More proof against the "Cardassians will *NEVER* happen because..." argument:
If a new faction happens (Cardassians are "likely", but also mentions Jem'Hadar and Borg, among a couple others), they will either be like Romulans (tied to FEDs or KDFs), or possibly starting out at level 50.
i cant see players with borg cubes, tactical cubes, tactical fusio... ehm xD..
cardassians make the most sense, 4th power in the quadrant, and for those fans of the dominion, why not band the alpha changelings with them and have an alliance, obviously the changelings are either LTS or non playable. anyway, have these alpha changelings give the specs of a cloning facility to the cardassians, and the cardassians control the type of jem'hadar they want to breed, increased lifespan, more open minded, less likely to be xenophibic, less aggressive, more compliant to help, following orders of others, more freedom, less engrained loyalty to the founders and more to the cardassian alliance.
meanwhile, you have the true way still operating with alpha jem'hadar that are still looking to create their own army, not completely wiped out, but enough from both sides to create a new problem.
speculative, but if there is a chance of something like this, only without the imperialistic goals...
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
I literally just listened to that part and he seemed more like that he's not interested in a new faction at all but possibly more the 'death knight' thing and doing that for various races.
Will we ever get a new Cardassian faction that was being talked about when the Romulans came out? They could make the story similar to the Romulan Republic storyline in a sense that you're rebuilding the Cardassian Union, but instead of allying with the Federation or the Klingons, you could have a choice of building up the Cardassian Union as a democratic state like it is played out to be in the game and novels, or the writers could make a complete U-turn and let you side with the True Way.
Yes and Yes but will be a half a$$ faction same as remans and roms.
Will we ever get a new Cardassian faction that was being talked about when the Romulans came out? They could make the story similar to the Romulan Republic storyline in a sense that you're rebuilding the Cardassian Union, but instead of allying with the Federation or the Klingons, you could have a choice of building up the Cardassian Union as a democratic state like it is played out to be in the game and novels, or the writers could make a complete U-turn and let you side with the True Way.
Yes and Yes but will be a half a$$ faction same as remans and roms.
Actually, it sounds like it might be even LESS than that. He said that a new Card faction might just start at max level, meaning they wouldn't even have the 20 something levels of faction specific content that the Roms have.
I think though they might add Cardassian as a new race in the Creator Character selection in the future, like Talaxian in DR.
I agree that this is what will most likely happen. I don't see Cryptic committing to a new fraction that will require pumping out 25+ ships on initial release plus keep up with releasing new Cardassian ships along with the current Fed, KDF, Rom ship demands that players have.
Really they should have just started from the beginning with a Federation faction (no Roms allowed) and a Klingon/Romulan/Cardassian alliance faction. Actually that sounds pretty nice. There could be much more balance of ship releases from 2 factions with this alignment.
When you see "TRIBBLE" in my posts, it's because I manually typed "TRIBBLE" and censored myself.
I think though they might add Cardassian as a new race in the Creator Character selection in the future, like Talaxian in DR.
I agree that this is what will most likely happen. I don't see Cryptic committing to a new fraction that will require pumping out 25+ ships on initial release plus keep up with releasing new Cardassian ships along with the current Fed, KDF, Rom ship demands that players have.
Really they should have just started from the beginning with a Federation faction (no Roms allowed) and a Klingon/Romulan/Cardassian alliance faction. Actually that sounds pretty nice. There could be much more balance of ship releases from 2 factions with this alignment.
Al Rivera stated the new faction would probably be unlocked once a character has reached level 50 and the new character would start out at level 50. That would bypass need to create new T1 thru T4 starships unless for some reason such a ship would need to be created for story mission purposes. There might just be two T5 ships; a cruiser and an escort plus whatever T6 starships Cryptic decides to put in the C-Store (and used for story missions).
Regarding a combined KDF/RR and possible Cardassian alliance faction at the game inception... well hindsight is always 20/20. Sure it would have been nice, but after Cryptic bought out the rights to create STO from Perpetual (now defunct), Cryptic had a specific time limit (2 years) to release the game otherwise, they would have lost the license to publish STO.
