I agree with pretty much everything you're saying.
The standard line is "No Klingon stuff because no one plays Klingons."
That's like saying "The hospital cafeteria must have good food, because it is a popular place to eat." It ignores basic facts in order to make its own argument.
There are reasons, actions, people who don't want to develop KDF content, not enough resources, whatever.
The bottom line is, They're selling Star Trek stuff to Star Trek fans. If no one is buying Klingon stuff, it's the product, not the consumer. Not being able to sell Klingon stuff to Star Trek fans is failure to a hilariously obvious extent.
edit- nm, I'm saying almost exactly what you're saying elsewhere. XD
as for "moral" obligations-there is only one-and it's in every business. "Do the work you said you'd do properly and completely."
In other words, when you say "Part X works with thing Y", you keep working until part X works with thing Y, regardless of how many units of Y sold this quarter, also when you sell something (say, item of artwork K) and something changes and now that something doesnt work (Say, the Kar'Fi skin rendering?), you don't ignore it for a **** year, then not fix it because the playerbase you sold it to is smaller than it was last year.
What about obligations to shareholders and employees? If doing it properly and completely is financially unwise, should it really be done?
What good is faction parity if it actually means that you need to produce a lot less content. What if instead of 10 faction-agnostic missions a year you get 1 faction-exclusive per faction? Would that really be in anyone's interest?
Cryptic has a responsibility to all its customers, not just people that focus exclusively on the KDF or the Romulan Republic.
There's something very, very wrong with what you're doing if your business is selling Star Trek product, and Klingon products "don't sell."
It is a constant delusion among KDF fans that they somehow are as signifcant in numbers and overall interest among the Star Trek fans as people that are interested in FED stuff. THere is no cure for this delusion, it seems.
To become a Klingon fan, you already must be a fan of Star Trek in the first palce, which means you must have liked all the Starfleet/Federation stuff. Just because you could sell a Klingon ship to Klingon fans doen't mean you couldn't sell a Federation ship to a lot more people.
Also I think it's a fundamental fallacy that having less C-Store ships for the KDF means that less people will be interested in playing KDF. This is a F2P game - People come into this game hoping they need to spend no money at all! Telling them that from the money they don't intend to spend in the first place, they can put more of that into Fed then the KDF is not swaying them.
People get excited for ships in this game - and the more canonical they are, the better. But there are only what - 5 canon KDF ships? How often can Cryptic sell those? I guess as often as they can raise the ship tier cap.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
We're going to defacto have to create and play some lame TRIBBLE Fed AoY, and grind out all the reps we need in order to rebuy the rep gear we use on our KDF toon for the UR upgrade unless we want to be at a fundamental disadvantage to virtually everyone else in the game.
That and we're going to have to probably go broke trying to get the only actual KDF ship that has been stuffed into a lockbox.
...but at least we finally got an entirely new tailor option for a change? (even though that is also in a lockbox, and will probably be expensive as well)
There's something very, very wrong with what you're doing if your business is selling Star Trek product, and Klingon products "don't sell."
It is a constant delusion among KDF fans that they somehow are as signifcant in numbers and overall interest among the Star Trek fans as people that are interested in FED stuff. THere is no cure for this delusion, it seems.
To become a Klingon fan, you already must be a fan of Star Trek in the first palce, which means you must have liked all the Starfleet/Federation stuff. Just because you could sell a Klingon ship to Klingon fans doen't mean you couldn't sell a Federation ship to a lot more people.
Also I think it's a fundamental fallacy that having less C-Store ships for the KDF means that less people will be interested in playing KDF. This is a F2P game - People come into this game hoping they need to spend no money at all! Telling them that from the money they don't intend to spend in the first place, they can put more of that into Fed then the KDF is not swaying them.
People get excited for ships in this game - and the more canonical they are, the better. But there are only what - 5 canon KDF ships? How often can Cryptic sell those? I guess as often as they can raise the ship tier cap.
That's neither what I implied, nor relevant to what I said.
The last 4 KDF ships do not work as intended, and they have yet to be fixed. I would be surprised if they ever do get fixed. The most likely scenario for a KDF ship release is a ship no one wants, a ship with subpar stats that isn't worth buying, and/or a ship that doesn't work correctly. The reason there are no KDF science vessels at T6 is because they "don't sell." This must be based on the Varanus, which is a paid version of a subpar Federation free ship, and the Dyson Science destroyers, which were both aesthetically unpleasing to most, and relied on a gimmick that most don't like (the mission where you are forced to fly one didn't help the cause). These are all failures in the product. I'm not sure how that equates to any kind of delusion on the part of potential paying customers.
There are bugs in KDF missions, that also will likely never get fixed. The storyline mostly ignores the fact that there are other factions (besides the Federation) after the faction specific arcs end. These are failures in the product.
All incentives to play KDF over Federation are gone. Contraband is irrelevant with the Admiralty system. Plasmonic Leech can be bought on the exchange. And, now, you don't even need to play KDF to fly a BoP. And they add in a "faction" with massive rewards for playing it, that is another incentive to play Federation content. All incentives in place are there to not play KDF. It's very odd to me that instead of fixing game imbalances, they are just ignored and magnified with every release.
