Okay, let's have a look what they need to do to create a Romulan faction:
Outfits for Romulans - they have done these already.
Romulan Boffs - they have done these already.
Romulan ships They are NPC ships. Cryptic have said that there is a huge difference between playable ships. eg A lot of back end tech is missing on the models
Romulan Starbase Same issues as starships, and no interiors
A Romulan Home Zone like ESD or Qo'onos, with NPC contacts for everything as usual. Yes I agree this is very cool and makes sense
A couple of Romulan missions and dailes <<< This is the big problem. You are missing about 40 faction specific missions. And looking at how much work is involved in FE, and the main reason KDF is missing them, is why I am doubtful.
Anything else?
Yup ... happy KDF faction is a good one.
If there is a Romulan faction I will be very very happy and instantly starting a Rom Tac.
if it all boils down to MISSION CONTENT, the Romulans can start at lvl 40-45, have some 3-4 missions and a tutorial, and can also play the Breen/Undine episodes.. Even the Romulan ones.
I think folks are forgetting that at one point cryptic said that They have pretty much finished a Klingon Tutorial for the game, but the fact that They didn't have enough missions for the 1 to 20 leveling, caused Them to, not place it into the game at that time.
That was several 'Seasons' ago... it seems to me that by now, They probably have more than enough KDF-only missions on the back burner waiting to be added.
I'd be really surprised if come May, the Klingon starting point Isn't bumped back to level one.
That said...,
They got away with pushing the Klingon faction out of the starting gate half finished...
(and have slowly been improving it since then)
What's to stop Them from doing the same with a Romulan Faction and just keep adding to it in the months and years to come.
The Klingon players have shown how dedicated they are to the game (I don't believe the numbers are a dismal as Cryptic would have us believe), and it's probably a safe bet that the Fed players are generous enough with their spending to off-set the cost of adding to the KDF as well as a third faction...
Goodness knows that the folks that desire a Romulan Faction have been vocal enough around here to give cause for Cryptic to at least consider it.
STO Member since February 2009. I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born! Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
Yes, yes they are coming. Anyone who says otherwise either doesn't want them, or is too much of a conspiracy theorist in that they believe it's some great Cryptic hoax. Ignore these people.
Funny thing to say, when all you got to believe in, is based on a conspiracy theory ..
All signs point to yes, but nothing's been stated outright.
Now sit back, relax, and wait for "Romulan Faction Thread #8642947".
Which signs would that be ... Forum speculations about a Wallpaper ...
There is absolutely no official announcement 3 months before release ... and most signs point to "probably not" like this :
Dstahl: We are not ready to begin discussing the details of what is in our May update, however the reference definitely suggests that it is related to Romulans in some way. We will share more news about the update and give a clearer response to your question as we get closer to May.
.....
we need to reserve these ships for a future update when we can implement a playable Romulan faction.
..... If and when we release a Romulan faction, ....
I think folks are forgetting that at one point cryptic said that They have pretty much finished a Klingon Tutorial for the game, but the fact that They didn't have enough missions for the 1 to 20 leveling, caused Them to, not place it into the game at that time.
That was several 'Seasons' ago... it seems to me that by now, They probably have more than enough KDF-only missions on the back burner waiting to be added.
I'd be really surprised if come May, the Klingon starting point Isn't bumped back to level one.
Sorry i call BS on this one, I don't believe for a second Cryptic is working on KDF Content for the last Seasons and is holding it back till now ... I don't even believe they have a complete Tutorial ... all you might get in May is 1-2 Missions ... and I don't think they're gonna be KDF only like the Season 2 Stuff ...
Patch Notes : Resolved an Issue, where people would accidently experience Fun.
That quote is just vague enough to go either way really.
It certainly can be construed to mean that He's just holding His cards very close to His chest at this time.
I have no clue, but I'm not discounting anything at this point.
I'd like to know how the question was worded, that He answered with the first line...
The "...give a clearer response to your question..." is the part that intrigues me.
STO Member since February 2009. I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born! Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
That quote is just vague enough to go either way really.
It's Dstahl we're talking about, Cryptic's Leading Skycastle Builder, if he would have ANYTHING ... there would be Announcements all over the place, not the same Statements you're getting since Day 1 "If and when ... yadda yadda yadda"
I call BS on a playable Romulan faction based on the following:
1) We have seen the alleged "team" grow in size and "capability" yes, but we've also seen quality take a vertical dive. They can't release a patch without breaking something and most times... it takes 2-3 weeks to fully sort out. They can't even get a cash-shop ship right on initial release.
2) There is an entire STO wiki page dedicated to the promises made regarding the KDF side. KDF is not profitable because it is half-finished. It has even LESS story than the Fed Side. Betcha top dollar that if they released 40 more stories, and a couple of Klingon-centric FEs it would be profitable... Problem is:
3) Lockboxes. If it can't fit in a lockbox it's not on their radar. Know what I think? May is going to be a couple new grind-worlds, Romulan themed lockboxes, Romulan player-characters and more "plasma gear." Expect more copy-paste Romulan Plasma ____ weapons and gear... they've developed the NPC artwork now it's a question of porting it over... and making it lock-box-able.
