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Multiple Factions have Diluted Dev Focus

taylor1701dtaylor1701d 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.
[img][/img]OD5urLn.jpg
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Comments

  • mustrumridcully0mustrumridcully0 Member Posts: 12,963 Arc User
    I don't believe multiple factions were the right choice in the first place. Especially not if they already realized during development that they couldn't make their full faction fully fleshed out.

    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.
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  • samt1996samt1996 Member Posts: 2,856 Arc User
    Perhaps... that's why this new character type is actually quite brilliant because it grants some new ships and a new leveling experience without having to completely start over.
  • forcemajeureforcemajeure Member Posts: 212 Arc User
    While I don't agree on a Fed-only approach (much of my personal enjoyment in an MMO comes from trying out different race/class/faction combos for 'flavor' variety), I do agree that 'too much faction = not enough quality for any'.

    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.
  • jodarkriderjodarkrider Member Posts: 2,097 Arc User
    I've honestly thought that they should've make only 'soft' factions. Ex. give us tools to play with ships & look like whatever Faction we want. The Story-missions, aside of very few, are mostly identical no matter what faction you play.

    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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  • sunfranckssunfrancks Member Posts: 3,925 Arc User
    I've honestly thought that they should've make only 'soft' factions. Ex. give us tools to play with ships & look like whatever Faction we want. The Story-missions, aside of very few, are mostly identical no matter what faction you play.

    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.

    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.
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  • mirrorchaosmirrorchaos Member Posts: 9,844 Arc User
    edited May 2016
    sunfrancks wrote: »
    I've honestly thought that they should've make only 'soft' factions. Ex. give us tools to play with ships & look like whatever Faction we want. The Story-missions, aside of very few, are mostly identical no matter what faction you play.

    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.

    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.
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  • nightkennightken Member Posts: 2,824 Arc User
    except thats how every other muti faction game works all major factions get the same level of surpport. there is no excuse for cryptic not doing. I literally have never seen another mmo do this mmo.

    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.
  • jodarkriderjodarkrider Member Posts: 2,097 Arc User
    sunfrancks wrote: »
    Making one big faction, rather than 2.5 and only one of them getting attention.
    Problem is, how to stop old players to feel from 'losing out'..?

    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.
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  • mirrorchaosmirrorchaos Member Posts: 9,844 Arc User
    sunfrancks wrote: »
    Making one big faction, rather than 2.5 and only one of them getting attention.
    Problem is, how to stop old players to feel from 'losing out'..?

    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.

    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.
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  • angrytargangrytarg Member Posts: 11,008 Arc User
    Problem is, how to stop old players to feel from 'losing out'..?

    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.

    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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  • jodarkriderjodarkrider Member Posts: 2,097 Arc User
    edited May 2016
    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.
    You can't mix-match the ships within one faction, even presently, not much. That could pose some serious technical difficulties to even do.

    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...
    angrytarg wrote: »
    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).​​
    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.

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  • taylor1701dtaylor1701d Member Posts: 3,099 Arc User
    I'd agree that soft factions wouldve been the best approach.
    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.
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  • mirrorchaosmirrorchaos Member Posts: 9,844 Arc User
    edited May 2016
    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.
    You can't mix-match the ships within one faction, even presently, not much. That could pose some serious technical difficulties to even do.

    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...

    yeah, but was looking for a bit of a sharper reply on the idea of cross mix and matching :p, but the idea is good to eliminate the 3 factions, make them all 1 and then a federation officer can fly around in a bortas or a klingon can fly around in a double d. be a good thing to see that. i have no special attachment to these separate factions, so if they all combine i wouldnt have a problem with it.
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  • sunfranckssunfrancks Member Posts: 3,925 Arc User
    edited May 2016
    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.
    You can't mix-match the ships within one faction, even presently, not much. That could pose some serious technical difficulties to even do.

    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...

    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..
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  • nightkennightken Member Posts: 2,824 Arc User
    edited May 2016
    I'd agree that soft factions wouldve been the best approach.
    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.


    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



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  • jodarkriderjodarkrider Member Posts: 2,097 Arc User
    edited May 2016
    I think we all would rather see fully-fledged, developped Factions, with their unique stories, careers and what else... for the replayability's sake & fun-factor.

    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.

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  • sunfranckssunfrancks Member Posts: 3,925 Arc User
    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.
    You can't mix-match the ships within one faction, even presently, not much. That could pose some serious technical difficulties to even do.

    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...

    yeah, but was looking for a bit of a sharper reply on the idea of cross mix and matching :p, but the idea is good to eliminate the 3 factions, make them all 1 and then a federation officer can fly around in a bortas or a klingon can fly around in a double d. be a good thing to see that. i have no special attachment to these separate factions, so if they all combine i wouldnt have a problem with it.

