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Some things should remain sacred.
centersolace
Member Posts: 11,178 Arc User
Many metric yonks ago it was decided that outside of lockbox ships, factions would retain their respective ships, and all was good. You obviously don't intend on having Klinks in Mirandas, and Feds in BoPs, so why are we even opening that door? What makes Romulans the exception now?
I just think that Cryptic is painting themselves into a very unpleasant corner with this.
1. It makes the Federation and Klingons less unique. It really does. Most of the game takes place in space with your ship. They're the biggest part of the game, and one of it's largest draws. This is why you aren't letting Feds and Klinks fly each others ships, so I really question the reasoning behind it.
2. It makes the Romulans less unique. I've already spent dozens of weekends and hundreds of hours with the other two kinds of ships. Doesn't seem like a good idea when the whole point of a new faction is a "new" experience.
3. It's going to make Cryptic less money. They have an opportunity to force people to buy entirely new T5 ships, and people are going to be completely cool with that, and they aren't going to take it!?!??! Why?
4. There would be no excuse to not have T5 Constitutions, Mirandas, Oberths, or D-7s. When a Romulan Farmer can pilot the pride of a nation, there's really no excuse anymore.
5. Now Feds and Klinks are going to want each others ships. And is that a can you really want to open? I wouldn't
6. Besides, those new Romulan ships look super kickass. Why would you even want us to fly anything else?
Everything else looks so good. I don't want this to ruin it all. And it would.
I just think that Cryptic is painting themselves into a very unpleasant corner with this.
1. It makes the Federation and Klingons less unique. It really does. Most of the game takes place in space with your ship. They're the biggest part of the game, and one of it's largest draws. This is why you aren't letting Feds and Klinks fly each others ships, so I really question the reasoning behind it.
2. It makes the Romulans less unique. I've already spent dozens of weekends and hundreds of hours with the other two kinds of ships. Doesn't seem like a good idea when the whole point of a new faction is a "new" experience.
3. It's going to make Cryptic less money. They have an opportunity to force people to buy entirely new T5 ships, and people are going to be completely cool with that, and they aren't going to take it!?!??! Why?
4. There would be no excuse to not have T5 Constitutions, Mirandas, Oberths, or D-7s. When a Romulan Farmer can pilot the pride of a nation, there's really no excuse anymore.
5. Now Feds and Klinks are going to want each others ships. And is that a can you really want to open? I wouldn't
6. Besides, those new Romulan ships look super kickass. Why would you even want us to fly anything else?
Everything else looks so good. I don't want this to ruin it all. And it would.
Post edited by centersolace on
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I don't entirely agree that this is a hypocritical move. Romulans in either faction are somewhat operating as exchange officers. While yes you can have a Romulan commanding a Galaxy class, it is still effectively in the service of the Federation. I do not think that this waters down the Federation or the KDF, but serves as an excuse to water down the Romulans before the launch.
Already the Romulans do not have their own DOff missions, fleet holdings, or ability to make their own fleet (including KDF or Fed 'allied' Romulans alike). This is not a "full" faction, but rather a Romulan sub faction that can be created within either the Federation or KDF equally. At the end of the day, you are either in the Federation or KDF, but have a couple more options.
Lock Boxes: The true value - (thread link)
Jem'Hadar Bug Odds - (thread link)
Galor Creation Rate - (thread link)
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And I'm no Farmer, I just happen to retire on a farmer planet to get away from stuff.
I'm not sure where the medium is between having Romulans in a fleet of another faction so that it is rewarding for them, but still allows factions to remain unique.
Obviously, lockbox ships are a big part of it all, but what would be a reasonable limitation that still promotes Romulan membership? Only access to fleet level ships, but not zen ships?(Meaning: No Romulans cruising around in a Vesta or Kar'fi, for example.)
Just about any other non-Fed/KDF species could be introduced in this manner, and it wouldn't be as much of a stretch.
As far as I know, they're setting themselves up to release a series of playable races, so rather than painting themselves in a corner, from a design perspective they're actually extricating themselves from one, namely the messy state of the back end of all content.
Like I said, the issue is that this particular group could have been more than a tired freedom fighter story, but I know it was only chosen because it's a fan favorite and focuses on one of Cryptic's more developed story arcs.
I'm less concerned about Fed/KDF players flying Romulan ships, or even Romulans flying Fed/KDF ships, than I am about the missed opportunity to bring one of the IPs better and more iconic factions to life.
I'd rather give them access to zen ships than fleet ships. From the cover story Cryptic is developing, giving them fleet ships makes more sense, but the impact of giving them zen ships would be much less severe. Fewer non-Romulan options would lead more Romulan players to stick with Romulan vessels; fleet ships, on the other hand, cover just about every possible configuration, including many configurations which may be more effective than what the Romulan vessels offer, or at least the initial offering of non-lock box Romulan vessels.
