatever is allocated to them by their "Gods", so unless the player is playing a Founder, with all of the game breaking uber abilities that would entail, the Dominion is also not faction material.
Hirogen are one dimensional as a group, all they ever want to do is hunt everyone else, so as a playable faction players interested in more than mindless killing would lose interest fast.
Cardasians are small time, they are not a major faction in the galaxy, their only impact as conquerors was the conquest of the neighboring planet of Bajor, they made one deperate grasp at greater power by allying with the Dominion and that had disastrous consequences, one well placed weapon fired at Cardasia Prime would end the threat Cardasia may pose to the universe in an instant.
Remans have no history other than being a rebelling servant class of Romulan society, they have no impact on galactic affairs, so their very minor role in such doesn't make them viable faction material.
The Iconians would be an uber faction if such were created and balancing their abilities to be fairly competitive with existing factions would destroy their credibility as, what is likely to made in future episodes, a greater threat to peace in the galaxy than the Borg.
The only way I could see there being a way to play as any of these races is if the Holodecks, on ships and starbases had an actual purpose, where players could play as anything attacking or interacting with objects and targets without disrupting the developing story in the main game.
If something is not broken, don't fix it, if it is broken, don't leave it broken.
Long story short is at this point Cryptic seems to want to focus on Endgame content for the time being, which makes sense in my opinion as most people are already at that point, both KDF and Federation. The major drawback that people seem to keep iterating is that the KDF is underdeveloped compared to the Federation, and it's always been that way as the KDF was supposed to be primarily PvP based through launch.
Now, I do have to say that they have mentioned the following: Making KDF versions of episodes across the game (retelling some episodes from a Klingon perspective ? such as ?Saturday's Child? or ?The Kuvah'Magh?) Saturday's child is currently a romulan mission on the federation side, but it could definitely be reworked so that it would fit the Klingon scheme of things. My personal favorite to see is the chain started by the events of the Kuvah'Magh, in which the Klingons see B'vat's actions as a dishonorable thing to do to the savior of the empire and stop his plans. From there, the rest of the arc can be geared to cleaning up the dishonorable actions that B'vat bestows upon the empire.
I can also pretty much say that adding a Romulan faction would mean that they'll have issues with the Feature Series missions that they already brought out, especially given the Romulans' secretive nature, and also where things are in the storyline. Until we know more about what's happening, we can pretty much count the Featured Series missions out.
Now that my points of view against the adding of the Romulan are out there, I want to talk about why we can still possibly expect the Romulans in the future. First of course is that fact that they've been around as long as the klingons have in the franchise and adding them as a playable faction would be a potential profit boost for them.
Second, and I don't think this has been pointed out in the discussion, but Dan Stahl stated nearly 2 months ago that a D'deridex would never be put into a lockbox, meaning that they are still considering the Romulans as a possible faction.
Third, and my final reasoning for a playable Romulan faction in STO is the story arc that they can do once matters are cleared up. What we know now is that Sela has disappeared with the Iconians, but they could go back and make it that there's an internal struggle that goes on that will lead upto the events of Sela disappearing and then go on from what they have planned. It's just a thought I had.
These are my opinions on the matter and I'm looking forward to what you guys have to say about my thoughts.
One of the things that hurt the Klingons is that after doing the quests that are exclusively Klingon you are doing missions identical to Federation, except now you're using a crew that look like they never bath and a UI that gives you migraines.
For Romulans the entire Romulan Mystery arc would have to be scrapped, the Cardasian arc too since Romulans have no canonical presences on DS9 or Bajor, In fact for huge part of this game Romulans are a known antagonist, how the heck would they work in missions that mesh with the rest of the game but where the player is ultimately required to lose? I don't see how it would be possible to incorporate the Romulans without completely re-writing the game, as a mini-faction with it's own list of unrelated missions, maybe but as a genuine faction that participates in the main story?
If something is not broken, don't fix it, if it is broken, don't leave it broken.
One of the things that hurt the Klingons is that after doing the quests that are exclusively Klingon you are doing missions identical to Federation, except now you're using a crew that look like they never bath and a UI that gives you migraines.
For Romulans the entire Romulan Mystery arc would have to be scrapped, the Cardasian arc too since Romulans have no canonical presences on DS9 or Bajor, In fact for huge part of this game Romulans are a known antagonist, how the heck would they work in missions that mesh with the rest of the game but where the player is ultimately required to lose? I don't see how it would be possible to incorporate the Romulans without completely re-writing the game, as a mini-faction with it's own list of unrelated missions, maybe but as a genuine faction that participates in the main story?
