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Multiple Factions have Diluted Dev Focus
taylor1701d
Member Posts: 3,099 Arc User
First of all, I've got nothing against Roms or Kdf (I have multiple Rom and Kdf characters) or Borg or cooperative, or Cardies, or etc etc etc.
While I can understand that people wanted to play different factions in STO, I'm really starting to think that the Devs should've only made FEDS playable.
Reason being is that with each new Faction or partial faction added to the game, it becomes more and more of an asset drain on the Devs.
For each faction added the devs need to implement the following;
- Ship Design
- Character Costume design
- Level Design
- Faction inclusion into storyline/FE
- Core of Featured Episodes (Romulan Arc for ex)
+ Probably many other things I'm not even thinking of off the top of my head.
So, with what we have now it creates 3x the workload for the devs for new releases.
Their time must be divided between the 3 factions for every release.
And as much as they try to not leave any one faction behind, we see what can happen with new releases.
Lack of ships for Kdf and Rom is often complained about for example, amongst many other common complaints from Kdf or Rom players.
This is not Blizzard or EA with huge staffs. They are a small team trying their hardest to keep this thing afloat.
So if I were able to give them advice for a future STO, I'd say just stick to a Fed faction.
Every ST series was from the point of view of the Feds anyway, on fed ships, and dealt with the human condition. While Klingon and Rom (and other) ideologies are part of Trek, they were never the focus.
They were only there to teach us more about ourselves. Humanity. They were reflections of what we could have possibly become.
Myself I would've made more species available, and allowed players to choose whatever ship they wanted. Then they could've made flag ships if each species and been done with it, instead of designing new stuff all the time from scratch.
In that way, at least people could fly what they like and use whatever species they liked.
I might have even went so far as to only allow human captains (but thats a bit extreme).
But as extreme as it seems, it would've been by far the easiest/less complicated route for our Devs.
With only your bridge officers and doffs coming from any of the trek non human species.
Basically right now everyone is allied anyway, and I wouldve started this game at that point.
And had the alliance fall into civil war. With one of two sides available to choose from. Sorta like mass effect Paragon vs Renegade divide.
At least then the poor devs wouldn't have to hear the constant complaints of "I wanted a Borg faction" "I wanted a Cardy faction"
And not have to hear that they "suck" for not offering perfect equality between the current factions.
Meanwhile like 80% of the population plays feds. So it doesn't even make sense to have perfect equality. I don't blame them for putting Feds of everyone else.
And I think adding any new factions to the game at this point would be a horrible mistake from a manpower/resources perspective.
I actually feel bad for the dev team, they're probably worked to bone already.
And always get complaints, because people have unreasonable expectations.
Am I wrong ? Did I miss something ?
What's your thoughts ?
How could the workload be alleviated for the devs if you believe multiple factions are the right choice for STO ?
And at what point are there "too many" factions to manage ?
I think its already at a near unmanageable level for the devs.
We've got people begging for Co-operative, Cardy, Ferengi Consortium, Mirror Uni factions, and thats not even scratching the surface.
At what point is enough, enough ?
The more that are added, the more diluted/complicated the demands on Dev time becomes.
STO should've been FED only from the start.
While I can understand that people wanted to play different factions in STO, I'm really starting to think that the Devs should've only made FEDS playable.
Reason being is that with each new Faction or partial faction added to the game, it becomes more and more of an asset drain on the Devs.
For each faction added the devs need to implement the following;
- Ship Design
- Character Costume design
- Level Design
- Faction inclusion into storyline/FE
- Core of Featured Episodes (Romulan Arc for ex)
+ Probably many other things I'm not even thinking of off the top of my head.
So, with what we have now it creates 3x the workload for the devs for new releases.
Their time must be divided between the 3 factions for every release.
And as much as they try to not leave any one faction behind, we see what can happen with new releases.
Lack of ships for Kdf and Rom is often complained about for example, amongst many other common complaints from Kdf or Rom players.
This is not Blizzard or EA with huge staffs. They are a small team trying their hardest to keep this thing afloat.
So if I were able to give them advice for a future STO, I'd say just stick to a Fed faction.
Every ST series was from the point of view of the Feds anyway, on fed ships, and dealt with the human condition. While Klingon and Rom (and other) ideologies are part of Trek, they were never the focus.
They were only there to teach us more about ourselves. Humanity. They were reflections of what we could have possibly become.
