The cost of maintaining a few characters has increased significantly since the release of Delta Rising. I don't maintain my KDF character to the high standards that I used to. She farms contraband now like a good little harvester.
This, exactly. DR not only killed our dreams, and marked the beginning of the decline of STO, it made it impossible in practical terms to maintain more than one toon in a fully developed state.
No, not really. But I'm working my own way here. While right now only one of my chars is upgrading, something I never bothered with until the first Sompek. I do still work on my other characters.
Right now I have been playing more tactical officers. But I'm old school joined the day the game went free to play. So I'm also use to playing a Sci officer as support/healer. Since back then, that's what they were. I stopped playing them when they jumped on board the DPS train for everything.
Now, with the Mircale Worker Spec. I'm thinking I need to start back to work on a Sci healer setup, with a Crowd Control/Heal setup for space.
Though due to the fact the majority of people that I play the game with is Fed, I was using my Fed as my main. But this is also my first character. Besides there's just something entertaining about having a red-headed Vulcan named Cheerwine. Other than this my main is a Klingon Tac officer.
1- Ferengi Tac
1- Klingon Sci
1- Orion Engi
These three are storage toons. They're all also below level 10, thus I can open kit boxes for career specific Mk II kits.
The only problem I have here. Is my Rom Delta Recruit is missing. I had started it during the DR event and I have a empty character slot. Which means... it's MIA, as it was a level 1 that I had planned to work on.
I do plan on getting more character slots. Right now, I'm on my Feds more, as I am working on building a fleet there. But I have been on hiatus from the game for a bit. So I can go back to my Klingon, which was my main previously, when I return. I maininly just waiting on the foundry to come back online. That way I can also continue to work on the missions I have started.
Okay so this thread inspired me to roll a new alien gen KDF that looks like my AoY character.
But one thing suddenly leapt out to me.
AoY; Star Fleet officer, doomed ship and recruited to set right what once went wrong. .
Fed: Klingons murdered my captain then we had to rescue a world from the borg. All before lunch.
Rom: We were peaceful farmers bothering no one. Then we were attacked by our own people. Now I come for our revenge.
KDF: You woke me up and forgot my coffee!
I know there is a little more to it than that. But is just is funny. The big attack that sets each in motion destroyed a ship, your captain, your home. . . knocked you out of bed.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
Okay so this thread inspired me to roll a new alien gen KDF that looks like my AoY character.
But one thing suddenly leapt out to me.
AoY; Star Fleet officer, doomed ship and recruited to set right what once went wrong. .
Fed: Klingons murdered my captain then we had to rescue a world from the borg. All before lunch.
Rom: We were peaceful farmers bothering no one. Then we were attacked by our own people. Now I come for our revenge.
KDF: You woke me up and forgot my coffee!
I know there is a little more to it than that. But is just is funny. The big attack that sets each in motion destroyed a ship, your captain, your home. . . knocked you out of bed.
Well first off, cryptic would need to re-make them, so that they aren't the thugs of STO...
No really... They are thugs and thieves in STO... nothing more.
Next, they need to do something about the epeen strokers...
They don't really need to rework them. The thugs and thieves part comes from when they were introduced to the game, they were the bad guys. This didn't change until the beginning of the Iconian War Arc.
Which story wise here, since the Iconian Arc, they have been doing a good job at not portraying them as the bad guys. Cryptic can't really do anything about how the players play or see them.
I already play KDF but i'd play x17 harder if I could have a Tier 6 Vor'cha
Hello rubber banding my old friend, time to bounce around the battlezone again, where are all my bug reports going?, out of love with this game I am falling, As Cryptic fail to acknowledge a problem exists, Shakes an angry fist, And from Support all I'm hearing are the sounds of silence.
Yah, they just moved them from bad, to incompetent. The OP is asking the wrong question, it's not "What would get you to play KDF" so much in Developer land, as "What can we do to get you to dump your KDF alts so we can save some money and bandwidth for the only faction that really matters."
and that's been the question in Developer-land since 2011 or so. the fact is, Cryptic can't manage a multi-faction game, they started 'merging' because the initial task on release was far too difficult for the team they had then-and the replacements aren't much better. EVERYTHING KDF has gotten since 2011 has been done on the side, off the budget and books, in someone's free time-this is how committed Cryptic is to even maintaining the faction's existence.
and it shows. It shows with the pace of bug fixes, the relative pace of upgrades for Fed content and zones vs. KDF, it shows in the movement of what were specific faction-types to an improved version on Fedside and it shows when they bother doing the reverse-and find some way to gimp the KDF version relative to their fed counterpart.