Here's a hint at just how easy it would be to incorporate the Romulans into ALL of the current story arcs in STO including the main story: <points over at avatar of Kirk disguised as a Romulan>
Seriously, you could have Romulan content from the PoV of Tal Shiar, Senate, Reman, RSE military, RSE command, Iconian-sympathising-Romulans/Tal Shiar/Remans, RSE Scientists researching Borg technology, Undine infiltrators of the RSE. This list is only limited by the imagination of the writer.
Specifically BECAUSE not that much is known about the Romulans and their history, the devs/writers have quite a lot of leeway to use this lack of knowledge while making up Romulan content.
One of the things that hurt the Klingons is that after doing the quests that are exclusively Klingon you are doing missions identical to Federation, except now you're using a crew that look like they never bath and a UI that gives you migraines.
For Romulans the entire Romulan Mystery arc would have to be scrapped, the Cardasian arc too since Romulans have no canonical presences on DS9 or Bajor, In fact for huge part of this game Romulans are a known antagonist, how the heck would they work in missions that mesh with the rest of the game but where the player is ultimately required to lose? I don't see how it would be possible to incorporate the Romulans without completely re-writing the game, as a mini-faction with it's own list of unrelated missions, maybe but as a genuine faction that participates in the main story?
Actually, the Romulans did have some appearances during DS9. They were also late stage entry into the Alliance side against the Dominion. So they have had Canon presence.
Alot of naive people still really think a Romulan faction can occur. It *can* occur but it will not be in a good or even acceptable state. If anything, it will be half-a$sed.
Think I'm full of it?
Ha! All I have to do is point towards the KDF faction, and say, "This is the result of 2 YEARS of so-called-development and neglect." The only thing ignored more than the KDF is PVP, which has gotten no attention at all ever since the game came out, and the state of PVP was not great at release.
Half-a$sed, lazy development. Even worse now since Cryptic's priorities are anywhere but STO. Actually, scratch that. The only thing Cryptic has as a priority for STO is figuring out novel ways to milk the living bejeezus out of Feds with the most bare-bones effort.
Comments
Heck, convert their OWN missions. Once you get our of the KDF arc, pretty much all of the Rom/Card missions could be playable by the KDF with slight dialog changes.
The real diferentiator would be from adding a new class or two of ship that doesn't exist for the Federation or KDF. That could make much of the old content feel fresh again.
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How about they don't adapt it and just give them new content. I HATE how the KDF got screwed into having the majority of their missions as copy/pasted rubbish.
There in lies Cryptic mistake. They rely soley on the fedfans to fund what exists for STO and the fact that the federation is well known as a Social term to draw new players into STO without offering much of anything else to keep the players interested.
Star Trek/Fed fans stay becuase they see a Star Trek centric game that feeds thier fandom to a point. That point will dull over time as they start buying less and less fluff items.
New players are drawn in buy the Name or by rumor, find STO fun to play and iether quickly burnout on the money grab tactics or storyless grinding that eventually peters out, try the KDf and find it worse, go back to fed and soon leave.
The one dimensional design of STO can not hold itself together forever. STO needs multifactional play and story to offer enough content to support its Free/Pay to play design.
R.I.P
There are examples in the industry. Look at The Secret World; it's got three factions, but they're not always opposed. The Templars promote "good", the Illuminati promote "order", and the Dragon promote "freedom", but they're all interested in stopping the bad guys first, and work together toward that goal.
Except when they don't.
Well...
No, I think done right factions would be good for this game. I'm against a merge that doesn't make sense, and merging Fed and KDF does not make sense. There is simply no good way to capture a Klingon "feel" if the storyline is all bland and generic; it will never be satisfying to a KDF player.
I disagree that factions are an absolute requirement for an MMO. It depends on the MMO. DDO for example does not have true factions. I imagine that Neverwinter will not either (although there's no real reason it couldn't).
STO is one MMO where a multi-faction (more than 2) environment might actually make sense. IDIC and all that.
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1- they need to make a whole new caimpain based differently from the other two factions because both other factions are hostile to the Romulans.
2- the Romulans only Have 6 ships counting the dreadnought and fighters, so class variations would be deeply hindered and whole new ships would have to be created.
Now, this being said, it is possible but it will take extensive work and possibly and entire Season 7 Update.
