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Why is KDF so one-dimensional?
tilarta
Member Posts: 1,801 Arc User
I've been wondering about this for sometime now and finally decided to organize my thoughts in a forum post.
I've been a long-term KDF player, but I'm just disillusioned by how all the stories and themes are well, the Klingon 24 hour show.
Way back before Klingons actually had content, I did the cluster explores to level up.
And every time I did so, this inconsistency leaped out at me.
My science officer is a female Orion and her backstory is she's a pacifist, she doesn't believe in solving problems with violence.
So I always found it odd that she was demanding the "blood of her enemies" and then cursing them in Klingon.
At the very least, if she felt the need to cuss them out, she'd do so in her native language, not Klingon!
As for my Captain, his story is because he's not Klingon, he doesn't believe in their approach to solving problems with blood, death and rants about besmirched honor.
I find it amusing to have this big intimidating guy take the diplomatic route to solving problems without resorting to violence.
A minor character point is he's not fazed by the Fek'liri, since they're Klingon nightmares, not his.
When his first officer turns into a Fek'liri during a hallucination sequence, he says "Hello, is that you?" instead of screaming in panic (yes, that's a conversation option).
And this became most obvious during the 4th romulan mission, where you locate a sympathetic Tal-Shiar Sub-Commander.
On the Starfleet side, you can use Diplomatic conversation options to convince her to aid you without resorting to violent confrontation.
I tried the same using Maruading conversation options only to have to fight her anyway!
What's the point of taking a different route to get to the same destination?
I was trying not to fight her!
Also, the KDF storyline makes little mention of the other races in the KDF.
Actually, I'm yet to determine if they feature at all!
There should be stories involving the Orions, Letheans, Gorn and Naausicaans, since they're all part of the Empire.
Yet, pretty much every story is about the Klingons.
The TV show was the same.
In my opinion, pick any episode with a Klingon theme, it was the same.
Honor is good, dishonor is bad, I must do things because honor demands it, even if it's really stupid.
Oh, and death to my enemies!
This is pretty much why I disapprove of the KDF faction, there's no flexibility in their gameplay to play differently then a standard blood-and-thunder Klingon screaming about their honor and demanding the blood of their enemies.
I've been a long-term KDF player, but I'm just disillusioned by how all the stories and themes are well, the Klingon 24 hour show.
Way back before Klingons actually had content, I did the cluster explores to level up.
And every time I did so, this inconsistency leaped out at me.
My science officer is a female Orion and her backstory is she's a pacifist, she doesn't believe in solving problems with violence.
So I always found it odd that she was demanding the "blood of her enemies" and then cursing them in Klingon.
At the very least, if she felt the need to cuss them out, she'd do so in her native language, not Klingon!
As for my Captain, his story is because he's not Klingon, he doesn't believe in their approach to solving problems with blood, death and rants about besmirched honor.
I find it amusing to have this big intimidating guy take the diplomatic route to solving problems without resorting to violence.
A minor character point is he's not fazed by the Fek'liri, since they're Klingon nightmares, not his.
When his first officer turns into a Fek'liri during a hallucination sequence, he says "Hello, is that you?" instead of screaming in panic (yes, that's a conversation option).
And this became most obvious during the 4th romulan mission, where you locate a sympathetic Tal-Shiar Sub-Commander.
On the Starfleet side, you can use Diplomatic conversation options to convince her to aid you without resorting to violent confrontation.
I tried the same using Maruading conversation options only to have to fight her anyway!
What's the point of taking a different route to get to the same destination?
I was trying not to fight her!
Also, the KDF storyline makes little mention of the other races in the KDF.
Actually, I'm yet to determine if they feature at all!
There should be stories involving the Orions, Letheans, Gorn and Naausicaans, since they're all part of the Empire.
Yet, pretty much every story is about the Klingons.
The TV show was the same.
In my opinion, pick any episode with a Klingon theme, it was the same.
Honor is good, dishonor is bad, I must do things because honor demands it, even if it's really stupid.
Oh, and death to my enemies!