It shows in the release of the Naj'sov, which didn't have any cloaking at all for the first two weeks because it was an oversight, it shows with the Jupiter-the only Tier Six version of a ship type that was KDF exclusive at launch, it shows in how story missions are developed with the assumption of a Federation order of battle that renders the thing KDF ships pay a price in shield and power for useless except as a very brief, low value damage boost. it shows with the consistent gimping of KDF ships in turn rate when they're released in the three-packs when KDF's original lineup was supposed to be trading shields for manuevering and the aforementioned worthless cloak.
Every gameplay element has been transferred to Federation side from KDF, until the faction has no unique playing style left, every story mission is geared for Federation officers with Federation dialogue and Federation objectives, goals, even morality being parroted with only the token "Gurr! HOnor!! Glory!!" text tacked on awkwardly-when the devs bother to go that far.
where other games that DO NOT have the coattails of a successful, multigenerational, IP to ride on, a minority faction would be a target for development, STO only focuses on the Majority faction and a few novelty 'monsterplay' or 'cosplay' subfactions.
At this point, almost eight years in, the only "Faction unique" aspect to playing KDF, is the neglect and the prevalence of unaddressed bugs, errors, and content gaps that create logical disconnects and break immersion.
The amount of work to repair the faction would require a couple of seasons and a major expansion at this point-and Cryptic wouldn't, will not, that is, even begin to direct the funds to maintain the faction's population at where it is.
The showrunners at Cryptic don't want us here. They certainly don't want anyone NEW picking it up.
Your argument is well written and both passionate and logical. Truth I can only measure if I spent a month in the Cryptic studios watching them work on the game. But the emboldened area I think is slightly off. The primary space rival to STO is successful, multigenerational, IP and the minority or dark faction has been developed and is heavily played and contribute to the success. And where a decline seemed to emerge was when the two factions were merged to one storyline. Just my observation.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
I'd say more passionate than well thought out or well written. It is lacking in spelling and grammar errors, but that's only basic writing. Also there's several things that are of dubious accuracy not just that one highlighted bit. The most significant flaw in the writing is how it's structured to demonstrate a point but spends more time ranting than explaining the point.
If you mean just KDF then I'm already playing that with my main engineer. If you mean actual Klingon race then I really haven't had a desire to make one yet. I love Klingons but they haven't drawn me in enough to try and level another character in the game.
I do know one thing, I'd most likely level and gear more toons if I could have TOS ships on the KDF and Romulan sides as well. Feds have all those TOS skin ships but KDF and Romulans are left out in the cold unless you wanna spend huge sums of money on the exchange and/or lockboxes.
If you mean just KDF then I'm already playing that with my main engineer. If you mean actual Klingon race then I really haven't had a desire to make one yet. I love Klingons but they haven't drawn me in enough to try and level another character in the game.
I do know one thing, I'd most likely level and gear more toons if I could have TOS ships on the KDF and Romulan sides as well. Feds have all those TOS skin ships but KDF and Romulans are left out in the cold unless you wanna spend huge sums of money on the exchange and/or lockboxes.
This goes back in to the lack of development time. Which is basically...
If you want most of the shiny, pretty stuff for free, play as the Federation.
If you want to buy the shiny, pretty stuff, play anything other than the Federation.
Then they'll use the number of players in each Faction to determine who get the most development time. But this is a biased number. As people are going to flock to where the most free stuff is. Thus, as large numbers of players flock to the Federation, for the free stuff, it gives them their justification to continue with this dimwitted approach.
It's has been suggested before that they take the lower tier, the tier 1-4 ships and put them in as either promotion ships, or purchasable with dil. This is really all they need to do.
We can overlook the story, since it's all "Go here, kill that and collect reward."
We can overlook the Federation centric style of the game. It is about Star Trek, which is Federation Centric. The thing here, is Cryptic seems to have a, "If you don't support the Federation. Then you aren't a real Star Trek fan." mentality. But, on this, if you remove any of the non-Federation Factions/aliens. Then you have nothing for the Federation to go up against. Which means you wouldn't have the Federation or Starfleet without these exterior Factions.
Right now, the only reason Cryptic even makes new ships for these factions, is because the players that play them. Or that want to get the ships and costumes. If all the players played as Federation, you can bet, you wouldn't see any new ships or costumes for any faction other than the Federation.
The main thing that hurts the KDF, Romulans, Cardassians, Ferengi, or any other faction outside of the Federation. Is that the players are mostly lore driven. We have to have some give and take on this though, to work between the actual lore and in-game lore. But we mostly stick to the actual lore. This is daunting to newer players, as the current players of these factions are more lore centric, and not the happy-go-lucky, I'll do what I want Federation.
