Thank you. Lets face it. Even in Canon The Feds only became powerful and expanded because it's members applied for their membership. No one got forced to it nor anyone can't get out. Love them or hate them one can admit that their system work that it's the people that are flocking to them.
Just ask yourself if you are a civilization that has warp capability and can chose from one of these group to join:
A Group that is Xenophobic and would eventually turn you into their slave and put you under fear.
B. Group that will put you under their protection as long as you are beneath them and are war mongers.
C. A Group of Capitalists that will exploit your resources for their own just because they think they are far superior than your race.
D. Or a bunch of care bears who's greatest fear is insulting your culture and diversity and are only concern about are trying their best to promote equality and sharing resources equally with their members and exploring the galaxy and sharing the knowledge to a point you think this guys are a bunch of softies.
I don't know about the others but in the end if I want to better my civilization I would have to chose the D group since it's your best bet. Seriously look at the ferengi's example.
Also kinda ironic that with all the tech and great minds the Feds has and all the more robust alien races they have it's always the Humans that are the most abundant pawn in the front lines as canon fodder. Imagine in TOS alone how many Red Shirts are humans that get killed off lol
The FIRST thing they need to do is kill the Romulans as a separate faction and fold the Rom Republic into the Federation and the remnant of the RSE into the Klingon Empire. Leave the Tal Shiar as a rogue enemy force.
Yeah.. thatd guarantee I never play again.... let alone pay.
Frankly I think you're the one that's insane. Ignoring cash opportunities is the stupid thing to do. Sure spend the bulk of your time on the larger % but to utterly ignore the rest is dull witted imo, you're telling people 'nah we don't want that extra cash.'
The FIRST thing they need to do is kill the Romulans as a separate faction and fold the Rom Republic into the Federation and the remnant of the RSE into the Klingon Empire. Leave the Tal Shiar as a rogue enemy force.
Yeah.. thatd guarantee I never play again.... let alone pay.
Frankly I think you're the one that's insane. Ignoring cash opportunities is the stupid thing to do. Sure spend the bulk of your time on the larger % but to utterly ignore the rest is dull witted imo, you're telling people 'nah we don't want that extra cash.'
You seem to be confusing "income" with "profit."
And even if KDF- or Romulan- endgame story content can be added without losing money, if the profit is 1% vs. 30% for the current "faction neutral" content does it make sense for a business to hire more staff to do it?
The pragmatic approach would be for you to push Cryptic to improve their support of the Foundry. Foundry authors work for free and some of them care as much about Romulan stories as you do.
You guys are weird. You keep talking about how development of KDF and Roms don't give a return on investment, except that storyline content is completely free to begin with. Of course you're not going to get a return on investment if you release something free of charge! That's not Cryptic's business model ffs.
I mean like holy TRIBBLE, pick your arguments better. Cryptic makes its money by selling ships and gambling revenue via lock boxes. They would have to be making a profit in order to remain solvent and producing new season content updates. If they weren't making a profit the game would be a different beast entirely and would be in maintenance mode with no development being done.
I don't buy this line of argument that they can't do different factional missions and stories, especially for bs about it being no return on their investment. It's not a question of can't, but won't. If they charged people for storyline content and they don't want it it would be a different story. But they don't. So stop arguing that they do.
In SwTor, you have the Jedi and the Sith. And a "third faction", the Smugglers and Bounty hunters. BUT they are forced into being Sith/Jedi too, instead of a 3rd faction. It seems like games devs can only think in binary, two groups. A third/fourth faction is too much headwork
LUKARI GUERILLA GARDENING MILITIA - Glowing fingers are Growing fingers!
You guys are weird. You keep talking about how development of KDF and Roms don't give a return on investment, except that storyline content is completely free to begin with. Of course you're not going to get a return on investment if you release something free of charge! That's not Cryptic's business model ffs.
I mean like holy TRIBBLE, pick your arguments better. Cryptic makes its money by selling ships and gambling revenue via lock boxes. They would have to be making a profit in order to remain solvent and producing new season content updates. If they weren't making a profit the game would be a different beast entirely and would be in maintenance mode with no development being done.
I don't buy this line of argument that they can't do different factional missions and stories, especially for bs about it being no return on their investment. It's not a question of can't, but won't. If they charged people for storyline content and they don't want it it would be a different story. But they don't. So stop arguing that they do.