For pretty much all the reasons you described honestly.
I mean, I fully intend on seeing plenty of D'koras, Galors, Bugs, etc on Romulan toons, that won't be a surprise.
But having the Romulans access to the ships is just a bit much. It lessens the other two factions, and gives Romulans WAY more options than the two previous ones.
Now, giving them access to their own ships entirely, including their own Fleet ships is ok. And also if they had just be given the CONSOLES only of lower tier ships (if you buy them or open console boxes), that would be ok as well.
Like for example, Plasmonic Leech. Giving them access to the ship feels a bit much, but just the console (which is what a good portion of people want anyways), would be a bit more reasonable. In other wards, technology trading feels better than suddenly giving them access to any ship that the Feds and KDF have access to.
On the other...it does kind of make any previous purchases more worthwhile (outside of single-character unlocks). All those lower tier ships you might already own or thought about getting, are gonna get more mileage because you'll have Romulans to level up. Knowing what I know now, I don't regret buying stuff like the Scourge Destroyer, or the B'rel, etc.
I'm in total agreement that the way Cryptic is doing this feels wrong and misguided, Romulan freedom fighters? WTF Cryptic??!! Even us non Romulan fans are not pleased.
But I completely see how they arrived at doing it this way, they want to make more money.
However now, proving that this dev team cannot please anybody no matter what they do, everyone is screaming bloody murder.
You can't tell me that all of you same people wouldn't have raged if you DIDN'T have access you the ships you already paid for, or demanded some kind of refund or zen bonus, since you won't be needing them anymore.
However I can see a problem coming from this system. It will effectively make both KDF and FED obsolete, especially in the cruiser department. KDF pop has always been low because they haven't had the same content and to be honest, most people couldn't be bothered to restart a new char once they hit 20 to make a KDF char now. Feds have more ships, KDF has better ships, but I am sure most people will debate that.
Romulans sound like they will have much better ships that fed, and maybe on par with KDF, without the issue of low pop.
So given the choice of being able to play KDF for the better ships, or Fed for the more iconic/more variety of ships, AND have access to your own, new and improved (still waiting to see stats) ships? It is the best of both worlds with virtually no downside to play as a Romulan, aside from having to start over, but after a few months, that won't be an issue.
If it's in the "service of the Federation" then the Romulans are just that -- a Federation door mat .
If it's not in the service of the Federation then the Federation are arms merchants -- no better then Quark's 'cusin Gaila' and his associates (see the DS9 ep "Business as Usual" for more details) .
Either way , once you level up as a Romulan and start doing "Starbase Defense" missions for your Masters , you'll find that sooner rather then later you will be killing A LOT of your 'other' allies .
Meaning that if you've allied with the Feds , you will be killing Klingons (to whom you're also allied per D'Tans double play) .
This is a situation where you have to swallow a lot to believe the 'story' that Cryptic is offering -- but that's the price to pay when you're playing Romulan Super Friends !
So this is once again about the Cryptic sacrificial slab in the name of "the new players" .
Before , I had my beloved STF's sacrificed (both the butchered story and the extended quest/game play) .
Now it's the very integrity of the two major powers (KDF/Federation) .
Oh you KNOW they will absolutely go there ... .
Let people do what they want to do with their time and money. If you dont want to fly a fed or KDF ship on your character then don't. Go fly Romulan ships only and be happy.
If people want to fly fed ships on their Romulan characters then let them. how does it affect you? as the Romulans are aligned with either the Feds or the KDF is makes no difference to end game what the next player is flying.
so player A is a Fed in a Fed ship, or a Romulan in a Fed ship. As a klingon player you are still going to shoot it down with or without player B being your partner in a KDF ship or a Romulan ship.
Its not going to make a blind bit of difference to you. If the romulans were a 100% unique faction with their own pvp/endgame then it would matter, but they are not.
I dont think its going to cost them money either, people will buy these new cool ships because people always buy cool new ships, no matter what they are currently flying. If this is such a big issue that people hate it so much then no one will fly the others ships anyway. the fact people might quite like to play their feds or KDF ships means they dont have a problem with it, and might just very well go buy the next fed or kdf ship that comes out instead.
And the bit about the romulan farmers suddenly means we can have tier 5 connies does not even make sense. You are a survivor that is now living on a farming colony. your profession has not always been a farmer.
Nothing is going to be ruined for your experience. You can do whatever you want.
Did people ask for a refund when they rolled KDF characters after reaching level 25 as a Fed? Why would this be any different?
