And in truth, they don't say "no". They say it's a significant amount of work, and not an easy thing to do. But it's also something that they want to do, and that they think is important to do.
[...]
It is almost as if asking for sources had merit.
And having listened to it: It is precisely as I had expected. They are not even talking about this particular solution, but just about the general problem of cross-faction teaming.
Granted. But it would seem they would have to solve the same coding problems to make any of it possible.
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[...]
I mean, even as a KDF player, I have a hard time imagining why a Federation player would want to fly Klingon ships unless he's looking for a way to make it easier for his buddy to rack up PvP accolades fedside by taking a handicap.
Don't forget all the people who could not care less for combat results, but prefer to play for style. A Fed-Aligned Klingon might want to use a Martok class with a BortasQ' skin because now, in the glorious age of the Alliance, he can.
But as I wrote: Restricting the ships should be comparatively trivial (after all, all zen ships are restricted to those who haven't bought them, so the code is basically already there).
I honestly have no idea why you'd want to fly a bortasque-even the tier six version. [...]
Restricting the ships should be comparatively trivial (after all, all zen ships are restricted to those who haven't bought them, so the code is basically already there).
Once again, not really. Either they coded the way you think they did...in which case they WILL need to add tags to make anything restricted to any faction...which WILL cause problems and a lot of work if the devs are to be believed. Because honetly if they did it the way you think, it AND additional tags are not an issue, it would be trival to make cross faction grouping a thing. OR they did not program it the way you think and it is part of their core mechanics code...in which case, it is NOT a simple thing and EVERYTHING...and I mean EVERYTHING gets borked by your suggestion.
If it was that 'easy' to do, they would do it, but OP thinks otherwise, despite having the evidence pointing otherwise. However, the problem you would then have is factions flying the other faction's ships during missions where they are still at war with each other!!
And as I have toons of all flavours, my KDF's sincerely object to this preposterous idea!
"You don't want to patrol!? You don't want to escort!? You don't want to defend the Federation's Starbases!? Then why are you flying my Starships!? If you were a Klingon you'd be killed on the spot, but lucky for you.....you WERE in Starfleet. Let's see how New Zealand Penal Colony suits you." Adm A. Necheyev.
Why do people in this forum insist on coming up with entirely speculative coding problems and arguing tooth and nail that these issues they made up support their opinions on what the game should be like?
Whatever the issue is with crossfaction teaming, fact is they haven't done anything to bring the factions together in gameplay, despite the storyline having us allied since at least Delta Rising. Not even the things we know for certain are possible without issue, like crossfaction social zone access. There is very likely to be more than coding work keeping up the status quo.
Crossfaction clothes, crossfaction items, crossfaction ships. In the end, a whole lot could be done without mechanically joining the factions. Crossfaction teaming and fleets are the big mechanical hurdles there. But only Cryptic can know if that would be easier or harder than literally setting everyone to the same faction.
I would not want KDF captains to merge with the Federation until after at least the end of the unique KDF stories, because those stories are good and have a very different feel than the fed side. And like with TOS captains I'd want to keep the KDF visuals and sounds.
I also like having the KDF fleet holding look different, different doff missions, different contacts, etc.
Apparently cross-faction teaming is terribly difficult to code.
Words to this effect have been used many times. However if its so difficult, why do we have romulans?
The romulan faction clearly shows that the code to progress a character within one faction, and then shift them into another later already exists. Whats more after the shift they can retain separate access to different faction ships, whilst still being able to team together just fine.
As the code clearly exists for romulans to chose fed or kdf, can it not be repurposed to allow fed, kdf, romulan fed and romulan kdf to be shunted into a communal faction after or during the iconian arc?
I can think of three potential hiccups.
1) We might all end up with romulan warp trails on our klink and fed ships... hold on that happens any way.
2) While the code exists to move players between factions, it doesn't to my knowledge, exist to move fleets between factions. That could be a sticky point maybe? But honestly if it can be done for characters I am sure it can be done for fleets too,
3) PVP warzones. These have needed revamping to meet cryptics quality standards for a long time any way. As they are the code exists to drop us in different instances when playing at different levels, surly that can be modified to a faction check instead of a level check, then drop us into a randomly assigned team for a PVP simulation zone if the character is in the end game faction.