But with Cardassian Gamplay Caimpain would be made easier because Cardassians are nutrel/allied with the KDF and Feds, Not only That but they have a previous long history with the Dominion and could very well have access to dominion ships on top of their own.
However Both Factions would hinder both from not having many races to choose from, you really only have for the cardassians the Cardassians Race and the Bajorians weras Romulans have a slight mix with both remen and hirogen support.
Just some thoughts, Opinions?
(please excuse the terrible typing as i cant type to save my life)
Ships. There's so little of them the heck, maybe they should make you start at level 50 for RSE because there's not enough ships to put in lower levels. I would actually be happy with that IF they gave us enough warbirds.
The Bird of Prey. Equivalent to the Fed escort and obviously the Klingon BoP.
The Mogai. Sort of like an equivalent to the Klingon raptor.
The D'deridex. A cruiser, obviously, but more like a Klingon cruiser.
Maybe one more they have to make up since with the Federation and KDF you get more than three choices for your free T5 ship. For the C store:
The Scimitar. Assuming the console/boff layout is as good as I hope, I might pay for something like this.
Random and assorted 25th century warbrids they make up.
Variants/refits of the free T5 ships that come with special consoles.
As you can see, there's just too little here to work with. But we can still hope, can't we? Maybe have the Undine join with the RSE (I know it's a stretch, but it might just get us the Romulan faction) or something like that.
I don't want to see a Romulan Faction done until they can appropriately give us an equal amount of missions as the Federation side already has.
We've already seen the KDF not being able to be finished. If this is what they'd give us with a Romulan faction, then I say do not do it.
Either do it right, or don't do it at all.
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PWE wants to see the 3 iconic factions playable in STO. PWE wants to see more PvP for high-level players. PWE owns Cryptic. Cryptic develops STO.
As has been said by the devs - all content to be generated for STO will be usable/playable by all factions.
STO is getting a new sector with Season 7. STO will be getting some additional story content missions with S7 that involve this new sector.
Personally, I believe that this content will involve the Romulans and the Iconians in the story. Whether or not we get Romulans as a playable faction in at that time is something only the devs know.
A playable Romulan faction that is brought into STO will not be a "full-blown faction". It will probably be some sort of mini-faction with possibly even less content than what the KDF has been given.
So yes, the future of STO, as far as I can see, is looking quite "green"... :P
p.s. the people with the constant "dead-horse" comments are primarily KDF players with the attidude of "if I can't have it, then no one else can have it".
Actually, that's quite a wrong statement. I play my Fed character 98% of the time, I hardly use the KDF one. We talk about the RSE faction as a dead horse because when you consider how much Cryptic would need to stretch its development team, and you realize the KDF faction is an underdeveloped thing whether you're a KDF or Fed person. We'll just need to wait for S7, as it was said it's the biggest update since launch. Or so they say...
I hear what you're saying, but it seems that STO and some Star Trek fans forget the Romulans do have a scout ship that we have actually seen in STNG "Defector" and a Romulan science ship that was seen in STNG "The Next Phase". Just ideas for two other ships.
Personally speaking I don't think that KDF were ever intended to be a full faction in the same sense as the Feds though. I personally think that they were intended to be used almost solely with the PVP which they had high hopes for but never really got around to developing further.
I think they could kill two birds with one stone here and have the Rommies in a renewed conflict with the Klingons allowing them to work on both at the same time sharing mission content from two different view points.
Work in some of the Tal Shiar elements stirring things up in the Empire pitting house against house and you have a working model for expanding the klingons at the same time.
guild wars 2 is not STO. and the overwhelming majority of mmos do have factions. its already implemented, its not going anywhere. in STO such a merge wouldn't even be possible. the entire concept of the game centers around the existence of the two factions. if you merged them it would TRIBBLE everything up and require a complete redesign of the current mission set and backstory. thats not practical wow didn't create the faction system by any stretch of the imagination and its not laziness. its the way things have been for a long time. it works. you don't TRIBBLE with what works
take another look at this. its not even remotely viable to set up a mini faction that way
this will not happen in this or any other game. there is way too much legal liability in even attempting to do so. they would just end up getting themselves sued at some point when the author didn't like what they did with a mission
which has nothing to do with merged factions
they never said any such thing. they explicitly said they were developing faction specific content AND cross faction content
I don't want a playable romulan faction. I want a playable borg faction.
1, Probe
2, Sphere
3, Cube
4, Tac cube
We already have all the ships, we even have playable borg characters with all the costume parts there.
