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No Romulans in May: click and see why
diogene0
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
As usual, a new teaser and a lot of excitement about a possible Romulan faction. But it won't happen in may and i'm almost 100% sure about that. Here is why:
I - Manpower/time issue.
What we know so far about season 8:
- 2 new tutorials to do.
- at least a featured episode series (5 episodes, which means 10-20 x 5 days of work according to an interview with Goatshark): 50 to 100 days. Since Sela will be in season 8 it's not even speculation.
- Nimbus III will be another New Romulus planet.
- Another space adventure zone.
- (anti)-Tholian reputation, which means 3-4 missions and that's a bare minimum. Missions will require a lot of work to brainstorm, build, balance, etc.
- a new character creator.
- pvp reputation. Maybe. This is huge. So much to do.
- a new lockbox. Come on, we all know it's coming.
- playable first officer?
So, even without any pvp rep, there's at least 4-5 months of work here. Which means that if they want to add a Romulan faction then they have 1 or 2 months to do it, and it would need playable ships, episodes, gear, a homeworld, costumes to sell, and so on.
II - Dan Stahl almost saying "no".
Of course, mainly for I -, a Romulan faction in May isn't realistic. Yes, the team size has increased, but it happened mostly prior to season 7, so they were probably very close to max content producing speed anyway. They already have a lot to do, especially with the new tutorials, the anti tholian reputation, and the featured episodes.
Now they might have been working on it for some time but still, there aren't enough assets in game for that. Season 8 sounds rather like a Romulan assets building season so that they can work on a faction later.
Now the only way I see them adding playable Romulans (and definitely not a Romulan faction) is with a playable first officer. Get one from your embassy, make it your first officer and tah-dah, you've got your Romulan character. It's the best they could do for season 8, most likely.
I - Manpower/time issue.
What we know so far about season 8:
- 2 new tutorials to do.
- at least a featured episode series (5 episodes, which means 10-20 x 5 days of work according to an interview with Goatshark): 50 to 100 days. Since Sela will be in season 8 it's not even speculation.
- Nimbus III will be another New Romulus planet.
- Another space adventure zone.
- (anti)-Tholian reputation, which means 3-4 missions and that's a bare minimum. Missions will require a lot of work to brainstorm, build, balance, etc.
- a new character creator.
- pvp reputation. Maybe. This is huge. So much to do.
- a new lockbox. Come on, we all know it's coming.
- playable first officer?
So, even without any pvp rep, there's at least 4-5 months of work here. Which means that if they want to add a Romulan faction then they have 1 or 2 months to do it, and it would need playable ships, episodes, gear, a homeworld, costumes to sell, and so on.
II - Dan Stahl almost saying "no".
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.
Dstahl: We have always had a plan for how we wanted to implement additional factions and we have polls dating back to early in the game's life when we were looking to see which future factions players were most interested in. If and when we release a Romulan faction, you can expect that it would set the stage for how a Cardassian, Borg, or any other faction would be introduced into the game.
Of course, mainly for I -, a Romulan faction in May isn't realistic. Yes, the team size has increased, but it happened mostly prior to season 7, so they were probably very close to max content producing speed anyway. They already have a lot to do, especially with the new tutorials, the anti tholian reputation, and the featured episodes.
Now they might have been working on it for some time but still, there aren't enough assets in game for that. Season 8 sounds rather like a Romulan assets building season so that they can work on a faction later.
Now the only way I see them adding playable Romulans (and definitely not a Romulan faction) is with a playable first officer. Get one from your embassy, make it your first officer and tah-dah, you've got your Romulan character. It's the best they could do for season 8, most likely.
Lenny Barre, lvl 60 DC. 18k.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
Post edited by diogene0 on
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None the less, if they surprise me... good.
"We are smart." - Grebnedlog
Member of Alliance Central Command/boq botlhra'ghom
The image on the front page confirms this, a bunch of romulan ships hiding. They are going to attack, it will be a great and fun FE, but that's all it is.