I do know one thing, I'd most likely level and gear more toons if I could have TOS ships on the KDF and Romulan sides as well. Feds have all those TOS skin ships but KDF and Romulans are left out in the cold unless you wanna spend huge sums of money on the exchange and/or lockboxes.
Well, there's something like a dozen TOS ships added in AoY that aren't playable.
I don't agree with the Klingon lifestyle or morality, and though there is a plethora of races to choose from, you only ever play a Klingon.
Want to be a cool Letheean assassin? Nah, "Serve the empire well!" Want to be a Nausicaan mercenary for hire? Nah, honour and stuff. Want to be an Orion pirate, playing by nobody's rules? Nah, put on your face ridges and shout Qa'pla! Want to be a Ferasan and have any shredded semblance of a backstory or history for your race? Nah, we're only as deep as "HONOUR HONOUR HONOUR HODOR HONOUR EMPIRE HONOUR CONQUESTGGRRRRAAAAAAAAAAA" Want to be a Gorn and do anything unique in the slightest? No.
I have one KDF in the form of my Ferasan, and I never paid any attention to the story because I knew I'd hate it. I mean, there's such a diverse range of races and species and there's no reason to use any of them. At least with the Federation it makes sense for everyone to have roughly the same opinions on stuff. With the KDF, there's just no consistency and no relevancy to any non-Klingons.
And I get that this is primarily a game focused on the gameplay and not the story, but they could at least attempt to give it more character than "ME KLINGON. GET HONOUR NOW. UNGH."
The lack of ships and general content is less important to me than the lack of any depth or care. I have a single Ferasan purely because I want to experience the whole game, but otherwise, my 4 Starfleet cats will do nicely.
I don't agree with the Klingon lifestyle or morality, and though there is a plethora of races to choose from, you only ever play a Klingon.
Want to be a cool Letheean assassin? Nah, "Serve the empire well!"
Want to be a Nausicaan mercenary for hire? Nah, honour and stuff.
Want to be an Orion pirate, playing by nobody's rules? Nah, put on your face ridges and shout Qa'pla!
Want to be a Ferasan and have any shredded semblance of a backstory or history for your race? Nah, we're only as deep as "HONOUR HONOUR HONOUR HODOR HONOUR EMPIRE HONOUR CONQUESTGGRRRRAAAAAAAAAAA"
Want to be a Gorn and do anything unique in the slightest? No.
I have one KDF in the form of my Ferasan, and I never paid any attention to the story because I knew I'd hate it. I mean, there's such a diverse range of races and species and there's no reason to use any of them. At least with the Federation it makes sense for everyone to have roughly the same opinions on stuff. With the KDF, there's just no consistency and no relevancy to any non-Klingons.
And I get that this is primarily a game focused on the gameplay and not the story, but they could at least attempt to give it more character than "ME KLINGON. GET HONOUR NOW. UNGH."
The lack of ships and general content is less important to me than the lack of any depth or care. I have a single Ferasan purely because I want to experience the whole game, but otherwise, my 4 Starfleet cats will do nicely.
The story line is wrote that way, yes. But, it doesn't define you character. I use the story more as reference material.
You want to do something unique with your character. That requires that you role play it, or put at least put in your bio. What the story is and what your character is, can be two entirely different things. But, that is up to you, the player.
The story line is wrote that way, yes. But, it doesn't define you character. I use the story more as reference material.
You want to do something unique with your character. That requires that you role play it, or put at least put in your bio. What the story is and what your character is, can be two entirely different things. But, that is up to you, the player.
That, I will go along with, in relation to the odd times I bring out my KDF toons. I got a mad scientist, a gangster, and even a 1950s style "Martian" bent on taking over the universe, among other wacky things in my own personal head canon.
Resident TOS, G.I. Joe, Transformers and hair metal fangirl.
Yah, they just moved them from bad, to incompetent. The OP is asking the wrong question, it's not "What would get you to play KDF" so much in Developer land, as "What can we do to get you to dump your KDF alts so we can save some money and bandwidth for the only faction that really matters."
You need to update this part, Patrick. They already negated the need to have KDF Alts or Rom Alts. At least, from my point of view...being the "click-y" game player (DOFFing).
They made the most efficient way to gain in game currency: Admiralty. You don't even have to build your DOFF roster, any more. Except for the ones that gain you buffs.