Cryptic makes money directly from ships, lock boxes, faction specific costumes, misc. unlocks.
They make money indirectly from free story episodes when those episodes cause players to keep playing the game (or return to playing it) and then spend money. They can tell how many players a story episode gains them, and how much money those players spent in the time around when they played that episode. They can link income from events the same way.
If a new faction-neutral story episode brings in 1,000 extra players who together spend an extra $1,000, that episode indirectly generated $1,000.
You guys are weird. You keep talking about how development of KDF and Roms don't give a return on investment, except that storyline content is completely free to begin with. Of course you're not going to get a return on investment if you release something free of charge! That's not Cryptic's business model ffs.
I mean like holy TRIBBLE, pick your arguments better. Cryptic makes its money by selling ships and gambling revenue via lock boxes. They would have to be making a profit in order to remain solvent and producing new season content updates. If they weren't making a profit the game would be a different beast entirely and would be in maintenance mode with no development being done.
I don't buy this line of argument that they can't do different factional missions and stories, especially for bs about it being no return on their investment. It's not a question of can't, but won't. If they charged people for storyline content and they don't want it it would be a different story. But they don't. So stop arguing that they do.
You do realise that revenue on its own doesn't say much, right? Costs are also important, and obviously maintaining 3 separate factions is more expensive than 1 or 2.
It doesn't matter much where the revenue comes from, even if it all came from C-store purchases and lockboxes, those C-store ships have to be designed too. What would be the wiser course of action: design three different ships for a faction that represents 70% of the playerbase, or nine ships to cover the other 30% too? It'll always be much cheaper to create stuff for less factions.
I'm fairly confident that Cryptic is more able to determine these things than you or I anyway. They have data, you know. The cursed metrics and spreadsheets.
You guys are weird. You keep talking about how development of KDF and Roms don't give a return on investment, except that storyline content is completely free to begin with. Of course you're not going to get a return on investment if you release something free of charge! That's not Cryptic's business model ffs.
@darthmeow504 I'm just done with you... you make far too many assumptions and seem to think Cryptic is an incompetent 3 man team incapable of doing anything.... even I don't hate on them that much. You also make assumptions about me, and what kind of Romulans I prefer. Further highlighting how dense your skull is and how little you care to see anything but your own views.
The FIRST thing they need to do is kill the Romulans as a separate faction and fold the Rom Republic into the Federation and the remnant of the RSE into the Klingon Empire. Leave the Tal Shiar as a rogue enemy force.
Yeah.. thatd guarantee I never play again.... let alone pay.
Frankly I think you're the one that's insane. Ignoring cash opportunities is the stupid thing to do. Sure spend the bulk of your time on the larger % but to utterly ignore the rest is dull witted imo, you're telling people 'nah we don't want that extra cash.'
You seem to be confusing "income" with "profit."
And even if KDF- or Romulan- endgame story content can be added without losing money, if the profit is 1% vs. 30% for the current "faction neutral" content does it make sense for a business to hire more staff to do it?
The pragmatic approach would be for you to push Cryptic to improve their support of the Foundry. Foundry authors work for free and some of them care as much about Romulan stories as you do.
Except as Ive stated before, and I think in this thread no less, you can give both KDF and RR more content in the current faction neutral styling they have been doing... they'd just have to bother. For example, as I've suggested before, instead of rushing into this next big bad war, we could have had a full seasons worth of content in the 'rebuilding and exploring' theme. We could have gone to Qo'nos to help rebuild there, considering it got hammered in space by Undine then space and ground during the Iconian War, and that would have been a beautiful time for a revamped map like ESD got and same for their shipyard station. Similarly we could have finally seen some progress on Mol'Rihan. It was also hotly contested during the Iconian War, and we've been building on it for a year and change in game. Other worlds were completely devastated according to the blog fiction. We could have gone there and slapped down scavengers/slavers/pirates and done some work to help colonists resettle. They can give us KDF/RR content easily inside this crappy new faction neutral(read federation only) design scheme they have...
Yes, if you accept that there will be no new faction-specific story content for Romulans and Klingons then it's reasonable to ask Cryptic to set some of the new faction-neutral stories in Romulan and Klingon space. Surface Tension did that for the last act of the story and it worked pretty well.
