There are a couple of different elements I would like to see fully blown out (with its own missions and everything). In no apparent preference order:
1. The Dominion
2. The Breen (although I like them more mysterious)
3. Mirror Federation
4. Section 31
5. The Mysterious Bunny People
As for 5, they have to exist. I know it because I keep seeing them. Everywhere!
Fleet Admiral Duane Gundrum, U.S.S. Merrimack
Fleet Admiral Ventaxa Proxmire, U.S.S. Shaka Walls Fell
Blog: http://www.sarbonn.com/?page_id=1990
Foundry series: Bob From Accounting & For the Sake of the Empire
I think it is a bit of a problematic issue defining a faction.
Obviously if we are going conventionaly there are several obvious contenders: Cardassians, Ferengi, Dominion, Delta Alliance, etc. but what I'd be more interested in seeing is alternate forms of existing factions.
Might sound a bit odd, but at the moment when you create a character, there's three factions to choose from, but in-game storywise, there are effectively two mid-game, then one at end-game. All in all there are four alternate ways to progress through the game: Federation, Klingon, Fed Romulan or Klingon Romulan. While it might be a bit more awkward to come up with other ideas, I'd be interested to see if a new storyline could be added in running parallel with the existing storyline (with some missions copied over obviously).
By doing things like this it could create an incentive to play through the game again and obviously buy more character slots (hint hint Cryptic).
Let's just say for example such a story progression was added for say levels 20-40, that's going from four progression routes up to eight if it applied to all four existing routes, and over time more and more alternate routes would build up over time depending on what the player wanted to do. I'm sure many players would like to see their actions having consequences, this could be a way to implement this in game.
First off, if they were to do any other faction, I'd want them to make a complete faction, with their own unique PvE story missions, ships, uniforms, casual clothing, bases.. Everything, not the half-faction that the KDF started out as and the Romulans are.
That being said.. ..Obviously the True Way Cardassians are the only logical answer, there's already a built in plethora of ships (Cardassian & Dominion), species (Cardassians, Bajoran+Cardassian Halfbreeds, Jem'Hadar, Vorta) and storyline conflict with all the other factions already in the game..
I've long been a proponent of heating up the war that is the core story of the game, yes the Iconians, the Undine, & the Fek'Ihri are all interesting opponents, and their moves behind the scenes started and propogate the war, but the Federation, the Empire, and the Tal Shiar are in an active war, and we should have a frontline part in fighting it, we should get to fight in the real war, the big battles with fleets of ships tearing each other asunder.. Give us reasons to use predominantly PvP Tactics like the Tachyon Detection Grid with huge fleets of NPCs, give us ground battles where you & your Boffs operate alongside ground forces of your factions to take and hold territory. Give us missions in shuttles fighting for air superiority over a raging battle on the ground and under a sky lit by phaser & disruptor fire..
Give us missions where we're fighting the war, all these special tertiary missions feel.. underwhelming. Any new faction or further work on an independent Romulan Faction should concentrate on the actual war.
Original Join Date: January 2010. Ragequit Date: January 7th 2012. Return Date: October 23rd 2014.
I realy think the romulan faction was well dun. unless you mean the options for ships is half-assed, most people would agree, but they also say the same for the Klingons. but overall you would have to agree that the story ark for the romulans was well dun.
The Roms never being a truly independent faction and merely a Fed v2.0 *sub*faction was an irritating thing for me. Taking what was depicted of the Romulans from TOS, TNG, DS9 / Dominion War and making them Epohh licking hippies was a major issue to me.
Limited ship selection? I'm primarily KDF, so I've long dealt with a more limited ship selection compared to Feds.
I'm one of those guys that expected a Romulan Star Empire faction, completely independent shipyards, ship list, starbases, a Romulan focused POV and storyline and not Fed v2.0 storyline (at least the Klingon missions are distinctly Klingon in flavor and more believable to the Star Trek shows to what the Klingons did). I expected a Romulan faction that stood on its own and not kneel to either the Klingons or Federation for table scraps. I expected a Romulan faction that, despite the loss of Romulus, would be defiant and angry enough to remind the Federation and Klingons that, "Hey mother****ers, we still have a pretty strong military" and put the other 2 powers in check, and show no sign of weakness despite Romulus' loss, and not allow the Romulan Star Empire's standing to be subservient to their rivals.
Another vote for some kind of privateer/merc faction.
For 2 reasons really, one, could be incorperated into current content, ie work on behalf of fed, kdf, rom etc and two, try to give a somewhat neutral narrative on the game.