JustGaming4US - https://www.youtube.com/user/JustGaming4Us/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/Brent_Justice
Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/brentjustice
I'm still puzzled about the first officer thing. What exactly do people want out of this? To play as their first officer? Doing what? I'd rather handle away missions with my own captain. Or maybe it's some "special" kind of missions with new mechanics and what not?
Or maybe make a new character with their first officer? What's the point? Just make another bloody character with the same name, race, and appearance!
Shoot, I don't see a faction coming till at least Season 12, IMO.
JustGaming4US - https://www.youtube.com/user/JustGaming4Us/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/Brent_Justice
Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/brentjustice
By supplying a product that is demand would be important to making money.
I guess its best this way as maybe they know what we want.
Unless we have some firm evidence as to their internal project time-frame and current progress I wouldn't be 100% sure nor would expect a Romulan faction.
What I do expect is bugs bugs bugs x)
#2311#2700#2316#2500
grindable, repeatable content.
Not a full faction.
Maybe a mini-faction.
will see soon enough, but I for one am not holding my breath
you are forgetting the MAY UPdate is not season 8 season 8 will be its own thing so who knows what season 8 is coming with this stuff. Do a little more research before you post please
First off - "Season 8" will probably be sometime in late summer or early fall, NOT IN MAY. Mr Stahl specifically stated that the May update would be too big to be called a "season".
Second - Why would either the Feds or the KDF be inclined to "march beneath the raptor's wings" - ie be placed under Romulan command during a mission. And make no mistake, D'Tan is about peace, not about marching to the drums of war.
Third - we, the forum posters have exactly ZERO idea of what any specific developer does on a day to day basis. Or what they each did every single work day over the last 10months or so.
Fourth - Mr Stahl is on record as mentioning that the STO dev team is going on 6-day work weeks for the next few months.
Fifth - the countdown timer just happens to coincide with both Spring AND follows the PWI quarterly earnings report.
Should I continue?
Made my day ... pretty much sums up the last 4 weeks of crazy Forum speculations ... only 10 weeks to go ...
"March beneath the Raptors Wing" is dead long live "Our shadow will dim the stars" (still no crazy "Our Shadow will dim the Stars" speculation thread though
Wow so you"re just completely ignoring everything over semantics ... wow ... just wow
The truth is, IF they're working on a true Romulan faction, you have no idea how long they've been working on it. If it's been in the works since shortly after launch and it's just now ready to go live, that provides PLENTY of time to have gotten it finished. If you assume they began work on it only when the wrapped up the features of Season 7, then that provides much less time.
Also, people make a lot of assumptions about what such a hypothetical faction might include.
If it's 10 missions, a home base, and some ships (many of which already have models in the game) , and you start at level 40 or even 50, that's a very different thing than if you start at level 1 and have a full UFP style story progression.
It could even be something like Pandaren in WoW, where you go through some tutorials and basic missions then choose a side, Klingon or Federation. In that case, all you've really got are some racial attributes, a some character creation options, and maybe a starting ship or two before you're essentially part of one of those other factions.
TL:DR version: No one outside of Crytpic/PWE knows for certain what kind or how much content is going to be included. We DO know that it's being hyped as if it is a big deal, with a countdown probably to a big reveal at the end of this month, a followup interview of Dstahl with STOked, etc. We DO know that Romulans are the core focus of the May update.
My own theory is that it's going to be playable Romulans and/or Romulan ships, but probably not a full fledged Romulan faction.
But, like you, I'm merely guessing.
