A Question of Factions, Fractions, and Fictions

leviathan99

I want to start off saying that I suspect it's already too late to have meaningful input on this.

However, imagine that you're involved in a discussion with leads on STO. You are tasked with discussing something that will:

-bring new players into the game

*AND*

-get existing players to play more

Bug fixes are being worked on to the point where they can. This is about a new content and systems gameplay initiative.

Now, say that factions come up. And let's say that what you have the resources for cannot be more involved than what the Romulan faction received in Legacy of Romulus. And is maybe 10% or so less.

Do you push ahead with a new faction on those terms?

Do you look at other initiatives like maybe a "specialization plus" that creates lots of Delta Recruit style optionals into missions and creates more variety in leveling?

Do you look at speeding up leveling even more and focusing on endgame?

What do you do and why?

Let's say the target is for existing players to login twice as much in a week, play at least 20% more and attract 30,000 new players who have never touched STO. The resources for this project have to be spent on something that can accomplish that goal. For the sake of this, you can't just detour to another goal like bugfixes. It has to be something that can directly tackle these goals using no more than 90-100% of the resources expended on the Romulan faction.

What do you do? Goals are inflexible. Resources are fixed. Shoot!

stf65

i think factions are what people want. they come to the game to play star trek, but everyone wants to play 'their' version of star trek. that means they want to be cardassians, and borg, and romulan, and so on. the more factions the more choices and the more the players can feel like it's their verions of star trek rather then just being fed or kdf or rom. so i think new factions are what's going to bring people in or back to sto. i also think there's a demand to play various tv series: an all tos series, enterprise, tng, and so on. if they did era story arcs i think that would get people in the door: 6 tos-era missions over 2 months, and so on.

i don't think the game has enough unique content to keep them more then a month or two. you can get to 50 in a week, and 60 in a couple more weeks, but then you've hit a wall. so it doesn't seem to me that sto is a long-term game. it's a hit it and quit it game: you play for a month or two 2-3 times a year rather then every day for years.

grayfoxjames

stf65 wrote: »

i think factions are what people want. they come to the game to play star trek, but everyone wants to play 'their' version of star trek. that means they want to be cardassians, and borg, and romulan, and so on. the more factions the more choices and the more the players can feel like it's their verions of star trek rather then just being fed or kdf or rom. so i think new factions are what's going to bring people in or back to sto. i also think there's a demand to play various tv series: an all tos series, enterprise, tng, and so on. if they did era story arcs i think that would get people in the door: 6 tos-era missions over 2 months, and so on.

i don't think the game has enough unique content to keep them more then a month or two. you can get to 50 in a week, and 60 in a couple more weeks, but then you've hit a wall. so it doesn't seem to me that sto is a long-term game. it's a hit it and quit it game: you play for a month or two 2-3 times a year rather then every day for years.

I must whole heartedly disagree with you on that good sir/madame. Been playing this for over two years now nearly every day. Plenty to do. Lot of good Foundry missions and what not. I'm a Fed player and not interested at all in other factions so I may be somewhat biased. I like playing my main human Fed and that's just good for me.