They do NOT want to fix or remaster existing episodes (remember that promise?) They do NOT want to implement story missions or entire FEs. Those can't be ground like Nukara or Defera can. The 2800 was a stab at making an FE-Grind... It was a good attempt but it relied too much on the "go here click this" mechanic... which gets very tedious on the third or forth runthrough.
As I discussed in chat today, I have high hopes that I am wrong about this next season. Maybe it'll be something grand, with new exciting content and plenty of interesting non-grind story progression and introduce new mechanics and concepts. BUT I am also in my mid 40s, I've been around long enough to know once a company lowers itself like Cryptic has... you rarely get anything "good" from such a company again. I am hoping for something epic, but I realize I am just setting myself up for disappointment.
1) We have seen the alleged "team" grow in size and "capability" yes, but we've also seen quality take a vertical dive. They can't release a patch without breaking something and most times... it takes 2-3 weeks to fully sort out. They can't even get a cash-shop ship right on initial release.
Agree ... furthermore what people seem to forget is that they had that manpower before, probably even more, since Atari kept 150 Cryptic employees after purchase back in 2009, and where unable to deliver 2 complete factions ... now we have like 50 and they're supposed to rush it out in 2 months ...
Patch Notes : Resolved an Issue, where people would accidently experience Fun.
It's Dstahl we're talking about, Cryptic's Leading Skycastle Builder, if he would have ANYTHING ... there would be Announcements all over the place, not the same Statements you're getting since Day 1 "If and when ... yadda yadda yadda"
i do not agree with you.
DStahl also said: "we need to put the "new" factions into the right place"
imho till may they have enough time, and they will announce Romulans later in april WHEN they are ready..
there will be more factions and there will be universal mission content.
Agree ... furthermore what people seem to forget is that they had that manpower before, probably even more, since Atari kept 150 Cryptic employees after purchase back in 2009, and where unable to deliver 2 complete factions ... now we have like 50 and they're supposed to rush it out in 2 months ...
they programmed the WHOLE game in less than a year. With 1 and 1/2 factions, missions, visuals, and from what i understand they've been taking their time with the GENESIS engine (the exploration)..
Don't tell me they are not able to redesign existing stuff and copy paste + design a little 3rd faction stuff in 5 months.
if it all boils down to MISSION CONTENT, the Romulans can start at lvl 40-45, have some 3-4 missions and a tutorial, and can also play the Breen/Undine episodes.. Even the Romulan ones.
I was thinking the same thing. Simply to appease the masses that have an issue with the KDF starting level. Cryptic could set the Romulans at say level 40 to start and work backward (if necessary) Given the Romulan missions should be complicated and intricate I would not expect many missions but I do expect serious quality for the few options. Then Cryptic could add say one mission a month. I think the community would be happy with that to be honest. At least, speaking as a leader of the oldest Romulan fleet/community in STO, we would welcome such an opportunity. :cool:
If you are looking for an excellent PvE fleet consider: Omega Combat Division today.
Former member of the Cryptic Family & FriendsTesting Team. Sadly, one day, it simply vanished - without a word or trace...
I was thinking the same thing. Simply to appease the masses that have an issue with the KDF starting level. Cryptic could set the Romulans at say level 40 to start and work backward (if necessary) Given the Romulan missions should be complicated and intricate I would not expect many missions but I do expect serious quality for the few options. Then Cryptic could add say one mission a month. I think the community would be happy with that to be honest. At least, speaking as a leader of the oldest Romulan fleet/community in STO, we would welcome such an opportunity. :cool:
this, also, the sooner the better, so that the gap between fleet holdings development does not get any bigger.
they programmed the WHOLE game in less than a year. With 1 and 1/2 factions, missions, visuals, and from what i understand they've been taking their time with the GENESIS engine (the exploration)..
Don't tell me they are not able to redesign existing stuff and copy paste + design a little 3rd faction stuff in 5 months.
That's BS it was 2 years with ~150 people
So basically what you're saying is :
150 people working 2 years (5 years if you count after Launch) equals 1,5 factions while 50 people working 2 months equals 0,5 - 1,5 new factions ... sounds reasonable ... based on their own track record they're gonna need 500+ employees to do this ...
DStahl also said: "we need to put the "new" factions into the right place"
Yeah that's Dstahl for "Just wait for this magical day to happen" just like the same old "We need to finish KDF
first", while nobody really cares about finishing KDF ... hard to believe Dstahl is now very cautious with his statements and tries calm the hype down ... because ... well that would be the excact opposite of what he is doing for 3 years now ..
Don't tell me they are not able to redesign existing stuff and copy paste + design a little 3rd faction stuff in 5 months
Did you spend the last 3 years in a Coma ... if not your answer is pretty obvious ... if copy/pasting .. adapting content for other Factions would be that easy we would have full Klingon PVE by now ... hell we would have full Klingon PVE Content since May 2010 ...
Patch Notes : Resolved an Issue, where people would accidently experience Fun.
Did you spend the last 3 years in a Coma ... if not your answer is pretty obvious ... if copy/pasting .. adapting content for other Factions would be that easy we would have full Klingon PVE by now ... hell we would have full Klingon PVE Content since May 2010 ...
this is flawed reasoning
1 - they are NOT interested in developing KDF any further (financial reasons, not enough people playing it). IF it happens, it will be with universal content which will be available to all future factions.