It's also reasonable to ask for more than one approach to parts of a story, like in the Dominion arc where you can spare or kill the Ferengi, or the same with Hassan. That isn't even a faction-specific wish, it also benefits feddies who are more like Kirk than Picard.
It's new Romulan-only or KDF-only story content that isn't likely to happen, and isn't reasonable to demand.
You guys are weird. You keep talking about how development of KDF and Roms don't give a return on investment, except that storyline content is completely free to begin with. Of course you're not going to get a return on investment if you release something free of charge! That's not Cryptic's business model ffs.
- snip -
Edit: nevermind. Just realised you edited the post.
Neither Romulan nor KDF factions should join the federation, No matter how friendly the KDF and the federation is honor would demand the KDF not fold to a superior power, death first. While this may not be the official position of the KDF the help they give and the attitude of it's officers should see that moment of the KSE joining the federation as a loss, a surrender. Klingons never surrender.
Romulans also should never join the Federation. D'tan is a traitor to what it means to be Romulan, so is Sela. I can't point to a specific person, except maybe Donotra in Nemesis as a decent representative. Romulans advance, they improve, they find a way to move forward. They take advantage of what resources they have available and use everything from intelligence to guile to perseverance to intimidation to brute force to pull ahead and out maneuver everyone to ensure that they, Romulans, are ahead.
And they should forever stay that way, because the Romulans are incapable of change, and too dumb to adapt to a new situation? They should cling to an Empire that was long destroyed, that failed to protect them=
You can blame the Vulcans for not helping (soon) enough all you want, fact is, the Great Romulan Star Empire with its superior methods and superior philosophy failed to avert the Hobus event and protect its citizens from disaster.
The Romulan Star Empire approach is a failure. You can blame individuals and others all you want, but if their society was all that great, it should have withstand some exterior foes and should not have been brought down by exterior or interior forces.
Even the peace-loving Feddie Bears managed to defeat the Borg and organized the Alpha and Beta Quadrant to stop the Dominion invasion. And it managed stop several interior foes, too - fear-mongers that wanted to create a military dictatorship for the "safety" of the Federation, individuals that were taken over by aliens, stopped conspiracies to spiral the Klingons and Federation into an all out war. It has proven resilient to exterior and interior foes (so far).
If some people can't see the signs, it's their problem. Thankfully, the Romulan people are not actually dumb. They can change and adapt, and D'Tan has shown an excellent way. Under his leadership, the Romulan Republic actually has become an influential power in the Galaxy. Heck, they have significant control and access to the Dyson Sphere and all its technological wonders. The remains of the Romulan Star Empire got nothing of that, and the KDF and FED would have probably fought tooth and nails to stop the old RSE getting access to that. The Tholians and Breen probably look with envy to the Romulans.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Feature episodes do not need to be specialized to each faction as it concludes that all factions will be under one alliance in the future. Will agree that Cryptic should rework some of the KDF places, ships and unifoms and revamp the Romulan'
s world, ships and uniforms to reflect the changes that have come about.
What i can't agree with is the notion that they don't care, but from a monetary stand point they shouldn't focus the majority of content on the feds which it has seemed like in the last year. New ships are nice to get but we also like to have other accessory items to which we can play with.
As to what Romulans you prefer, did you not say you want to play the bad guy, the Romulan Empire and hate the Republic? If I'm misremembering your posts, please explain your position better. If RSE is what you want, however, a playable KDF race under the rubric of the Klingon Empire is a lot closer to what you want than Republic will ever be and getting that would be an improvement for you.
This aint the forum topic for that, but in brief, Yes Im of the Imperialist bent, no I don't want the RSE as Cryptic has butchered it into, nor the Tal Shiar. The Republic has some things going for it but at the top we have incompetent bo obs running the show. Namely D'Twerp and Kerererererrererererereeeek. Regarding villain play, I have said before that it should be allowed, but I also have said that Klingons and Romulans do not play by a Human morality compass, esp not the one Roddenberry created, thus are not villains simply because they have a different opinion. They can be an antagonist to the UFP's protagonist easily but TNG had several good episodes that showed they were not ALWAYS at cross purpose.
D'Tan incompetent? Nah, he's sneaky. He acts nice to get the Feds to do what he wants, but he puts Romulan needs over the Federation.