I'm one of those guys that expected a Romulan Star Empire faction, completely independent shipyards, ship list, starbases, a Romulan focused POV and storyline and not Fed v2.0 storyline (at least the Klingon missions are distinctly Klingon in flavor and more believable to the Star Trek shows to what the Klingons did). I expected a Romulan faction that stood on its own and not kneel to either the Klingons or Federation for table scraps. I expected a Romulan faction that, despite the loss of Romulus, would be defiant and angry enough to remind the Federation and Klingons that, "Hey mother****ers, we still have a pretty strong military" and put the other 2 powers in check, and show no sign of weakness despite Romulus' loss, and not allow the Romulan Star Empire's standing to be subservient to their rivals.
This is a definite problem, and not one they seem keen on fixing.
I can understand why they did what they did, but I feel that the game would definitely be enhanced if the Romulans had a third option to defect to the Tal Shiar at level 10 instead of working alongside the Feds or Klingons. Even if the ship options end up "limited" to Romulan-only ships it certainly wouldn't be the end of the world as I'm sure most Romulan players would be happy enough just to get a Star Empire alternate storyline within the Romulan faction. Might make things awkward to explain why they have gone to the Delta Quadrant and such, but that's something the writers can build on.
And if it can work for the Romulans when it comes time to add in the Cardassians then a similar multi-storyline option could be implemented (going with the True Way or with one of the other powers). It could also help out the Mercenary faction being mentioned above, or help the more greedy Starfleet Captains run off to the Ferengi Alliance for some profit making.
I can see a Cardassian subfaction working, made viable by the inclusion of AQ Jem'hadar and Vorta. Given the cooperative nature of the current game it would probably need to be the Union and not the True Way, but we've seen early steps towards this with the more active Cardassian presence in recent FEs.
The Dominion per se are just too big and powerful; they need to stay as potential adversaries. The Tholians, again too alien and too well placed as villains.
Other races... frankly none of the DQ races are well fleshed out enough. A faction needs enough recognition factor to avoid being seen as mary sues, and only the Cardassians have that.
It could work, as well. Start the story with the Cardassian Union coming off the fence, with the Feds / Klingons accepting their rearmament in view of the current level of threat from the Borg, Undine, Iconians, Voth etc. A good parallel would be the rearmament of West Germany in the 1950s - the western allies overcame their fears of resurgent German militarism in the face of the perceived Soviet threat. The player then starts as an officer in the newly recomissioned Cardassian military. The initial storyline could then cover a showdown with the True Way - bring back Odo and have him used as the catalyst for large numbers of True Way Jem'hadar and Vorta to switch to the Union, justifying their presence as PCs / BOffs / DOffs. Finally have the PC allocated to supporting either Starfleet or KDF operations along the demi-faction model.
Shipwise, with T6 you could justify introducing Jem'Hadar and Cardassian ships that were better than the (supposedly obsolescent) Galor and JHAS.
Eh. I would not so much as have the Dominion as adversaries with Odo joining the link and sharing his experiences with the other founders. I wouldn't exactly rely on them as allies either.
That said...
When they do open up the Gamma Quadrant to us.....
I can understand why they did what they did, but I feel that the game would definitely be enhanced if the Romulans had a third option to defect to the Tal Shiar at level 10 instead of working alongside the Feds or Klingons.
Umm no... just hell no... The Tal Shiar and their terrible 2D Villain-ness might be amusing for 30min or so but... NO
Support the Romulan Star Empire? Hell yes! Support the terrible caricature of the RSE with Sela at the helm and the aforementioned Tal Shiar rubbing their nuts in yer face 24/7? No thx.
Tho I might support the existing terrible RSE joke if it involves a cut scene where I eject Tovan out an airlock for whining about joining the people that attacked Virinat.... That could be worth it by itself.
If I were to make a new faction, it would not be a single species faction. I would make:
Non-allied / Alien Faction / Renegade
to finally give all those non factional ships a home and all those players who wish to be independent and play characters and "careers" not possible when forced to be allied with a faction.
This Idea would even work as a mini faction.
Non-allied / Alien Faction / Renegade
Have there own starbases and "hideouts" scattered across the galaxy.
Start as a cadet in any faction then at some level, maybe 30, you would have the option to choose to resign and become independent (similar to the Romulan choose faction mechanic). Then your character would follow the new "renegade" storyline till you hit level 50.
New "Renegade" storyline from level 30 to 50
This Faction limited to non faction ships, Mirror and lower level (40 and below) factional ships.