2 - they are almost DONE with releasing canon stuff for the FED's. The obvious thing to do is to release Romulans and other factions, to boost sales.
1 - they are NOT interested in developing KDF any further (financial reasons, not enough people playing it). IF it happens, it will be with universal content which will be available to all future factions.
2 - they are almost DONE with releasing canon stuff for the FED's. The obvious thing to do is to release Romulans and other factions, to boost sales.
So ... KDF is not worth it, because of not enough people playing it... while 1/2 Romulan Faction is ... are you serious ... if you believe more people want to play a rushed out Romulan Faction than a complete KDF Faction, you're delusional ...
Thats not how Star Trek "works", if that would be true there would be more Episodes on Romulans than Klingons etc ...
Also I would like to see a offical quote on "they are NOT interested in developing KDF any further" please ... you are contradicting yourself here with "not interested in KDF" and "other Factions to boost sales"
Patch Notes : Resolved an Issue, where people would accidently experience Fun.
That's BS it was 2 years with ~150 people
So basically what you're saying is :
150 people working 2 years (5 years if you count after Launch) equals 1,5 factions while 50 people working 2 months equals 0,5 - 1,5 new factions ... sounds reasonable ... based on their own track record they're gonna need 500+ employees to do this ...
Cryptic has NEVER had more than 30 people working on a single game to my knowledge.
City of Heroes was developed with 25. Champs was developed with 25. STO had a 25 person team and, as I recall, borrowed maybe a few CO devs for last minute help prior to launch.
At their peak under Atari, they may have had 150. That counts core engine team, corporate, marketing, administrative, and custodial... And Atari had them working on 4+ games at once.
There were, I believe, two games beyond Neverwinter being worked on at one point. There's at least one right now.
Also, I think all of STO's CONTENT was made in the last 8 months or so prior to around November 2009. They were only planning content when they got news a few months before J.J. Trek came out that Romulus was nixed. I understand many or most of their plans up until that point had involved Kestrel doing writeups on Romulus because she's a super-Romulan fan. The art and uniforms weren't finalized but they supplied IDW with concept art for uniforms that got used in the COUNTDOWN comic.
So 1.5 factions took 25 people 8 months.
As of May 2013, they'll have had 50 people for almost 12 months.
And I'm also fairly sure Klingons and Romulans will be getting a lot of repurposed Fed content.
Again? Why? Because PWE isn't keen on charging for content. That's the free bait in their model. But Cryptic will almost have to charge for new factions because factions include species and ships. So that means all content has to be made available to all factions.
I'm convinced that all the current Fed missions in the game will be opened to Klingons and Romulans. I suspect that all Klingon missions will be opened to Feds and Romulans. And all new missions will be developed for all three and no missions will be exclusive to a single faction, with very rare exceptions, maybe.
While not all of these 150-200 employees might have worked on STO, it's pretty safe to asume it was at least half, because it was the "Main-Game" in Development ... or are you gonna tell me 30 were working on STO while 120 were making coffee & marketing ...
City of Heroes/Villains was pretty dead by then ... Neverwinter wasn't even in development ... which only leaves Champions Online ... so not sure what these 4 games might that be ...
All of the "We just have 20 people, less than a Starbucks" statements are from the year of fail ... when Atari left Cryptic floating dead in space ... the whole statement wouldn't even make sense if they wouldn't have had more people at one point in the past ...
Patch Notes : Resolved an Issue, where people would accidently experience Fun.
I'd imagine if there's any content being repurposed it'd be the new Romulan stuff. It would make sense for the Romulans and Klingons to share at least some early content if the intent is to have them in competition, if not all out war, with each other. That way you can fill up early Klingon levels while adding the same missions, from a different perspective, for the Romulans.
*Shrugs* I see this saying and various other variants on it said quite frequently, which is sort of a residual effect from launch when Klingons basically had one nebula and pvp to play and that was it, but now, at this point I don't really see the faction as being incomplete/unviable
I have 6 toons, 1 of each major class, ((tac,sci,eng)) on each faction all at level 50 ((doffs make this process almost effortless )) and as I play all of these characters across both factions, my usual gameplay habits are as follows:
and quite frankly, its all equally accessible on all my characters, everything i do at level 50 is equal and the same, if the kdf is incomplete then so is the federation is as well, since all of the content that matters for your long term experience once you reach max level, which happens in the blink of an eye is completely equal
Now I would agree that some backwards working additional story episodes and bringing the starting level down to 1 for the sake of bringing in new blood from new players would be nice. Saying the kdf faction is not a viable faction etc is a bit of a hyperbole charged statement since everything you typically do on your federation toons, you can do on your kdf toons as well. The "content gap" between the factions isn't as big as some posts here would have one believe
While not all of these 150-200 employees might have worked on STO, it's pretty safe to asume it was at least half ... or are you gonna tell me 30 were working on STO while 120 were making coffee ...
I'm telling you that of those 150 (which is rounding up):
Not all of those were fulltime. That includes things like ILM freelancers moonlighting on concept art and the cleaning person.