Think five metric yonks from now. Imagine, after those five metric yonks, they add a Cardassian faction using the Romulan Republic template. Now we see that adding a Romulan faction and a Romulan lockbox afterwards is just the Cardassian template in reverse.
Makes a lot more sense to me, to sell old ships rather than build 10-15 new ones.
(Which is the same move we thought/think they are doing with story missions, recycled content)
If we assume new people are coming in just to play romulan why wouldn't you open sales up to them?
Isn't buying new ships, c-store items and lockboxes what keeps the game running?
Honestly? Yes it makes more sense to have fewer ships than to bastardise the Romulan 'fraction' with Fed/KDF ships. Nobody was expecting to be able to fly other faction ships because there isn't precedent for it. Feds haven't been asking for Vorchas!
The best solution is obvious; grant the consoles only, not the ships! And hey, why not them all cross-faction. Buy a KDF ship from the C-Store and get the console (except for shipbound ones) on your Fed or Rom. Everyone would have been happy with that, and chances are it would have still bumped sales.
Because that's the only way sales will add up.
You supposedly have a group of new people coming into the game to play romulan. Once they get their 3rd of 4th ship, the last one, then what?
Well, then they going to buy c-store or fleet ships which just so happens to not cost anything since it's reused content.
It's actually a great oppertunity to sell some of those old kling ships they said never turned a profit. Versus building 10 new ones that might not sell.
To me we are way past any of this making any sense on any level so it's basically down to cryptic making money or not, is what is left to hope for.
They were certainly selling consoles for 500-2000 zen before because of the leveling speed. It's not like they can't use the ships with their KDF/Federation alts.
The Romulans are already being mutilated in order to appeal to the widest possible audience, making them freedom fighters based off of the Bajorans of all things. They have even outright stated in the devlogs that the Romulan faction is designed for mass appeal:
"One of our primary goals with Legacy of Romulus is to attract players that have either never played Star Trek Online or that only played at launch...our messaging is focusing attention on the Romulan story because it?s entirely new and exciting for Star Trek fans no matter what faction you?re interested in playing."
My guess is that the infamous 'Only 18% play Klingon' thing is coming back to bite (Romulan) players in the butt. Cryptic made a decent attempt at making the Klingons feel different from the Federation by acknowledging a lot of the violent and nasty stuff they did. They obviously weren't mainstream enough, because not as many players go for KDF (there are other issues at hand here too, of course) so when it came time to make a Romulan faction, they made it as blandly appealing to the general public as possible.
Consider, if the Klingons were already somewhat unpalpatable for many folks, what would be the case with the Romulans? Obviously this thoguht went through their heads while planning the Romulan Republic, so they decided to make them a 'good guy' faction-perhaps even moreso than the KDF storyline.
Meanwhile, they gave them access to KDF and FED bases and ships to attract existing players, since this would basically allow them to use all of their FED/KDF resources (zen ships, fleet bases, etc) with their new characters. In this way they could 'double dip' fed/kdf content with the Romulans. Less work than a full faction implementation, while basically danglign the promise of Fedration and KDF 'Premium characters'.
The ships are just another level of this double dipping. Cryptic has made the Romulans have access to basically all content of their allies-there really is no good reason game-mechanicwise for not making a Romulan character, and they have been sufficiently bleached of all Romulan character to not drive away players who might otherwise be squeemish with the Romualn way of life. They can effectively send players through a second wave of Federation/KDF grind doing this, and they can justify selling Romulan ships to what are effectively Federation/KDF players this way as well.
This is such a blatent money grab, IMO, it's shameful.
While I hadn't read it like that, it would certainly make sense. It is completely watering down and neutralising what should be another unique faction, ensuring that they'll grab as many players as possible, and avoiding the '18%' dilemma at the sacrifice of a true faction.
I hope, down the road, things might be shifted, in mmos nothing is permanent. And things may be restructured later.
- Seeing Romulans (or Hirogen in the future) on Quonos / EDS without a major comprehensive peace accord is going to break my immersion .
- Knowing that the Romulans will defend Fed/KDF starbases , and in doing to will be killing their own (NPC) allies (enmasse) will break my immersion + cause me to further distrust Romulans (they are after all killing their allies with the ships that we (Fed/KDF supplied them) . That's just screams 'trustworthy' there .
- The Feds are not arms merchants . (the thought of it breaks my immersion)
- The KDF who want to de-fang the Rommies would not do that by supplying them with their latest weapons .
The above ruins my experience .
The thought that any other new faction would also be represented in this half baked manner has me worried .
And the fact that we get pressured into "this is the only way you'll play Romulans kiddies" -- well that fills me with revulsion .