In short, Perpetual crashed by the end of 2007 and was forced to lay off its team and sell off the license and art assets to Cryptic in January 2008. While it was a solid IP for Cryptic, the acquisition meant that the studio was legally obligated to create an MMO within two years or face losing the license. This explains STO's "rushed" feel and its early 2010 release.
If there wasn't a 2 year time limit to publish STO, then perhaps the KDF would have been a fully fleshed out faction rather than a level 20 unlockable faction with no story missions. Meaning the faction existed for PVP purposes.
Geko is pretty clear in that there won't be any new full faction.
The concepts he talks about is either something like the Romulans (good acquisition scheme, but expensive), or something we haven't seen in STO yet - A faction starting at Level 50. (No need for new tutorial or low tier ships, will have access to all or most of the faction-agnostic content. Good for player retention.)
Romulans as full factions are not happening, nor is any other full faction.
---
I think one interesting opportunity for a Level 50 faction could be that the new missions could integrate in the storyline of the Fed and KDF, too, and involve the new faction. That means that if the new faction releases and you immediately make your new faction character to do the new content, it might "feel" like the content is about you and your new faction, but it is actually faction-agnostic.
Admittedly, for Cardassia I see more potential for something like a political thriller/espionage stuff type story (True Way trying to turn Cardassia in a new independent power under a military regime like it used to, vs. democratic groups), but I am not sure Cryptic could pull of the writing... Even with the revamp of the Cardassian arc I still find the True Way (as they are depicted) a hard sell.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Geko is pretty clear in that there won't be any new full faction.
The concepts he talks about is either something like the Romulans (good acquisition scheme, but expensive), or something we haven't seen in STO yet - A faction starting at Level 50. (No need for new tutorial or low tier ships, will have access to all or most of the faction-agnostic content. Good for player retention.)
Romulans as full factions are not happening, nor is any other full faction.
maybe theyll listen when you say it... seems everyone loves to ignore that bit
maybe theyll listen when you say it... seems everyone loves to ignore that bit
It's not what you say, it's what you spend. The only numbers ever published (back at the 5th anniversary) suggested that, despite the naked powercreep of their traits and some ships, the Roms are less popular than the Klingons (something like 12% to 18%, IIRC). I'm sure Cryptic will be looking closely at Rom ship sales before embarking on another faction.
Personally, I've never run a Rom alt because I don't want to have to buy into another faction (although I strongly feel the game as a whole is better for their inclusion).
But yeah. A lot of people will say they think playable Cardassians are a good thing, but I wonder how many would put money down.
So, (full) playable factions will likely not get added anymore. I'd be happy if they'd add more playable species to the current factions though.
Factions seem to be less important than what was originally planned anyway. Basically the only thing that sets them apart from single playable species like the Trill and Fed-aligned Klingons are
- ships
- some uniforms
- a few faction-exclusive maps
- some species use different models like the Undine
- and of course a bit of roleplaying related stuff
- Featured episodes
Ships for most species are already there, especially lobi and lockbox ones for the Xindi, Voth, Benthans etc. These species could just get their respective faction's C-store and levelling ships as playable ships, perhaps with an extra option if you're flying, say, a Voth Bastion on a Fed-aligned Voth toon. This might stimulate lock box key sales a bit too.
Uniforms, I can imagine, are less problematic while adding new species.
Faction exclusive maps would most likely take most of the work.
Species models should be less of a problem since they're most likely already in the game.
So the most difficult and resource-demanding stuff seems to be the faction-specific maps and the featured episodes. But these things wouldn't be necessary or less necessary if they'd release the species as part of an existing faction.
Wait, what? Let me get this straight. A species that made 99% of its on screen appearances in only ONE of the Trek series and ZERO of the films, the vast majority of that as antagonists, is "one of the major protagonist factions throughout Star Trek"? Freaking Talaxians have as much protagonist screen time as Cardassians do, that is one character in one series that's it. What the hell are you smoking to think they're so important?