He may be sneaky but hes still a dolt. "is that an Iconian gateway??? Turning it on will be bad? Who cares fire that sucker up!' Yep millions died because of D'Tan.
The Romulans and KDF aren't ones to mess with. You mess with them and they'll rip you a new wormhole.
The Federation on the other hand are so wimpy and "diplomatic", they even got trolled by Pakleds once. Their preference for more talk, less action, and imposing their morality on other species, makes them prime targets to get picked on.
Edit: And with the Romulans and Klingons you know where they stand.
The Feds are all hypocrites; violating their "prime directive" whenever they want. Picard should have respected the Edo's laws and let them execute Wesley for falling into the flower bed.
You guys are weird. You keep talking about how development of KDF and Roms don't give a return on investment, except that storyline content is completely free to begin with. Of course you're not going to get a return on investment if you release something free of charge! That's not Cryptic's business model ffs.
I mean like holy TRIBBLE, pick your arguments better. Cryptic makes its money by selling ships and gambling revenue via lock boxes. They would have to be making a profit in order to remain solvent and producing new season content updates. If they weren't making a profit the game would be a different beast entirely and would be in maintenance mode with no development being done.
I don't buy this line of argument that they can't do different factional missions and stories, especially for bs about it being no return on their investment. It's not a question of can't, but won't. If they charged people for storyline content and they don't want it it would be a different story. But they don't. So stop arguing that they do.
I'm not trying to insult you, but this is literally one of the absolute dumbest things I've ever read on this forum.
Story content requires a writing staff and usually new art assets, and those cost money because you have to pay staff for their time and work. So to make three separate storylines and three sets of missions costs 3 times as much for only 30 percent gain. That puts Cryptic in the hole 270%. Are YOU going to make up those losses out of your pocket? No, I didn't think so. Try again, and think it through this time.
what you say only adds up if you are saying that a rom or kdf focused story episode would result in no feds playing it. which of course is ridiculous, as that would be the same as saying that no rom/kdf players play episodes because they are fed focused. players will play whatever story content we are given.. we are starved for it!
the factional focus is less important than the quality of the writing, they wouldn't need to write 3 stories to account for everyone, they just do as they currently do, with a shifting focus.. if they have a series of 5 episodes planned, they write 3 fed focused, 1 rom and 1 kdf.. it still amounts to the same thing and shows some love for something other than just fed. it wouldn't cost cryptic any more than they were going to spend, so they loose nothing, which makes what stofsk was saying, really quite sensible.
The Romulans and KDF aren't ones to mess with. You mess with them and they'll rip you a new wormhole.
The Federation on the other hand are so wimpy and "diplomatic", they even got trolled by Pakleds once. Their preference for more talk, less action, and imposing their morality on other species, makes them prime targets to get picked on.
Edit: And with the Romulans and Klingons you know where they stand.
The Feds are all hypocrites; violating their "prime directive" whenever they want. Picard should have respected the Edo's laws and let them execute Wesley for falling into the flower bed.
The big difference there between Feds and KDF is that the Klingons would probably have shot the Edo and their Guardian for presuming to tell them what to do.
D'Tan incompetent? Nah, he's sneaky. He acts nice to get the Feds to do what he wants, but he puts Romulan needs over the Federation.
He may be sneaky but hes still a dolt. "is that an Iconian gateway??? Turning it on will be bad? Who cares fire that sucker up!' Yep millions died because of D'Tan.
Actually, The precautions were so extensive that they se demolition charges in an attempt to destroy the gate if things went wrong. Obviously it didn't work but they tried.
The Romulans and KDF aren't ones to mess with. You mess with them and they'll rip you a new wormhole.
The Federation on the other hand are so wimpy and "diplomatic", they even got trolled by Pakleds once. Their preference for more talk, less action, and imposing their morality on other species, makes them prime targets to get picked on.
Edit: And with the Romulans and Klingons you know where they stand.
The Feds are all hypocrites; violating their "prime directive" whenever they want. Picard should have respected the Edo's laws and let them execute Wesley for falling into the flower bed.
The big difference there between Feds and KDF is that the Klingons would probably have shot the Edo and their Guardian for presuming to tell them what to do.
D'Tan incompetent? Nah, he's sneaky. He acts nice to get the Feds to do what he wants, but he puts Romulan needs over the Federation.
