test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
The Gronyard speaks! KDF now..
oldkhemaraa
Member Posts: 1,039 Arc User
No new uniforms. Not surprising. No new hair... If you play klingon you have 5 hair styles to choose from.. thats it. Orion's get the best selection, but do not get access to any of the new hair styles. And someone mentioned the Vet uniform parts may not be working on new characters.
Cryptic studio's shown this utterly amazing ability to pay attention too, and yet ignore 20% of thier player base all at the same time. If cryptic had spent the first year developing the KDF (as was originally promised/implied) instead of putting it off for three years we wouldn't have this mess. Honestly there is no other MMO out there quite like STO. And there is a reason for this.
Unfortunatly most of the players are Fed centric and Trek fans, not gamers. (no insult intended or implied Trek fans, and Fed players.) For many STO is thier very very first MMO. (still, even after 3 1/2 years). The curtain of neglect other then a few driblets tossed in from the wings to the KDF has only just now been lifted. It is as of yet an incomplete job.
I hope more will be added to the KDF, but the studio has far froma sterling track record in that department. In my opinion STO is deeply, basicly flawed. I feel the only way Cryptic studio's can possibly correct any of this is to just continue pumping a few goodies into the game every 3 to 4 months (to keep the money flow going.. it aint free ya know) while starting work on a brand new STO 2.0 starting over from a clean slate with the only thing carried over from the current game being artwork. The Likelyhood of this happening is pretty small though.
There is a great deal with this expansion to like, But the KDF faction STILL needs more work done. Most of it is little stuff. But there is an awefull lot of it, that little stuff. It should have all been done when the game was subscription based. But the game went hybrid free to play. SO we're left with development dollars going to provide goodies to the portion of the player base where most of the money come from, And that is not the KDF faction. Oh, if could have been a greater portion of the player base, IF the time and effort had been spent in the first year after release.
3 1/2 years later.. I now play STO when I'm utterly boored out of my skull. I have a LTM and I really don't recall the last time I actually spent any money of my own at the Zen store. I'm sure I have in the last year, but as a KDF player theres just no real reason to play. End game? Gear Chase? PvP? End game is PvE, the gear is more bother then its worth, and end game PvP is a joke if you play KDF. You can spend hours waiting for red v blue match. End game PvP died for KDF when same faction PvP was introduced. A whole bunch of KDF players just gave up and let thier accounts lapse when that happen, or simply stopped playing. I never have figured that out. Why would this studio appease a fraction of the player of it's largest faction and leave it other faction which was pretty much stack as ONLY PvP hung out to dry?
So, we have the here and now. KDF has recieved much needed content and I can only hope that it not to little, to late. And lets be clear. The only thing thats been done is right in the patch notes. Tutorial (nice tutorial, very klingon), some additional missions, restructuring of the mission flow through the PvE content. Editing/tweaking of some old missions so they make a bit more sense from the KDF viewpoint, and ships added back in that we used to have anyway. No New Art in the form of uniforms and character appearance. No actuall new ships. None of the filler material and crome that bring the characters to life. The little shiney bits, like uniform and clothing, hairstyles etc.
The studio has obviously no problem now with tapping once KDF exclusive items and handing them to the fed players, (yes there is some reverse flow) but the KDF faction still has yet to see a KLINGON science ship.
I suppose I should be happy. But I'm not. No new factions added untill the KDF is finished we were told. Well, I'm the customer, and I say the KDF IS NOT COMPLETE. A nasty angry part of me looks at cryptic studio and see's just another bunch of suits and ties looking to make a quick buck at minimal cost off of Trek Fandom with yet another rushed, chintzy product.