Yes, if you take a look into any of the many nice Star Trek maps of the galaxy out there - you'll notice that the Cardassian Union holds a vast region of space making it one of the 4 main factions/empires in known space by size alone, roughly on pair with the Romulan Star Empire and the Klingon Empire. No other faction in known space comes even near the main 4 and has the potential to be a "main player" which would grant a basis for a faction in STO. The Cardassians also have more time on air than the Romulans, just FYI.
The Cardassian species and civilization has been the focal point of an entire Star Trek series, with thorough insight into their culture, civilization, politics, religion, technology, social dynamics, etc. In addition DS9 had thoroughly developed multiple different characters from the species, at least 2 of which were amongst the main protagonist of that show that lasted for 7 seasons. The species were also present in couple of TNG episodes and couple of Voyager episodes.
If you want to equate the development of the Cardassians as species with a single Talaxian civilian/cook that lived and traveled aboard a Federation ship - then you're the one who has been smoking the stuff, my man.
Never got the appeal of spoonheads.... zomfg ugly ships and they were reptile romulans w/o cloak... Worse they got the depth development that Romulans SHOULD have gotten....
This I agree with you on completely.
Yeah, that figures. You just need to remember that your personal bias does in no possible way constitute a fact.
AT ONE TIME Cardassia controlled a large empire. Post-Dominion War they barely control anything beyond their own home planet. They're not in TOS, in no more than two episodes each of Voyager or TNG, and were important in only one series DS9 where they were NOT the "main focus". They were introduced as a former enemy of the Federation in TNG, and in DS9 they were cast as the former antagonists of the Bajorans and later the pawn of the Dominion, and that was it. They were a fading empire by the time DS9 began and they continued to lose territory and power from that point on until there was nothing left. We have never seen Cardassia at the peak of its power on screen, ever. You're vastly overestimating them.
Whil I agree with most of this, I do think you are slightly underestimating the Cardassians.
Yes, they've continuously lost influence and power during the series, the huge amount of damage done to Cardassia Prime itself and the grim outlook Garak had for his decimated people cannot be ignored and certainly do not support the notion of Cardassia as an important power.
That being said, they were noted to be a proud people (Worf) who would go to great lengths to ensure their domination over others. Their taking sides, first with the Dominion and later switching to the FED-Klingon-Romulan alliance was significant enough to be a major turning point in the war.
The fact that the Federation gave several inhabited worlds to them, creating a resistance group - the Maquis who would be causing trouble for some time - in the process, also shows that they are clearly a to be respected power. You don't give control of multiple established worlds to one of your former enemies, certainly not to a militairistic and conquest-driven species that might only be encouraged by these actions to try and take more. Not if they're weak enough to just ignore them and you could basically just pretend they don't exist or treat them as a very minor power.
They have certainly become less influential and less important since we last saw them. But the Dominion War ended a long time ago from our in-game perspective. As noted, they are proud. They have had enough time to rebuild at least a significant part of their homeworld, and their is little evidence that they actually lost a lot of territory, apart from what has been given to the Breen and even what happened to those worlds is unestablished AFAIK.
Besides, the Romulan Republic is presented as a power almost equal to the Feds and the Klinks in that they do everything we do, from going to the Delta Quadrant to fighting the Iconian War and being an important target during several conflicts. It was founded less than two years ago, from an in-game perspective. Cardassia has had well over 30 years to rebuild, and they've received a lot of support.
I know they're not canon, but in some of the books, Cardassia was helped even though the resources could also have been spent on Betazed rebuilding efforts.
Since they're often compared to space TRIBBLE's : one of the mistakes that were made a century ago, was condemning Germany to huge rebuilding fines (for lack of a better word) after the first World War. That, according to most historians today, was a huge mistake and led to the increased popularity of Hitler. It is not that much of a stretch to imagine the Feds to be willing to support Cardassia in any way they can anyway.
By the end of the series they are reduced to a single planet and a few scattered colonies, completely broken with no holdings to speak of whatsoever.
