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Ambassador Kael: full new factions = highly unlikely
thegrandnagus1
Member Posts: 5,165 Arc User
This is from a different thread but significant enough for it's own discussion IMO:
ambassadorkael#6946 wrote: »It's highly unlikely there will ever be a full new faction with it's own story and introduction in the game. With the size of the team and the time it takes to make things, taking on extra missions would just mean less time to continue the main story.
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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what about the Androids from PIC.
Low expectations also mean we are more likely to be pleasantly surprised: Lefler’s Lifehacks #227
Terrans are also pretty popular just put them into the same group as TOS and Disco, they're basically Feds but with an alternate start, if Lorca can infiltrate Starfleet who's to say that other Terrans haven't infiltrated our ranks, maybe Admiral Quinn is really Mirror Quinn it will help explain why he sends us out to complete our daily Kill Quotas Endeavors.
Yeah, but if you're going to reason like that, one can call everything an expansion.
In STO terminology, expansions were exactly that which you describe: the addition of a significant amount of content to the game that's released at one specific moment or within a handful of maintenances. Like LoR and DR.
Queues, missions, uniforms and other assets that are released over the course of months or even in multiple years, aren't expansions. That's just the release of content as we always had - and as can be expected from an online game that does everything it can to keep players logging on on a daily basis.
[3/25 10:41][Combat (Self)]Your Haymaker deals 26187 (10692) Physical Damage(Critical) to Orinoco.
It's also a bit off-topic to a discussion of the news that we will probably never get another full faction with significant number of faction-locked stories.
Back on topic: with fed (+sub-factions), Klingon, Romulan, and Dominion covered I can't think of any other major powers to add. Anything else could just be a sub-faction with a tutorial mission or two before choosing fed or KDF.
I've said it before: we don't really need new factions. What would be great, however, is creating one or a handful of episode(s) for specific species. Adding their homeworlds, creating some notable NPC's, make a new ship etc.
It wouldn't be as much work as a new faction. And there could be something for everyone in it - instead of one big faction that might be interesting to some but not to others (like the Dominion or Klingons), almost everyone would see some development for what they consider fun species.
And most of this stuff, like ships, is worth investing in for Cryptic anyway.
They could gradually keep working on it, without having to release it all at once. Instead it could be an effort that's spread out more, maybe they could even create events around it. Like instead of playing queue X for twenty days, they could create an event around these content additions.
Besides all the aforementioned benefits, it would finally help fleshing out the existing factions more, and do so in a more orderly manner. Devs have stated they wished to revamp some existing planets like Vulcan and Andoria. Other key planets like Betazed, Tellar Prime, Bolarus, Denobula, Gornar, Cardassia or Cait aren't even in existence yet. We have not seen any buildings, cities or planetary environments from these species and planets, no ships in many cases, no or few gear like special weapons, there are few NPC's with a well developed background story...
Most of this stuff usually ends up in lock boxes instead, if it is created at all. Usually we get a lot of random gear and environments (usually within episodes) for non-playable species, and we have a lot of species with little to no assets.
A lot of stuff could be added, even if not part of a new faction.
Cause we don't need a clearly delineated faction. That's not necessary for further developing the things that deserve more developer attention.
[3/25 10:41][Combat (Self)]Your Haymaker deals 26187 (10692) Physical Damage(Critical) to Orinoco.
I like that idea, and it could get people to create and level up new characters for their favorite races.
> I like that idea, and it could get people to create and level up new characters for their favorite races.
I like this too. I would like to see Ferenginar, Cardassia Prime, and a useful Andor. However STO is also limitated by the IP. Star Trek has not been to many “homeworlds.” We haven’t seen a lot of architecture for many of the Star Trek species. Tellarite architecture is completely unknown. In Discovery we went to Trill S3 but only saw a cave.
That being said, the 23rd Romulan buildings STO designed looked good—but it was because we saw TOS Romulan interiors. We know what a 23rd century Romulan logo looks like. STO could probably invent their own Teller cityscape. But it would probably be invalidated immediately if we ever see these places in a Star Trek series.
This reminds me of Borticus' recent quote ("if everything is special, nothing is"). Except in this topic it would be: "if everything is an expansion, nothing is".
Another problem with that logic is when other MMOs have "real" expansions (meaning a big content drop at one time) they still have normal "filler" content in between expansions. But by trying to pass off this "expansion over time" nonsense it means we don't even get the normal filler content, because everything released is part of the latest "expansion over time".