This is pretty much why I disapprove of the KDF faction, there's no flexibility in their gameplay to play differently then a standard blood-and-thunder Klingon screaming about their honor and demanding the blood of their enemies.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
Post edited by tilarta on
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They have no real clue on how to make a decent KDF faction and it can be seen everywhere ingame.
In TOS we saw Klingon mediators, wordsmithis, cunning and composed women and men of the Empire. In TNG we even saw a Klingon tea ceremony which was lovely, not to mention the ever practical Duras sisters. The Klingon dynamics started to fade away to 1d fighting and squabbling in DS9 though and it was sad and disappointing that they fell into a mindless cliche'.
Well remember that in the TV show, the empire is only Klingons so only Klingons and Klingon themes will show up in the TV shows.
Can it be improved? You bet! Can it be made more responsive to character bacround, especially of "pet" characters? Not without a lot more work then the studio has staffing for, and hellacious file bloat. While someday it would be nice to see, this is not an actuall holodeck, and were going to be stuck with inconsistancies like this in games for quite a few decades yet.
The technology simply hasn't been invented yet to create that level of interaction in a computer game with as broad a scope as STO. I don't think we have the computing power to allow the sort of AI that could literally write the dialog on the fly that give that level of immersion in the story. Also to add that programming the beast (and it would be a beast!) would take literally years. it is quite simply beyond the budget of any game deveopment studio or company. We will see it someday, perhapes even by the end of the 21st century.
But realisticly at least for now, its just a technology thats not feasable to develop, though, there is ground work at the theoretical level being done to eventually develop such a technology if demand is sufficient. Computer, and computer programs can fake creative thought to a point. That point is limited by the ability of the programmers. We don't even yet understand how human thought happens. To develop a software package that writes on the fly creativly, such software will need to be pretty much an AI.. a real one, not the current level of expert programs (which by the by are very limited in what they're actually capable of doing). Such software might need to actully be self aware to work. We really just don't know yet. Someday *sigh*
Khemaraa sends.
R.I.P
Although I for one will never complain about having to swear in thlIngan Hol. It's such a rich language for cursing...
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
but getting a dialog responsive to back story in a character or NPC back story is realisticly more trouble then its worth. This aint blizzard.. and WOW.. they got a huge staff. Cryptic and STO, not so much.
Well, that's kindof the point.
That someone could join the KDF and not be an unreasoning brute who solves every problem with violence.
He's specifically chosen his crew to fit this approach, hence having the pacifist Orion Science Officer and so on.
Unconventional individuals who will help him in his goal to civilize Klingons and present a positive image.
And well, if the Klingons don't like it, well, he's well prepared to backup his position!
Remember I said he's a big guy?
The backstory is he's from a species who make Klingons look like wet noodles, he's stronger, more resilient.
So if pushed to action, any Klingon who challenges him is pretty much going to end up in sickbay.
I do play Starfleet, but because of the lack of choice/parity, I play KDF very infrequently.
This is about bringing KDF up to be the equal of Starfleet in terms of gameplay, to offer choice instead of sticking to the honorisgooddeathtoenemies one track path.
I'm not a fan of Foundry, because the tools are badly developed.
I tried to make a ground map once, only to give up in frustration.
I was trying to build a fortified structure out of building parts.
But because I couldn't see where the pieces were in 3d view, I had to position the piece, go to map view, move it, go back to editor, repeat until the object was in the right place.
To build the entire base like this would take hours, if not days or weeks!
And the map was also supposed to have active siege turrets near the structure entrance.
But there isn't actually a Foundry Object for a Siege Turret (or there wasn't when I worked on it last, which was ages ago), so there's just a couple of huge breen acting as turret standins.
After that horrible failure, I gave up working on Foundry.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
Why would the KDF ever commission someone like this to be an officer, nevermind a toilet cleaner, for the KDF? Because in STO, BoP's grow on trees?
It's the Klingon Defense Force, we all know the rules and the manner of conduct it applies.
This would make sense if the red alliance was something like let's say the Horde in WoW, where they all belong to the Horde and fight for their cause, but each race has it's own "homebase" and each maintain their own military. If this would be the case in STO, then Orions would be part of the Syndicate for ex., and they could have different approach and behavior than the Klingons on certain issues. Same goes for Nausicaans being pirates and not caring about honor or such.