Myself I would've made more species available, and allowed players to choose whatever ship they wanted. Then they could've made flag ships if each species and been done with it, instead of designing new stuff all the time from scratch.
In that way, at least people could fly what they like and use whatever species they liked.
I might have even went so far as to only allow human captains (but thats a bit extreme).
But as extreme as it seems, it would've been by far the easiest/less complicated route for our Devs.
With only your bridge officers and doffs coming from any of the trek non human species.
Basically right now everyone is allied anyway, and I wouldve started this game at that point.
And had the alliance fall into civil war. With one of two sides available to choose from. Sorta like mass effect Paragon vs Renegade divide.
At least then the poor devs wouldn't have to hear the constant complaints of "I wanted a Borg faction" "I wanted a Cardy faction"
And not have to hear that they "suck" for not offering perfect equality between the current factions.
Meanwhile like 80% of the population plays feds. So it doesn't even make sense to have perfect equality. I don't blame them for putting Feds of everyone else.
And I think adding any new factions to the game at this point would be a horrible mistake from a manpower/resources perspective.
I actually feel bad for the dev team, they're probably worked to bone already.
And always get complaints, because people have unreasonable expectations.
Am I wrong ? Did I miss something ?
What's your thoughts ?
How could the workload be alleviated for the devs if you believe multiple factions are the right choice for STO ?
And at what point are there "too many" factions to manage ?
I think its already at a near unmanageable level for the devs.
We've got people begging for Co-operative, Cardy, Ferengi Consortium, Mirror Uni factions, and thats not even scratching the surface.
At what point is enough, enough ?
The more that are added, the more diluted/complicated the demands on Dev time becomes.
STO should've been FED only from the start.
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I think their attempts to do cross-faction packs and to create faction-agnostic material was a reasonable way to get things done for all factions. I wish they could spend a bit more time fleshing out dialog options to have fitting replies for all factions (and individual characters and races.)
And I have to wonder: HOw many MMOs actually maintain strong faction content after release? If I understand things correctly, even WoW has lots of faction-agnostic stuff. SWTOR's newest expansion (and even earlier releases) seems to be faction-agnostic, too.
And STO had the added drawback of being about a franchise that has been tightly focused on the "human faction". In Star Wars the two factions were always integral part of every movie and every novel. But in Star Trek, you have countless of episodes without Klingons or Romulans.
I also agree that if the player base is something like 75% Fed 15% Klingon 10% Romulan (although that has likely changed since then) then it is silly and impractical to expect KDF and Roms to get the same dev time as Feds. They should get enough to keep them viable, interesting, and have their own flavor; maybe a bit more than that to help them grow over time.
While a Fed-only approach would allow them to focus their efforts, it would also have cut way back on story line, ship options, technologies in play, mission variety etc. And while 'everyone is currently allied', that doesn't acknowledge that we have gone through peace, into war, into temporary alliance against the greater threat, and finally grudging acknowledgement that we are stronger together than apart. Which may change yet again in the future. That's what storytelling is apart. Not 'Feds uber alles, forever'.
DS9 is often rated as the 'best story' of the series, and it was the series that most deeply involved the stories and backgrounds of non-Fed races. That added a level of tension, depth and continuity that the other series lacked. I think STO did well to develop 3 factions despite the added complexity and split efforts.
In future though, I would recommend they stick with what they have, and work on fleshing out/adding depth to those 3, as well as introducing new antagonists (as they have been doing). Splitting their efforts even further would be pretty risky at this point.
There would be no difference, really.
I get it, the Dev-team is small, they don't have time & resources to invest time into full-factions & unique stories. But this way people wouldn't be feeling 'left out', if the "traditional MMORPG" concept of 'Red Faction, Blue Faction & Green Faction' was essentially gone & folks could play what they felt like at that time. It'd give devs more free-hands imho too. Sure, not the most conventional opinion; maybe not even popular one... but eh. It's sad there's a lot of strife between the factions, and given how little factions mean in the game, and STO is essentially a Star Trek 'Theme-park', this would even fit nicely along these lines.
Probably too late to implement something like this, though.
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"bIghojchugh DaneH, Dumev pagh. bIghojqangbe'chugh, DuQaHlaH pagh."
"Learn lots. Don't judge. Laugh for no reason. Be nice. Seek happiness." ~Day[9]
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I think this is the direction the devs are heading.