Now granted I haven't seen cryptics code, so i have no idea what I am talking about. Who knows just how bad the annotations and supporting docs are. Maybe its such a spaghetti jumble that it would take six months just to work out what bits can be copied and pasted. But I have to hope that's not the case.
Personally I could care less whether faction compression results in access to the other sides stuff. I just want to be able to team up with my friends without people having to faction hop. And i think that's something that should be doable. Whats more it would help the KDF and romulan factions. One of the reasons people play fed, is to play with their friends, who are playing fed. I know quite a few people who would love to make their klinks their main characters if not for that.
Could you please reference which parts of the code make it "even HARDER" to code?
Hate to say it, Sophlogimo, but Somtaawkhar's right. the sheer amount of data transfer to get everybody's characters over to Fed, is a hell of a lot more grunt work and server time than cross-faction teaming that was, per Geko and Ricossa in their January P1 appearance, already rejected by the technical department as too complicated to achieve. (they actually told the EP and lead Developer "NO". I don't know if a rolled newspaper was involved, but it's something I'd giggle a lot imagining.)
Tech and manpower complexities and shortages means we're pretty much stuck with the limbo we've got-they can't actually support and develop multiple factions fully, but they can't change the mechanics to the game they CAN support fully and still keep the lights on and the servers running.
Hate to say it, Sophlogimo, but patrickngo is right about Somtaawkhar's being right. STO was built to be a 'blue vs. red' game. Removing/adapting all code, everywhere, where the distinction matters, would be sheer nightmare (for the Devs); and, worse (for us) likely introduce a whole slew of extra bugs -- and if the game has anything already in abundance, it's bugs.
There are some faction specific queues which would benefit, but a complete merger is serious overkill with regards to the amount of work involved.
Having said that, replacing the current Gorn/Federation minefield STF with a cross faction STF (Perhaps against the Nah'kull?) would be nice.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
so, basically, easily-crushed monster of the week.
Nope. The Iconians were far more powerful then the Alliance. Nog even speculates that Alliance tech wouldn't be equal to the Iconians for another 700ish years, meaning it would take until the year 3,100, further in the future then even Daniels is from, to beat the Iconians. And the Iconians pretty soundly beat us, even after we combined forces with The Dominion, and the Delta Alliance.
And again, the entire rest of your post is an off topic tangent that has nothing to do with what was actually being said. Please learn the basic of replying before you do next time. What makes it even worse is that I have, several times, talked about how dumb Gene was, and how Trek was built on people working against him, and you have responded to them before. Your entire rant is something I have equally stated, and you have responded too in the past, making it worthless as a rant!
More Powerful? Flashier, certainly, but the entire Iconian story arc is one un-impeded and unending march to easy victory.
going by what's on screen.
They were flashy, and pretty and pathetic. at exactly zero time was there any sense that these were dangerous opponents, rather, the impression was that the Allied command were utterly, totally, and completely incompetent, and that incompetence caused 100% of any and all casualties suffered.
Alliance Command incompetent? The Commander that had the entire Alliance fighting as Klingons do? Massed, Honorable Combat to the last starship at every site the Iconians showed up at? The same techniques that the "illustrious" Captain Shon of the combative Andorians bought into wholeheartedly?
Well, until the Alliance was running "dangerously low" on ships/personnel and Admiral (Dahar Master) Kills'Em'All shows up with the Annorax plans and the Klingon Commander goes "well, we have to go all Feddie-bear on this one and win with even more superior technology than the Iconians, because we can master time and they can't..."?
The "bigger" problem, to me, with the Iconian War is the fact that it was "fought" without any "lasting" effects on gameplay. ESD was blown up, yet immediately after that mission, there was a "new" ESD, the Feddies weren't banished to DS9/K7/Sierra for any period. Same with Q'onos - shipyards down? So what, you aren't forced to go visit DS9/Gandala/Fleet HQ, you still go to the exact same map with the exact same flavor personnel chatting up Anti-Fed wartime propaganda.
Oh, and why exactly were the numerically/technologically superior Iconians fighting a guerilla war with "gateway in, strike, gateway out whenever the Alliance responded / our job there was done" strategies? Oh, because we couldn't "lose access" to 2/3rd the map during this "war"... Do you remember how many people were clamoring for "random Iconian attacks during the war while travelling" to illustrate Iconian dominion over most of the Beta Quadrant?