So yeah, I'm ready for STO to have another "real" expansion like LOR, DR, and VIL. Every year they keep telling is it's the "best year the game has ever had". If that's really true, then pump out a real expansion.
Now, here is the part where "you know who" shows up and posts some long winded nonsense about how the players are bad/stupid and STO is making more content than ever before and anyone who isn't completely satisfied is wrong 🙄
So something has to be done on this level if its going to carry the game into the future because the existing way content has been made has gone beyond stale at this point. For the most part the basic guidelines I would set with my four decades of online gaming experience to todays players. First a system that requires no organization so that players can come in and leave as they wish without it being detrimental to the experience of the game. Also ways where groups of players can get instructions from a leader of the group that clearly explains what is going on which can be done with basic symbols and establishing group targeting which I am pretty sure they have all the tech to create something like this. Not flaming PWE but this is also one of their problems on why their games have fizzled out. The emphasis is all on how to try to get people to spend money on lockbox keys that they allow the actual game content to become so poor that eventually they can't sell any lockbox because there is nothing to do with the content that comes from it that entertains players.
> He does say “with the size of the staff” though where he has previously said the team-size is healthy. Whether or not it makes sense to invest so much in an aging game aside, we should probably lower our expectations regardless. It seems like they only have one dedicated programmer at this point. New models and textures are likely, but expansions, new systems, etc. unlikely.
>
> Low expectations also mean we are more likely to be pleasantly surprised: Lefler’s Ligehacks #227
A fair amount of the sto devs were fired after magic the gathering failed. Any that were shifted over to work on it including ship designers and the one dev who knew how the foundry worked were lost with that.
It could be when he claimed the Team Size was "Healthy" he was under the impression the devs that Sto lost would be returning, until magic was canceled and those devs fired.
> first, how do you know they were all fired.
> second, if they were, and not brought back to STO, thats a huge fail.
> third, maybe not all of them wanted to come back to STO
42 developers working on Magic the Gathering were fired upon its cancelation. Atleast one of them went on to work at Activision but I haven't heard about the others finding more work. Of those that were fired the developer responsible for designing and implementing squadron pets and a lot of the past few ship designs was let go. Basically the entire magic team was fired.
> first ive heard of the layoffs. sad. guess the talent wasnt wanted at STO then. and if they just fired people rather then move them around if they wanted to come to STO or return, then that was a TRIBBLE move by PWE/cryptic. also shows how much they care about games in play at this time.
> well...guess we wait and see about STO.
Its more likely that they were removed just for them to cleanse themselves of anyone associated with the failure of Magic.
Because they were laid off, returning to STO was most likely not even an option.
I do worry for the future because I liked a lot of the things those developers worked on, so missing out on them will be disappointing.
It's not really 'good business' to advertise the firing of staff to us customers. Risks losing the confidence of the people giving them profit
Sure sucks, they let go of some talented folks.
I am not sure the Dominion can be called "multi-species" in the context of the game since unlike all of the others there is only one Dominion species that can be played, (and on top of that, those are more biotech constructs rather than a normal species), and all the other species in it are irrelevant unplayable NPCs. There is not much potential for new factions that actually mean anything, but in the case of the Dominion there is a need to fix that if they want more players willing to make Dominion characters.
It isn't like there are not a lot of people running around with faux-Vorta characters (and possibly some other Dominion species), so the interest in making them is there even though they have to resort to making them in the other faction's character generators and put up with them not being able to unlock Dominion ships or be eligible for Gamma recruits, or even use the right transporter SFX or have the right boffs and starter ship and other annoyances.
In a similar vein, making a few more alternate quest givers tied to particular races giving the same missions out but with a different style would help give the game a more dynamic, living feel. It would not have to be every mission for every player species, and it could be added in over time, but it could be a relatively inexpensive, low effort enhancement that could encourage people to make and play more characters to see what the little differences are between the handlers.
For example, Secret World Legends only has three factions and all but a very few missions are the same for everyone, but players like to make at least one character of each faction to hear and see what the various handlers do when they send them out (of course they handlers in that game are very distinctively different which helps a lot).
Buffing up existing factions like that would probably help keep the frequent request for niche factions down somewhat, and at a fraction of the cost of making new factions.
Pardon my ignorance, but how is a completely unrelated game, Magic the Gathering, getting STO devs fired?!