Not quite, the treaty at the end of the dominion war actually ceded the union all the planets they held at the start of the war, they still lost the planets the klingons took in the klingon-cardassian war that featured a season prior but they were not reduced to just a handful of worlds, militarily yes they were devastated though.
The game certainly doesn't reflect that, there is no Cardassian territory marked off as there is for Romulans and Klingon space, and every time we see Cardassians in game it's secret bases or scattered mostly forgotten colonies with no indication of a larger galactic presence.
Don't worry, Cryptic are the undisputed masters of retconning. There's barely a piece of the "old" STO left that hasn't been completely retconned or altered by now. If they want to, or see the financial gain in adding a Cardassian faction, you'll be surprised to wake up one morning and STO be like "What do you mean no significant Cardassian presence in this game? They have always been here! Did that Quinn forgot to brief you again?".
Remember how the Romulan Republic came to be? There was no Mol'Rihan, hell there was no Tau Dewa sector space even. But one day *boom* they decide on making peace-loving "nice" Romulans and we're just told that "Well, all this happened waaay before the events in the game you've played so far, but Admiral Quinn forgot to brief you. In essence you're playing a prequel. Bon apetit!" Hell, they even altered the entire Sela story and completely transformed the Tal'Shiar and the essence of the RSE into something ugly and unorthodox just to fit their new narrative.
Don't even for a second think that it can't or won't happen again if Legacy of Romulus resulted in good financial gain for them, which I believe it did based on observation.
Im still talking about a civillian faction, 'Trader' - High engineering lug lots of cargo in big ships for profit, 'Pirate' high tactical kill ships to steal stuff not huge cargobay and 'Smuggler' - high science avade and escape small cargo bay but bonus speed.also have a meter on progress so mostly blue - more chance of a pirate attack. more red - more chance of being arrested and losing cargo.
If they do a Cardie faction, shouldn't don't do what they did with the Romulans.
Choosing sides seemed so wrong when they had capability to exist as a independent faction, even after the Nova.
Crash of you go back and play through that rom arc again, you may notice the rason your choosing sides is to manipulate both the fedration and the klingons, it is a way of helping d'tan work both sides to get what he wants.
In short joining sides is just another tool for a larger romulan manipulation to get what they desire while being protected by both feds and klinks, and tbh it worked very well if it had not been for the feds and klinks the elachi wouldve ended the RR quite fast.
I personally like the idea of a "start at level 50" system for new races. Most of your character's life takes place in endgame anyway, and for some characters, such as Borg Cooperative captains, starting just after a certain point in the story (for Borg, after the Delta Quadrant is opened to the Alliance) is a lot more plausible then everybody starting in 2409.
I think if they do a stand alone cardi mini faction it should be done this way , similar to how the klinks were after reaching a certain level you could play a different faction.
I personally like the idea of a "start at level 50" system for new races. Most of your character's life takes place in endgame anyway, and for some characters, such as Borg Cooperative captains, starting just after a certain point in the story (for Borg, after the Delta Quadrant is opened to the Alliance) is a lot more plausible than everybody starting in 2409.
I understand your logic, but here is the problem: At level 50, there is *NO* faction specific content. And without faction specific content, there is no point having different factions at all. So if they were going to start a new "faction" at level 50, they might as well just give whatever new ships that faction would have to the Feds/KDF and be done with it, because that would effectively be the same thing.
Comments
https://www.reddit.com/r/sto/comments/4ccxal/devspeak_tidbits_from_the_latest_geko_interview/
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
cardassians make the most sense, 4th power in the quadrant, and for those fans of the dominion, why not band the alpha changelings with them and have an alliance, obviously the changelings are either LTS or non playable. anyway, have these alpha changelings give the specs of a cloning facility to the cardassians, and the cardassians control the type of jem'hadar they want to breed, increased lifespan, more open minded, less likely to be xenophibic, less aggressive, more compliant to help, following orders of others, more freedom, less engrained loyalty to the founders and more to the cardassian alliance.
meanwhile, you have the true way still operating with alpha jem'hadar that are still looking to create their own army, not completely wiped out, but enough from both sides to create a new problem.
speculative, but if there is a chance of something like this, only without the imperialistic goals...