Star Trek fans will buy Klingon product. That's how it is. If you went to a convention, and had Klingon stuff to sell, it would likely sell easily, as long as it wasn't complete crapola. If your product isn't worth buying, they probably won't buy it. Either the product is bad intentionally, or it's half a**ed so egregiously that it ends up being garbage. Either way, it means they can't even sell Klingon stuff to Star Trek fans, which demonstrates a hilarious amount of ineptitude.
as for "moral" obligations-there is only one-and it's in every business. "Do the work you said you'd do properly and completely."
In other words, when you say "Part X works with thing Y", you keep working until part X works with thing Y, regardless of how many units of Y sold this quarter, also when you sell something (say, item of artwork K) and something changes and now that something doesnt work (Say, the Kar'Fi skin rendering?), you don't ignore it for a **** year, then not fix it because the playerbase you sold it to is smaller than it was last year.
What real Klingon warriors do - cry some more in your blood wine.
Or play the new missions and make a TOS alt for the fun and the rewards.
That's not a mutually exclusive or.
Mustrum, we know, you're getting everything you want
No, I don't. I still have no Tier 6 Vor'Cha. I still can't use the new T6 Material with patterns on my Neg'Tev. An entire skin is still missing from Tier 6 B'Rel. The Bortasque saucer still doesn't really seem to fit on the Tier 6 variant hulls. I still have no Tier 6 Romulan Dyson Destroyers.
PvP is still in ruins and looks even more unrecoverable as it did 4 years ago, and there is still not a single sign of a remote hope that anything could ever happen about that.
But I am not making it personal. I am not pretending that Cryptic has some moral obligation to deliver it because I belong to an arbitrarily defined minority. I am not whining all the time about what I don't have and might never get.
I learned to appreciate what I have. Make suggestions on stuff I would like to see. Maybe something will stick. Maybe not.
YET, whenever criticism comes up, you're first to leap to the battlements to defend Cryptic's decisions.
Because most criticism is TRIBBLE and has unrealistic expectations of what a game or a company making a game can actually do.
It's pretty clear though that stuff like the issues with the T6 Bortasque is the result of a limited budget. The artists didn't get the time he needed to fix the problems, and was send to do other work. That can only be described as disappointing. But that doesn't mean the reasoning behind it is impossible to understand. And too many pretend otherwise. Or make it some sort of "personal" issue, pretending the developers hate Klingons or Klingon players or whatever. And that is a reason to jump to Cryptic's defense every time. If people start reveling in idiotic illusions like that, hope of them being able to communicate with the devs in a meaningful manner is lost.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
When the Bortasque was released, Geko quite specifically stated his dislike for working on 'klingon ships', a while later, he noted that he didn't like having to do Bird of Prey work because "you run out of marketable options" and "They're boring".
When the Bortasque flopped (and it flopped HARD, I don't know if you were here for that...basically the KDF playerbase looked at it, and asked "Where's the turn rate?" and "Why are the consoles bugged all to hell?" and "What the **** am I going to use THIS for??"-they then didn't buy it.) He pronounced working on KDF material to be a waste of money and the playerbase to be unprofitable.
This is probably the most relevant thing about the state of KDF/ROM in this game. I always get the feeling that everything tht gets put out with the most attention is something Geko actually wants, and the things he doesn't want, are just "Yeah, throw that together or whatever."
It reminds me of when Facebook was not working properly on certain mobile devices. Instead of just ignoring that platform entirely, and saying that "no one uses those devices for Facebook," they forced the employees to use ONLY those devices to access their own personal accounts. Voila! It got fixed.
No one is saying "ZOMG teh KDF would sell moar than FEDs but Geko is a jerkface." I think he basically only knows what he likes, and is completely unable to make product that is outside of that. Hence why everything is TAC captains in FED cruisers FAWing everything. I would think that it would be beneficial for them to play Engineers or Science captains. Or Romulans. Or Klingons. Even just for a few weeks.
Imagine if one of the DPS channel admins was in charge. People would be complaining things were too difficult. Or if someone who thinks Star Trek begins and ends with Spock, and there was an overabundance of Vulcan content, and it was "Space Magic Online." It's the same thing. People learn to speak Klingon, for crying out loud. You can translate it on Bing.
It would be ridiculously easy to incentivize playing other factions (or even other careers than TAC). Turn on x2 XP for Romulans, and call it a "Star Empire rebuilding event." Add in cross faction fleets for those 50+. Have a Delta recruit-type of event for the less played factions. A CStore ship sale. Instead, they push people away from them, which is really rather odd to me. I've never seen a business not put in incentives to buy things that "don't sell."
Mustrum, we're not pretending certain devs dislike working on the KDF side, or the KDF playerbase-Geko Said So. I mean, I'm not inclined to call the man a liar since when he said it it was massively NOT something you'd see in a vetted press-release...
It's one thing to suspect-without evidence. Which I get the impression you feel is going on here, it's quite another when the lead developer outright said it in 2012.
and you can't call it a 'joke'-not when the actions subsequent line up with the statement (or in his case, statements, plural)
When the Bortasque was released, Geko quite specifically stated his dislike for working on 'klingon ships', a while later, he noted that he didn't like having to do Bird of Prey work because "you run out of marketable options" and "They're boring".
Yes, and that's the typical non-charitable way to interpret a post.
Don't you realize what the BOP's real problem is? It is all universal. There is almost no design space anymore you can do with it. That's why it's boring and you run out of marketable options.
That doesn't mean he hates the KDF.
Just like you interpret his comment on "being no longer forced to do Klingon episodes" as he hated working on Klingon episodes, instead of him meaning they could not do faction-agnostic episodes - that are more efficient to make since, well, everyone in the player base and every character can play them - before the change.