~15 of those were executive staff and their support teams (Ie. Bill Roper, Steven D'Angelo, Jack Emmert, the CFO, the CMO, etc.)
~15+ of those were forum admins (before the volunteer system, they had staffs), video trailer specialists, sound engineers, and marketing teams, which are currently PWE employees and not included in team count.
~15+ were developing the core game engine and server technology (This is almost assuredly a low estimate)
~25 were developing STO
~25 were developing Champions
And at that point, Cryptic had a couple of mystery games in development, including a Cthulu game.
Cryptic has never had more than around 25 people on a development team for a game prior to the Perfect World buyout, barring cases where they had games loan eachother employees under Atari. City of Heroes was basically developed by 25 or 26 people. Cryptic as an independent studio after selling CoH was founded with maybe 20 people, which expanded using Microsoft money (and is probably why the engine still uses Internet Explorer architecture for the patcher and can't be installed on a system without IE). I imagine this is probably when Dan Stahl entered the picture as he was a Microsoft employee if memory serves.
At that point, Cryptic's drive was to create as many games as possible. Champions' launch and STO's launch altered their philosophy which I think made Atari skittish because their plan (and why they bought Cryptic) was based around the idea of a couple of MMOs a year with minimal upkeep and very small development teams.
If they would have had constantly 25 people working STO, please explain the enormous difference in the release of Content ... during the first 6-12 months of the game and the year of fail (from which the 25 people estimates are)... everyone was in a really bad mood for a year ?
What would be really disappointing is that they split the rommies with the feds/kdf that would end the game for me really but if they re-unite the rommies and make them a force again and playable faction in know atleast 50 SWTOR players who would come running back with cash in there hands
Moreover, if you look at content devs (not character or ship artists, not systems folks or QA) and even counting one month loaners, I don't think Cryptic ever had more than 15 people making missions on any one game.
For most of 2010, the teamsize did not change aside from losing CO loaners and produced around 25 missions from March 2010 to March 2011.
For most of 2011, they had around 5 and produced... 4 missions, 3 revamped hubs, and tweaked STFs.
In 2012, after F2P, they did mass hirings and last I checked were still hiring new content designers. They produced 9 episodic missions and 3 adventure zones and had ~25 people working on a mystery project for STO starting in about March or April.
Furthermore, I'll add a detail in support of existing missions getting revamped. The job description on Crypticstudios.com from around March 2011 through around March 2012 specifically called for Star Trek knowledgeable content designers who could revamp existing content with new objectives and gameplay elements added.
So I think the idea was probably always to shift existing Fed missions KDF side but they never had the manpower for it or the financial incentive to do it until last spring when they hired up and cooked up the idea of a Romulan faction, which I swear, will not be free. And that the financing the port Fed missions KDF side is covered by selling Romulan faction access (and future faction access).
By making the existing missions factionless and charging for new factions, that's the model for fixing the KDF. And I bet that's been the plan for over a year.
If they would have had constantly 25 people working STO, please explain the enormous difference in the release of Content ... during the first 6-12 months of the game and the year of fail (from which the 25 people estimates are)... everyone was in a really bad mood for a year ?
Source on that ??
Not constantly. The Year of Fail was down to around 15.
And I don't do sources on guesses but I've been following these forums for over three years and my numbers roughly align with what devs said. And accessing old dev posts is annoying because when the forums changed, all the old posts became "Archived Post" as the poster.
Around 25 until launch with last minute CO loaners on top of that.
Around 15 in the "Year of Fail." (I suspect it was lower at one point.)
Around 50 as of last spring.
And while I don't generally DO sources, because I come here to throw out wild guesses, not hard facts (I don't do hard fact research for free and searching these forums for pre-PWE posts is something it would take me 6+ hours of digging to do), I probably can dig up something that indicates that City of Heroes had 26 people on its team pre-launch.
Really, my hope is that a dev will happen by and just say, "Yeah, that sounds roughly right."
Exact numbers aren't possible anyway because except during the divestment when it was constant decline. The headcount would always vary up and down depending on when in a month you checked. Game industry is high turnover. Some employees literally lasted less than a week.
If they would have had constantly 25 people working STO, please explain the enormous difference in the release of Content ... during the first 6-12 months of the game and the year of fail (from which the 25 people estimates are)... everyone was in a really bad mood for a year ?
The lack of content release was mostly due to pretty much everyone being heads-down converting everything over to F2P. This includes all the tech and systems needed for things like Silver/Gold sub differences and converting every single mission and all the rewards they gave in the game to scale to player level (they did not do that pre-F2P).
"But," you ask, "if so few people could produce a whole game save for the engine from scratch in a year and a half, why did it take them almost a year to convert existing content and nothing else?" That's easy! They didn't have to worry about maintaining a live server alongside working on new stuff at the time.
That said, the "bad mood" thing isn't necessarily wrong in and of itself - things were rough for Cryptic at that time and morale was definitely in the crapper.
If they would have had constantly 25 people working STO, please explain the enormous difference in the release of Content ... during the first 6-12 months of the game and the year of fail (from which the 25 people estimates are)... everyone was in a really bad mood for a year ?