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Yes and Yes but will be a half a$$ faction same as remans and roms.
Actually, it sounds like it might be even LESS than that. He said that a new Card faction might just start at max level, meaning they wouldn't even have the 20 something levels of faction specific content that the Roms have.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
Really they should have just started from the beginning with a Federation faction (no Roms allowed) and a Klingon/Romulan/Cardassian alliance faction. Actually that sounds pretty nice. There could be much more balance of ship releases from 2 factions with this alignment.
Sounds more like 1/8th arsed to me
Al Rivera stated the new faction would probably be unlocked once a character has reached level 50 and the new character would start out at level 50. That would bypass need to create new T1 thru T4 starships unless for some reason such a ship would need to be created for story mission purposes. There might just be two T5 ships; a cruiser and an escort plus whatever T6 starships Cryptic decides to put in the C-Store (and used for story missions).
Regarding a combined KDF/RR and possible Cardassian alliance faction at the game inception... well hindsight is always 20/20. Sure it would have been nice, but after Cryptic bought out the rights to create STO from Perpetual (now defunct), Cryptic had a specific time limit (2 years) to release the game otherwise, they would have lost the license to publish STO.
http://www.engadget.com/2014/11/22/the-game-archaeologist-perpetuals-star-trek-online/
If there wasn't a 2 year time limit to publish STO, then perhaps the KDF would have been a fully fleshed out faction rather than a level 20 unlockable faction with no story missions. Meaning the faction existed for PVP purposes.
The concepts he talks about is either something like the Romulans (good acquisition scheme, but expensive), or something we haven't seen in STO yet - A faction starting at Level 50. (No need for new tutorial or low tier ships, will have access to all or most of the faction-agnostic content. Good for player retention.)
Romulans as full factions are not happening, nor is any other full faction.
---
I think one interesting opportunity for a Level 50 faction could be that the new missions could integrate in the storyline of the Fed and KDF, too, and involve the new faction. That means that if the new faction releases and you immediately make your new faction character to do the new content, it might "feel" like the content is about you and your new faction, but it is actually faction-agnostic.
Admittedly, for Cardassia I see more potential for something like a political thriller/espionage stuff type story (True Way trying to turn Cardassia in a new independent power under a military regime like it used to, vs. democratic groups), but I am not sure Cryptic could pull of the writing... Even with the revamp of the Cardassian arc I still find the True Way (as they are depicted) a hard sell.
maybe theyll listen when you say it... seems everyone loves to ignore that bit
It's not what you say, it's what you spend. The only numbers ever published (back at the 5th anniversary) suggested that, despite the naked powercreep of their traits and some ships, the Roms are less popular than the Klingons (something like 12% to 18%, IIRC). I'm sure Cryptic will be looking closely at Rom ship sales before embarking on another faction.
Personally, I've never run a Rom alt because I don't want to have to buy into another faction (although I strongly feel the game as a whole is better for their inclusion).
But yeah. A lot of people will say they think playable Cardassians are a good thing, but I wonder how many would put money down.
Factions seem to be less important than what was originally planned anyway. Basically the only thing that sets them apart from single playable species like the Trill and Fed-aligned Klingons are
- ships
- some uniforms
- a few faction-exclusive maps
- some species use different models like the Undine
- and of course a bit of roleplaying related stuff
- Featured episodes
Ships for most species are already there, especially lobi and lockbox ones for the Xindi, Voth, Benthans etc. These species could just get their respective faction's C-store and levelling ships as playable ships, perhaps with an extra option if you're flying, say, a Voth Bastion on a Fed-aligned Voth toon. This might stimulate lock box key sales a bit too.
Uniforms, I can imagine, are less problematic while adding new species.
Faction exclusive maps would most likely take most of the work.
Species models should be less of a problem since they're most likely already in the game.
So the most difficult and resource-demanding stuff seems to be the faction-specific maps and the featured episodes. But these things wouldn't be necessary or less necessary if they'd release the species as part of an existing faction.
