Star Trek Online Splash Page (for new visitors)
Choose your allegiance: Federation, Klingon, or Romulan.
However, this page, titled
The history of the Klingon Empire with Cryptic Studios, has the following entry:
If Cryptic doesn't want to develop content "just for Klingons anymore", then why are they still being advertised as a faction? The purpose of a faction is to get unique faction content to remain a faction, is it not? If the old faction content doesn't get updated or added to with unique faction content, isn't it misleading to new players, especially if they invest money into the faction?
Comments
So why post something disingenuous about the existence of factions in STO?
Oh, I know the answer. Because you can.
Which is exactly the reason why Cryptic can keep advertising its now 4 factions.
if I stop posting it doesn't make you right it. just means I don't have enough rum to continue interacting with you.
Not necessarily... Overall appearance of the characters and ships is sufficient to class them as independant. Try sending an Orion slave girl to a Fed account and see what happens... She won't thank you for it, but insist she is a proud warrior of the empire... So yes, it is still a seperate faction. The fact that content may or may not be updated, is irrelevant to that, it just means that it's a dead faction... Arguably, AoY shouldn't be classed as a seperate faction, as after Lt.Commander, the character follows the same storyline with access to the same ships, same BOFFs and same equipment. The difference in user-interface really isn't enough by itself to qualify something as 'a faction', as nothing else is different. But Fed, Klingon and Romulan, yes, three distinct factions...
My character Tsin'xing
Besides, they were clearly discussion mission content. With no war, all factions at a certain point in their progression begin to merge their missions to the point they are working the same line. They aren't making new faction specific missions. Which is actually a good thing because it means they aren't focusing resources specifically on one faction with no benefit to the rest.
normally I'ld agree with this but they do focus on one then allow the other two to run it. and the rare times they do pay attention to the other two, it goes mr burns trying to be good levels of wrong.
if I stop posting it doesn't make you right it. just means I don't have enough rum to continue interacting with you.
@iconians
Your name has been spoken. You have been summoned.
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
colored text = mod mode
MMO's change all the time.
Sure, for the time being, there really isn't anything but cross faction storylines being developed, but that could easily change and very likely WILL change over the long life of the game.
If you really believe that you can say with absolute certainty that they will NEVER support the multiple factions, you're a really brave man.
The game is expanding and growing every year. The consoles are expanding the market, and you can't say how that will influence the game overall - and it's naive to think that it won't.
Add to that the fact that Exec. Producers and Lead Developers have come and gone, and the team has expanded and changed over the years. They're hiring right now in fact (https://www.crypticstudios.com/openings) (and yes, the positions change on the careers page, depending on what they're looking for).
MMO's are constantly changing focus and Developers constantly change their mind based off of what's hot. Not just in the game, but in the overall market.
But really, you can't honestly say what is going on internally at Cryptic anymore than I can. You can only speculate. Sure, you base your assumptions off of the past development of the game, but I would never have seen them launching to consoles this late in the games life, and yet they did.
Never say never.
You have to draw the summon circle first to get him to come.
There are FOUR factions!
The OP misused a smiley face.
There are 2.5 Factions.
Romulans are half a faction and AOY are just an alternate tutorial.
I mean if WoW did it like that I am sure it would be a free to play game as well.
Because the missions are the only thing that make up a faction and WoW is just this one step away from being a F2P. /s
My character Tsin'xing
I would say it's everything but. Missions spin a narrative but the faction is a setting. There's a story there too but to have a faction you need stuff. And that's all that anyone complains about with the Romulan Republic (more specifically: sub-optimal ship parity and never mind the focus of the brand in question) even though they have a huge block of exclusive intro content that can be argued to tell a better story than the FED's side.
And if you want to get down to the root of those complaints, it's worth considering that there's only a few holes in the KDF/ROM ship line up that can't be plugged with something in their own stable. And you can supplement every one those with a cross-faction ship. There's nothing that you can do with the FED that you can't do with the KDF/ROM (besides use FED branded stuff). And in terms of wanting more stuff players who favor the KDF/ROM can't be held as the only ones asking for more content (see. T6 Vesta, Nova, Sovereign, Nebula, ect.) It's simply that when asking for more stuff, players who favor the KDF/ROM can inject a note about fairness to make their wants seem distinct from the general background.
"It's not just that I want a T6 Romulan carrier, there's an objective imbalance in the game that can only be fixed with this ship. Now, get to it!"
So, when looking at the faction question in STO, you can really just toss it all aside as jockeying facts to suit independent arguments. It's not representative to how factions function in STO. Looking at that (ie. in the context of the game and what we do in it), what we have now works pretty well for the purpose, and it's a very useful feature not to have to worry about making "wrong" choices at the end-game to experience a particular story line with a particular character. It's up to you, which compliments STO gameplay design and its emphasis on customization options.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
The answer to everything faction specific is The Foundry. As soon as they make the Foundry very intuitive, this game will turn a corner and content released by the developers will be supplemented with player created content...some of which will be very faction specific.
Overhauling the Foundry editor to make it more "intuitive" isn't on the table (as far as anyone is aware). The system works well (for what it is) but there is a learning curve (which I'm reluctant to want flattened or shortened, because making things more "intuitive" can also have drawbacks for experience users, depending on what's targeted in the overhaul.) However, speaking as someone who's still relatively new to the Foundry (just over a year now), one can pick up fairly easily if you simply think about what you're doing, how the system is working, and what that means for the story you're telling. It takes personal initiative, but there's also help available throughout the Foundry community.
Link to a new tutorial series.
And as it is, there's already a huge amount of player-created content which is at the very least no worse than expected for UGC. I naturally have a different opinion, but that minimum will suffice for a statement made on the general forum. Anyway, to your point, Foundry missions can be distinctly faction specific (ex. FED, KDF, ROM [republic], ROM [imperial], TOS, and Mirror Universe.) Myself, I tend to write for STO's post-Iconian War Alliance but that's just one approach. There's a lot of diversity here (and all of those factions listed above have been recently supported.)
The primary issue (as more frequently commented on in and around the Foundry Community) is in how you find Foundry missions. The top 3 system was a great addition but it doesn't quite solve the core problem. The search UI needs to be overhauled to make it easier for the general population to explore UGC content. In the meantime, here's a link to the next best thing for once the current Foundry downtime has been completed.
http://www.foundrymissions.com/
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
My character Tsin'xing