He may be sneaky but hes still a dolt. "is that an Iconian gateway??? Turning it on will be bad? Who cares fire that sucker up!' Yep millions died because of D'Tan.
Actually, The precautions were so extensive that they se demolition charges in an attempt to destroy the gate if things went wrong. Obviously it didn't work but they tried.
indeed, advancement and risk always seem to share the same bed.. and it is a little hard to be a pioneer, if you're a pie in the oven.
The Romulans and KDF aren't ones to mess with. You mess with them and they'll rip you a new wormhole.
The Federation on the other hand are so wimpy and "diplomatic", they even got trolled by Pakleds once. Their preference for more talk, less action, and imposing their morality on other species, makes them prime targets to get picked on.
Edit: And with the Romulans and Klingons you know where they stand.
The Feds are all hypocrites; violating their "prime directive" whenever they want. Picard should have respected the Edo's laws and let them execute Wesley for falling into the flower bed.
The big difference there between Feds and KDF is that the Klingons would probably have shot the Edo and their Guardian for presuming to tell them what to do.
D'Tan incompetent? Nah, he's sneaky. He acts nice to get the Feds to do what he wants, but he puts Romulan needs over the Federation.
He may be sneaky but hes still a dolt. "is that an Iconian gateway??? Turning it on will be bad? Who cares fire that sucker up!' Yep millions died because of D'Tan.
Actually, The precautions were so extensive that they se demolition charges in an attempt to destroy the gate if things went wrong. Obviously it didn't work but they tried.
Actually, The precautions were so extensive that they se demolition charges in an attempt to destroy the gate if things went wrong. Obviously it didn't work but they tried.
And their own chief engineer... and the readings you helped take.... Why? Because they'd set a time table and promised a show. Kererek and D'Tan's egos couldn't handle calling it off for another month.
I will admit the last time D'Tan made any kind of major appearance he DID act more Romulan and less whiney federation/vulcan butt widget. But... lots left to prove
Story content requires a writing staff and usually new art assets, and those cost money because you have to pay staff for their time and work. So to make three separate storylines and three sets of missions costs 3 times as much for only 30 percent gain. That puts Cryptic in the hole 270%.
They already have a staff that they need to pay. The only way it would cost more to make three separate storylines is if they hired twice the staff to do so, which I never suggested to begin with. That's your strawman. Like I said earlier in the thread, if the playerbase breakdown is 70/30 weighted in favour of Federation players, then it makes sense to bias your development towards Federation players. What doesn't make sense is not catering to the other third of your market. A third of a market isn't some insubstantial amount. That's a big chunk of the market you're not catering to.
They also don't need to make three separate storylines and missions. And I never said that. They allocate a set amount of work towards featured episodes and pay the staff they have already. They would plan these episodes out months if not a full year in advance. How would it increase the workload if they mandated that one of these episodes had a non-Fed faction bias? If they're going to produce let's say ten episodes in a year, seven of them could be Federation biased episodes with two or three being KDF and Rom biased. Hell, I'd accept just one episode a year at this point.
Are YOU going to make up those losses out of your pocket? No, I didn't think so. Try again, and think it through this time.
This isn't the silver bullet rebuttal you think it is. Cryptic doesn't charge us for story content. Maybe I would be willing to pay for extra storyline content for the other factions. Did you ever stop to think quite a few players would pay for an expansion pack for story content for each faction? Nah, you're too busy being smugly condescending.
I'm not trying to insult you, but this is literally one of the absolute dumbest things I've ever read on this forum.
For someone who claims they're not trying to be insulting, you sure do manage it anyhow.
You do realise that revenue on its own doesn't say much, right? Costs are also important, and obviously maintaining 3 separate factions is more expensive than 1 or 2.
I do realise that. But people were saying that development of KDF and Rom factions are a revenue deadend. I dispute that.
I'm not saying that each faction has to be developed in equal amounts. Maybe other people are but that's not my argument at all, and developing the other factions may not raise costs as highly as others assume. There's a thread going on about how someone on the dev team is putting in extra work for the KDF tailor options. Great! Give that guy a raise! If I could vote with my wallet to signal to Cryptic this is the right move and should be applauded, I would.
I'm fairly confident that Cryptic is more able to determine these things than you or I anyway. They have data, you know. The cursed metrics and spreadsheets.