However, the fact is that every player captain that plays the red side is a part of the Klingon Defense Force, so the rules the Klingons made apply to everyone serving under their flag.
Same applies to Starfleet if you compare it, if a player chooses to buy a playable Klingon character for the Federation, that doesn't mean that he/she will be able to rampage, behave like a brute and kick everything in his/hers way. That player will have to follow the rules and conduct that is established in Starfleet.
The KDF may have embraced diversity, but only up to a point.
My Foundry missions | My STO Wiki page | My Twitter home page
Yeah, but the poster that all these responses are written about, is playing an Orion pacifist. It's really problematic in the context of the empire, the orions, and the game's story content.
It's not likely an orion pacifist would rise to high ranks in the Klingon military.
And this game may allow for Federation pacifists to exist, but not Klingon as the poster who plays this Orion pacifist has pointed out, stating that the in-game text continually calls for the blood of her enemies and stuff like that.
Yeah, the KDF is a lot more diverse and dare one suggest it ... tolerant of that diversity. I totally believe an Orion pacifist exists. And heck, I bet an Orion pacifist might even make a serviceable engineer or astrometrics technician on board a KDF vessel. But a Brigadier General in full Honor Guard? That's stretching it due to the nature of the culture.
I just don't see any pacifists rising through the military ranks.
Ithink you are both right. The other poster is right innthat such individuals as he des robed would wash out of KDF duty most likely but you too are right, at least as represented by the farmer and playwright/actor social characters in the Gorkon novels, the Empire would not still exist if it was so rigid.
Given what soft canon offscreen examples of klingon life and society we have seen and read the Empire is rigidly loyal to itself and even a little selfsupremist in nature but it is not oppressive to its citizens.
R.I.P
Bingo, we have a winner.
You can put the blame on Ronald D Moor. for reducing Klingons to mindless fools that twist their honor like other people their wet panties if the plot dictates it.
Just like DS9 did not understood the mirror universe and ruined it, it did not understood klingons and ruined them. Everyone on their grandma where fine with the changed appearance between tos and tng, just not genius Moor, he had to invent a stupid scene to high lite the differences in makeup. DS9 did as much damage to trek as Voyager, just in a different way.
You do realize the Moore was the writer who created the things you're idolizing in TNG right? And if I'm not mistaken, he was the driving force behind the ENT arc that highlighted the non-warrior castes of Klingon society (using J.G. Hertzler too).
And yes, i do know that, however he lost it with DS9.
1) Not enough time money to make 2 full factions in the beginning (poor decisions made by stupid people wearing smart looking suits). Klings were designed for PvP, which didn't work so they did their best to paste PvE designed for Feds onto the Klingons side. They upped the starting level because their was very little low level content that worked for Klings and almost no one PvP's at lower levels anyway (one of their primary forms of XP at the time).
2) Not enough people play Klings (approx %18 of server population), to put the effort/time/resources (money) into something with very little return. players don't buy many Kling ship's, uniforms, etc. If an artist is payed for 2-3 weeks to design a ship. and only %18 of the player base will even consider it.. let alone buy. It's a waste of company resources.
This is one of the major reasons there are only 2 factions atm and why a Romulan faction is likely going to be a little bit longer. Despite the excitement coming from some players, Rommies will probably have less people playing then even the Klingons, not a good return for the invested effort (money). So what they seem to be doing is introducing a lot of Romulan material that is playable by all factions, and eventually whip up some Romulan specific quests. They really don't want to repeat the "Klingon mistake"
If a faction will not generate revenue, it will be low priority and not get as much effort from PW/Cryptic. If people want a more fleshed out Klingon empire sooner, then more people have to play Klingons (%18 player base needs to be %30 - %50) vote with their wallets and spend C-points on them. It's a bit of a catch-22 at the moment. Less available content = less players = less effort invested in content.
On the bright side the Devs have repeatedly stated that Klingons WILL get more and be properly fleshed out in a similar fashion as the Romulans, People will just have to keep waiting or start spending a lot more.