Guess what, he recently used the word force and Klingons again. I think it was the Tribble Ecstasy podcast, IIRC. There he basically said that a new fully fledged faction is unfeasible - they were already forced to give Klingon faction-agnostic episodes, instead of faction-specific ones.
The force doesn't mean: "Oh, I hate this job of making KDF stuff, oh woe is me." It means "We can't do the stuff we would like to do for the KDF because there is no sufficient market for it".
Or maybe he really hates your guts. He could do a better job at living out his hate, instead of just passive aggressively delivering cross-faction bundles or faction-agnostic stuff, he could just release nothing anymore for the KDF.
Maybe you should had to one of these conventions and ask him personally.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
"maybe we'll see a T6 raider with 5 forward weapons, battle cloak and Temp Ops seating"
The D4 has all of that, is a full fledged pilot ship on top of that, retains all universal seating, and has what sounds like a cool console to boot.
The only advantage the Kor has is as a Torp boat. The Gateway BoP just has those Tenporal mechanics.
So yeah, the D4 is going to be King of the Klingon ships.
Yeah, a console whose set bonus is PHASER damage, what a waste of a BoP.
As for Geko, he clearly said he doesn't like working on KDF stuff and then when he is forced to put out KDF stuff, that BTW is utterly useless for it's stated purpose, TRIBBLE that the KDF players won't buy it or uses that refusal to buy useless TRIBBLE as a reason to NOT do any more KDF stuff.
Come on, how can 'no-one buys X' be a believable reason to not make it when you don't even sell it?
How many KDF / Roms are going to buy that temporal science ship because it is cross-faction?
A lot of them is the answer, that is because it is the ONLY science ship at T6 for KDF / Roms. The Feds have at least 3 before you include fleet versions (it goes up to 5 then).
Carriers are a KDF thing, you can get one for FREE at level 40 only on the KDF, with one c-store carrier. The feds got a c-store carrier and a fleet version and the Roms don't get any full carriers.
So why do the Feds (and now via a lock box), the Roms get T6 carriers first?
Feds can keep the escort-carriers, personally I think the flight-deck raptor should have been another orion flight-deck cruiser.
But the first T6 carriers should have been a science / intel and a engineering / command pair for the KDF, they could have said they were upgraded vo'quvs and mirror vo'quvs.
Probably some bull TRIBBLE excuse 'it won't sell so, we won't waste our time making it', if they could make it without TRIBBLE it up it'd sell really well.
As for reasons the Kar'fi won't sell, fix the texture issue and I'll buy it, until then they don't deserve to get paid for a ship that is broken and that they refuse to fix.
BoPs being all universal is not a problem unless you have some compulsion to use cookie-cutter fits that are all about damage. BoPs can have so many different Boff layouts, so why does no-one try anything other then cannon or torpedos?
If you have a BoP, T5 or T6 for the enhanced battlecloak, see how many science abilities you can fit and use while still cloaked, you won't even have to do the brief decloaking to fire either like you do with torpedoes, so you should (possibly need a respec) be able to kill stuff without it ever seeing you.
BoPs are the go to ship for being fast, flexible fitwise and still packing a punch.
How many KDF / Roms are going to buy that temporal science ship because it is cross-faction?
A lot of them is the answer, that is because it is the ONLY science ship at T6 for KDF / Roms. The Feds have at least 3 before you include fleet versions (it goes up to 5 then).
The problems I have with the cross-faction science vessel:
1. There are no faction specific visuals (as far as I know). It's a FED-ish looking ship.
2. It's kind of like the Vesta, but it doesn't have the ability to slot DC, or the turn rate to make that viable.
It's cross faction, yeah. It's a science vessel, yeah. But, even FED players wanted a T6 Vesta. So, it's not as functional as a T6 Vesta would be, and it looks like a Fed ship (but not enough like a FED ship to inspire Vesta users to want it).
I may get it just out of desperation for a T6 science vessel, but, it's not exactly a slam dunk, like it could have been. A bit of a head-scratcher, unless its purpose was to just be a T6 science ship for those desperate to get anything, which is the wrong way to do it, IMO.
"Mustrum, we're not pretending certain devs dislike working on the KDF side, or the KDF playerbase-Geko Said So. I mean, I'm not inclined to call the man a liar since when he said it it was massively NOT something you'd see in a vetted press-release...
It's one thing to suspect-without evidence. Which I get the impression you feel is going on here, it's quite another when the lead developer outrightsaid it in 2012.
and you can't call it a 'joke'-not when the actions subsequent line up with the statement (or in his case, statements, plural)
When the Bortasque was released, Geko quite specifically stated his dislike for working on 'klingon ships', a while later, he noted that he didn't like having to do Bird of Prey work because "you run out of marketable options" and "They're boring".
When the Bortasque flopped (and it flopped HARD, I don't know if you were here for that...basically the KDF playerbase looked at it, and asked "Where's the turn rate?" and "Why are the consoles bugged all to hell?" and "What the **** am I going to use THIS for??"-they then didn't buy it.) He pronounced working on KDF material to be a waste of money and the playerbase to be unprofitable.
WE got roughly two and a half years of nothing in the C-store until the release of the Dyson ships (Predate the Mogh by about eight months, btw.)
It took a player write in campaign to CBS to get the Tier 5 B'rel-at all.