They also don't share that data very much at all, or at least I'm unaware of it if they have. I'm not saying they're lying or anything, but there's a lot of shouting going on in this thread and a lot of assumptions and back and forthing when really, you're right, only Cryptic knows what the actual state of affairs is. It might be worse than we think, it might be better, who knows.
The thing is though, what reason does Cryptic have to lie about the ratio?
What reason do they have to not put more work into KDF and Romulan content if there really was an enormous amount of profit to be made? Do they secretly hate making huge profits? Or is it more reasonable to assume that when they look at the numbers the content won't give them that reward?
I like the idea of faction-specific content. I enjoyed playing the Romulan and KDF faction-specific stories. And I agree that the game would be better if I had more choices in what approach to take during an episode. That allows more variation in my characters, regardless of faction.
But: unless you really think Cryptic hates profit, it's more reasonable to assume that they know what they are doing even if you or I would reward them for a new KDF ship or Romulan costume. Apparently there are not enough people like that in their metrics.
You know, I agree that it sucks that the KDF faction doesn't get more content, and it's a shame that the Romulans don't get, say, easy access to Romulan boffs and doffs to fill up their rosters with their own people.
But I don't get the vicious side taking here. Like the bitter attitude people show when the plot implies that the KDF and the rom republic join the federation in the future.
The entire POINT of the federation is that all cultures and people are valuable, and that embracing diversity is a good thing. This is one of the core themes of Star Trek: Don't be a bigot, don't hate people because they're different, seek common ground with even the bitterest enemies. TNG started off from a point where the Klingons and the Federation were tight allies. DS9 split them up and brought them back together again. By the end of that series, even Fed/RSE relations were on the mend.
Yeah, the KDF joins the Federation. So does the Romulan Republic. -That- part isn't dev favoritism, it's the themes of the freaking franchise at work.
Comments
Thank you. Lets face it. Even in Canon The Feds only became powerful and expanded because it's members applied for their membership. No one got forced to it nor anyone can't get out. Love them or hate them one can admit that their system work that it's the people that are flocking to them.
Just ask yourself if you are a civilization that has warp capability and can chose from one of these group to join:
A Group that is Xenophobic and would eventually turn you into their slave and put you under fear.
B. Group that will put you under their protection as long as you are beneath them and are war mongers.
C. A Group of Capitalists that will exploit your resources for their own just because they think they are far superior than your race.
D. Or a bunch of care bears who's greatest fear is insulting your culture and diversity and are only concern about are trying their best to promote equality and sharing resources equally with their members and exploring the galaxy and sharing the knowledge to a point you think this guys are a bunch of softies.
I don't know about the others but in the end if I want to better my civilization I would have to chose the D group since it's your best bet. Seriously look at the ferengi's example.
Also kinda ironic that with all the tech and great minds the Feds has and all the more robust alien races they have it's always the Humans that are the most abundant pawn in the front lines as canon fodder. Imagine in TOS alone how many Red Shirts are humans that get killed off lol
Frankly I think you're the one that's insane. Ignoring cash opportunities is the stupid thing to do. Sure spend the bulk of your time on the larger % but to utterly ignore the rest is dull witted imo, you're telling people 'nah we don't want that extra cash.'
You seem to be confusing "income" with "profit."
And even if KDF- or Romulan- endgame story content can be added without losing money, if the profit is 1% vs. 30% for the current "faction neutral" content does it make sense for a business to hire more staff to do it?
The pragmatic approach would be for you to push Cryptic to improve their support of the Foundry. Foundry authors work for free and some of them care as much about Romulan stories as you do.
I mean like holy TRIBBLE, pick your arguments better. Cryptic makes its money by selling ships and gambling revenue via lock boxes. They would have to be making a profit in order to remain solvent and producing new season content updates. If they weren't making a profit the game would be a different beast entirely and would be in maintenance mode with no development being done.
I don't buy this line of argument that they can't do different factional missions and stories, especially for bs about it being no return on their investment. It's not a question of can't, but won't. If they charged people for storyline content and they don't want it it would be a different story. But they don't. So stop arguing that they do.
In SwTor, you have the Jedi and the Sith. And a "third faction", the Smugglers and Bounty hunters. BUT they are forced into being Sith/Jedi too, instead of a 3rd faction. It seems like games devs can only think in binary, two groups. A third/fourth faction is too much headwork
Cryptic makes money directly from ships, lock boxes, faction specific costumes, misc. unlocks.