Whats most boggles me is some of the things that have been done that are amazing. The TOS enterprise interior, the Defiant interior, some of the bridges are amazing, Yet do we have a classic D-7 interior? For that matter are any of the KDF bridges accurate to the series? Not really, no. The art team seems to be stuck in Star Trek the Motion Picture (where to hide the flaws in the sets they turned on the fog machines for the view of the Klingon bridge. this foolishness was slightly repeated in Search for Spock. In next gen anywhere you saw this happening was just a soft focus to bring the fore ground out. In Enterprise it was done aboard the Klingon raptor which was a DAMAGED ship trapped in the reducing atmosphere of a bloody gas giant.... Loose the crappy lighting and fog effects will ya?)
and the list goes on and on and on.
And if I didn't care, I would not post. But I do care, and I want to see it done RIGHT, within the limitations of the tools at hand.
This has been a step in the right direction, but its only been really a single step. Hopefully the studio will follow up with more. But I wonder if its going to be yet another 3 1/2 year wait and the introduction of another faction before it happens. I am relitivly certain that the new additions will being more KDF players into the game, but at the same time the flaws and omissions ensure that a goodly portion of those new KDF players wont stay for more then a few months especially when they run up against a bug and then find out the bug has been in game unfixed for years!
PvP content may generate excitement and buzz, but its PvE content that keeps the customer coming back. Thats why WOW is a 26 GB install and A. I.O.N. is a 21 GB install, and the other big MMO's are of a like size... all that PvE content. By comparison STO is a measly little 9.4 GB (thats the launcher and everything on a new clean install). The UGC stuff is wonderfull and grand, but a part of me has some real issues with it. Players create content for your game, that makes it much more interesting and.. to do so they much have a subscription???? You charge them for making content FOR YOU????
Honestly I gotta wonder. Another Cryptic product, Neverwinter does much the same as far as UGC goes. Never winter is not Trek though. Its built apon an aging paper and pencil RPG system thats been around since the 1980's. And it is competition with a great many well established MMO in the fantasy genre. It's also got to compeate against stand alone games like Skyrim. I don't think it going to get anywhere near the draw it needs to be a big money maker. I could be wrong but its got a tremendous amount of competition in the genre compared to STO. which admittadly really doesn't have that much that might actually draw away its user base (though Carbine studio's may have something to say about that..Wildstar anyone?, and Chris Roberts Star Citizen with most likely make a tremendous impact when it launches, and which I will play.)
There is a "promise" hanging in the wind still about "Season 8" having KDF development, but the KDF player base has heard this several times before. If the past track record of Cryptic is to be gone by this will be a whole bunch of C-store added crome which may or may not be for the KDF, and 1 to 3 (one, singlar, Uno) missions, which will be a very good missions, but still, one to three missions.
I am very very pleased to see the KDF content, but it is not yet sufficient. There is still a bunch of bug fixing to be done with KDF related issues. and still much room for VAC, and filler.
My favorite MMO is a Korean product where the Dev rarely if ever pay any attention to what the american and euro players have to say (or at least they don't seem to) yet its head and sholders better the STO for both PvE and PvP content. Every year they have added significantly to thier product, advancing the story line, and the history of the game world. In comparison STO has been stuck in the year 2409 for 3 1/2 years.... The story has NOT advanced, and there are holes in the story line you could drive a fleet through and not touch the edges of. This sort of annual expansion is done by the majority of the big MMO's out there. But not STO.
Now, I can all ready hear that "It's not the Cryptic way". Ok, sure. But I'm in my 50's and I was a gamer long before computer games came along. Thats why the title of the post starts with "The Gronyard speaks" Decades of gameing. Decades of seeing what works and what doesn't work. What I see is this studio trolling a bright shiney lure in front of it's players, and baiting the hook with extensive hype. What I see is in 40 hours of play you can scoot right to the level cap and burn though the entirety of the games PvE content. In many MMO's you kind of have to grind your way to a ceratin extent through the PvE content. This slows down player progression. STO does it different. The grind begins at end game doing a the STF gear chase, or the PvE gear chase, or the reputation systems gear chase.