Well of course it's all speculation, but at least we should speculate on what we know and not on what we want to believe ... since Cryptic's statement since launch was "No work on Romulan Faction before complete KDF" thats the one I'm going with :P
no i am not your saying because they got to make this stuff they can't make a rom faction but you don't even know that they started working on this stuff yet since its not coming out in may and know one knows when it is so your all post is nothing what happens if season 8 don't come out until christmas then they don't need to work on it now which throws your all post out. He also said 100% sure which is just crazy because you can't be with the information we have lol. Also half the stuff he said was not even confirmed for season 8 which also throws his post out
i tell ya
"ALT your BOff"
Take your Bridge Officer / First Officer
- Breen
- Reman
- Romulan
- Jem'Hadar
- EMH
- LobiStore - Black Maco Hologram
- Aenar
- C-Store Borg
- KAGE Borg
- Veteran ANDROID
- Federation Diplomacy Gorn / Orion / Nausicaan
and promote him to a new Player Captain = new ALT, starting at level 40
and optional i want him to be able to replace the current captain instead of making an ALT, i already got Breen and Jem'Hadar Ships, it would be a shame not to use the appropriate Species with their Ships.
Oh... and obviously if these Species are made available for Players, they ALL need proper Character Creator options, instead of just the one fixed look that many of them BOffs have right now.
PS: pretty sure this is not planned for the may update, not sure where the OP got that from
If you take a close look at that screenshot, you can see a sort of green temporal rift. At the end of the Romulan episodes, the last thing we saw was a Warbird being dragged into a time portal.
Nope just reading what Dstahl said, instead of ignoring everything, in favor of playable Romulans
It's not so much what he's said as it is what he has not said and what has actually came to pass. Most of the posters in this topic have been around STO a while and understand that about Dan and STO.
I received an email Sat 23rd (and probably every other player as well) from STO/PWE and in the lower right corner was the heading -
"Launching May 2013" Bookmark our new teaser site and check back often for updates surrounding our upcoming content release.
The choice of words used gives a lot away. What sort of released content would be "launched"?
No doubt there's been some ground work done, but I just don't see where they've had the time and resource to do it any sort of justice since the purchase by PWI, and change over to a mixed P2P/F2P revenue generation system.
The KDF getting filled out is how ever both resonable and very do able. That would mostly require tutorial content to permit new players to start STO play as KDF, and mission content to level up with. The current use of recycled FE's to level with was, and is just a stop gap that happened with the "Free to Play" transition, and just to streamline the KDF levelling experience. Remember there really is only a bare handfull of actuall KDF mission content to level with. Fortunatly most of the assets needed to create any KDF content all ready in game. It just needs to get done. Once the KDF is set up for a new player to come in and dig right in as a player character, the way is paved for further, better development of PvP. Faction player characters would come up sufficient to provide the number of players needed to make persistant territorial PvP a do-able reality. Get some war going in that fictional UFP v Klingon war which we hear so much about and see so little of. With out other faction that have a complete experience to attract incoming player (and the typical faction loyalty that happens in a MMORPG..yes, that is what STO is supposed to be)
PvP is never going to be more then a little arena mini game for people to get epeen on.
Personally, I think that stinks. It can be so very much more. ANd it brings in a place to add a core faction rep/reward system to encourage it.... and of course the resultant revenue that could be gained.. (ehm, had to mention filthy ludre.. hey, STO is a commercial product.. they didn't make all of this as a labor of love.. thats just a bonus.)
Khemaraa sends
now whether this is just npc clothing or preperations for a romulan faction is another thing.
Why
The Iconians must Pay...they are the reason we are at war....they are the reason there is chaos in the Quadrant...they are the reason the Romulans lost their way and most of all....they are the reason for JJ trek.
FED players KDF players can we all agree we need to finish what was started and wipe the Iconians out of existence :mad:
Tonight we dine in Gre'thor
I'm shocked ! It's so unexpected !
Agreed, and just for JJ trek, they NEED to die.
So, either way, queue the cries of 'Broken Promises!' and 'Favoritism!' from either side depending on how this turns out.
If anything, I have a feeling it's going to be a FE featuring the Iconians and Sela with the possibility of you commanding a Romulan ship during it in some fashion.
FE's were never ment to be levelling content!
I mean Duh - the HUGELY hyped 2nd JJ movie comes out in - when was that?? MAY!
So yeah some big story content for all the movie people - maybe some tie-in advertizing with the movie.
plus if they basically did nothing for the KDF except a bare-bones tutorial update - then they could have diverted all resources to this content. And shafting the KDF once again is just par for the course.