Far less work involved in making the borg playable than making the romulans playable.
Unlocked by having a lvl 50 of each class in both fed and KDF
Borg don't have free will, so when you log in it will just be a video of your character walking around a cube, because you wouldn't be the captain, there is no captain.
Borg Queen Anyone?
That was an exception to the rule... You have 100 of those floating around, then its no longer an exception and lore is broken.
Excuse me for being entitled to and having my own opinion based on my own observations and experience.
Some kind soul posted this on the matter of the KDF development that kinda proves me right actually in terms of pre-launch expectations and Klingons being a PVP faction.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=217322
Regardless of what you 'think' I still believe that the KDF faction was shoehorned in. Like much of this game in the early days there were many flash in the pan ideas that were openly talked about that never came into being. In 'my opinion' there was never any strong intention to flesh them out beyond PVP because once under way their resources were focused on the Feds and updating the system with changes such as re-vamped ground combat and the likes of the doff system. Then you have the buy out of Cryptic and development of Neverwinter to take into consideration as well.
Like I say, they need a sound financial reason to include Romulans and piggy backing in on an existing undeveloped faction is the best way to get two bases covered at once. The only way they will get included post f2p is if they know they will be able to generate income from them. Then they also have to consider how far CBS will be willing to let them run with the development of the race.
If they create a sound Romulan/Klingon story arc with Federation involvement building on the Reman episodes then they are in a much stronger position to attract existing customers to the product and begin building a solid foundation. They can't really afford to gamble time and resources on a faction based on the support posted on the forums.
But Cryptic's track history of half-assedness with building factions speaks enough volumes about how this will never happen. If it does, it will occur in a terrible, terrible state.
And if everything gets jumbled into 1 faction, that is even more stupid. How ridiculous does it look for the Federation to be a swiss army knife of all the peoples and navies of several quadrants? It's getting stupid enough as it is with Galors, Dakoras, and Bug Ships being used in navies where they have no business in belonging, but going further into it because a dumb precedent has been set is even worse. Stupid...
Cryptic is not going to take it on faith that "If They Build it They will come" creating a product based in the Star Trek franchise was already going out on a very thin limb and they are very much constrained by what CBS will allow them to do with the franchise. That is likely one of the reasons why the KDF is getting limited attention, because in spite of it's inclusion the investors and developers are not seeing numbers that would justify investing too much time in filling out the faction. Only a small fraction of the player base post in the forums, so that is not an accurate indicator of community interest. The devs are looking at how much activity and how much revenue is coming from the KDF in game, if there were as many Klingon characters and as active as Federation ones, if there were as many C-Store purchases for KDF items as the Federation they would have the statistical justification for investing the money and resources to complete the faction and the incentive to add additional factions, but that is clearly not the case, KDF is not showing the return they had hoped for, so adding a third faction would seem to be throwing good money after bad.
This is not Star Trek's Universe Online, it's Star Trek Online and Star Trek has always been about the Federation and Starfleet with all other factions being side stories to support the main story from a Federation perspective.
In all of the television series and movies the Romulans were always a semi-mysterious shadowy power that existed as a looming threat to peace in the galaxy and, aside from a very short lived alliance and technology exchange with the Klingons, shunned interaction with other governments, they were decidedly insular and this is not conducive to developing them as a playable faction.
With the Klingons at least there has been a great deal of effort made in TV series and movies to fill in their history, from Kahless to the current time, but with Romulans what if anything is known about how they came to be? Other than the vague possibility that they are of Vulcan descent. All of that would have to be created, probably from scratch to give them an identity other than as a threat, how far would CBS allow such a thing to develop since they would have the last word in these matters?
Borg would be impossible as a faction, no individual has freedom, the collective is under the direct control of the Borg Queen, hence all Borg are her slaves, the Borg have no free will, no commerce, they take or destroy, not faction material.
Likewise with the Dominion, races are the genetically created slaves of the founders, whether the Dominion even has an economy is unlikely, the Founders having no need of it and their slaves perfectly happy with whatever is allocated to them by their "Gods", so unless the player is playing a Founder, with all of the game breaking uber abilities that would entail, the Dominion is also not faction material.
Hirogen are one dimensional as a group, all they ever want to do is hunt everyone else, so as a playable faction players interested in more than mindless killing would lose interest fast.