Making one big faction, rather than 2.5 and only one of them getting attention.
according to their future timeline it is going to happen anyway, if that na'khul storyline gets finished off before the new expac arrives and pushes for a 3 way alliance, there would be no need for separate storylines within a storyline. ie, one for feds, one for kdf, one for roms. and all three work from an alliance contact instead of the leaders of the various empires.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
and no money doesn't work you don't go out of your way to make sure you don't get money from some players if thats you main concern. and teams just as small and smaller can do it why can't cryptic?
if I stop posting it doesn't make you right it. just means I don't have enough rum to continue interacting with you.
I feel personally it would be better to just let people use what they want, in terms of ships/appearance, so they can sort of "roleplay" their own desired faction with the theme they'd use, with their ships & characters. I mean, as I said, it's that way for most part anyways... as skills are identical, missions are identical. Only Social zones/couple of missions are different. Remove the artifical red, blue & green, and all you'll get is everyone being able to team-up, people less divided across the game & if someone wants to thematically be a Klingon, they grab the klingon-ship/outfit, and gogo...
At least I'd think that just these few points, would be good. And the content would be universal, therefore, nobody would be left out.
Star Trek Online Volunteer Community Moderator
"bIghojchugh DaneH, Dumev pagh. bIghojqangbe'chugh, DuQaHlaH pagh."
"Learn lots. Don't judge. Laugh for no reason. Be nice. Seek happiness." ~Day[9]
"Your fun isn't wrong." ~LaughingTrendy
Find me on Twitterverse - @jodarkrider
if there is to be a 3 way alliance, then these "factions" could choose any ship they would like, mix and match parts from various different ships, neghvar nacelles on vesta pylons with a centaur engineering bay, a vorcha neck and a romulan ar'kala saucer/head.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
The problem is replayability. With STOs setup you've essentially seen it all if you bring one character to lvl 60. In the godfather of three-way MMO, Dark age of Camelot, you had three realms with their own PvM and PvP content as well as the big RvR battlegrounds. Each faction featured different classes and different stories, so you had a incentive to play all realms and all classes.
The "making everything even" approach is paling in comparison. It doesn't matter which "realm" I'm in, everything's the same. It doesn't matter which career I choose because ultimately, everything plays the same. And there's no battleground to contest against other players or even a cooperative battleground against the AI (the battle zones don't work that way, they're simply static maps on a timer).
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Anyways, don't think that hard onto it. I just personally feel the whole Red, Blue & Green concept is dividing the playerbase unnecessarily & at the point this game is, it's actually hurting it, while not bringing anything of value to consider keeping this in place, imho.
The Dev-team is unlikely to have time & resources to have content/missions developped/tailored for each faction uniquelly for them. Same goes for the careers/skills. It is a bit saddening, yes, but.. unfortunately, the way I see it, this is where we are...
Yes, well, we have this problem in STO already, with replayability being unappealing, with the 'three' Factions, the content is essentially the same, aside of ships & outfits. Hence why I said that the Faction system currently adds nothing of value to even merit to keep it, rather than imho, hurting & dividing the community & dev-focus.
Star Trek Online Volunteer Community Moderator
"bIghojchugh DaneH, Dumev pagh. bIghojqangbe'chugh, DuQaHlaH pagh."
"Learn lots. Don't judge. Laugh for no reason. Be nice. Seek happiness." ~Day[9]
"Your fun isn't wrong." ~LaughingTrendy
Find me on Twitterverse - @jodarkrider
With a high level of customization. That way everyone would have options to roleplay as they like.
And we wouldnt have ship packs that only get bought by a smaller group of players.
Essentially every ship pack could be bought by anyone. It would have increased total sales I'm sure.
If we compare Dev time to create a faction ship pack to purchases, I'm pretty sure the Fed ratio is way more favorable in terms of end profit.
Nightken, not to argue with you or anything but could you name a few examples of small teams that produce a full fledge multi faction game ? I don't really play any other mmo's, I'm curious.
yeah, but was looking for a bit of a sharper reply on the idea of cross mix and matching
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
I don't think you will ever be able to mix and match old ships, but the new AoY ships are apparently going to be universal to all factions. At least 2 of them are, anyways.
Then, going forward (as Mirrorchaos said) there will be a universal contact for all factions.
We will probably start seeing less faction specific ships and more universal ships.