With Admiralty it behooves you to stick to one faction (to collect the C-store ships which is now account wide, have it on one character they all have them). Fed side has the most prolific and well balanced selection of ships (Tac, Eng, and Sci ships, as well as more low level ships)...there is no point in buying even more ships to build up characters in the other factions. Unless you love playing those factions.
KDF and ROM are lucky we have free event ships to round out our Admiralty ship rosters (oh but wait, Feds get those, too). And we almost have to purchase the Mirror and other secondary (cheaper) lockbox ships with EC (if you can find them on the Exchange, any more). Especially, if you want to do more than one round of Admiralty a day.
They cut the Contraband turn in assignments from every 4 hours to once every 20 hours. There isn't any sense doing the contraband hunt on extra characters, now, no profit in selling them when no one needs them. There were so many KDF Alts selling contraband on the Exchange, anyways. Good riddance to them, I say.
Pretty soon, with all the whining about the excess of Prisoners, they will probably port some form of the Forced Labor assignments, too. I am sure Cryptic is cooking something up.
And with Colony holding, they removed the need to do the Recruitment to collect free white DOFFs via Roms. Even though it wasn't the most efficient way to go about it....you wouldn't have to spend Fleet Credits nor sit around for hours at the Personnel Officer grinding down Purple > Blue > Green > White...if one could supplement with Rom Recruitment.
Only reason left for people to create Alts in KDF or Rom is out of curiosity for the low level faction story missions...and most new players probably only want to do those once, anyways. Or because: fandom.
As you mentioned, the play styles have already been imported to the Fed side. Only thing different is Singularity functions of the Roms...but I don't know how long before they start tacking those on to other ships to entice sales. And I will even SPECULATE addition of those Singularity type functions be what they sell T-7's on (???).
THEN the only thing different between factions then would be : low level missions and LOOKS.
There is no point to threads like this....begging for players to join one faction or another.
People, at this point, are going to play what they want to play. Most characters probably won't even DO most of the stuff to completion anyways (R&D, DOFFing, Rep, Specialization).
"Spend your life doing strange things with weird people." -- UNK
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
As it was pointed out there are a few things on Cryptic's end that hurt the other Factions.
1) Lack of Development.
I'm not saying they should devote the majority of development time to this. But, they definitely aren't looking at it as, "While we're developing this. What can we do to help this?" Right now, the KDF and Roms are lucky to get new ships. @patrickngo with Al Riviera's statement from 2011, "The KDF just isn't profitable." A box he put Cryptic, and the player base into.
Though, if they aren't profitable, why do they continue to make ships for them?
2) For Romulans, it's not the fact they intentionally made the OP. This is more on the choose a faction part. A lot of people do not want to make that choice. Even though, all you're really choosing is which doff assignments, ships, story, costumes, and starbase appearances you want.
This will be how it is for any other faction they put out there. They will be their own mini-faction, but have to make this choice. This is mainly to save on production time and costs.
3) Bugs that have been in these two, since their release. That Cryptic has never fixed. The same can be said for some of the content. Like, the power plant on Defera. It's been buggy since the release of LoR.
@patrickngo also pointed out the Bortusqu sales. But this is what happens when you try to sell an inferior ship, that's just looks pretty. But this is also not the only reason. The thing they need to remember here, to quote Jeff Dunham and Peanut, "Polish a TRIBBLE, it's still a TRIBBLE."
You also have to jump to 2013 and the release of the Excelsior, another of Al Riviera's baby's. He boasted it was the most powerful ship in the galaxy. What happened? It got popped like a zit the day after it's release in PvP against an inferior KDF ship. He still harbor's a bit of resentment here over that.
4) The PvP in STO is on life support, at best. One of the main staples of an MMO, and it barely even exists in STO. Admittedly, PvP has never been Cryptic's strong suit. But they aren't even trying to address this weakness. Just ignoring it.
5) Lack of engaging and entertaining content. This is hurting all factions, not just the KDF and Roms. But this is what happens when you lean heavily on the Powercreep and DPS side of the game. Another box that Cryptic has crawled into and hasn't left.
6) Another thing that hurts the KDF here is the species. Sure, the KDF has plenty of of them. Klingon, Gorn, Orion, Nasicaan, Lethean, Ferasan, and Alien. But three of these races, which people want to play, are missing the female gender. Which I've stated is a turn off to a lot of players.
How many races in the Federation only have a male selection? None, that I can think of.
The Gorn are the only one of these races you can work around not having a female gender for. As they're reptilian, they don't come with the standard mammalian equipment for child rearing. So, one can portray a male or a female. Though, by lore, the females are a highly protected asset in Gorn society.