Uniform options for KDF remain at the back-burner, and that doesn't include new options-bugs from release are still present, as are bugs post-dating release. The Kar'fi bug started a bit before Delta Rising, it's a known issue, not a mystery, the only mysterious thing being why something that basic would be ignored with that much dedication.
When they made the PvP queues universal, Geko informed Priority One that "...we are no longerforced to make faction specific materials..." This was at a time just after Legacy of Romulus was released, and he'd just spent two years not making KDF materials at all.
and no, slipping "General" into the text of federation missions and flipping a switch isn't making KDF material. It took them eight months to create, from scratch, the entire Romulan Republic storyline, full set of ships from tiers 1-50, the lockboxed assimilated destroyer, the Scimitar, the Tau Dewa Sector Block map...and on the side, off-budget, as a 'labor of love' (Dan Stahl's words there), the leveling missions they'd spent three years NOT doing any work on for KDF.
Oh, and pulling two low-tier bird of prey models they'd had rattling in the drawer for c-store release-the B'rotlh, and the Qaw-dun.
The Mogh was actually announced (not by name) at the beginning of 2013, didn't get released until december 2014, but the rainchecking was-to facilitate the Voth work. We all accepted that reason-until two weeks later when the AVenger was rolled out for Feds as a surprise.
It wasn't announced ahead of time. Nobody even heard of it until they rolled it out two weeks after publicly delaying the KDF ship that would roll out with identical stats...three months later.
as I said, it's one thing when it could be a joke, or a jape, or misinterpretation-but the actions match the words, and the words were said.
at that point, it's not a conspiracy theory or tinfoil hat reaction, it's simply acknowledging what's been said and done."
I've been skeptical over the years about this kind of thing, but I didn't know Geko out right said those things. If that is the case then its time for Geko to move on to say Neverwinter Online or Champions Online where he can't do anymore damage to the game.
Star Trek Online is a really fun game, but I think it needs some seriously new leadership, fresh blood, someone who will bring needed reforms to the game.
I say this dispassionately, as I have not been as effected by Geko's choices negatively as many other KDF players have, I don't PVP, I don't want to fly a KDF sci ship, ect..., I say it, because its the logical choice, because if the KDF faction is recieving negative growth because of Geko's actions and words, then then the needs of the many out weigh the BS of the one.
"Mustrum, we're not pretending certain devs dislike working on the KDF side, or the KDF playerbase-Geko Said So. I mean, I'm not inclined to call the man a liar since when he said it it was massively NOT something you'd see in a vetted press-release...
It's one thing to suspect-without evidence. Which I get the impression you feel is going on here, it's quite another when the lead developer outrightsaid it in 2012.
and you can't call it a 'joke'-not when the actions subsequent line up with the statement (or in his case, statements, plural)
When the Bortasque was released, Geko quite specifically stated his dislike for working on 'klingon ships', a while later, he noted that he didn't like having to do Bird of Prey work because "you run out of marketable options" and "They're boring".
When the Bortasque flopped (and it flopped HARD, I don't know if you were here for that...basically the KDF playerbase looked at it, and asked "Where's the turn rate?" and "Why are the consoles bugged all to hell?" and "What the **** am I going to use THIS for??"-they then didn't buy it.) He pronounced working on KDF material to be a waste of money and the playerbase to be unprofitable.
WE got roughly two and a half years of nothing in the C-store until the release of the Dyson ships (Predate the Mogh by about eight months, btw.)
It took a player write in campaign to CBS to get the Tier 5 B'rel-at all.
Uniform options for KDF remain at the back-burner, and that doesn't include new options-bugs from release are still present, as are bugs post-dating release. The Kar'fi bug started a bit before Delta Rising, it's a known issue, not a mystery, the only mysterious thing being why something that basic would be ignored with that much dedication.
When they made the PvP queues universal, Geko informed Priority One that "...we are no longerforced to make faction specific materials..." This was at a time just after Legacy of Romulus was released, and he'd just spent two years not making KDF materials at all.
and no, slipping "General" into the text of federation missions and flipping a switch isn't making KDF material. It took them eight months to create, from scratch, the entire Romulan Republic storyline, full set of ships from tiers 1-50, the lockboxed assimilated destroyer, the Scimitar, the Tau Dewa Sector Block map...and on the side, off-budget, as a 'labor of love' (Dan Stahl's words there), the leveling missions they'd spent three years NOT doing any work on for KDF.
Oh, and pulling two low-tier bird of prey models they'd had rattling in the drawer for c-store release-the B'rotlh, and the Qaw-dun.
The Mogh was actually announced (not by name) at the beginning of 2013, didn't get released until december 2014, but the rainchecking was-to facilitate the Voth work. We all accepted that reason-until two weeks later when the AVenger was rolled out for Feds as a surprise.
It wasn't announced ahead of time. Nobody even heard of it until they rolled it out two weeks after publicly delaying the KDF ship that would roll out with identical stats...three months later.
as I said, it's one thing when it could be a joke, or a jape, or misinterpretation-but the actions match the words, and the words were said.
at that point, it's not a conspiracy theory or tinfoil hat reaction, it's simply acknowledging what's been said and done."
I've been skeptical over the years about this kind of thing, but I didn't know Geko out right said those things. If that is the case then its time for Geko to move on to say Neverwinter Online or Champions Online where he can't do anymore damage to the game.
Star Trek Online is a really fun game, but I think it needs some seriously new leadership, fresh blood, someone who will bring needed reforms to the game.