First thing, we dont know how much of that first 6-12 months was developed during pre release and just not released/finished in time.
second the 'year of fail' had a FE series, a ground combat update, the entire conversion to free to play which dealt with the economy, the way missions were structured etc, the borg defera invasion, the update to the STF's plus, the overhaul of ESD and qo'nos, the academies, the duty officer system, a few other bits and pieces, plus about 3 devs left in quick order so when you look at the year it was not like we got nothing. in fact we got quite a bit it was just less pure mission based.
I think the playable Romulan faction is not coming because the KDF isn't complete and there would be a lot of rage coming from the KDF side.
That's just it though, short of some episodes, clothing (plus hair) and ships, the KDF doesn't really need anything else. Heck, they don't really need the ships; it's just people demand more cause they're greedy. The current Klingon Fleet serves the purpose quite well. Adding more ships for the sake of it... Why waste time?
People are always raving on about how much work a KDF faction needs, when in actuality, it doesn't need that much at all. I guess it depends on what you'd define as a 'finished KDF'. Few users are going to agree on whole with what is needed. You might want an extra 50 missions, 10 ships and a new tutorial (with levels 1 - 20); person B might want 20 missions, 5 new ships and just levels 1 - 20 (without a new tutorial); person C might want 40 new missions, 10 new ships and a new tutorial without the level 1 - 20.
I'll say it again, but what is defined as a 'finished KDF'?
Would they be able to maintain the faction as profitable? Would they even recoup the investment of developing the faction off the initial sales rush?
I'd be willing to bet more people will play as Romulan than they do KDF. If they can get the faction released, along with the store ships, store costumes and such, they'll be laughing where profit is concerned.
Funny thing to say, when all you got to believe in, is based on a conspiracy theory
Well we'll see in May, wont we?
I'll skip the rest of the posts, I'm pretty sure they cover everything that's already been mentioned, and any answers I'd have to them are within this one.
What doesn't TRIBBLE off KDF players? I'd swear that if the devs implemented the KDF wishlist, KDF players would still find reason to cry. They're worse than Ferengi, and probably should all be permabanned for being such spineless warriors.
We've got reasons to be pissed off.
If Cryptic implemented a 'wishlist' of things the KDF faction needs to be really considered on par with the Federation faction in terms of development, then the community would stop 'whining'. That is, as long as Cryptic continued to give us equal treatment and consideration.
The biggest gaps are in storyline content. Ship-wise, KDF still needs a little more variety. . .but it's 'tolerable'. We've got the universal content (the majority of which is, of course, patterned from a Federation viewpoint), PvP, fleet stuff, etc.
If Cryptic instituted a full 20-25 levels of storyline and related content for levels 1-25, that alone would stop a lot of 'whining'. KDF would FINALLY get equal access to beginner players. If they combined that with a change to the UI (the red UI drives away a lot of players), that would be a significant improvement.
The problem Fed-biased players seem to have is that they think tossing a few carbon-copy ships to the KDF is enough to 'stop the whining'. It is not enough. Universal content that's blatantly patterned towards Federation sensibilities is not enough, either.
My PvP toon is Krov, of The House of Snoo. Beware of my Hegh'ta of doom.
People are always raving on about how much work a KDF faction needs, when in actuality, it doesn't need that much at all. I guess it depends on what you'd define as a 'finished KDF'. Few users are going to agree on whole with what is needed. You might want an extra 50 missions, 10 ships and a new tutorial (with levels 1 - 20); person B might want 20 missions, 5 new ships and just levels 1 - 20 (without a new tutorial); person C might want 40 new missions, 10 new ships and a new tutorial without the level 1 - 20.
I'll say it again, but what is defined as a 'finished KDF'?
I'd be willing to bet more people will play as Romulan than they do KDF. If they can get the faction released, along with the store ships, store costumes and such, they'll be laughing where profit is concerned.
.
QFT
KDF does need new tutorial and has to start at lvl 1
they only need to adjust lvl sliders and the faction is finished (ok, some Zen-Store costumes would be nice)
I also agree Romulans will be played more than the KDF. I am SURE of it.
Why? For once they are sexy.
Comments
If there is a Romulan faction I will be very very happy and instantly starting a Rom Tac.
if it all boils down to MISSION CONTENT, the Romulans can start at lvl 40-45, have some 3-4 missions and a tutorial, and can also play the Breen/Undine episodes.. Even the Romulan ones.
That was several 'Seasons' ago... it seems to me that by now, They probably have more than enough KDF-only missions on the back burner waiting to be added.
I'd be really surprised if come May, the Klingon starting point Isn't bumped back to level one.
That said...,
They got away with pushing the Klingon faction out of the starting gate half finished...
(and have slowly been improving it since then)
What's to stop Them from doing the same with a Romulan Faction and just keep adding to it in the months and years to come.
The Klingon players have shown how dedicated they are to the game (I don't believe the numbers are a dismal as Cryptic would have us believe), and it's probably a safe bet that the Fed players are generous enough with their spending to off-set the cost of adding to the KDF as well as a third faction...
Goodness knows that the folks that desire a Romulan Faction have been vocal enough around here to give cause for Cryptic to at least consider it.
I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born!
Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
Funny thing to say, when all you got to believe in, is based on a conspiracy theory ..
Which signs would that be ... Forum speculations about a Wallpaper ...