The Dominion or True way would be my second option. As much as people don't seem to like it I would love a playable Borg faction. The Borg are my favorite. I am a lifer and I wouldn't care about "loosing" my special Borg characters at all. Big difference between freed drones and playing the Borg. I would prefer collective over coop. I understand the issues with that but to truly be Borg and assimilate is what its about. You could start as a drone trying to assimilated a Fed/KDF/ROM (or any random ship)(You choose). That ship would then be your ship. Assimilate your BOFFS to make them join. Don't buy a new ship but assimilate a new one. Can move through a couple assimilated ships then go to a probe, sphere, then cube. If they made it truly Borg it would be awesome. (Yes I know it would be hard) But I would be ok with the Coop. I just want to assimilate and fly Borg shipping looking for perfection.
OK if you were to design your own faction what would it be and why.
would it be a canon star trek species/alliance or would you want to make your own.
BORG (cooperative) (collective)
DR alliance (iconion) (Kazon) (talaxian/ocamper) (vaadwaur) (vidiians) (benthan) (voth)
GAMMA (dominion)
I would like to see a Gamma Quadrant faction. one of my favorite story arks was the dominion (second wave) to (boldly they rode)
its already basic knowledge the dominion conquer others and incorporate or eliminate others as needed. so you already have several character options. from a changeling/founder, Jem'hadar, Vorta, (? the trueway so Cardassians and bajorans ? maybe ?) dosi, Karemma, and a few others I cant remember.
the only problem I could see would be the Jem'hadar ships as people may be upset that you had to work hard or pay to get the with any other characters.
I want my Vorta toon, so Dominion is the way to go. Then I can spend months grinding it up to lvl 60 plus!
Tho I might support the existing terrible RSE joke if it involves a cut scene where I eject Tovan out an airlock for whining about joining the people that attacked Virinat.... That could be worth it by itself.
Given that the problems arise from the fact he's tied into the Fed/Klingon story for the Romulans that would be an option as they could create a new storyline without Tovan Khev (or even better, you personally killing him).
Comments
1. The Dominion
2. The Breen (although I like them more mysterious)
3. Mirror Federation
4. Section 31
5. The Mysterious Bunny People
As for 5, they have to exist. I know it because I keep seeing them. Everywhere!
Fleet Admiral Ventaxa Proxmire, U.S.S. Shaka Walls Fell
Blog: http://www.sarbonn.com/?page_id=1990
Foundry series: Bob From Accounting & For the Sake of the Empire
Obviously if we are going conventionaly there are several obvious contenders: Cardassians, Ferengi, Dominion, Delta Alliance, etc. but what I'd be more interested in seeing is alternate forms of existing factions.
Might sound a bit odd, but at the moment when you create a character, there's three factions to choose from, but in-game storywise, there are effectively two mid-game, then one at end-game. All in all there are four alternate ways to progress through the game: Federation, Klingon, Fed Romulan or Klingon Romulan. While it might be a bit more awkward to come up with other ideas, I'd be interested to see if a new storyline could be added in running parallel with the existing storyline (with some missions copied over obviously).
By doing things like this it could create an incentive to play through the game again and obviously buy more character slots (hint hint Cryptic).
Let's just say for example such a story progression was added for say levels 20-40, that's going from four progression routes up to eight if it applied to all four existing routes, and over time more and more alternate routes would build up over time depending on what the player wanted to do. I'm sure many players would like to see their actions having consequences, this could be a way to implement this in game.
That being said.. ..Obviously the True Way Cardassians are the only logical answer, there's already a built in plethora of ships (Cardassian & Dominion), species (Cardassians, Bajoran+Cardassian Halfbreeds, Jem'Hadar, Vorta) and storyline conflict with all the other factions already in the game..
I've long been a proponent of heating up the war that is the core story of the game, yes the Iconians, the Undine, & the Fek'Ihri are all interesting opponents, and their moves behind the scenes started and propogate the war, but the Federation, the Empire, and the Tal Shiar are in an active war, and we should have a frontline part in fighting it, we should get to fight in the real war, the big battles with fleets of ships tearing each other asunder.. Give us reasons to use predominantly PvP Tactics like the Tachyon Detection Grid with huge fleets of NPCs, give us ground battles where you & your Boffs operate alongside ground forces of your factions to take and hold territory. Give us missions in shuttles fighting for air superiority over a raging battle on the ground and under a sky lit by phaser & disruptor fire..
Give us missions where we're fighting the war, all these special tertiary missions feel.. underwhelming. Any new faction or further work on an independent Romulan Faction should concentrate on the actual war.
Almost called it.
There isn't a second full faction, never mind a third since it all merges into one in the later story stages with the "Delta Alliance".