Now you may not care about my immersion and that's fine , but I'm not asking you to make this game for me .
Some could be more difficult, such as fleets (and somehow I can't imagine Cryptic making Romulan-only fleets anytime soon, considering that would require either rewriting all of the special projects to have a romulan equivalent or not having special 200,000 dilithium projects at all-lot of money lost for cryptic, also it would require them to change the embassy (since having an embasy to yourself would make little sense)
Giving Romulans access to FED/KDF ships and doffs are thigns that cannto be changed at this point, or are highly unlikely, IMO. A lot of Rommies will no doubt have a few fed/kdf ships, since they can freely buy them with no restricions, restricting players to romulan ships after this has been implemented would be a huge slap in the face of those players, who would have consoles, loadouts, shisp etc whihc they had invested in suddenly all useless. ditto for doffs, this is why Cryptic will never do that.
Additionally, there is of course the 'bleaching' of all 'evil' traits from the faction for mass appeal. This is so extensive, and used to justify basically all of their other questionable decisions, so it will never happen that they will change that, because it woudl require scrapping all their work up to this point.
I think it makes sense, from what I've seen the Romulan toons we'll be playing are from some back water colony separate from both the old empire and the new republic. It makes perfect sense to me that one of these people would align themselves to a more established faction after the events of the content we'll play through.
Besides, if the Romlans turn out to be popular enough what's to say they won't be made into a full faction in the future? For now they need to make sure the expansion is successful, so it needs to appeal to a wide audience and it needs to have as few barriers as possible.
I don't think anyone wants a repeat of the KDF.
Understand, i really enjoy STO, my favorite game and really only game im playing atm. However to reach this point i have to play this game as not necessarily Star Trek, but as a space mmo with a trek feel and similarities. With that i can enjoy this game, immersion started to pull away from the station with being a foot soldier admiral amongst many. It continued out the station with lockbox time ships and so on, all of which i enjoy and play with by the way.
This leads me to the end of this post, i see how this paves the way for future factions. And get this, its in part to keep with the "type" of immersion that has already begun. Now when they introduce the Ferengi, Cardassian and Dominion no one balks at allies in ships of theirs.
I don't expect them to add Tholian or Breen factions ever and we only have one Cardassian lockbox ship. Also people did complain about it back then and I'd say it isn't even comparable to having every single faction ship available for others. I would have no problems with Romulans having access to D7 for example.
I'm not holding my breath.
Hence why we are seeing them cut so many corners with these "Romulans".
The Romulans have never had that many ships appear in canon, so that means that filling out an entire roster would require a lot of brand new ones created by the devs. A process that takes time and money, and ultimately has to get approval by CBS at multiple points along the way.
Letting the romulans raid the roster of existing Federation and Klingon ships on the other hand allows them to pad the roster without having to invest as much time and money.
This same formula applies to consoles, doffs, weapons, and fleet assets.
As time passes we will probably see more things added here and there to flesh out this new faction, and it might eventually grow into something more self supporting.
Agreed. How did finishing the DOff system with CXP rewards for all categories and tiers go? How about the first officer system? What about flagging assets for use in the Foundery (there is a massive backlog of assets not flagged yet due to lazyness)?
Cryptic is the king of starting things and not finishing. That's why the start is of critical importance.
Lock Boxes: The true value - (thread link)
Jem'Hadar Bug Odds - (thread link)
Galor Creation Rate - (thread link)
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That's the thing, in all MMOs you need to effectively ignore other players when it comes to the story. There aren't a zillion rescues of the Azura, or thousands of uber-dragons killed, just one. So in that sense, everything is 'exceptional' - even if it looks odd.
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Starfleet also takes ships from anywhere - Federation members like Earth and Andoria; interstellar rivals like the Breen and Jem'Hadar; even the Terran Empire of the Mirror Universe. No problem.
Now, in canon, the Romulan Empire has been effectively destroyed, between the ruins of ch'Rihan, the capture of Praetor Taris, and the disappearance of Empress Sela (and yes, she seems to be coming back - but after that absence, how many Romulans are going to believe it's really Sela, not some Undine impersonator?). A new Republic is being born on Mol'Rihan. And both Starfleet and the KDF are recognizing that the emergent threats of the Undine and Iconians call for alliances that were once unthinkable (particularly given past ties between the RSE and the House of Duras). So, why shouldn't an ambitious young Rihannsu consider joining the fleet of a former rival in order to secure his/her people and satisfy mnhei'sahe? And why is that less acceptable than a Gorn Admiral in the KDF? Or a female Orion commanding a Bortasqu'-class war cruiser?
Is someone arguing against that? People have already made hundreds of 'Romulan' (alien) KDF/Fed captains.