    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. ;)
    Fed: Eng Lib Borg (Five) Tac Andorian (Shen) Sci Alien/Klingon (Maelrock) KDF:Tac Romulan KDF (Sasha) Tac Klingon (K'dopis)
    Founder, member and former leader to Pride Of The Federation Fleet.
    What I feel after I hear about every decision made since Andre "Mobile Games Generalisimo" Emerson arrived...
    3oz8xC9gn8Fh4DK9Q4.gif





  • risian4risian4 Member Posts: 3,711 Arc User
    I think we all would rather see fully-fledged, developped Factions, with their unique stories, careers and what else... for the replayability's sake & fun-factor.

    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.

    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.
  • taylor1701dtaylor1701d Member Posts: 3,099 Arc User
    edited May 2016
    Yeah... I really think that's their best bet going forward @Sunfrancks
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  • risian4risian4 Member Posts: 3,711 Arc User
    Things like opening up social zones for characters that are at a certain point in the storyline (post-level 50 for example) or allowing cross-faction teaming could be done without a need to rewrite a lot of content though. In fact, we know that some social zones already are accessible to other factions :)
  • sunfranckssunfrancks Member Posts: 3,925 Arc User
    risian4 wrote: »
    Things like opening up social zones for characters that are at a certain point in the storyline (post-level 50 for example) or allowing cross-faction teaming could be done without a need to rewrite a lot of content though. In fact, we know that some social zones already are accessible to other factions :)

    Klingons on ESD killing Quinn, for instance. ;)
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    Founder, member and former leader to Pride Of The Federation Fleet.
    What I feel after I hear about every decision made since Andre "Mobile Games Generalisimo" Emerson arrived...
    3oz8xC9gn8Fh4DK9Q4.gif





  • risian4risian4 Member Posts: 3,711 Arc User
    sunfrancks wrote: »
    risian4 wrote: »
    Things like opening up social zones for characters that are at a certain point in the storyline (post-level 50 for example) or allowing cross-faction teaming could be done without a need to rewrite a lot of content though. In fact, we know that some social zones already are accessible to other factions :)

    Klingons on ESD killing Quinn, for instance. ;)

    Or unarmed bartenders :/

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  • mirrorchaosmirrorchaos Member Posts: 9,844 Arc User
    sunfrancks wrote: »
    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. ;)

    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.
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  • risingwolfshadowrisingwolfshadow Member Posts: 619 Arc User
    Strongly disagree with the OPs viewpoint. It'll be the worst decision the Devs could possibly make, possibly worse than the neglect of PvP.

    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.
  • sunfranckssunfrancks Member Posts: 3,925 Arc User
    sunfrancks wrote: »
    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. ;)

    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.

    It is possible (theoretical with my not knowing anything about their coding) , but whether the devs go in that direction is another thing...
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  • jodarkriderjodarkrider Member Posts: 2,097 Arc User
    Looking on the other side of the fence - Problem with this is, while 'universal', "soft" Faction would work greatly for STO, imho - There are people who created a specific character, because of the Faction. They wanted these Klingon ships. Romulan Ships. So they created a character with the Faction allowing to do them just that. And there's just no way for them to be reimbursed for the loss of that. Granted, all of their characters could technically do that, if this was a go, but still.. part of me feels that'd make people to feel they spent time on a character for nothing.

    It's why I think it's unfortunately too late to implement something like this.
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  • risian4risian4 Member Posts: 3,711 Arc User
    Strongly disagree with the OPs viewpoint. It'll be the worst decision the Devs could possibly make, possibly worse than the neglect of PvP.

    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.

    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).
  • sunfranckssunfrancks Member Posts: 3,925 Arc User
    Looking on the other side of the fence - Problem with this is, while 'universal', "soft" Faction would work greatly for STO, imho - There are people who created a specific character, because of the Faction. They wanted these Klingon ships. Romulan Ships. So they created a character with the Faction allowing to do them just that. And there's just no way for them to be reimbursed for the loss of that. Granted, all of their characters could technically do that, if this was a go, but still.. part of me feels that'd make people to feel they spent time on a character for nothing.

    It's why I think it's unfortunately too late to implement something like this.

    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...
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  • delerouxdeleroux Member Posts: 478 Arc User
    This whole thread is based on a fallacious premise.

    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.
  • taylor1701dtaylor1701d Member Posts: 3,099 Arc User
    Its not really something I expect to be implemented @risingwolfshadow

    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.
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