They make money indirectly from free story episodes when those episodes cause players to keep playing the game (or return to playing it) and then spend money. They can tell how many players a story episode gains them, and how much money those players spent in the time around when they played that episode. They can link income from events the same way.
If a new faction-neutral story episode brings in 1,000 extra players who together spend an extra $1,000, that episode indirectly generated $1,000.
So, not weird at all.
You do realise that revenue on its own doesn't say much, right? Costs are also important, and obviously maintaining 3 separate factions is more expensive than 1 or 2.
It doesn't matter much where the revenue comes from, even if it all came from C-store purchases and lockboxes, those C-store ships have to be designed too. What would be the wiser course of action: design three different ships for a faction that represents 70% of the playerbase, or nine ships to cover the other 30% too? It'll always be much cheaper to create stuff for less factions.
I'm fairly confident that Cryptic is more able to determine these things than you or I anyway. They have data, you know. The cursed metrics and spreadsheets.
Except as Ive stated before, and I think in this thread no less, you can give both KDF and RR more content in the current faction neutral styling they have been doing... they'd just have to bother. For example, as I've suggested before, instead of rushing into this next big bad war, we could have had a full seasons worth of content in the 'rebuilding and exploring' theme. We could have gone to Qo'nos to help rebuild there, considering it got hammered in space by Undine then space and ground during the Iconian War, and that would have been a beautiful time for a revamped map like ESD got and same for their shipyard station. Similarly we could have finally seen some progress on Mol'Rihan. It was also hotly contested during the Iconian War, and we've been building on it for a year and change in game. Other worlds were completely devastated according to the blog fiction. We could have gone there and slapped down scavengers/slavers/pirates and done some work to help colonists resettle. They can give us KDF/RR content easily inside this crappy new faction neutral(read federation only) design scheme they have...
It's also reasonable to ask for more than one approach to parts of a story, like in the Dominion arc where you can spare or kill the Ferengi, or the same with Hassan. That isn't even a faction-specific wish, it also benefits feddies who are more like Kirk than Picard.
It's new Romulan-only or KDF-only story content that isn't likely to happen, and isn't reasonable to demand.
Edit: nevermind. Just realised you edited the post.
You can blame the Vulcans for not helping (soon) enough all you want, fact is, the Great Romulan Star Empire with its superior methods and superior philosophy failed to avert the Hobus event and protect its citizens from disaster.
The Romulan Star Empire approach is a failure. You can blame individuals and others all you want, but if their society was all that great, it should have withstand some exterior foes and should not have been brought down by exterior or interior forces.
Even the peace-loving Feddie Bears managed to defeat the Borg and organized the Alpha and Beta Quadrant to stop the Dominion invasion. And it managed stop several interior foes, too - fear-mongers that wanted to create a military dictatorship for the "safety" of the Federation, individuals that were taken over by aliens, stopped conspiracies to spiral the Klingons and Federation into an all out war. It has proven resilient to exterior and interior foes (so far).
If some people can't see the signs, it's their problem. Thankfully, the Romulan people are not actually dumb. They can change and adapt, and D'Tan has shown an excellent way. Under his leadership, the Romulan Republic actually has become an influential power in the Galaxy. Heck, they have significant control and access to the Dyson Sphere and all its technological wonders. The remains of the Romulan Star Empire got nothing of that, and the KDF and FED would have probably fought tooth and nails to stop the old RSE getting access to that. The Tholians and Breen probably look with envy to the Romulans.
s world, ships and uniforms to reflect the changes that have come about.
What i can't agree with is the notion that they don't care, but from a monetary stand point they shouldn't focus the majority of content on the feds which it has seemed like in the last year. New ships are nice to get but we also like to have other accessory items to which we can play with.
Now back to the topic at hand.
My character Tsin'xing
He may be sneaky but hes still a dolt. "is that an Iconian gateway??? Turning it on will be bad? Who cares fire that sucker up!' Yep millions died because of D'Tan.
original join date 2010
Member: Team Trekyards. Visit Trekyards today!
The Romulans and KDF aren't ones to mess with. You mess with them and they'll rip you a new wormhole.