It will make it easier for the devs to concentrate on one set of ships for all factions, rather than making separate skins for each faction..
give me a while it's been years since I've played em.
though one is a really bad brower based one by a guy in his basement magic duel... not the magic the gathering game. you start factionless and join one later. game is in bad shape right now but it also doing it's 10th birthday. but the guy doesn't do what cryptic does and favor one over everybody and it's just him
if I stop posting it doesn't make you right it. just means I don't have enough rum to continue interacting with you.
But, realistically speaking, given where STO is heading, I have to step back & think, that going 'universal', so everyone can essentially pick their own flavor at moments' notice, would be better off for the game and its' developpers. Currently, I believe the Factions only serve as limiting factor on what ships you can fly, what species your characters can be, the whole unability to cross-faction teaming & unable to access some Social Zones. All of those imho, are hurtful, while not giving anything in return to the players, that'd merit these limitations.
Star Trek Online Volunteer Community Moderator
"bIghojchugh DaneH, Dumev pagh. bIghojqangbe'chugh, DuQaHlaH pagh."
"Learn lots. Don't judge. Laugh for no reason. Be nice. Seek happiness." ~Day[9]
"Your fun isn't wrong." ~LaughingTrendy
Find me on Twitterverse - @jodarkrider
You know this will never happen.
It would mess up too much for the old content, but there is nothing stopping them from giving the illusion of one faction in the story and releasing more universal ships.
Given where the story is heading with the Galactic Union and such, and that there may be another big announcement to come, I think it's likely that they're working on this.
I hope so. Factions may need to be removed indeed. But it would require them to rewrite a lot of game content. Right now, some of the factions are still at war when our characters are created after all. And those faction-specific storylines, especially the Romulan one, are quite good. I don't think they'd want to remove that, but I think it would be necessary if factions were to disappear.
Klingons on ESD killing Quinn, for instance.
Or unarmed bartenders
Honourable warriors. Yeah, right
couldnt the devs renamed the federation faction the alliance and just move all romulan and klingon entries across this new side make the changes needed to lock allied missions out, ships out and so on until a specific set of directives has been completed to unlock everything, for example all the major storylines, the highest level and the mission that focuses on the new alliance with it being signed. after this, you become an alliance fleet admiral and you can choose any ship you want and mix the parts.
you wouldnt need the illusion, but rather that it is all there and it acts the same as it has before, only that you dont get access to the alliance until much later in the storyline.
that would free up a faction space that was klingon.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
The best stories get you to look at a subject from 2 different points of view. It's what makes it gripping and makes you think on it for sometime after you've played.
Though seeing as looking at something from opposite points of view encourages "thinking" and complexity in gameplay and storyline I understand why some (including Devs it seems) want to get rid of factions.
It is possible (theoretical with my not knowing anything about their coding) , but whether the devs go in that direction is another thing...
It's why I think it's unfortunately too late to implement something like this.
Star Trek Online Volunteer Community Moderator
"bIghojchugh DaneH, Dumev pagh. bIghojqangbe'chugh, DuQaHlaH pagh."
"Learn lots. Don't judge. Laugh for no reason. Be nice. Seek happiness." ~Day[9]
"Your fun isn't wrong." ~LaughingTrendy
Find me on Twitterverse - @jodarkrider
I'm mostly a Fed player, but I can look at the story from different points of view. The current storyline doesn't really need separate factions for that, considering some choices the Alliance and the parties to the Temporal Accords have made and other things that happened (especially regarding the Na'Kuhl).
Which is why I think it will stay in the story.
They have the tech to switch a character into factions, as the Romulans do it at level 10 in part of their story.
I don't think the devs want to go the route of forcing every player to hard choose to join the alliance, as it would lock to many people out of future content...
So, with what we have now it creates 3x the workload for the devs for new releases.
This is demonstrably false. The KDF and Romulan factions quite clearly do not receive equitable development attention, so this idea that there is "3x the workload" is simply inaccurate.
More so a theoretical discussion.
Though I get your point.
And Id agree with you if this was say Blizz or EA who actually have a large enough staff to flesh out the factions as we'd all like to see.
And it does waters down the experience to a degree admittedly, but.. I dunno, I think for the Devs here, and their relatively small size, this could have saved them many, many man hours.
Obviously its too late in the games life cycle to do this.
And I have no problem living with the current situation. I still really like the game as is.
But IMO I don't think it would do much good for anyone if they added any new factions at this point. Especially not their bottom line.
That said i wouldn't complain if we got another one or even another .5 faction. But I wouldn't think it'd be a very good business decision for them.