All of that is grind play. Every last bit of it. Like the other F2P MMO's out there, it become progressivly more difficult to get what shinies you want. It's a proven formula and it works for dozens of MMO's. In other words, its the same old same old. and... it's booring! It really is. Grind for Dilithium. Grind for various and assorted rep currencies. I ran well over a 100 STF's and was finally getting the gear I wanted to get. But then the system got changed, and I entirely gave up on STF grinding as a bad job. Rom rep, same system, different window dressing. Same with the Fleet bases. And still stuck in a time warp where the story get added to with more details but still no progression, because it's still 2409!
Deja Vu all over again (thank you Yogi!).
So, state of the KDF. Improved but not quite "There" yet. Romulan faction. Great stuff, but where is THIER story going to go next? Federation Faction... SO much content availible that they dev team could cut XP gains by 30 to 50% per mission and STILL have more content then needed to max out level progression. The Klingon Empire technically at war with the Federation. Why are they at war. The Klingons accuse the Federation in failing to honor it treaty obligation. The Federation feels the Empire acted hastily and with out due regard. Both are right, and the treaty is righty abrogated. Who's bright idea was it to go to war though and why? That a chancellor of the Klingon empire could be so phenominally stupid and short sighted boggles the mind, especially with Worf still allive! The Chancellor should have had a fatal "accident" by now! Oh wait never mind.. were in that time warp again and it's still 2409!
Meanwhile out in the real world..3 1/2 years have passed.
"DO the Klingon Players want the KDF to be the horde in space?" (Daniel Stahl)
the newest WOW expansion has a civil war going in within the Horde to toss Garosh Hellscream out on his ear for being a sabre rattling war mongering tyrant and not a fit leader for the horde. SOund like a good idea.. let advance to 2410 and have a Klingon civil war!
Khemaraa Iron Hand sends
(Pay no attention to the player joined date. I've been here since the game launched.)
Cryptic studio's shown this utterly amazing ability to pay attention too, and yet ignore 20% of thier player base all at the same time. If cryptic had spent the first year developing the KDF (as was originally promised/implied) instead of putting it off for three years we wouldn't have this mess. Honestly there is no other MMO out there quite like STO. And there is a reason for this.
Unfortunatly most of the players are Fed centric and Trek fans, not gamers. (no insult intended or implied Trek fans, and Fed players.) For many STO is thier very very first MMO. (still, even after 3 1/2 years). The curtain of neglect other then a few driblets tossed in from the wings to the KDF has only just now been lifted. It is as of yet an incomplete job.
I hope more will be added to the KDF, but the studio has far froma sterling track record in that department. In my opinion STO is deeply, basicly flawed. I feel the only way Cryptic studio's can possibly correct any of this is to just continue pumping a few goodies into the game every 3 to 4 months (to keep the money flow going.. it aint free ya know) while starting work on a brand new STO 2.0 starting over from a clean slate with the only thing carried over from the current game being artwork. The Likelyhood of this happening is pretty small though.
There is a great deal with this expansion to like, But the KDF faction STILL needs more work done. Most of it is little stuff. But there is an awefull lot of it, that little stuff. It should have all been done when the game was subscription based. But the game went hybrid free to play. SO we're left with development dollars going to provide goodies to the portion of the player base where most of the money come from, And that is not the KDF faction. Oh, if could have been a greater portion of the player base, IF the time and effort had been spent in the first year after release.
3 1/2 years later.. I now play STO when I'm utterly boored out of my skull. I have a LTM and I really don't recall the last time I actually spent any money of my own at the Zen store. I'm sure I have in the last year, but as a KDF player theres just no real reason to play. End game? Gear Chase? PvP? End game is PvE, the gear is more bother then its worth, and end game PvP is a joke if you play KDF. You can spend hours waiting for red v blue match. End game PvP died for KDF when same faction PvP was introduced. A whole bunch of KDF players just gave up and let thier accounts lapse when that happen, or simply stopped playing. I never have figured that out. Why would this studio appease a fraction of the player of it's largest faction and leave it other faction which was pretty much stack as ONLY PvP hung out to dry?