Whil I agree with most of this, I do think you are slightly underestimating the Cardassians.
Yes, they've continuously lost influence and power during the series, the huge amount of damage done to Cardassia Prime itself and the grim outlook Garak had for his decimated people cannot be ignored and certainly do not support the notion of Cardassia as an important power.
That being said, they were noted to be a proud people (Worf) who would go to great lengths to ensure their domination over others. Their taking sides, first with the Dominion and later switching to the FED-Klingon-Romulan alliance was significant enough to be a major turning point in the war.
The fact that the Federation gave several inhabited worlds to them, creating a resistance group - the Maquis who would be causing trouble for some time - in the process, also shows that they are clearly a to be respected power. You don't give control of multiple established worlds to one of your former enemies, certainly not to a militairistic and conquest-driven species that might only be encouraged by these actions to try and take more. Not if they're weak enough to just ignore them and you could basically just pretend they don't exist or treat them as a very minor power.
They have certainly become less influential and less important since we last saw them. But the Dominion War ended a long time ago from our in-game perspective. As noted, they are proud. They have had enough time to rebuild at least a significant part of their homeworld, and their is little evidence that they actually lost a lot of territory, apart from what has been given to the Breen and even what happened to those worlds is unestablished AFAIK.
Besides, the Romulan Republic is presented as a power almost equal to the Feds and the Klinks in that they do everything we do, from going to the Delta Quadrant to fighting the Iconian War and being an important target during several conflicts. It was founded less than two years ago, from an in-game perspective. Cardassia has had well over 30 years to rebuild, and they've received a lot of support.
I know they're not canon, but in some of the books, Cardassia was helped even though the resources could also have been spent on Betazed rebuilding efforts.
Since they're often compared to space TRIBBLE's : one of the mistakes that were made a century ago, was condemning Germany to huge rebuilding fines (for lack of a better word) after the first World War. That, according to most historians today, was a huge mistake and led to the increased popularity of Hitler. It is not that much of a stretch to imagine the Feds to be willing to support Cardassia in any way they can anyway.
'Deathknight system where you start at level 50 and have no story'? Yeah, hard pass. Either do Legacy of Cardassia or not at all IMO.
Not quite, the treaty at the end of the dominion war actually ceded the union all the planets they held at the start of the war, they still lost the planets the klingons took in the klingon-cardassian war that featured a season prior but they were not reduced to just a handful of worlds, militarily yes they were devastated though.
Do we really need a third faction whining about not getting ships and content? I think not.
Don't worry, Cryptic are the undisputed masters of retconning.
Remember how the Romulan Republic came to be? There was no Mol'Rihan, hell there was no Tau Dewa sector space even. But one day *boom* they decide on making peace-loving "nice" Romulans and we're just told that "Well, all this happened waaay before the events in the game you've played so far, but Admiral Quinn forgot to brief you. In essence you're playing a prequel. Bon apetit!" Hell, they even altered the entire Sela story and completely transformed the Tal'Shiar and the essence of the RSE into something ugly and unorthodox just to fit their new narrative.
Don't even for a second think that it can't or won't happen again if Legacy of Romulus resulted in good financial gain for them, which I believe it did based on observation.
Crash of you go back and play through that rom arc again, you may notice the rason your choosing sides is to manipulate both the fedration and the klingons, it is a way of helping d'tan work both sides to get what he wants.
In short joining sides is just another tool for a larger romulan manipulation to get what they desire while being protected by both feds and klinks, and tbh it worked very well if it had not been for the feds and klinks the elachi wouldve ended the RR quite fast.
I think if they do a stand alone cardi mini faction it should be done this way , similar to how the klinks were after reaching a certain level you could play a different faction.
I can get behind that idea
I understand your logic, but here is the problem: At level 50, there is *NO* faction specific content. And without faction specific content, there is no point having different factions at all. So if they were going to start a new "faction" at level 50, they might as well just give whatever new ships that faction would have to the Feds/KDF and be done with it, because that would effectively be the same thing.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008