Cardasians are small time, they are not a major faction in the galaxy, their only impact as conquerors was the conquest of the neighboring planet of Bajor, they made one deperate grasp at greater power by allying with the Dominion and that had disastrous consequences, one well placed weapon fired at Cardasia Prime would end the threat Cardasia may pose to the universe in an instant.
Remans have no history other than being a rebelling servant class of Romulan society, they have no impact on galactic affairs, so their very minor role in such doesn't make them viable faction material.
The Iconians would be an uber faction if such were created and balancing their abilities to be fairly competitive with existing factions would destroy their credibility as, what is likely to made in future episodes, a greater threat to peace in the galaxy than the Borg.
The only way I could see there being a way to play as any of these races is if the Holodecks, on ships and starbases had an actual purpose, where players could play as anything attacking or interacting with objects and targets without disrupting the developing story in the main game.
Long story short is at this point Cryptic seems to want to focus on Endgame content for the time being, which makes sense in my opinion as most people are already at that point, both KDF and Federation. The major drawback that people seem to keep iterating is that the KDF is underdeveloped compared to the Federation, and it's always been that way as the KDF was supposed to be primarily PvP based through launch.
Now, I do have to say that they have mentioned the following: Making KDF versions of episodes across the game (retelling some episodes from a Klingon perspective ? such as ?Saturday's Child? or ?The Kuvah'Magh?) Saturday's child is currently a romulan mission on the federation side, but it could definitely be reworked so that it would fit the Klingon scheme of things. My personal favorite to see is the chain started by the events of the Kuvah'Magh, in which the Klingons see B'vat's actions as a dishonorable thing to do to the savior of the empire and stop his plans. From there, the rest of the arc can be geared to cleaning up the dishonorable actions that B'vat bestows upon the empire.
I can also pretty much say that adding a Romulan faction would mean that they'll have issues with the Feature Series missions that they already brought out, especially given the Romulans' secretive nature, and also where things are in the storyline. Until we know more about what's happening, we can pretty much count the Featured Series missions out.
Now that my points of view against the adding of the Romulan are out there, I want to talk about why we can still possibly expect the Romulans in the future. First of course is that fact that they've been around as long as the klingons have in the franchise and adding them as a playable faction would be a potential profit boost for them.
Second, and I don't think this has been pointed out in the discussion, but Dan Stahl stated nearly 2 months ago that a D'deridex would never be put into a lockbox, meaning that they are still considering the Romulans as a possible faction.
Third, and my final reasoning for a playable Romulan faction in STO is the story arc that they can do once matters are cleared up. What we know now is that Sela has disappeared with the Iconians, but they could go back and make it that there's an internal struggle that goes on that will lead upto the events of Sela disappearing and then go on from what they have planned. It's just a thought I had.
These are my opinions on the matter and I'm looking forward to what you guys have to say about my thoughts.
For Romulans the entire Romulan Mystery arc would have to be scrapped, the Cardasian arc too since Romulans have no canonical presences on DS9 or Bajor, In fact for huge part of this game Romulans are a known antagonist, how the heck would they work in missions that mesh with the rest of the game but where the player is ultimately required to lose? I don't see how it would be possible to incorporate the Romulans without completely re-writing the game, as a mini-faction with it's own list of unrelated missions, maybe but as a genuine faction that participates in the main story?
Here's a hint at just how easy it would be to incorporate the Romulans into ALL of the current story arcs in STO including the main story: <points over at avatar of Kirk disguised as a Romulan>
Seriously, you could have Romulan content from the PoV of Tal Shiar, Senate, Reman, RSE military, RSE command, Iconian-sympathising-Romulans/Tal Shiar/Remans, RSE Scientists researching Borg technology, Undine infiltrators of the RSE. This list is only limited by the imagination of the writer.
Specifically BECAUSE not that much is known about the Romulans and their history, the devs/writers have quite a lot of leeway to use this lack of knowledge while making up Romulan content.
Actually, the Romulans did have some appearances during DS9. They were also late stage entry into the Alliance side against the Dominion. So they have had Canon presence.
Think I'm full of it?
Ha! All I have to do is point towards the KDF faction, and say, "This is the result of 2 YEARS of so-called-development and neglect." The only thing ignored more than the KDF is PVP, which has gotten no attention at all ever since the game came out, and the state of PVP was not great at release.
Half-a$sed, lazy development. Even worse now since Cryptic's priorities are anywhere but STO. Actually, scratch that. The only thing Cryptic has as a priority for STO is figuring out novel ways to milk the living bejeezus out of Feds with the most bare-bones effort.