7) Yes, Klingon story arc is a bit narrowly focused on Honor. But take into account, this was Cryptic's first attempt at writing for the Klingons. Which, they also rectified in later arcs, so they do still have the potential to work this out. But this is marginal, since everyone gets the same missions starting at level 20.
8) As @where2r1 pointed out. Cryptic has been working to remove the uniqueness of the other factions. If they have it, the Federation should have it to. Which, if you look at the ships, you'll see, any new Rom/KDF ship they release, are just copy/paste stats from the Federation ships. The only difference is in the appearance of them. Remember, Cryptic is of the mind, "Either you're Federation, or you're not a Star Trek fan." Now, I'm not saying everyone at Cryptic agrees with this. But, it seems to be the overall opinion of those in charge.
9) As @where2r1 also pointed out, the change to contraband and admiralty. The KDF use to rule the house on Dil farming because of the contraband and prisoner turn in. Now, with admiralty, any one can make the same amount.
10) Turning the KDF into the Federation's pet military doesn't help either. The same goes for the Romulans. Neither society fits within the confines of the Federation. In truth, their beliefs and culture are directly opposed to the Federation's. This turns a lot of players off of both factions as well.
Another thing that hurt the game overall, is the Time Travel aspect. This gives Cryptic leeway to use that mechanic to go back and change anything in the canon to be more concurrent with their, "Everyone becomes the Federation." story. But as it has been stated, "STO is not canon." This is just something we the players have to take with a grain of salt(and perhaps a few alcoholic drinks). No matter how much this sickens us to see. It is, what it is.
I don't agree with the Klingon lifestyle or morality, and though there is a plethora of races to choose from, you only ever play a Klingon.
Want to be a cool Letheean assassin? Nah, "Serve the empire well!"
Want to be a Nausicaan mercenary for hire? Nah, honour and stuff.
Want to be an Orion pirate, playing by nobody's rules? Nah, put on your face ridges and shout Qa'pla!
Want to be a Ferasan and have any shredded semblance of a backstory or history for your race? Nah, we're only as deep as "HONOUR HONOUR HONOUR HODOR HONOUR EMPIRE HONOUR CONQUESTGGRRRRAAAAAAAAAAA"
Want to be a Gorn and do anything unique in the slightest? No.
I have one KDF in the form of my Ferasan, and I never paid any attention to the story because I knew I'd hate it. I mean, there's such a diverse range of races and species and there's no reason to use any of them. At least with the Federation it makes sense for everyone to have roughly the same opinions on stuff. With the KDF, there's just no consistency and no relevancy to any non-Klingons.
And I get that this is primarily a game focused on the gameplay and not the story, but they could at least attempt to give it more character than "ME KLINGON. GET HONOUR NOW. UNGH."
The lack of ships and general content is less important to me than the lack of any depth or care. I have a single Ferasan purely because I want to experience the whole game, but otherwise, my 4 Starfleet cats will do nicely.
The story line is wrote that way, yes. But, it doesn't define you character. I use the story more as reference material.
You want to do something unique with your character. That requires that you role play it, or put at least put in your bio. What the story is and what your character is, can be two entirely different things. But, that is up to you, the player.
the Grethor missions are among the best in the game
I don't agree with the Klingon lifestyle or morality, and though there is a plethora of races to choose from, you only ever play a Klingon.
Want to be a cool Letheean assassin? Nah, "Serve the empire well!"
Want to be a Nausicaan mercenary for hire? Nah, honour and stuff.
Want to be an Orion pirate, playing by nobody's rules? Nah, put on your face ridges and shout Qa'pla!
Want to be a Ferasan and have any shredded semblance of a backstory or history for your race? Nah, we're only as deep as "HONOUR HONOUR HONOUR HODOR HONOUR EMPIRE HONOUR CONQUESTGGRRRRAAAAAAAAAAA"
Want to be a Gorn and do anything unique in the slightest? No.
I have one KDF in the form of my Ferasan, and I never paid any attention to the story because I knew I'd hate it. I mean, there's such a diverse range of races and species and there's no reason to use any of them. At least with the Federation it makes sense for everyone to have roughly the same opinions on stuff. With the KDF, there's just no consistency and no relevancy to any non-Klingons.
And I get that this is primarily a game focused on the gameplay and not the story, but they could at least attempt to give it more character than "ME KLINGON. GET HONOUR NOW. UNGH."
The lack of ships and general content is less important to me than the lack of any depth or care. I have a single Ferasan purely because I want to experience the whole game, but otherwise, my 4 Starfleet cats will do nicely.
The story line is wrote that way, yes. But, it doesn't define you character. I use the story more as reference material.