So, we have the here and now. KDF has recieved much needed content and I can only hope that it not to little, to late. And lets be clear. The only thing thats been done is right in the patch notes. Tutorial (nice tutorial, very klingon), some additional missions, restructuring of the mission flow through the PvE content. Editing/tweaking of some old missions so they make a bit more sense from the KDF viewpoint, and ships added back in that we used to have anyway. No New Art in the form of uniforms and character appearance. No actuall new ships. None of the filler material and crome that bring the characters to life. The little shiney bits, like uniform and clothing, hairstyles etc.
The studio has obviously no problem now with tapping once KDF exclusive items and handing them to the fed players, (yes there is some reverse flow) but the KDF faction still has yet to see a KLINGON science ship.
I suppose I should be happy. But I'm not. No new factions added untill the KDF is finished we were told. Well, I'm the customer, and I say the KDF IS NOT COMPLETE. A nasty angry part of me looks at cryptic studio and see's just another bunch of suits and ties looking to make a quick buck at minimal cost off of Trek Fandom with yet another rushed, chintzy product.
Whats most boggles me is some of the things that have been done that are amazing. The TOS enterprise interior, the Defiant interior, some of the bridges are amazing, Yet do we have a classic D-7 interior? For that matter are any of the KDF bridges accurate to the series? Not really, no. The art team seems to be stuck in Star Trek the Motion Picture (where to hide the flaws in the sets they turned on the fog machines for the view of the Klingon bridge. this foolishness was slightly repeated in Search for Spock. In next gen anywhere you saw this happening was just a soft focus to bring the fore ground out. In Enterprise it was done aboard the Klingon raptor which was a DAMAGED ship trapped in the reducing atmosphere of a bloody gas giant.... Loose the crappy lighting and fog effects will ya?)
and the list goes on and on and on.
And if I didn't care, I would not post. But I do care, and I want to see it done RIGHT, within the limitations of the tools at hand.
This has been a step in the right direction, but its only been really a single step. Hopefully the studio will follow up with more. But I wonder if its going to be yet another 3 1/2 year wait and the introduction of another faction before it happens. I am relitivly certain that the new additions will being more KDF players into the game, but at the same time the flaws and omissions ensure that a goodly portion of those new KDF players wont stay for more then a few months especially when they run up against a bug and then find out the bug has been in game unfixed for years!
PvP content may generate excitement and buzz, but its PvE content that keeps the customer coming back. Thats why WOW is a 26 GB install and A. I.O.N. is a 21 GB install, and the other big MMO's are of a like size... all that PvE content. By comparison STO is a measly little 9.4 GB (thats the launcher and everything on a new clean install). The UGC stuff is wonderfull and grand, but a part of me has some real issues with it. Players create content for your game, that makes it much more interesting and.. to do so they much have a subscription???? You charge them for making content FOR YOU????
Honestly I gotta wonder. Another Cryptic product, Neverwinter does much the same as far as UGC goes. Never winter is not Trek though. Its built apon an aging paper and pencil RPG system thats been around since the 1980's. And it is competition with a great many well established MMO in the fantasy genre. It's also got to compeate against stand alone games like Skyrim. I don't think it going to get anywhere near the draw it needs to be a big money maker. I could be wrong but its got a tremendous amount of competition in the genre compared to STO. which admittadly really doesn't have that much that might actually draw away its user base (though Carbine studio's may have something to say about that..Wildstar anyone?, and Chris Roberts Star Citizen with most likely make a tremendous impact when it launches, and which I will play.)
There is a "promise" hanging in the wind still about "Season 8" having KDF development, but the KDF player base has heard this several times before. If the past track record of Cryptic is to be gone by this will be a whole bunch of C-store added crome which may or may not be for the KDF, and 1 to 3 (one, singlar, Uno) missions, which will be a very good missions, but still, one to three missions.