Hur'q war is already lining up to be another one of these. For those who may not be 100% "current" in their gameplay:
DS9 is thrashed in this first mission of the new arc, yet again, you wouldn't tell because immediately after the mission you can beam down to the same old DS9 and vendor/bank your loot...
Hard to fully illustrate these great "single player" storylines when the game has to be an "all period inclusive MMO" as well as a Singleplayer game...
Detecting big-time "anti-old-school" bias here. NX? Lobi. TOS/TMP Connie? Super-promotion-box. (aka the two hardest ways to get ships) Excelsior & all 3 TNG "big hero" ships? C-Store. Please Equalize...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
[...]
I mean, even as a KDF player, I have a hard time imagining why a Federation player would want to fly Klingon ships unless he's looking for a way to make it easier for his buddy to rack up PvP accolades fedside by taking a handicap.
Don't forget all the people who could not care less for combat results, but prefer to play for style. A Fed-Aligned Klingon might want to use a Martok class with a BortasQ' skin because now, in the glorious age of the Alliance, he can.
But as I wrote: Restricting the ships should be comparatively trivial (after all, all zen ships are restricted to those who haven't bought them, so the code is basically already there).
I honestly have no idea why you'd want to fly a bortasque-even the tier six version. [...]
Restricting the ships should be comparatively trivial (after all, all zen ships are restricted to those who haven't bought them, so the code is basically already there).
Once again, not really. Either they coded the way you think they did...in which case they WILL need to add tags to make anything restricted to any faction...which WILL cause problems and a lot of work if the devs are to be believed. Because honetly if they did it the way you think, it AND additional tags are not an issue, it would be trival to make cross faction grouping a thing. OR they did not program it the way you think and it is part of their core mechanics code...in which case, it is NOT a simple thing and EVERYTHING...and I mean EVERYTHING gets borked by your suggestion.
If it was that 'easy' to do, they would do it, but OP thinks otherwise, despite having the evidence pointing otherwise. However, the problem you would then have is factions flying the other faction's ships during missions where they are still at war with each other!!
Why would that be a problem? People can fly all the enemy faction ships during missions where they are at war. People can fly herald ships during missions when we hadn't even heard of the iconians. People can fly an Annorax during missions before it was built, before we found the krenim, before we even got to the delta quadrant. Or the lukari ships before they were invented at all. And so on. It's not a problem at all.
So I have to ask, why anyone would voluntarily want stuff from that side for their federation mains, when said mains already get the better versions of everything that faction has.
Because they like them? Nevermind I for one want all ships, just because they exist.
I get that you're bitter about the fate of your favorite faction, but it's not the ships' fault. Star Trek just is so thoroughly Fed-focused having these segregated factions was always doomed to failure. As I've said many times before, if they'd let everyone buy the klingon ships, they'd all sell at least as well as all the other crossfaction alien ships if not better. It's not like nobody likes klingons, it's just people want stuff they can use on their mains.
One thing i would like to see is holo cloaks which can be used during combat. There are some available for use outside of combat.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
Agreed. Wish we went back to war with each other. I'm still hoping that with the Discovery's focus (although controversial) on the Klingons, we might see a Klingon-only recruitment event in the future..
pssstttt...it is not just Klingons and Romulans that are tired of this forced Alliance. I have even heard it from the Feds.
This is because the Factions is not integrated quite right in Cryptic's Alliance stories. Hence...threads like this one.
"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
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Granted. But it would seem they would have to solve the same coding problems to make any of it possible.
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If it was that 'easy' to do, they would do it, but OP thinks otherwise, despite having the evidence pointing otherwise. However, the problem you would then have is factions flying the other faction's ships during missions where they are still at war with each other!!
And as I have toons of all flavours, my KDF's sincerely object to this preposterous idea!
Whatever the issue is with crossfaction teaming, fact is they haven't done anything to bring the factions together in gameplay, despite the storyline having us allied since at least Delta Rising. Not even the things we know for certain are possible without issue, like crossfaction social zone access. There is very likely to be more than coding work keeping up the status quo.
Crossfaction clothes, crossfaction items, crossfaction ships. In the end, a whole lot could be done without mechanically joining the factions. Crossfaction teaming and fleets are the big mechanical hurdles there. But only Cryptic can know if that would be easier or harder than literally setting everyone to the same faction.