You want to do something unique with your character. That requires that you role play it, or put at least put in your bio. What the story is and what your character is, can be two entirely different things. But, that is up to you, the player.
the Grethor missions are among the best in the game
So is What Lies Beneath. I find this episode to be the most entertaining one we have.
Comments
No, not really. But I'm working my own way here. While right now only one of my chars is upgrading, something I never bothered with until the first Sompek. I do still work on my other characters.
Right now I have been playing more tactical officers. But I'm old school joined the day the game went free to play. So I'm also use to playing a Sci officer as support/healer. Since back then, that's what they were. I stopped playing them when they jumped on board the DPS train for everything.
Now, with the Mircale Worker Spec. I'm thinking I need to start back to work on a Sci healer setup, with a Crowd Control/Heal setup for space.
Though due to the fact the majority of people that I play the game with is Fed, I was using my Fed as my main. But this is also my first character. Besides there's just something entertaining about having a red-headed Vulcan named Cheerwine. Other than this my main is a Klingon Tac officer.
Right now my characters are.
2 - Fed Tac
1 - Fed Sci(Pre-Lor Romulan Alien Gen)
1 - Fed Engi(AoY Dil farmer)
1- Rom-Fed Sci Alien
1- Rom-KDF Tac Alien
1- Klingon Tac
1- Orion Sci
1- Ferengi Tac
1- Klingon Sci
1- Orion Engi
These three are storage toons. They're all also below level 10, thus I can open kit boxes for career specific Mk II kits.
The only problem I have here. Is my Rom Delta Recruit is missing. I had started it during the DR event and I have a empty character slot. Which means... it's MIA, as it was a level 1 that I had planned to work on.
I do plan on getting more character slots. Right now, I'm on my Feds more, as I am working on building a fleet there. But I have been on hiatus from the game for a bit. So I can go back to my Klingon, which was my main previously, when I return. I maininly just waiting on the foundry to come back online. That way I can also continue to work on the missions I have started.
But one thing suddenly leapt out to me.
AoY; Star Fleet officer, doomed ship and recruited to set right what once went wrong. .
Fed: Klingons murdered my captain then we had to rescue a world from the borg. All before lunch.
Rom: We were peaceful farmers bothering no one. Then we were attacked by our own people. Now I come for our revenge.
KDF: You woke me up and forgot my coffee!
I know there is a little more to it than that. But is just is funny. The big attack that sets each in motion destroyed a ship, your captain, your home. . . knocked you out of bed.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
Let sleeping dragons, lay.
No really... They are thugs and thieves in STO... nothing more.
Next, they need to do something about the epeen strokers...
They don't really need to rework them. The thugs and thieves part comes from when they were introduced to the game, they were the bad guys. This didn't change until the beginning of the Iconian War Arc.
Which story wise here, since the Iconian Arc, they have been doing a good job at not portraying them as the bad guys. Cryptic can't really do anything about how the players play or see them.
Hello rubber banding my old friend, time to bounce around the battlezone again, where are all my bug reports going?, out of love with this game I am falling, As Cryptic fail to acknowledge a problem exists, Shakes an angry fist, And from Support all I'm hearing are the sounds of silence.
You need to get x17 more Feds to defect to this side for the T-6 Vor'cha.
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
Your argument is well written and both passionate and logical. Truth I can only measure if I spent a month in the Cryptic studios watching them work on the game. But the emboldened area I think is slightly off. The primary space rival to STO is successful, multigenerational, IP and the minority or dark faction has been developed and is heavily played and contribute to the success. And where a decline seemed to emerge was when the two factions were merged to one storyline. Just my observation.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
My character Tsin'xing
I do know one thing, I'd most likely level and gear more toons if I could have TOS ships on the KDF and Romulan sides as well. Feds have all those TOS skin ships but KDF and Romulans are left out in the cold unless you wanna spend huge sums of money on the exchange and/or lockboxes.
This goes back in to the lack of development time. Which is basically...
If you want most of the shiny, pretty stuff for free, play as the Federation.
If you want to buy the shiny, pretty stuff, play anything other than the Federation.
Then they'll use the number of players in each Faction to determine who get the most development time. But this is a biased number. As people are going to flock to where the most free stuff is. Thus, as large numbers of players flock to the Federation, for the free stuff, it gives them their justification to continue with this dimwitted approach.
It's has been suggested before that they take the lower tier, the tier 1-4 ships and put them in as either promotion ships, or purchasable with dil. This is really all they need to do.
We can overlook the story, since it's all "Go here, kill that and collect reward."