I am very very pleased to see the KDF content, but it is not yet sufficient. There is still a bunch of bug fixing to be done with KDF related issues. and still much room for VAC, and filler.
My favorite MMO is a Korean product where the Dev rarely if ever pay any attention to what the american and euro players have to say (or at least they don't seem to) yet its head and sholders better the STO for both PvE and PvP content. Every year they have added significantly to thier product, advancing the story line, and the history of the game world. In comparison STO has been stuck in the year 2409 for 3 1/2 years.... The story has NOT advanced, and there are holes in the story line you could drive a fleet through and not touch the edges of. This sort of annual expansion is done by the majority of the big MMO's out there. But not STO.
Now, I can all ready hear that "It's not the Cryptic way". Ok, sure. But I'm in my 50's and I was a gamer long before computer games came along. Thats why the title of the post starts with "The Gronyard speaks" Decades of gameing. Decades of seeing what works and what doesn't work. What I see is this studio trolling a bright shiney lure in front of it's players, and baiting the hook with extensive hype. What I see is in 40 hours of play you can scoot right to the level cap and burn though the entirety of the games PvE content. In many MMO's you kind of have to grind your way to a ceratin extent through the PvE content. This slows down player progression. STO does it different. The grind begins at end game doing a the STF gear chase, or the PvE gear chase, or the reputation systems gear chase.
All of that is grind play. Every last bit of it. Like the other F2P MMO's out there, it become progressivly more difficult to get what shinies you want. It's a proven formula and it works for dozens of MMO's. In other words, its the same old same old. and... it's booring! It really is. Grind for Dilithium. Grind for various and assorted rep currencies. I ran well over a 100 STF's and was finally getting the gear I wanted to get. But then the system got changed, and I entirely gave up on STF grinding as a bad job. Rom rep, same system, different window dressing. Same with the Fleet bases. And still stuck in a time warp where the story get added to with more details but still no progression, because it's still 2409!
Deja Vu all over again (thank you Yogi!).
So, state of the KDF. Improved but not quite "There" yet. Romulan faction. Great stuff, but where is THIER story going to go next? Federation Faction... SO much content availible that they dev team could cut XP gains by 30 to 50% per mission and STILL have more content then needed to max out level progression. The Klingon Empire technically at war with the Federation. Why are they at war. The Klingons accuse the Federation in failing to honor it treaty obligation. The Federation feels the Empire acted hastily and with out due regard. Both are right, and the treaty is righty abrogated. Who's bright idea was it to go to war though and why? That a chancellor of the Klingon empire could be so phenominally stupid and short sighted boggles the mind, especially with Worf still allive! The Chancellor should have had a fatal "accident" by now! Oh wait never mind.. were in that time warp again and it's still 2409!
Meanwhile out in the real world..3 1/2 years have passed.
"DO the Klingon Players want the KDF to be the horde in space?" (Daniel Stahl)
the newest WOW expansion has a civil war going in within the Horde to toss Garosh Hellscream out on his ear for being a sabre rattling war mongering tyrant and not a fit leader for the horde. SOund like a good idea.. let advance to 2410 and have a Klingon civil war!
Khemaraa Iron Hand sends
(Pay no attention to the player joined date. I've been here since the game launched.)
"I aim to misbehave" - Malcolm Reynolds
Post edited by Unknown User on
0
Comments
Though I am still surprised they haven't opened up the Worf/K'mtar/Kahless wild hairstyle. Also, I do agree that the KDF does need some new threads, especially ones that aren't locked behind the lobi store. And females need a non-spiky option for footwear.
Yes....yesyes....and Skirts...NOW!!!
Its Time for Skirts, Dammit.:)
XDD
i forgot cardassian Bones-Necklaces....i will wear this^^