I say this dispassionately, as I have not been as effected by Geko's choices negatively as many other KDF players have, I don't PVP, I don't want to fly a KDF sci ship, ect..., I say it, because its the logical choice, because if the KDF faction is recieving negative growth because of Geko's actions and words, then then the needs of the many out weigh the BS of the one.
Don't you realize what the BOP's real problem is? It is all universal. There is almost no design space anymore you can do with it. That's why it's boring and you run out of marketable options.
I don't get on the Cryptic Hate Train, but this part here is TRIBBLE.
If your model for improved ships is just 1 more Boff power and 1 more console, you can still do that on a BoP. You can also come up with a new gimmick console and a gimmick Starship Trait. It's the same thing they do for every other T-6 version of an existing ship.
When they introduced the Plesh Brek, they brought out Raider Flanking. Some devs even talked about how much fun flying a BoP was and talked about it's unique playstyle when this happened. They have thought "outside the box" for new stuff to make the BoP unique.
When they invented "Tactical Maneuvers", that seemed like a natural fit for a BoP (and the Defiant, but that is prolly a different Rant thread). The whole T-6 Escort Bundle seemed a little lack-luster after they brought out the "Tactical Maneuvers". But, here we have a BoP with "Tactical Maneuvers" and it's about friggin time!
How many KDF / Roms are going to buy that temporal science ship because it is cross-faction?
A lot of them is the answer, that is because it is the ONLY science ship at T6 for KDF / Roms. The Feds have at least 3 before you include fleet versions (it goes up to 5 then).
The problems I have with the cross-faction science vessel:
1. There are no faction specific visuals (as far as I know). It's a FED-ish looking ship.
I've never liked how the federation temporal ships look at all, no intention to ever get any of them. The Klingon temporal ships seem off somehow, not sure why. The romulan ones look like a D'D class that had a major makeover.
3. It's kind of like the Vesta, but it doesn't have the ability to slot DC, or the turn rate to make that viable.
It's cross faction, yeah. It's a science vessel, yeah. But, even FED players wanted a T6 Vesta. So, it's not as functional as a T6 Vesta would be, and it looks like a Fed ship (but not enough like a FED ship to inspire Vesta users to want it).
I was wondering why it got a hanger bay, so it's a temporal vesta, or suppose to be. Never liked to look of the vespa line, absolutely hated them because of the cheap, 'oh look you can buy that ship' line they (apparently) remade a perfectly fine tutorial to add in.
I may get it just out of desperation for a T6 science vessel, but, it's not exactly a slam dunk, like it could have been. A bit of a head-scratcher, unless its purpose was to just be a T6 science ship for those desperate to get anything, which is the wrong way to do it, IMO.
I refuse to buy anything that is cross-faction because they are too lazy to make faction versions, they want to be lazy I'll keep using sci-bortasqu's and sci-fit BoPs. Just because it can't do the job as well doesn't mean it won't work and just maybe it'll inspire someone else to try out a new fit.
I had thought that the T6 BoP would be a truely 'universal' seating, Cmdr uni, LtCmdr/intel, LtCmdr/command, LtCmdr/pilot seating layout.
I'd also hoped that when they released T6 BoP it'd be a triple pack.
One command spec for torpedo-fits, ie: the current Kor.
One intel one with EBC and more sci consoles then eng or tact with a trait that boosts sci abilities somehow.
One pilot without EBC but with more eng consoles then normal and a console to go with the quad cannon where you can 'charge up' all your forward weapons then fight off a massive, single target, alpha strike.
That's entirely possible. I will admit that calling the TOS faction a faction is silly, they're members of starfleet and the federation, how is that a new faction from the federation? I mean even the Orion Syndicate and the Gorn Hemogny is more seperate from the Klingons as vessel states then earily Federation vs. more rescent Federation.
If it makes you feel better, buy the Eternal or Chronos Temporal ships snd use those future federation ships in tne Kahless Expanse to destroy federation ships. Just a nice counter irony.
I just pictured Kirk screaming Kaaaaahn! As Kahn ran away with a federation ship, the one he used to attack the Enterprise.
There's a number of cool things added, redone for TOS in the AOY update.
More Pre-TNG Klingon ships.
You saw older Gorn, Orion ships.
You saw "Rubber Suit" Gorn. FYI for the newer players, when STO launched, all Gorn, including player ones, looked like the TOS styled Gorn.
Orion and TOS Klingon ship interiors (of note, it looks awful like Starfleet interiors... TOS budgets, y'all ).
NPC Romulan D7 Battlecruisers, complete with the phoenix design on the ventral side of the ship!
TOS Klingon uniforms were heavily fixed up. More accessories and even the female uniform that has been asked for over the years. You saw Kor with uniform accessories not seen in the game before.
Sadly, most of the stuff you see from the AOY update no KDF or Rom player can use, or use for endgame purposes.
Comments
The standard line is "No Klingon stuff because no one plays Klingons."
That's like saying "The hospital cafeteria must have good food, because it is a popular place to eat." It ignores basic facts in order to make its own argument.
There are reasons, actions, people who don't want to develop KDF content, not enough resources, whatever.
The bottom line is, They're selling Star Trek stuff to Star Trek fans. If no one is buying Klingon stuff, it's the product, not the consumer. Not being able to sell Klingon stuff to Star Trek fans is failure to a hilariously obvious extent.
edit- nm, I'm saying almost exactly what you're saying elsewhere. XD
What good is faction parity if it actually means that you need to produce a lot less content. What if instead of 10 faction-agnostic missions a year you get 1 faction-exclusive per faction? Would that really be in anyone's interest?