There is absolutely no official announcement 3 months before release ... and most signs point to "probably not" like this :
______________
Sorry i call BS on this one, I don't believe for a second Cryptic is working on KDF Content for the last Seasons and is holding it back till now ... I don't even believe they have a complete Tutorial ... all you might get in May is 1-2 Missions ... and I don't think they're gonna be KDF only like the Season 2 Stuff ...
It certainly can be construed to mean that He's just holding His cards very close to His chest at this time.
I have no clue, but I'm not discounting anything at this point.
I'd like to know how the question was worded, that He answered with the first line...
The "...give a clearer response to your question..." is the part that intrigues me.
I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born!
Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
It's Dstahl we're talking about, Cryptic's Leading Skycastle Builder, if he would have ANYTHING ... there would be Announcements all over the place, not the same Statements you're getting since Day 1 "If and when ... yadda yadda yadda"
It's all from February's Ask Cryptic, people might wanna read it, because it's the only official statement besides Internet Forum Hype ....
http://sto.perfectworld.com/news/?p=820691
1) We have seen the alleged "team" grow in size and "capability" yes, but we've also seen quality take a vertical dive. They can't release a patch without breaking something and most times... it takes 2-3 weeks to fully sort out. They can't even get a cash-shop ship right on initial release.
2) There is an entire STO wiki page dedicated to the promises made regarding the KDF side. KDF is not profitable because it is half-finished. It has even LESS story than the Fed Side. Betcha top dollar that if they released 40 more stories, and a couple of Klingon-centric FEs it would be profitable... Problem is:
3) Lockboxes. If it can't fit in a lockbox it's not on their radar. Know what I think? May is going to be a couple new grind-worlds, Romulan themed lockboxes, Romulan player-characters and more "plasma gear." Expect more copy-paste Romulan Plasma ____ weapons and gear... they've developed the NPC artwork now it's a question of porting it over... and making it lock-box-able.
They do NOT want to fix or remaster existing episodes (remember that promise?) They do NOT want to implement story missions or entire FEs. Those can't be ground like Nukara or Defera can. The 2800 was a stab at making an FE-Grind... It was a good attempt but it relied too much on the "go here click this" mechanic... which gets very tedious on the third or forth runthrough.
As I discussed in chat today, I have high hopes that I am wrong about this next season. Maybe it'll be something grand, with new exciting content and plenty of interesting non-grind story progression and introduce new mechanics and concepts. BUT I am also in my mid 40s, I've been around long enough to know once a company lowers itself like Cryptic has... you rarely get anything "good" from such a company again. I am hoping for something epic, but I realize I am just setting myself up for disappointment.
Agree ... furthermore what people seem to forget is that they had that manpower before, probably even more, since Atari kept 150 Cryptic employees after purchase back in 2009, and where unable to deliver 2 complete factions ... now we have like 50 and they're supposed to rush it out in 2 months ...
i do not agree with you.
DStahl also said: "we need to put the "new" factions into the right place"
imho till may they have enough time, and they will announce Romulans later in april WHEN they are ready..
there will be more factions and there will be universal mission content.
they programmed the WHOLE game in less than a year. With 1 and 1/2 factions, missions, visuals, and from what i understand they've been taking their time with the GENESIS engine (the exploration)..
Don't tell me they are not able to redesign existing stuff and copy paste + design a little 3rd faction stuff in 5 months.
I was thinking the same thing. Simply to appease the masses that have an issue with the KDF starting level. Cryptic could set the Romulans at say level 40 to start and work backward (if necessary) Given the Romulan missions should be complicated and intricate I would not expect many missions but I do expect serious quality for the few options. Then Cryptic could add say one mission a month. I think the community would be happy with that to be honest. At least, speaking as a leader of the oldest Romulan fleet/community in STO, we would welcome such an opportunity. :cool:
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Original Cryptic Forum Name: Spartan (member #124)
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this, also, the sooner the better, so that the gap between fleet holdings development does not get any bigger.
btw - nice to meet you here
That's BS it was 2 years with ~150 people
So basically what you're saying is :
150 people working 2 years (5 years if you count after Launch) equals 1,5 factions while 50 people working 2 months equals 0,5 - 1,5 new factions ... sounds reasonable ... based on their own track record they're gonna need 500+ employees to do this ...
Yeah that's Dstahl for "Just wait for this magical day to happen" just like the same old "We need to finish KDF
first", while nobody really cares about finishing KDF ... hard to believe Dstahl is now very cautious with his statements and tries calm the hype down ... because ... well that would be the excact opposite of what he is doing for 3 years now ..
Did you spend the last 3 years in a Coma ... if not your answer is pretty obvious ... if copy/pasting .. adapting content for other Factions would be that easy we would have full Klingon PVE by now ... hell we would have full Klingon PVE Content since May 2010 ...
this is flawed reasoning
1 - they are NOT interested in developing KDF any further (financial reasons, not enough people playing it). IF it happens, it will be with universal content which will be available to all future factions.
2 - they are almost DONE with releasing canon stuff for the FED's. The obvious thing to do is to release Romulans and other factions, to boost sales.
