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=/\= New/next faction discussion/brainstorm =/\=
thegrandnagus1
Member Posts: 5,166 Arc User
In Geko's recent P1 interview, he discussed possible new factions being added at some point in the future. The factions he mentioned specifically were: Cardassian, Dominion, Liberated Borg, and Mirror Universe. With that in mind, here are a few questions for discussion:
(1) Do you actually want a new faction, or would you prefer other forms of content? You can *click here* to vote, but please also reply and elaborate on your thoughts and reasons.
(2) If a new faction were going to be added, and if the choices were the ones Geko mentioned, what order or priority would you prefer they be added in?
Why are there 4 polls instead of one? Quite simply, a single poll only tells you what people want for their first choice. However, once that result is clear, a single poll does *not* tell you what all the people who voted for their first choice would want for the second, third, and last choices. Therefore, this gives everyone a chance to vote for what order they would want each faction added in.
(3) If you would *not* prefer a new faction be added to the game, what type of content would you want to see instead?
Please feel free to answer any of these questions, as well as give any other thoughts or ideas you have on the subject of new factions and what you would or would not like to happen.
PS: most of the people who play this game do not even read or post on the forums. Therefore, if you are in a fleet, please ask your fleetmates who do not read the forums to cast their vote so that as many people can voice their opinion as possible.
(1) Do you actually want a new faction, or would you prefer other forms of content? You can *click here* to vote, but please also reply and elaborate on your thoughts and reasons.
(2) If a new faction were going to be added, and if the choices were the ones Geko mentioned, what order or priority would you prefer they be added in?
- What is your FIRST choice for a new faction? *click here to vote*
- What is your SECOND choice for a new faction? *click here to vote*
- What is your THIRD choice for a new faction? *click here to vote*
- What is your FOURTH choice for a new faction? *click here to vote*
Why are there 4 polls instead of one? Quite simply, a single poll only tells you what people want for their first choice. However, once that result is clear, a single poll does *not* tell you what all the people who voted for their first choice would want for the second, third, and last choices. Therefore, this gives everyone a chance to vote for what order they would want each faction added in.
(3) If you would *not* prefer a new faction be added to the game, what type of content would you want to see instead?
Please feel free to answer any of these questions, as well as give any other thoughts or ideas you have on the subject of new factions and what you would or would not like to happen.
PS: most of the people who play this game do not even read or post on the forums. Therefore, if you are in a fleet, please ask your fleetmates who do not read the forums to cast their vote so that as many people can voice their opinion as possible.
Post edited by thegrandnagus1 on
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1-BORG
2-BORG
3-BORG
4-BORG
5 to 1000 BORG ...get it
Mirrorverse
Dominion
Cardassians
Liberated Borg (because, to be rude, I shelled out about £200 for my liberated borg)
even if they did bring out the cooperative as the next faction I think they'd find a way for your LB to remain unique, they wouldnt TRIBBLE lifers over that hard.. they aren't that stupid..
*rolls eyes* I hope.
It is question #1 and question #3. You can answer them however you want, as they did not specify *new* content.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
Liberated Borg. No questions.
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Right next to the "That will never happen" option.
I think a good expansion needs a big hook. Something that people unfamiliar with ALL the particulars of Star Trek can latch onto.
I like the Cardassians or Dominion but they, by themselves, are not really HOOKS for people who only know the broad strokes.
Borg and Mirrorverse have permeated pop culture.
Which doesn't mean that Dominion or Cardassians can't work but I think getting into the right mindset for a hook with them matters and influences the other features.
I think with Cardassians, the best hook is probably Occupation. They were an occupying power. They're now occupied. Maybe a part of the hook there is to have 30 levels of content all within Cardassia's solar system so that when you finally leave, you feel both a release and a sense of truly leaving home. I think the idea of being an occupied world (even if that isn't exactly how Cardassia has been portrayed under the Detapa Council) and maybe finding parallels with former eastern bloc countries like the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary would be a strong approach. We also know that Cryptic is going to have playable characters only if they are friendly to the existing powers so maybe part of what makes a Cardassian faction tick is to really give us a ground level view of how the Obsidian Order's Cardassia may have perverted or conflicted with some core Cardassian values. They value security but how can you have that without transparency? They value culture and art but how can you have that with censorship? They value family but how can you value that when you have soldiers like Dukat separated from their families and off starting up franchises with captured people?
The Dominion's hooks would probably be genetic engineering and religion. Those are the ideas that would inform game mechanics and get people into the mentality of playing Dominion.
Mirror Universe is just silly. The Terrans are jerks (hey wait, what if we--irl--are in the mirror universe? Ha!) and nobody likes them.
Cardassians and Dominion could work, but I'm not really all that enthusiastic about either.
Feds still get the most stuff and probably always will. KDF and Roms still don't have a T6 sci ship and it doesn't look like they will be getting one for a while. Roms still get called Starfleet/KDF on certain missions and patrols. Why anyone would think that yet another faction would fare any better is beyond me.
All that will happen is that Cryptic will release a new faction, like 5% of the playerbase will use it, and then those 5% will complain that they don't get proper treatment. Exactly the same as we have right now.
No thanks.
Mine Trap Supporter
The reason? Since the move to almost exclusively cross-faction content, I simply don't think there's much point. As it is, there are only very superficial differences in the dialogue of the shared missions that are hardly worth mentioning. If each faction had more, and regularly received new, unique content, I'd be strongly in favour of a new faction.
My votes:
1) Cardassian: The last major Alpha/Beta Quadrant power. Unfortunately, their story would likely be very similar to that of the Romulan Republic.
2) Liberated Borg: As presented on the Priority One podcast, I could see this working. And they're the "good guys," so it would be easy to include them in the cross-faction content.
3) Dominion: I have no idea what their situation is in the 2409/2410 universe (there seems to be some diplomatic contact between the Dominion and the Federation, and it's been established that the Gamma Quadrant is being regularly visited, but that's it), but I don't think it would feel right for the Dominion to be anything other than an adversary. But I'm open to changing my mind if the story is good.
4) Mirror Universe: See above. They're (mostly) bad guys, and my interest in them is low.
I know what you mean, and you are just as right in your opinion as anyone else. But here are my thoughts. Cryptic's reason is obvious: money. New faction = new faction ships = money. So that is simple. For me it is also pretty simple: variety. While you are right that most of the content is shared, I do like the variety of playing that content with my different factioned characters.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
2.
a: Liberated Borg/Cooperative: This is the least bad option. Since they are all individuals now, and mostly DQ races, the ship possibilities are endless. They could offer captured sphere/probes as lockbox/lobi rewards. Interesting things could be done for the leveling content, but the shared missions would be a problem story-wise.
[big space here]
b: Cardassians: There are too many problems here, but they are popular. Firstly, their main ship is lockbox, so that rules them out all together. They are a very minor power at this point, and weren't really a big player to start out with. There is no way they would have anything to do with the klinks, so you couldn't pull a half-faction like with the RR. You could get a good hero story for leveling, though, and it would be a great opportunity to get Garak in the game.
[even bigger space here]
c: Dominion: This is just a bad idea. The nature of the Dominion rules out a hero story. All of their ships are already in-game. They have even more problems integrating to existing content than any DQ race would.
d: MU: Dumb. Just plain dumb.
3. Instead of new factions, I would make more playable species. Cardassians would be the obvious choice; make them a new Fed playable race. Maybe there could be a Vorta playable race too, for all factions.
2. Cardassians - Until we what the new revamped missions looked like, this one could be a Romulan Republic clone.
3. Mirror Universe - Similar to the Dominion and it could open up a new universe
4. Liberated Borg - Just does not seem all that interesting more into the boring factor and the Borg ambiance gets old, especially a whole faction of similar Seven of Nine's story. Though it would fit in the cross-faction very well.
2) Cardassians. Very popular amongst fans, I know.
3) Dominion. We haven't seen much of them, aside for the 2800 arc. It would be interesting to see how they're faring against the Iconians
4) Mirror. I've never been super interested in them.
Edit: Aside from Borg, all of the suggested factions have ships ingame. Cardassians would either never get to fly a Galor (which would be ridiculous) or they'd fly a non-lockbox version of the Galor (also ridiculous).
All of the Dominion ships are already ingame, as well as numerous Mirror ships. The only "new" ships would be Borg ships, which could potentially be interesting as Romulan-style unique ships, but would require more effort and resources than Cryptic seems willing to invest.
I liked the idea of adding new races to the existing factions- pull whatever story strings needed to allow Cardassian, Jem'Hadar, and Mirror characters to be played.
We already have Liberated Borg as a playable species, but the Lifetimers would all kill themselves if everybody got access to them
That is a good Idea, I just figured spend 10 levels chasing your prime universe counterpart, then finally kill and replace them.
Cardassian
Mirror
Dominion
Liberated
But personally the only faction I'm truly interested in is Cardassian...Mirror could be interesting if it was unique and had its own completely original story to go with it but I doubt that would happen.
1. Cardassian
2. Mirror Universe
3. Liberated Borg (they already exist!)
4. Dominion (you can pry my already-purchased Jem fleet from my COLD DEAD FINGERS :mad:)
1-cardassians
2- cardassians
3- cardassians
4 - cardassians
5 to 1 billion cardassians
*gets out Polearm and starts hacking*
Hehe....
Actually, if they do add playable Dominion, then they will give them new ship models and not the same ones that are in lock boxes.
My character Tsin'xing
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1. I fully admit this is mainly down to personal taste, and I'm ignoring the lockbox issue, but Dominion. I can see a liaison to the main Alpha/Beta Quadrant powers trick once you're done with the low levels - the Founders, after all, would if nothing else have an interest in investigating and learning new counters to potential threats to the Dominion like the Borg, the Undine and potentially the Iconians (what Eraun says Dominion policy is and what is actual Founder-intended Dominion policy isn't necessarily the same thing), and it's not like it's a good idea to send a full fleet through after the Dominion War (plus, if some of those threats end up being so that it'd be beneficial to temporarily team up with Starfleet or the KDF, it'd be useful to have officers who have experience working with Starfleet or KDF officers).
2. Mirror Universe. Interesting quirk on the game setting, and I could see it be made to work with the Starfleet/KDF choice - the split could right at the start (Kllingon-side Alliance officer or Terran Rebellion hold-out against James O'Brien's Terran Empire working in an 'enemy mine' situation with the Alliance, to explain why you have the same missions, joining up with KDF or Federation Starfleet respectively once you cross over), and I think it could be made to work at the point of the cross-over (Alliance officer from a non-KDF race, maybe? Could allow some ambiguity over whether the KDF or Federation Starfleet would be your best choice of allies on the other side of the Mirror).
3. Cardassian, 4. Liberated Borg. I put them together because honestly neither really interests me. Cardassian won out mainly because the Cardassian astrographic position means it'd be more likely to come with cross-faction improvements and content additions to the Alpha Quadrant.
Incidentally, the straw poll seems to have something of a minor security issue. After a pause of a couple of hours (I'm a slow writer at times, and tend to get distracted when I look up things), I decided to check the last two straw polls again to make certain I voted as I said earlier - only to find that regardless of the poll, I could now vote again (I didn't, but others might not be so scrupulous). And yes, I definitely did vote earlier.
Imperial Romulan
Liberated Borg
Cardassian
I'd be compelled to say FOR CARDASSIA!!!
If they follow through.
Honestly I'm not really sure what yall actually think the devs would invest time into otherwise anyway. If we stick to what we is currently in the game, then I reckon it'll be T6 and T7 ships as the pinnacle of development.
At least a new faction would mix up the story content and maybe add some new ship mechanics as the Romulans did.
I play for story and a new faction would open up an unexplored realm of the Star Trek universe.
Answer No.2
1- Dominion
2- Mirror Universe
3- Liberated Borg
4- Cardassian
Details of Answer No.2
1- Gamma quadrant is totally unexplored, open for pure creation of what Star Trek may offer. Not even in Deep Space 9 was it explored openly thus remains truely 'unknown'.
2- Unexplored and flips the motives of all factions - more war is the norm in the mirror universe. More fitting of what Star Trek Online is.
3- A story of potentially all races of the galaxy as the Borg have explored the galaxy widely thanks to their transwarp conduits.
If such a new faction must ally to the Federation or Klingon Empire like the Romulan Republic, such a story would have to involve the preparation of the Borg assault on the Alpha Quadrant leading into the Iconian War story arc somehow.
~ The player character would start out full Borg and become liberated later - somewhat like the story of Seven of Nine.
4- Cardassian. They are a known quantity in Star Trek.
Their history is known.
What they have contributed to the quadrant at large has not been so significant to draw the attention of any faction beyond the activities of the 'True Way'.
It would not explore the unknown for a faction to start off with a Cardassian viewpoint and slowly merge with either the Federation or Klingon Empire.
As far as unique abilities and ships go, the Cardassians are most established but it isn't my objective to explore game mechanics beyond enjoying the experience.
It's not what is done or said but why.
Words and actions may be judged, but motives?
Motives are truth to a believer
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
It would we a slam dunk.