Cryptic has a responsibility to all its customers, not just people that focus exclusively on the KDF or the Romulan Republic.
It is a constant delusion among KDF fans that they somehow are as signifcant in numbers and overall interest among the Star Trek fans as people that are interested in FED stuff. THere is no cure for this delusion, it seems.
To become a Klingon fan, you already must be a fan of Star Trek in the first palce, which means you must have liked all the Starfleet/Federation stuff. Just because you could sell a Klingon ship to Klingon fans doen't mean you couldn't sell a Federation ship to a lot more people.
Also I think it's a fundamental fallacy that having less C-Store ships for the KDF means that less people will be interested in playing KDF. This is a F2P game - People come into this game hoping they need to spend no money at all! Telling them that from the money they don't intend to spend in the first place, they can put more of that into Fed then the KDF is not swaying them.
People get excited for ships in this game - and the more canonical they are, the better. But there are only what - 5 canon KDF ships? How often can Cryptic sell those? I guess as often as they can raise the ship tier cap.
That and we're going to have to probably go broke trying to get the only actual KDF ship that has been stuffed into a lockbox.
...but at least we finally got an entirely new tailor option for a change? (even though that is also in a lockbox, and will probably be expensive as well)
That's neither what I implied, nor relevant to what I said.
The last 4 KDF ships do not work as intended, and they have yet to be fixed. I would be surprised if they ever do get fixed. The most likely scenario for a KDF ship release is a ship no one wants, a ship with subpar stats that isn't worth buying, and/or a ship that doesn't work correctly. The reason there are no KDF science vessels at T6 is because they "don't sell." This must be based on the Varanus, which is a paid version of a subpar Federation free ship, and the Dyson Science destroyers, which were both aesthetically unpleasing to most, and relied on a gimmick that most don't like (the mission where you are forced to fly one didn't help the cause). These are all failures in the product. I'm not sure how that equates to any kind of delusion on the part of potential paying customers.
There are bugs in KDF missions, that also will likely never get fixed. The storyline mostly ignores the fact that there are other factions (besides the Federation) after the faction specific arcs end. These are failures in the product.
All incentives to play KDF over Federation are gone. Contraband is irrelevant with the Admiralty system. Plasmonic Leech can be bought on the exchange. And, now, you don't even need to play KDF to fly a BoP. And they add in a "faction" with massive rewards for playing it, that is another incentive to play Federation content. All incentives in place are there to not play KDF. It's very odd to me that instead of fixing game imbalances, they are just ignored and magnified with every release.
Star Trek fans will buy Klingon product. That's how it is. If you went to a convention, and had Klingon stuff to sell, it would likely sell easily, as long as it wasn't complete crapola. If your product isn't worth buying, they probably won't buy it. Either the product is bad intentionally, or it's half a**ed so egregiously that it ends up being garbage. Either way, it means they can't even sell Klingon stuff to Star Trek fans, which demonstrates a hilarious amount of ineptitude.
The D4 has all of that, is a full fledged pilot ship on top of that, retains all universal seating, and has what sounds like a cool console to boot.
The only advantage the Kor has is as a Torp boat. The Gateway BoP just has those Tenporal mechanics.
So yeah, the D4 is going to be King of the Klingon ships.
In other words, when you say "Part X works with thing Y", you keep working until part X works with thing Y, regardless of how many units of Y sold this quarter, also when you sell something (say, item of artwork K) and something changes and now that something doesnt work (Say, the Kar'Fi skin rendering?), you don't ignore it for a **** year, then not fix it because the playerbase you sold it to is smaller than it was last year. Because most criticism is TRIBBLE and has unrealistic expectations of what a game or a company making a game can actually do.
It's pretty clear though that stuff like the issues with the T6 Bortasque is the result of a limited budget. The artists didn't get the time he needed to fix the problems, and was send to do other work. That can only be described as disappointing. But that doesn't mean the reasoning behind it is impossible to understand. And too many pretend otherwise. Or make it some sort of "personal" issue, pretending the developers hate Klingons or Klingon players or whatever. And that is a reason to jump to Cryptic's defense every time. If people start reveling in idiotic illusions like that, hope of them being able to communicate with the devs in a meaningful manner is lost.
This is probably the most relevant thing about the state of KDF/ROM in this game. I always get the feeling that everything tht gets put out with the most attention is something Geko actually wants, and the things he doesn't want, are just "Yeah, throw that together or whatever."
It reminds me of when Facebook was not working properly on certain mobile devices. Instead of just ignoring that platform entirely, and saying that "no one uses those devices for Facebook," they forced the employees to use ONLY those devices to access their own personal accounts. Voila! It got fixed.
No one is saying "ZOMG teh KDF would sell moar than FEDs but Geko is a jerkface." I think he basically only knows what he likes, and is completely unable to make product that is outside of that. Hence why everything is TAC captains in FED cruisers FAWing everything. I would think that it would be beneficial for them to play Engineers or Science captains. Or Romulans. Or Klingons. Even just for a few weeks.
Imagine if one of the DPS channel admins was in charge. People would be complaining things were too difficult. Or if someone who thinks Star Trek begins and ends with Spock, and there was an overabundance of Vulcan content, and it was "Space Magic Online." It's the same thing. People learn to speak Klingon, for crying out loud. You can translate it on Bing.