So ... KDF is not worth it, because of not enough people playing it... while 1/2 Romulan Faction is ... are you serious ... if you believe more people want to play a rushed out Romulan Faction than a complete KDF Faction, you're delusional ...
Thats not how Star Trek "works", if that would be true there would be more Episodes on Romulans than Klingons etc ...
Also I would like to see a offical quote on "they are NOT interested in developing KDF any further" please ... you are contradicting yourself here with "not interested in KDF" and "other Factions to boost sales"
Cryptic has NEVER had more than 30 people working on a single game to my knowledge.
City of Heroes was developed with 25. Champs was developed with 25. STO had a 25 person team and, as I recall, borrowed maybe a few CO devs for last minute help prior to launch.
At their peak under Atari, they may have had 150. That counts core engine team, corporate, marketing, administrative, and custodial... And Atari had them working on 4+ games at once.
There were, I believe, two games beyond Neverwinter being worked on at one point. There's at least one right now.
Also, I think all of STO's CONTENT was made in the last 8 months or so prior to around November 2009. They were only planning content when they got news a few months before J.J. Trek came out that Romulus was nixed. I understand many or most of their plans up until that point had involved Kestrel doing writeups on Romulus because she's a super-Romulan fan. The art and uniforms weren't finalized but they supplied IDW with concept art for uniforms that got used in the COUNTDOWN comic.
So 1.5 factions took 25 people 8 months.
As of May 2013, they'll have had 50 people for almost 12 months.
And I'm also fairly sure Klingons and Romulans will be getting a lot of repurposed Fed content.
Again? Why? Because PWE isn't keen on charging for content. That's the free bait in their model. But Cryptic will almost have to charge for new factions because factions include species and ships. So that means all content has to be made available to all factions.
I'm convinced that all the current Fed missions in the game will be opened to Klingons and Romulans. I suspect that all Klingon missions will be opened to Feds and Romulans. And all new missions will be developed for all three and no missions will be exclusive to a single faction, with very rare exceptions, maybe.
http://www.gamespot.com/news/atari-gets-cryptic-star-trek-online-due-in-10-6202107
While not all of these 150-200 employees might have worked on STO, it's pretty safe to asume it was at least half, because it was the "Main-Game" in Development ... or are you gonna tell me 30 were working on STO while 120 were making coffee & marketing ...
City of Heroes/Villains was pretty dead by then ... Neverwinter wasn't even in development ... which only leaves Champions Online ... so not sure what these 4 games might that be ...
All of the "We just have 20 people, less than a Starbucks" statements are from the year of fail ... when Atari left Cryptic floating dead in space ... the whole statement wouldn't even make sense if they wouldn't have had more people at one point in the past ...
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*Shrugs* I see this saying and various other variants on it said quite frequently, which is sort of a residual effect from launch when Klingons basically had one nebula and pvp to play and that was it, but now, at this point I don't really see the faction as being incomplete/unviable
I have 6 toons, 1 of each major class, ((tac,sci,eng)) on each faction all at level 50 ((doffs make this process almost effortless )) and as I play all of these characters across both factions, my usual gameplay habits are as follows:
-Doffing
-STFS
-Foundry
-New Romulus stuff
-Occasionally fleet events etc
and quite frankly, its all equally accessible on all my characters, everything i do at level 50 is equal and the same, if the kdf is incomplete then so is the federation is as well, since all of the content that matters for your long term experience once you reach max level, which happens in the blink of an eye is completely equal
Now I would agree that some backwards working additional story episodes and bringing the starting level down to 1 for the sake of bringing in new blood from new players would be nice. Saying the kdf faction is not a viable faction etc is a bit of a hyperbole charged statement since everything you typically do on your federation toons, you can do on your kdf toons as well. The "content gap" between the factions isn't as big as some posts here would have one believe
I'm telling you that of those 150 (which is rounding up):
Not all of those were fulltime. That includes things like ILM freelancers moonlighting on concept art and the cleaning person.
~15 of those were executive staff and their support teams (Ie. Bill Roper, Steven D'Angelo, Jack Emmert, the CFO, the CMO, etc.)
~15+ of those were forum admins (before the volunteer system, they had staffs), video trailer specialists, sound engineers, and marketing teams, which are currently PWE employees and not included in team count.
~15+ were developing the core game engine and server technology (This is almost assuredly a low estimate)
~25 were developing STO
~25 were developing Champions
And at that point, Cryptic had a couple of mystery games in development, including a Cthulu game.
Cryptic has never had more than around 25 people on a development team for a game prior to the Perfect World buyout, barring cases where they had games loan eachother employees under Atari. City of Heroes was basically developed by 25 or 26 people. Cryptic as an independent studio after selling CoH was founded with maybe 20 people, which expanded using Microsoft money (and is probably why the engine still uses Internet Explorer architecture for the patcher and can't be installed on a system without IE). I imagine this is probably when Dan Stahl entered the picture as he was a Microsoft employee if memory serves.
At that point, Cryptic's drive was to create as many games as possible. Champions' launch and STO's launch altered their philosophy which I think made Atari skittish because their plan (and why they bought Cryptic) was based around the idea of a couple of MMOs a year with minimal upkeep and very small development teams.
Source on that ??
For most of 2010, the teamsize did not change aside from losing CO loaners and produced around 25 missions from March 2010 to March 2011.