The Federation on the other hand are so wimpy and "diplomatic", they even got trolled by Pakleds once. Their preference for more talk, less action, and imposing their morality on other species, makes them prime targets to get picked on.
Edit: And with the Romulans and Klingons you know where they stand.
The Feds are all hypocrites; violating their "prime directive" whenever they want. Picard should have respected the Edo's laws and let them execute Wesley for falling into the flower bed.
what you say only adds up if you are saying that a rom or kdf focused story episode would result in no feds playing it. which of course is ridiculous, as that would be the same as saying that no rom/kdf players play episodes because they are fed focused. players will play whatever story content we are given.. we are starved for it!
the factional focus is less important than the quality of the writing, they wouldn't need to write 3 stories to account for everyone, they just do as they currently do, with a shifting focus.. if they have a series of 5 episodes planned, they write 3 fed focused, 1 rom and 1 kdf.. it still amounts to the same thing and shows some love for something other than just fed. it wouldn't cost cryptic any more than they were going to spend, so they loose nothing, which makes what stofsk was saying, really quite sensible.
My character Tsin'xing
indeed, advancement and risk always seem to share the same bed.. and it is a little hard to be a pioneer, if you're a pie in the oven.
They also ignored Worf and Shon.
original join date 2010
Member: Team Trekyards. Visit Trekyards today!
And their own chief engineer... and the readings you helped take.... Why? Because they'd set a time table and promised a show. Kererek and D'Tan's egos couldn't handle calling it off for another month.
I will admit the last time D'Tan made any kind of major appearance he DID act more Romulan and less whiney federation/vulcan butt widget. But... lots left to prove
They also don't need to make three separate storylines and missions. And I never said that. They allocate a set amount of work towards featured episodes and pay the staff they have already. They would plan these episodes out months if not a full year in advance. How would it increase the workload if they mandated that one of these episodes had a non-Fed faction bias? If they're going to produce let's say ten episodes in a year, seven of them could be Federation biased episodes with two or three being KDF and Rom biased. Hell, I'd accept just one episode a year at this point.
This isn't the silver bullet rebuttal you think it is. Cryptic doesn't charge us for story content. Maybe I would be willing to pay for extra storyline content for the other factions. Did you ever stop to think quite a few players would pay for an expansion pack for story content for each faction? Nah, you're too busy being smugly condescending.
For someone who claims they're not trying to be insulting, you sure do manage it anyhow.
I'm not saying that each faction has to be developed in equal amounts. Maybe other people are but that's not my argument at all, and developing the other factions may not raise costs as highly as others assume. There's a thread going on about how someone on the dev team is putting in extra work for the KDF tailor options. Great! Give that guy a raise! If I could vote with my wallet to signal to Cryptic this is the right move and should be applauded, I would.
They also don't share that data very much at all, or at least I'm unaware of it if they have. I'm not saying they're lying or anything, but there's a lot of shouting going on in this thread and a lot of assumptions and back and forthing when really, you're right, only Cryptic knows what the actual state of affairs is. It might be worse than we think, it might be better, who knows.
What reason do they have to not put more work into KDF and Romulan content if there really was an enormous amount of profit to be made? Do they secretly hate making huge profits? Or is it more reasonable to assume that when they look at the numbers the content won't give them that reward?
I like the idea of faction-specific content. I enjoyed playing the Romulan and KDF faction-specific stories. And I agree that the game would be better if I had more choices in what approach to take during an episode. That allows more variation in my characters, regardless of faction.
But: unless you really think Cryptic hates profit, it's more reasonable to assume that they know what they are doing even if you or I would reward them for a new KDF ship or Romulan costume. Apparently there are not enough people like that in their metrics.
But I don't get the vicious side taking here. Like the bitter attitude people show when the plot implies that the KDF and the rom republic join the federation in the future.
The entire POINT of the federation is that all cultures and people are valuable, and that embracing diversity is a good thing. This is one of the core themes of Star Trek: Don't be a bigot, don't hate people because they're different, seek common ground with even the bitterest enemies. TNG started off from a point where the Klingons and the Federation were tight allies. DS9 split them up and brought them back together again. By the end of that series, even Fed/RSE relations were on the mend.
Yeah, the KDF joins the Federation. So does the Romulan Republic. -That- part isn't dev favoritism, it's the themes of the freaking franchise at work.