We can overlook the Federation centric style of the game. It is about Star Trek, which is Federation Centric. The thing here, is Cryptic seems to have a, "If you don't support the Federation. Then you aren't a real Star Trek fan." mentality. But, on this, if you remove any of the non-Federation Factions/aliens. Then you have nothing for the Federation to go up against. Which means you wouldn't have the Federation or Starfleet without these exterior Factions.
Right now, the only reason Cryptic even makes new ships for these factions, is because the players that play them. Or that want to get the ships and costumes. If all the players played as Federation, you can bet, you wouldn't see any new ships or costumes for any faction other than the Federation.
The main thing that hurts the KDF, Romulans, Cardassians, Ferengi, or any other faction outside of the Federation. Is that the players are mostly lore driven. We have to have some give and take on this though, to work between the actual lore and in-game lore. But we mostly stick to the actual lore. This is daunting to newer players, as the current players of these factions are more lore centric, and not the happy-go-lucky, I'll do what I want Federation.
...I am Klingon!
My character Tsin'xing
Want to be a cool Letheean assassin? Nah, "Serve the empire well!"
Want to be a Nausicaan mercenary for hire? Nah, honour and stuff.
Want to be an Orion pirate, playing by nobody's rules? Nah, put on your face ridges and shout Qa'pla!
Want to be a Ferasan and have any shredded semblance of a backstory or history for your race? Nah, we're only as deep as "HONOUR HONOUR HONOUR HODOR HONOUR EMPIRE HONOUR CONQUESTGGRRRRAAAAAAAAAAA"
Want to be a Gorn and do anything unique in the slightest? No.
I have one KDF in the form of my Ferasan, and I never paid any attention to the story because I knew I'd hate it. I mean, there's such a diverse range of races and species and there's no reason to use any of them. At least with the Federation it makes sense for everyone to have roughly the same opinions on stuff. With the KDF, there's just no consistency and no relevancy to any non-Klingons.
And I get that this is primarily a game focused on the gameplay and not the story, but they could at least attempt to give it more character than "ME KLINGON. GET HONOUR NOW. UNGH."
The lack of ships and general content is less important to me than the lack of any depth or care. I have a single Ferasan purely because I want to experience the whole game, but otherwise, my 4 Starfleet cats will do nicely.
The story line is wrote that way, yes. But, it doesn't define you character. I use the story more as reference material.
You want to do something unique with your character. That requires that you role play it, or put at least put in your bio. What the story is and what your character is, can be two entirely different things. But, that is up to you, the player.
That, I will go along with, in relation to the odd times I bring out my KDF toons. I got a mad scientist, a gangster, and even a 1950s style "Martian" bent on taking over the universe, among other wacky things in my own personal head canon.
And knowing is half the battle!
21 'til I die!
You need to update this part, Patrick. They already negated the need to have KDF Alts or Rom Alts. At least, from my point of view...being the "click-y" game player (DOFFing).
They made the most efficient way to gain in game currency: Admiralty. You don't even have to build your DOFF roster, any more. Except for the ones that gain you buffs.
With Admiralty it behooves you to stick to one faction (to collect the C-store ships which is now account wide, have it on one character they all have them). Fed side has the most prolific and well balanced selection of ships (Tac, Eng, and Sci ships, as well as more low level ships)...there is no point in buying even more ships to build up characters in the other factions. Unless you love playing those factions.
KDF and ROM are lucky we have free event ships to round out our Admiralty ship rosters (oh but wait, Feds get those, too). And we almost have to purchase the Mirror and other secondary (cheaper) lockbox ships with EC (if you can find them on the Exchange, any more). Especially, if you want to do more than one round of Admiralty a day.
They cut the Contraband turn in assignments from every 4 hours to once every 20 hours. There isn't any sense doing the contraband hunt on extra characters, now, no profit in selling them when no one needs them. There were so many KDF Alts selling contraband on the Exchange, anyways. Good riddance to them, I say.
Pretty soon, with all the whining about the excess of Prisoners, they will probably port some form of the Forced Labor assignments, too. I am sure Cryptic is cooking something up.
And with Colony holding, they removed the need to do the Recruitment to collect free white DOFFs via Roms. Even though it wasn't the most efficient way to go about it....you wouldn't have to spend Fleet Credits nor sit around for hours at the Personnel Officer grinding down Purple > Blue > Green > White...if one could supplement with Rom Recruitment.
Only reason left for people to create Alts in KDF or Rom is out of curiosity for the low level faction story missions...and most new players probably only want to do those once, anyways. Or because: fandom.