The Roms never being a truly independent faction and merely a Fed v2.0 *sub*faction was an irritating thing for me. Taking what was depicted of the Romulans from TOS, TNG, DS9 / Dominion War and making them Epohh licking hippies was a major issue to me.
Limited ship selection? I'm primarily KDF, so I've long dealt with a more limited ship selection compared to Feds.
I'm one of those guys that expected a Romulan Star Empire faction, completely independent shipyards, ship list, starbases, a Romulan focused POV and storyline and not Fed v2.0 storyline (at least the Klingon missions are distinctly Klingon in flavor and more believable to the Star Trek shows to what the Klingons did). I expected a Romulan faction that stood on its own and not kneel to either the Klingons or Federation for table scraps. I expected a Romulan faction that, despite the loss of Romulus, would be defiant and angry enough to remind the Federation and Klingons that, "Hey mother****ers, we still have a pretty strong military" and put the other 2 powers in check, and show no sign of weakness despite Romulus' loss, and not allow the Romulan Star Empire's standing to be subservient to their rivals.
For 2 reasons really, one, could be incorperated into current content, ie work on behalf of fed, kdf, rom etc and two, try to give a somewhat neutral narrative on the game.
This is a definite problem, and not one they seem keen on fixing.
I can understand why they did what they did, but I feel that the game would definitely be enhanced if the Romulans had a third option to defect to the Tal Shiar at level 10 instead of working alongside the Feds or Klingons. Even if the ship options end up "limited" to Romulan-only ships it certainly wouldn't be the end of the world as I'm sure most Romulan players would be happy enough just to get a Star Empire alternate storyline within the Romulan faction. Might make things awkward to explain why they have gone to the Delta Quadrant and such, but that's something the writers can build on.
And if it can work for the Romulans when it comes time to add in the Cardassians then a similar multi-storyline option could be implemented (going with the True Way or with one of the other powers). It could also help out the Mercenary faction being mentioned above, or help the more greedy Starfleet Captains run off to the Ferengi Alliance for some profit making.
The Dominion per se are just too big and powerful; they need to stay as potential adversaries. The Tholians, again too alien and too well placed as villains.
Other races... frankly none of the DQ races are well fleshed out enough. A faction needs enough recognition factor to avoid being seen as mary sues, and only the Cardassians have that.
It could work, as well. Start the story with the Cardassian Union coming off the fence, with the Feds / Klingons accepting their rearmament in view of the current level of threat from the Borg, Undine, Iconians, Voth etc. A good parallel would be the rearmament of West Germany in the 1950s - the western allies overcame their fears of resurgent German militarism in the face of the perceived Soviet threat. The player then starts as an officer in the newly recomissioned Cardassian military. The initial storyline could then cover a showdown with the True Way - bring back Odo and have him used as the catalyst for large numbers of True Way Jem'hadar and Vorta to switch to the Union, justifying their presence as PCs / BOffs / DOffs. Finally have the PC allocated to supporting either Starfleet or KDF operations along the demi-faction model.
Shipwise, with T6 you could justify introducing Jem'Hadar and Cardassian ships that were better than the (supposedly obsolescent) Galor and JHAS.
That said...
When they do open up the Gamma Quadrant to us.....
Playable Jem'Hadar species for LTS.....
Yes, I am being selfish. hehe
Support the Romulan Star Empire? Hell yes! Support the terrible caricature of the RSE with Sela at the helm and the aforementioned Tal Shiar rubbing their nuts in yer face 24/7? No thx.
Tho I might support the existing terrible RSE joke if it involves a cut scene where I eject Tovan out an airlock for whining about joining the people that attacked Virinat.... That could be worth it by itself.
Non-allied / Alien Faction / Renegade
to finally give all those non factional ships a home and all those players who wish to be independent and play characters and "careers" not possible when forced to be allied with a faction.
This Idea would even work as a mini faction.
Non-allied / Alien Faction / Renegade
Have there own starbases and "hideouts" scattered across the galaxy.
Start as a cadet in any faction then at some level, maybe 30, you would have the option to choose to resign and become independent (similar to the Romulan choose faction mechanic). Then your character would follow the new "renegade" storyline till you hit level 50.
New "Renegade" storyline from level 30 to 50
This Faction limited to non faction ships, Mirror and lower level (40 and below) factional ships.
Special "Renegade" material, paint, costumes etc.
Just a thought
I want my Vorta toon, so Dominion is the way to go. Then I can spend months grinding it up to lvl 60 plus!
Given that the problems arise from the fact he's tied into the Fed/Klingon story for the Romulans that would be an option as they could create a new storyline without Tovan Khev (or even better, you personally killing him).