It would be ridiculously easy to incentivize playing other factions (or even other careers than TAC). Turn on x2 XP for Romulans, and call it a "Star Empire rebuilding event." Add in cross faction fleets for those 50+. Have a Delta recruit-type of event for the less played factions. A CStore ship sale. Instead, they push people away from them, which is really rather odd to me. I've never seen a business not put in incentives to buy things that "don't sell."
Don't you realize what the BOP's real problem is? It is all universal. There is almost no design space anymore you can do with it. That's why it's boring and you run out of marketable options.
That doesn't mean he hates the KDF.
Just like you interpret his comment on "being no longer forced to do Klingon episodes" as he hated working on Klingon episodes, instead of him meaning they could not do faction-agnostic episodes - that are more efficient to make since, well, everyone in the player base and every character can play them - before the change.
Guess what, he recently used the word force and Klingons again. I think it was the Tribble Ecstasy podcast, IIRC. There he basically said that a new fully fledged faction is unfeasible - they were already forced to give Klingon faction-agnostic episodes, instead of faction-specific ones.
The force doesn't mean: "Oh, I hate this job of making KDF stuff, oh woe is me." It means "We can't do the stuff we would like to do for the KDF because there is no sufficient market for it".
Or maybe he really hates your guts. He could do a better job at living out his hate, instead of just passive aggressively delivering cross-faction bundles or faction-agnostic stuff, he could just release nothing anymore for the KDF.
Maybe you should had to one of these conventions and ask him personally.
Yeah, a console whose set bonus is PHASER damage, what a waste of a BoP.
As for Geko, he clearly said he doesn't like working on KDF stuff and then when he is forced to put out KDF stuff, that BTW is utterly useless for it's stated purpose, TRIBBLE that the KDF players won't buy it or uses that refusal to buy useless TRIBBLE as a reason to NOT do any more KDF stuff.
Come on, how can 'no-one buys X' be a believable reason to not make it when you don't even sell it?
How many KDF / Roms are going to buy that temporal science ship because it is cross-faction?
A lot of them is the answer, that is because it is the ONLY science ship at T6 for KDF / Roms. The Feds have at least 3 before you include fleet versions (it goes up to 5 then).
Carriers are a KDF thing, you can get one for FREE at level 40 only on the KDF, with one c-store carrier. The feds got a c-store carrier and a fleet version and the Roms don't get any full carriers.
So why do the Feds (and now via a lock box), the Roms get T6 carriers first?
Feds can keep the escort-carriers, personally I think the flight-deck raptor should have been another orion flight-deck cruiser.
But the first T6 carriers should have been a science / intel and a engineering / command pair for the KDF, they could have said they were upgraded vo'quvs and mirror vo'quvs.
Probably some bull TRIBBLE excuse 'it won't sell so, we won't waste our time making it', if they could make it without TRIBBLE it up it'd sell really well.
As for reasons the Kar'fi won't sell, fix the texture issue and I'll buy it, until then they don't deserve to get paid for a ship that is broken and that they refuse to fix.
BoPs being all universal is not a problem unless you have some compulsion to use cookie-cutter fits that are all about damage. BoPs can have so many different Boff layouts, so why does no-one try anything other then cannon or torpedos?
If you have a BoP, T5 or T6 for the enhanced battlecloak, see how many science abilities you can fit and use while still cloaked, you won't even have to do the brief decloaking to fire either like you do with torpedoes, so you should (possibly need a respec) be able to kill stuff without it ever seeing you.
BoPs are the go to ship for being fast, flexible fitwise and still packing a punch.
The problems I have with the cross-faction science vessel:
1. There are no faction specific visuals (as far as I know). It's a FED-ish looking ship.
2. It's kind of like the Vesta, but it doesn't have the ability to slot DC, or the turn rate to make that viable.
It's cross faction, yeah. It's a science vessel, yeah. But, even FED players wanted a T6 Vesta. So, it's not as functional as a T6 Vesta would be, and it looks like a Fed ship (but not enough like a FED ship to inspire Vesta users to want it).
I may get it just out of desperation for a T6 science vessel, but, it's not exactly a slam dunk, like it could have been. A bit of a head-scratcher, unless its purpose was to just be a T6 science ship for those desperate to get anything, which is the wrong way to do it, IMO.
Its like you read my mind.
It's one thing to suspect-without evidence. Which I get the impression you feel is going on here, it's quite another when the lead developer outrightsaid it in 2012.
and you can't call it a 'joke'-not when the actions subsequent line up with the statement (or in his case, statements, plural)
When the Bortasque was released, Geko quite specifically stated his dislike for working on 'klingon ships', a while later, he noted that he didn't like having to do Bird of Prey work because "you run out of marketable options" and "They're boring".
When the Bortasque flopped (and it flopped HARD, I don't know if you were here for that...basically the KDF playerbase looked at it, and asked "Where's the turn rate?" and "Why are the consoles bugged all to hell?" and "What the **** am I going to use THIS for??"-they then didn't buy it.) He pronounced working on KDF material to be a waste of money and the playerbase to be unprofitable.
WE got roughly two and a half years of nothing in the C-store until the release of the Dyson ships (Predate the Mogh by about eight months, btw.)
It took a player write in campaign to CBS to get the Tier 5 B'rel-at all.
Uniform options for KDF remain at the back-burner, and that doesn't include new options-bugs from release are still present, as are bugs post-dating release. The Kar'fi bug started a bit before Delta Rising, it's a known issue, not a mystery, the only mysterious thing being why something that basic would be ignored with that much dedication.