As you mentioned, the play styles have already been imported to the Fed side. Only thing different is Singularity functions of the Roms...but I don't know how long before they start tacking those on to other ships to entice sales. And I will even SPECULATE addition of those Singularity type functions be what they sell T-7's on (???).
THEN the only thing different between factions then would be : low level missions and LOOKS.
There is no point to threads like this....begging for players to join one faction or another.
People, at this point, are going to play what they want to play. Most characters probably won't even DO most of the stuff to completion anyways (R&D, DOFFing, Rep, Specialization).
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
1) Lack of Development.
I'm not saying they should devote the majority of development time to this. But, they definitely aren't looking at it as, "While we're developing this. What can we do to help this?" Right now, the KDF and Roms are lucky to get new ships. @patrickngo with Al Riviera's statement from 2011, "The KDF just isn't profitable." A box he put Cryptic, and the player base into.
Though, if they aren't profitable, why do they continue to make ships for them?
2) For Romulans, it's not the fact they intentionally made the OP. This is more on the choose a faction part. A lot of people do not want to make that choice. Even though, all you're really choosing is which doff assignments, ships, story, costumes, and starbase appearances you want.
This will be how it is for any other faction they put out there. They will be their own mini-faction, but have to make this choice. This is mainly to save on production time and costs.
3) Bugs that have been in these two, since their release. That Cryptic has never fixed. The same can be said for some of the content. Like, the power plant on Defera. It's been buggy since the release of LoR.
@patrickngo also pointed out the Bortusqu sales. But this is what happens when you try to sell an inferior ship, that's just looks pretty. But this is also not the only reason. The thing they need to remember here, to quote Jeff Dunham and Peanut, "Polish a TRIBBLE, it's still a TRIBBLE."
You also have to jump to 2013 and the release of the Excelsior, another of Al Riviera's baby's. He boasted it was the most powerful ship in the galaxy. What happened? It got popped like a zit the day after it's release in PvP against an inferior KDF ship. He still harbor's a bit of resentment here over that.
4) The PvP in STO is on life support, at best. One of the main staples of an MMO, and it barely even exists in STO. Admittedly, PvP has never been Cryptic's strong suit. But they aren't even trying to address this weakness. Just ignoring it.
5) Lack of engaging and entertaining content. This is hurting all factions, not just the KDF and Roms. But this is what happens when you lean heavily on the Powercreep and DPS side of the game. Another box that Cryptic has crawled into and hasn't left.
6) Another thing that hurts the KDF here is the species. Sure, the KDF has plenty of of them. Klingon, Gorn, Orion, Nasicaan, Lethean, Ferasan, and Alien. But three of these races, which people want to play, are missing the female gender. Which I've stated is a turn off to a lot of players.
How many races in the Federation only have a male selection? None, that I can think of.
The Gorn are the only one of these races you can work around not having a female gender for. As they're reptilian, they don't come with the standard mammalian equipment for child rearing. So, one can portray a male or a female. Though, by lore, the females are a highly protected asset in Gorn society.
7) Yes, Klingon story arc is a bit narrowly focused on Honor. But take into account, this was Cryptic's first attempt at writing for the Klingons. Which, they also rectified in later arcs, so they do still have the potential to work this out. But this is marginal, since everyone gets the same missions starting at level 20.
8) As @where2r1 pointed out. Cryptic has been working to remove the uniqueness of the other factions. If they have it, the Federation should have it to. Which, if you look at the ships, you'll see, any new Rom/KDF ship they release, are just copy/paste stats from the Federation ships. The only difference is in the appearance of them. Remember, Cryptic is of the mind, "Either you're Federation, or you're not a Star Trek fan." Now, I'm not saying everyone at Cryptic agrees with this. But, it seems to be the overall opinion of those in charge.
9) As @where2r1 also pointed out, the change to contraband and admiralty. The KDF use to rule the house on Dil farming because of the contraband and prisoner turn in. Now, with admiralty, any one can make the same amount.
10) Turning the KDF into the Federation's pet military doesn't help either. The same goes for the Romulans. Neither society fits within the confines of the Federation. In truth, their beliefs and culture are directly opposed to the Federation's. This turns a lot of players off of both factions as well.
Another thing that hurt the game overall, is the Time Travel aspect. This gives Cryptic leeway to use that mechanic to go back and change anything in the canon to be more concurrent with their, "Everyone becomes the Federation." story. But as it has been stated, "STO is not canon." This is just something we the players have to take with a grain of salt(and perhaps a few alcoholic drinks). No matter how much this sickens us to see. It is, what it is.
My character Tsin'xing
So is What Lies Beneath. I find this episode to be the most entertaining one we have.