Why should people need any more reason to want a klingon ship than all the other races in the game?
I also like having the KDF fleet holding look different, different doff missions, different contacts, etc.
Words to this effect have been used many times. However if its so difficult, why do we have romulans?
The romulan faction clearly shows that the code to progress a character within one faction, and then shift them into another later already exists. Whats more after the shift they can retain separate access to different faction ships, whilst still being able to team together just fine.
As the code clearly exists for romulans to chose fed or kdf, can it not be repurposed to allow fed, kdf, romulan fed and romulan kdf to be shunted into a communal faction after or during the iconian arc?
I can think of three potential hiccups.
1) We might all end up with romulan warp trails on our klink and fed ships... hold on that happens any way.
2) While the code exists to move players between factions, it doesn't to my knowledge, exist to move fleets between factions. That could be a sticky point maybe? But honestly if it can be done for characters I am sure it can be done for fleets too,
3) PVP warzones. These have needed revamping to meet cryptics quality standards for a long time any way. As they are the code exists to drop us in different instances when playing at different levels, surly that can be modified to a faction check instead of a level check, then drop us into a randomly assigned team for a PVP simulation zone if the character is in the end game faction.
Now granted I haven't seen cryptics code, so i have no idea what I am talking about. Who knows just how bad the annotations and supporting docs are. Maybe its such a spaghetti jumble that it would take six months just to work out what bits can be copied and pasted. But I have to hope that's not the case.
Personally I could care less whether faction compression results in access to the other sides stuff. I just want to be able to team up with my friends without people having to faction hop. And i think that's something that should be doable. Whats more it would help the KDF and romulan factions. One of the reasons people play fed, is to play with their friends, who are playing fed. I know quite a few people who would love to make their klinks their main characters if not for that.
I am sure everyone would be traumatized if such a thing happened.
Hate to say it, Sophlogimo, but patrickngo is right about Somtaawkhar's being right.
Having said that, replacing the current Gorn/Federation minefield STF with a cross faction STF (Perhaps against the Nah'kull?) would be nice.
Alliance Command incompetent? The Commander that had the entire Alliance fighting as Klingons do? Massed, Honorable Combat to the last starship at every site the Iconians showed up at? The same techniques that the "illustrious" Captain Shon of the combative Andorians bought into wholeheartedly?
Well, until the Alliance was running "dangerously low" on ships/personnel and Admiral (Dahar Master) Kills'Em'All shows up with the Annorax plans and the Klingon Commander goes "well, we have to go all Feddie-bear on this one and win with even more superior technology than the Iconians, because we can master time and they can't..."?
The "bigger" problem, to me, with the Iconian War is the fact that it was "fought" without any "lasting" effects on gameplay. ESD was blown up, yet immediately after that mission, there was a "new" ESD, the Feddies weren't banished to DS9/K7/Sierra for any period. Same with Q'onos - shipyards down? So what, you aren't forced to go visit DS9/Gandala/Fleet HQ, you still go to the exact same map with the exact same flavor personnel chatting up Anti-Fed wartime propaganda.
Oh, and why exactly were the numerically/technologically superior Iconians fighting a guerilla war with "gateway in, strike, gateway out whenever the Alliance responded / our job there was done" strategies? Oh, because we couldn't "lose access" to 2/3rd the map during this "war"... Do you remember how many people were clamoring for "random Iconian attacks during the war while travelling" to illustrate Iconian dominion over most of the Beta Quadrant?
Hur'q war is already lining up to be another one of these. For those who may not be 100% "current" in their gameplay:
Hard to fully illustrate these great "single player" storylines when the game has to be an "all period inclusive MMO" as well as a Singleplayer game...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
Because they like them? Nevermind I for one want all ships, just because they exist.
I get that you're bitter about the fate of your favorite faction, but it's not the ships' fault. Star Trek just is so thoroughly Fed-focused having these segregated factions was always doomed to failure. As I've said many times before, if they'd let everyone buy the klingon ships, they'd all sell at least as well as all the other crossfaction alien ships if not better. It's not like nobody likes klingons, it's just people want stuff they can use on their mains.
pssstttt...it is not just Klingons and Romulans that are tired of this forced Alliance. I have even heard it from the Feds.
This is because the Factions is not integrated quite right in Cryptic's Alliance stories. Hence...threads like this one.
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin