Do Too Few Players Roll Klingon Captains?

littlesarbonn · September 2015

I have a few Klingon characters, but sometimes it's just not fun playing them because I love doing group things and the timers for PVE missions takes forever (and sometimes never pops). I've often wondered why this is. I haven't felt Klingon faction characters are less fun to play, yet it can sometimes be really difficult to find others queuing on that side. I know the game caters to a Federation side mentality, but you would think with all of this time, the Klingon side would be getting a lot more popular.

anazonda · September 2015

The klingons overall have more enjoyable content, better story and more interesting ships, but in the long run people generally associate more with the federation and to a degree romulans than the klingons.

lianthelia · September 2015

I gave up Klingons and Romulans pretty much for several reasons

1) Not nearly as much stuff...and the only time they get stuff anymore is if the Feds do too
2) No decent Science ships and less ships in general
3) Not nearly as much customization as Feds (can sorta fit with 1)
4) Not nearly as active as the Fed side. (Or if I want to play a Fed Rom I need millions maybe even a 100 million EC for a leech)

bobbydazlers · September 2015

there are definitely less KDF characters then there are fed, personally I have 2 KDF 2 fed and 2 rom ( 1 KDF rom & 1 fed rom ).
so I play pretty equal most of the time, having said that I don't think that there being less KDF has anything to do with the queues not popping for KDF characters.

I know if you form a private team for queued missions they all need to be in the same faction but if you are in the open queues I think faction does not play a part, I have often been in queued missions as a fed and seen KDF team members and vice versa when playing as KDF seen fed team members.

I think you will find that the problem with queues not popping is global regardless of faction.

I can understand most players being drawn to the fed side of the game as the majority of players are trek fans and the majority of tv episodes & movies cantered around fed crews and characters its only natural to be that way, even from a personal view though I enjoy playing all my characters if I could only ever have one character I would choose fed in the blink of an eye.

walligig · September 2015

I think one major issue is that a majority of the story missions particularly those after the Cardassian Struggle Arc has your Klingon character acting like a happy slappy can do no wrong human. This is especially a problem with the recent Iconian missions. Most people who play KDF characters have learned just to live with this and make up responses from the player character in their head rather then read the one the game forces you to choose. It still doesn't change the fact that this is immersion breaking. The most frustrating part is that Cryptic has done missions where Klingon characters are able to choose different responses before so its not like that can't do it. It's just for some reason they choose not too.

ryakidrys · September 2015

For privates, you do not need to be all fed or KDF allied toons. You can mix it up. Only for things like fed fleet alert do you need to all be the same faction. You don't even need to be same faction to join most random queues, but it takes much more coordination and timing to make it work so you team up as planned.

More ships are available to fed, especially science ships. KDF and Romulans are forced to use sci ships that aren't very compelling to use or obtain lock-box ships either by chance or by lots of (blood and sweat) energy credits.
Romulans still have access to the scimitar, one of the better PvE ships available.
Feds and KDF have ships that are near twins that are very good, Avenger/ Mogh and the Arbiter/Kurak classes. So, it's not all bad.
KDF used to be the only ones with the plasmonic leech, it's expensive for Feds and Rommies, but available. The Feds used to be the only ones with reciprocity, now KDF and Rommies can get it and it's not as bad as the price of the leech. Rommies, however, have the console from the Valdore, Feds and KDF do not have it.
In general, more people create and play Federation characters, but miss out on some nice stuff that are available to KDF and to Rommie toons. It's all in how you want to spin it.

markhawkman · September 2015

Klingons are smelly and have terrible fashion sense. Orions are much better. :P

Or is the OP using Klingon as a generic term for any member of the KDF?

bobbydazlers · September 2015

ryakidrys wrote: »

For privates, you do not need to be all fed or KDF allied toons. You can mix it up. Only for things like fed fleet alert do you need to all be the same faction. You don't even need to be same faction to join most random queues, but it takes much more coordination and timing to make it work so you team up as planned.

I am not so sure about that, I have often in the past had to change faction when playing team stf`s and even team crystalline catastrophe and even got the message wrong faction when trying to team up members for tagging epohh.

also there have been plenty of threads in the past requesting cross faction teaming for different things from story missions to queued missions.

the only exception to this is teaming with roms, feds can team with fed roms and KDF can team with KDF roms but ironically fed roms cant team with KDF roms, go figure.

psychoplatt · September 2015

The few PVE Queues for Kdf only are useless. Once u sit on 100k fleetmarks u get an idea why.

bernatk · September 2015

I have more klingon skippers than feddy bears. There.

happyhappyj0yj0y · September 2015

walligig wrote: »

I think one major issue is that a majority of the story missions particularly those after the Cardassian Struggle Arc has your Klingon character acting like a happy slappy can do no wrong human. This is especially a problem with the recent Iconian missions. Most people who play KDF characters have learned just to live with this and make up responses from the player character in their head rather then read the one the game forces you to choose. It still doesn't change the fact that this is immersion breaking. The most frustrating part is that Cryptic has done missions where Klingon characters are able to choose different responses before so its not like that can't do it. It's just for some reason they choose not too.

It was especially galling in Midnight. Your BOff hails you to cry over the dead, and your response is that you miss them too. It's... just... no.. No you don't. They're in Sto'Vo'Kor. You don't mourn them, you celebrate them. You dishonor their memory with your grief...

tasshena · September 2015

I have four KDF chars, three 'in progress' and one up to 60 with a T6 Neggy.

Re: happyhappyJ0yj0y:

It's funny, some of the missions work better rolling an Orion, than a Klingon, naussican, or Ferasan

Orion girls especially have more possibility of enough emotion left to give a TRIBBLE.

groomofweird · September 2015

From what Ive seen in the two fleets I command, and the two Armadas we are in, many players seem to have alts in both factions and both fleets.
In fact currently the KDF armada we are a Beta fleet in is far more advanced, with many more members than our Federation armada in which are are the Alpha fleet.
However (and its an interesting observation), even though the KDF armada is bigger and more advanced there is never even close to the same ammount of active players online at any given time.
It seems that for many (though of course not all), the KDF side of things is more of a side project than main focus.
More love to the KDF would always help, but as others have said many people just associate more with the Federation because of the shows, but its always nice to roll a badassed Klingon.

davefenestrator · September 2015

I have 9 characters, (3 professions) x (Fed, Rom, KDF), but I have limited time. Right now I'm playing my Fed science captain and the others are parked.

starswordc · September 2015

My problem with the Klingon campaign is being railroaded into committing crimes against sentience and getting turned into a thlIngan Hol-spamming trigger-happy lunatic despite the fact I play a Lethean who's only in it for the latinum.

gradii · September 2015

starswordc wrote: »

My problem with the Klingon campaign is being railroaded into committing crimes against sentience and getting turned into a thlIngan Hol-spamming trigger-happy lunatic despite the fact I play a Lethean who's only in it for the latinum.

Remind me when that was?

I play a fully clothed female orion General/Warrior who's definitely klingon at heart.

kyrrok · September 2015

gradii wrote: »

starswordc wrote: »

My problem with the Klingon campaign is being railroaded into committing crimes against sentience and getting turned into a thlIngan Hol-spamming trigger-happy lunatic despite the fact I play a Lethean who's only in it for the latinum.

Remind me when that was?

I play a fully clothed female orion General/Warrior who's definitely klingon at heart.

Not in any episode I played. Even when I was playing Midnight, resigned to a them or us mentality, when I saw a third more honorable course, I didn't hesitate to take that road instead.

rogueaegian · September 2015

I have a Klingon general, a Fed Vice-Admiral and a Romulan commander. IMO the big issue with the Klingon is that after a certain point you are basically running the same missions regardless of faction, and in my experience there a lot fewer Foundery missions for the Klingons.

nikephorus · September 2015

I used to invest a lot of time and resources into my kdf character. Unfortunately, after dr I gave up on both my Romulan and kdf characters. It's just way too much time and or money to keep them relevant. So now my kdf farms contraband to fuel my fed character.

farmallm · September 2015

I have a KDF I play often. Right now I'm working him to Lv60. Just hit Lv59 over the weekend. So he is right behind my first character my Fed. I been playing KDF when you had to level a Fed to 20 just to get access to them. Then leveled him the hard way by grinding a lot between the missions. So DR isn't that bad to me, like most fussed. As either they forgot how it was for KDF or they never done it.

Now since they redone a lot of the KDF story line. I'm now working on my 2nd KDF character in a BoP. So this way I can see the new stories and play in a BoP where my other is in a battle cruiser.

What I don't like and this hurts the players who wants to be KDF:

* Not enough KDF type missions. To make them feel like they are different. I don't like doing the missions on my Fed, KDF, and Romulan as see the same dialog and mission set up. Really?? Some of this will never work for all 3 factions. At times my Romulan and KDF would love to smack some those mission givers around.

* Lack of options. We need more outfits, hair styles, ships, and bases.

* Special mission rewards. I love how some rewards are just for that faction. That makes them unique. You see a person with a killer rifle. Where you get it? Play KDF and get one!

deleroux · September 2015

In the beginning, and through much of the game's lifetime, KDF has been an afterthought at best. We had no substantial early-game progression or story content to speak of--progression was almost entirely exclusive to PvP. As a result, KDF was only especially appealing to a certain type of player in general. Moreover, KDF content and features (or what little there was) were riddled with incompleteness, bugs, and a general disregard, leaving little hope of any kind of improvements or development focus. KDF has always had fewer options, fluff, and ships, as well--any cursory look at the ship charts throughout the history of the game will reveal the ship disparity, and any cursory look at such things as uniform options will reveal an even greater disparity. In addition, what ships have been available to us haven't always fulfilled their respective roles competitively--reference the ongoing distinct lack of science ships. And also, what unique features KDF had access to have become much more accessible to non-KDF over time--reference cloaking and carriers, for example. What's more, KDF was already fighting an uphill battle from the get-go, as most Star Trek fans will tend to favor the Federation by default.

Put simply and briefly, KDF was (and for the vast majority of the game's lifespan, has been) handled quite terribly overall. The words "gross neglect" come to mind. The choices of the developers practically made it a certainty that it would be relatively unpopular out of the gate. And the ongoing development choices only served to ensure that stayed true.

Yet, while some of the more major issues with KDF have been given attention to one degree or another (e.g. early game story progression), I suspect much of it was a day late and a dollar short. Even without all the issues that have plagued KDF over the years, it has been a daunting prospect for the average player to want to drop one character to start a brand new "main," or even a KDF alt, let alone start their STO experience as KDF. Then when you add the aforementioned issues on top of that, it becomes even less appealing, particularly when compared to the Fed alternative. As well, since PvP has essentially been abandoned, for all intents and purposes, and was never especially great before anyway, the core player base that once thrived among the KDF has largely been driven away.

So, bearing all of this context in mind, it shouldn't be too surprising to observe a population disparity between Fed and KDF captains.

cptjhunter · September 2015

walligig wrote: »

I think one major issue is that a majority of the story missions particularly those after the Cardassian Struggle Arc has your Klingon character acting like a happy slappy can do no wrong human. This is especially a problem with the recent Iconian missions. Most people who play KDF characters have learned just to live with this and make up responses from the player character in their head rather then read the one the game forces you to choose. It still doesn't change the fact that this is immersion breaking. The most frustrating part is that Cryptic has done missions where Klingon characters are able to choose different responses before so its not like that can't do it. It's just for some reason they choose not too.

So much this. I couldn't see my KDF generals doing the story arc in the Delta quadrant. Doing fetch tasks for idiots. Taking my cues from a lying sneak Romulan. I went back to the alpha quadrant to grind Rep gear again...I couldn't sell myself that my character would just mumble a disagreement, and follow through with it.
However, I have four KDF Characters.

apulse · September 2015

I tried to play Klingon, but beside from there Bird of Prey, it dosen't speaks to me much.

On the otherhand, never liked their cave-grunt-warrior-like society. More fun to watch klingons then to be one.
My two cents

tarastheslayer · September 2015

There's more Klingons than Romulans, though the KDF has been around longer so there is that: http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/9065123-star-trek-online-5-year-anniversary-infographic

aesica · September 2015

KDF has less content, so it attracts fewer people. The devs see that fewer people are playing KDF, so they give more new stuff to the Federation. And so the cycle persists.

mosul33 · September 2015

littlesarbonn wrote: »

I have a few Klingon characters, but sometimes it's just not fun playing them because I love doing group things and the timers for PVE missions takes forever (and sometimes never pops). I've often wondered why this is. I haven't felt Klingon faction characters are less fun to play, yet it can sometimes be really difficult to find others queuing on that side. I know the game caters to a Federation side mentality, but you would think with all of this time, the Klingon side would be getting a lot more popular.

Dunno, there are alot of incentives to play the kdf faction, but becouse its not the main focus in the show, the fed faction is played the most. Also is alot more cheap if you count the leach console lol.
But I do feel your pain. Sometimes I want to do some colony invasion with my ferasan, but the queue is never played

Also, why not?

, is Cryptic fault. Lots of players made kdf characters during the delta recruit event, both old and new players, becouse it was easier to lvl them and gain spec points via doffing. After delta recruit event ended, Cryptic "cut off" those doff missions. So the majority of those newly created kdf toons remained just alts/storage mules or even got deleted.

ryakidrys · September 2015

bobbydazlers wrote: »

I am not so sure about that, I have often in the past had to change faction when playing team stf`s and even team crystalline catastrophe and even got the message wrong faction when trying to team up members for tagging epohh.

also there have been plenty of threads in the past requesting cross faction teaming for different things from story missions to queued missions.

the only exception to this is teaming with roms, feds can team with fed roms and KDF can team with KDF roms but ironically fed roms cant team with KDF roms, go figure.

If you team up first, without going directly to the privately created instance of the STF, then yes, you can't mix Fed and KDF factions. However, except for a small number of STFs, you can join the private queue with a mix of factions. You mention crystal catastrophe, which the private queues from the DPS channels were constantly filled with a mix of factions without any issues.
When teaming up a few folks first, then joining a random queue, like crystal catastrophe, yes, each faction has to create it's own group/ team first. The hard part there, is to join the 2 separate teams into the same CCA instance. Coordinate when both teams join to get a better chance to get into the same instance. Even then, you need to not engage and make sure that both groups received the engage buttons at the same time so you can be reasonably assured both different faction teams will enter the same instance when they do select to engage. That's why I mentioned that it takes more coordination and timing. Using voice comms is a big help in that.

FYI, 6 toons, 4 KDF, 1 Fed and 1 Rommie. I've bought more KDF ships than fed and rommie combined, nearly 2 to 1.

rezking · September 2015

aesica wrote: »

KDF has less content, so it attracts fewer people. The devs see that fewer people are playing KDF, so they give more new stuff to the Federation. And so the cycle persists.

I have to agree with this statement.

Furthermore there was a sense of exclusivity when I unlocked KDF play.
Now...not so much.
Perhaps that feeling will return if the KDF versions of the Leech and AA's get a 100% buff

deleroux · September 2015

mosul33 wrote: »

Dunno, there are alot of incentives to play the kdf faction

What are these "alot of incentives" you speak of?

dalnar83 · September 2015

I recently refurbished my Klingon captain that was sitting on lvl 50 for years and was originally created during the times of "no content". And I must say, things really improved for the KDF since then and I really enjoyed the story missions.

On the other hand, I see no special incentives to play KDF, except for cool ships and blood wine.

artan42 · September 2015

I have two of all factions but my Delta Klingon is my new main.

Do Too Few Players Roll Klingon Captains?

Comments

When I think about everything we've been through together,

maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,

and if that journey takes a little longer,

so we can do something we all believe in,

I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.

When I think about everything we've been through together,

maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,

and if that journey takes a little longer,

so we can do something we all believe in,

I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.