Cheers
Slight correction on #1: It's not that the KDF has 'not enough low level content', it was more like 'not enough content in general'. What the level contraction did is it compressed the content that DID exist into fewer levels, to make it less of a dull grind to level a KDF character. So, instead of there being 3-4 levels in between major XP-granting missions, it was reduced to 2-3. ..slightly more manageable, especially with the addition of the Mirror Universe invasion event.
Since Cryptic wasn't interested in or able to finish the faction back then, it was a decent temporary measure. There was a lot of griping about the incredibly dull grinding in between storyline missions (I distinctly remember having to repeat the 'Empire Defense' missions repeatedly to grind XP). It was a problem that needed solving. The issue is, we don't want the faction to be left in this state. . .it's stuck between 'full faction' and 'end-game only'. There's too much content for it to be end-game only now, but insufficient interest in really finishing the faction and bringing it up on par with the Federation in terms of what's offered.
What sources can you supply that shows this as a "misinterpretation"?
The Klingon Empire have always had a really warped definition of honor. "Men we are going to launch a sneak attack on that unarmed cardassian convoy! For honor and glory!"
That is the race you guys are claiming is all about honor. One that uses sneak attacks and ambushes instead of challenging an opponent face to face.
The klingons starting to sound hypocritical to anyone else?
Honestly, I keep wondering why so many people expect the Klingon code of honor or the meaning behind honor to even mildly reflect our human concept of honor.
They are alien species, their meaning of honor is in many ways very much different to what we as humans find to be honorable. For Klingons the biggest honor there is is to win the battle, be victorious, slay the enemies of the empire - not taking the moral highground even if it means losing or complicating issues as the Federation would do.
This view of theirs applies especially to species they grew to despise like for ex. the Romulans or Cardassians. To the Klingon, there is nothing honorable about the Cardassians, so in their twisted way of observing the things a sneak attack of a Cardassian convoy being honorable makes sense because they killed the honorless petaQ.
Also, you must consider that for Klingons the victory brings most honor. So if they are aware that a Galaxy class can bitchslap a B'rel in face to face combat, they're going to use a sneak attack because the cloak makes it possible for them. Because the victory is what they care most at the end of the day.
In addition to this, them using cloak to make sneak attacks might be hypocritical in our human way of understanding the things. Not in theirs. To them is just utilizing a tech. edge that they have over their oponents so they can be victorious and by that bringing honor and glory to the Empire and reserving a place in Sto'vo'kor.
We have to accept that different alien species will have different ways of interpreting things. That's why when the Federation would make a decision that is peacefull, preserves lives or is honorable in our way of looking at things (ex. Aenik Okeg promising to honor the treaty of Algeron even if the RSE is in ashes), the Klingons would see that like being weak and cowardly.
Worf himself said it best: "Nothing is more honorable than victory".
and yet when the romulans use that same tech, and that same tactic, they're called honorless cowards...the concept of honor for the klingons seems to change daily
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Don't get the Romulans involved into this. They consider them honorless cowards because they didn't have the guts for an upfront attack on the Empire, but were rather scheming with the treacherous Duras to create a civil war that would weaken the Klingon Empire from within and make Duras the Chancellor who would be a RSE puppet afterwards. They are not honorless cowards because they use cloaking or any other tech. that would give them edge over the KDF, but because they'd rather achieve their goals through plotting and scheming.
And BTW, by which standard would you suggest that a 30 man B'rel facing a 1000 man Galaxy class, that is 100 times the size of the B'rel in a face to face approach would be honorable? That's not honorable, that's pure foolishness. It's a Bird of Prey after all.
On another note, do you remember Riker's remark when the Enterprise D tried to protect the Enterprise C untill they go into the anomaly?
Remember how the much bigger, sturdier K'vorts did not find it necessary to use the cloak when engaging the Enterprise? It all boils down to logical tactics used in battle. A Klingon is more inclined to do whatever brings a victory, because for them victory = honor and glory for themselves, their House and the Empire.
While space Vikings might be a plausible frame for the Klingon portion of the faction. It feels forced when I play my Lethean, Gorn, Orion, Nausicaan, and Ferasan characters. I don?t expect the dialogue to cater to my Romulan KDF, however the rest of the standard playable characters should not feel so canned.