When they made the PvP queues universal, Geko informed Priority One that "...we are no longerforced to make faction specific materials..." This was at a time just after Legacy of Romulus was released, and he'd just spent two years not making KDF materials at all.
and no, slipping "General" into the text of federation missions and flipping a switch isn't making KDF material. It took them eight months to create, from scratch, the entire Romulan Republic storyline, full set of ships from tiers 1-50, the lockboxed assimilated destroyer, the Scimitar, the Tau Dewa Sector Block map...and on the side, off-budget, as a 'labor of love' (Dan Stahl's words there), the leveling missions they'd spent three years NOT doing any work on for KDF.
Oh, and pulling two low-tier bird of prey models they'd had rattling in the drawer for c-store release-the B'rotlh, and the Qaw-dun.
The Mogh was actually announced (not by name) at the beginning of 2013, didn't get released until december 2014, but the rainchecking was-to facilitate the Voth work. We all accepted that reason-until two weeks later when the AVenger was rolled out for Feds as a surprise.
It wasn't announced ahead of time. Nobody even heard of it until they rolled it out two weeks after publicly delaying the KDF ship that would roll out with identical stats...three months later.
as I said, it's one thing when it could be a joke, or a jape, or misinterpretation-but the actions match the words, and the words were said.
at that point, it's not a conspiracy theory or tinfoil hat reaction, it's simply acknowledging what's been said and done."
I've been skeptical over the years about this kind of thing, but I didn't know Geko out right said those things. If that is the case then its time for Geko to move on to say Neverwinter Online or Champions Online where he can't do anymore damage to the game.
Star Trek Online is a really fun game, but I think it needs some seriously new leadership, fresh blood, someone who will bring needed reforms to the game.
I say this dispassionately, as I have not been as effected by Geko's choices negatively as many other KDF players have, I don't PVP, I don't want to fly a KDF sci ship, ect..., I say it, because its the logical choice, because if the KDF faction is recieving negative growth because of Geko's actions and words, then then the needs of the many out weigh the BS of the one.
Better call Stahl, eh?
Tal'Shiar/Reman Resistance/Romulan Nemesis uniform, pls.
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7403/13262502435_5604548f2c_o.png
If your model for improved ships is just 1 more Boff power and 1 more console, you can still do that on a BoP. You can also come up with a new gimmick console and a gimmick Starship Trait. It's the same thing they do for every other T-6 version of an existing ship.
When they introduced the Plesh Brek, they brought out Raider Flanking. Some devs even talked about how much fun flying a BoP was and talked about it's unique playstyle when this happened. They have thought "outside the box" for new stuff to make the BoP unique.
When they invented "Tactical Maneuvers", that seemed like a natural fit for a BoP (and the Defiant, but that is prolly a different Rant thread). The whole T-6 Escort Bundle seemed a little lack-luster after they brought out the "Tactical Maneuvers". But, here we have a BoP with "Tactical Maneuvers" and it's about friggin time!
I've never liked how the federation temporal ships look at all, no intention to ever get any of them. The Klingon temporal ships seem off somehow, not sure why. The romulan ones look like a D'D class that had a major makeover.
I was wondering why it got a hanger bay, so it's a temporal vesta, or suppose to be. Never liked to look of the vespa line, absolutely hated them because of the cheap, 'oh look you can buy that ship' line they (apparently) remade a perfectly fine tutorial to add in.
I refuse to buy anything that is cross-faction because they are too lazy to make faction versions, they want to be lazy I'll keep using sci-bortasqu's and sci-fit BoPs. Just because it can't do the job as well doesn't mean it won't work and just maybe it'll inspire someone else to try out a new fit.
I had thought that the T6 BoP would be a truely 'universal' seating, Cmdr uni, LtCmdr/intel, LtCmdr/command, LtCmdr/pilot seating layout.
I'd also hoped that when they released T6 BoP it'd be a triple pack.
One command spec for torpedo-fits, ie: the current Kor.
One intel one with EBC and more sci consoles then eng or tact with a trait that boosts sci abilities somehow.
One pilot without EBC but with more eng consoles then normal and a console to go with the quad cannon where you can 'charge up' all your forward weapons then fight off a massive, single target, alpha strike.
It would have been glorious.
On the brightside someone was asking for Klingon Civil War content, here you go!
I legit felt like uninstalling the game during that mission.
If it makes you feel better, buy the Eternal or Chronos Temporal ships snd use those future federation ships in tne Kahless Expanse to destroy federation ships. Just a nice counter irony.
I just pictured Kirk screaming Kaaaaahn! As Kahn ran away with a federation ship, the one he used to attack the Enterprise.
More Pre-TNG Klingon ships.
You saw older Gorn, Orion ships.
You saw "Rubber Suit" Gorn. FYI for the newer players, when STO launched, all Gorn, including player ones, looked like the TOS styled Gorn.
Orion and TOS Klingon ship interiors (of note, it looks awful like Starfleet interiors... TOS budgets, y'all
NPC Romulan D7 Battlecruisers, complete with the phoenix design on the ventral side of the ship!
TOS Klingon uniforms were heavily fixed up. More accessories and even the female uniform that has been asked for over the years. You saw Kor with uniform accessories not seen in the game before.
Sadly, most of the stuff you see from the AOY update no KDF or Rom player can use, or use for endgame purposes.