For most of 2011, they had around 5 and produced... 4 missions, 3 revamped hubs, and tweaked STFs.
In 2012, after F2P, they did mass hirings and last I checked were still hiring new content designers. They produced 9 episodic missions and 3 adventure zones and had ~25 people working on a mystery project for STO starting in about March or April.
Furthermore, I'll add a detail in support of existing missions getting revamped. The job description on Crypticstudios.com from around March 2011 through around March 2012 specifically called for Star Trek knowledgeable content designers who could revamp existing content with new objectives and gameplay elements added.
So I think the idea was probably always to shift existing Fed missions KDF side but they never had the manpower for it or the financial incentive to do it until last spring when they hired up and cooked up the idea of a Romulan faction, which I swear, will not be free. And that the financing the port Fed missions KDF side is covered by selling Romulan faction access (and future faction access).
By making the existing missions factionless and charging for new factions, that's the model for fixing the KDF. And I bet that's been the plan for over a year.
Not constantly. The Year of Fail was down to around 15.
And I don't do sources on guesses but I've been following these forums for over three years and my numbers roughly align with what devs said. And accessing old dev posts is annoying because when the forums changed, all the old posts became "Archived Post" as the poster.
Around 25 until launch with last minute CO loaners on top of that.
Around 15 in the "Year of Fail." (I suspect it was lower at one point.)
Around 50 as of last spring.
And while I don't generally DO sources, because I come here to throw out wild guesses, not hard facts (I don't do hard fact research for free and searching these forums for pre-PWE posts is something it would take me 6+ hours of digging to do), I probably can dig up something that indicates that City of Heroes had 26 people on its team pre-launch.
Really, my hope is that a dev will happen by and just say, "Yeah, that sounds roughly right."
Exact numbers aren't possible anyway because except during the divestment when it was constant decline. The headcount would always vary up and down depending on when in a month you checked. Game industry is high turnover. Some employees literally lasted less than a week.
The lack of content release was mostly due to pretty much everyone being heads-down converting everything over to F2P. This includes all the tech and systems needed for things like Silver/Gold sub differences and converting every single mission and all the rewards they gave in the game to scale to player level (they did not do that pre-F2P).
"But," you ask, "if so few people could produce a whole game save for the engine from scratch in a year and a half, why did it take them almost a year to convert existing content and nothing else?" That's easy! They didn't have to worry about maintaining a live server alongside working on new stuff at the time.
That said, the "bad mood" thing isn't necessarily wrong in and of itself - things were rough for Cryptic at that time and morale was definitely in the crapper.
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First thing, we dont know how much of that first 6-12 months was developed during pre release and just not released/finished in time.
second the 'year of fail' had a FE series, a ground combat update, the entire conversion to free to play which dealt with the economy, the way missions were structured etc, the borg defera invasion, the update to the STF's plus, the overhaul of ESD and qo'nos, the academies, the duty officer system, a few other bits and pieces, plus about 3 devs left in quick order so when you look at the year it was not like we got nothing. in fact we got quite a bit it was just less pure mission based.
People are always raving on about how much work a KDF faction needs, when in actuality, it doesn't need that much at all. I guess it depends on what you'd define as a 'finished KDF'. Few users are going to agree on whole with what is needed. You might want an extra 50 missions, 10 ships and a new tutorial (with levels 1 - 20); person B might want 20 missions, 5 new ships and just levels 1 - 20 (without a new tutorial); person C might want 40 new missions, 10 new ships and a new tutorial without the level 1 - 20.
I'll say it again, but what is defined as a 'finished KDF'?
I'd be willing to bet more people will play as Romulan than they do KDF. If they can get the faction released, along with the store ships, store costumes and such, they'll be laughing where profit is concerned.
For all we know, they could have been working on this faction for the past two years.
This.
Well we'll see in May, wont we?
I'll skip the rest of the posts, I'm pretty sure they cover everything that's already been mentioned, and any answers I'd have to them are within this one.
We've got reasons to be pissed off.
If Cryptic implemented a 'wishlist' of things the KDF faction needs to be really considered on par with the Federation faction in terms of development, then the community would stop 'whining'. That is, as long as Cryptic continued to give us equal treatment and consideration.
The biggest gaps are in storyline content. Ship-wise, KDF still needs a little more variety. . .but it's 'tolerable'. We've got the universal content (the majority of which is, of course, patterned from a Federation viewpoint), PvP, fleet stuff, etc.
If Cryptic instituted a full 20-25 levels of storyline and related content for levels 1-25, that alone would stop a lot of 'whining'. KDF would FINALLY get equal access to beginner players. If they combined that with a change to the UI (the red UI drives away a lot of players), that would be a significant improvement.
The problem Fed-biased players seem to have is that they think tossing a few carbon-copy ships to the KDF is enough to 'stop the whining'. It is not enough. Universal content that's blatantly patterned towards Federation sensibilities is not enough, either.
QFT
KDF does need new tutorial and has to start at lvl 1
they only need to adjust lvl sliders and the faction is finished (ok, some Zen-Store costumes would be nice)
I also agree Romulans will be played more than the KDF. I am SURE of it.
Why? For once they are sexy.