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The faction popularity puzzle solved

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  • nikeixnikeix Member Posts: 3,972 Arc User
    This may come as a shock, but Nielsen Media Research is actually quite good at running this sort of study to get actionable results. If they only polled 600 its because they had a good feel for how to get the data the client was asking for with a sample that size.
  • equinox976equinox976 Member Posts: 2,305 Arc User
    nikeix wrote: »
    This may come as a shock, but Nielsen Media Research is actually quite good at running this sort of study to get actionable results. If they only polled 600 its because they had a good feel for how to get the data the client was asking for with a sample that size.

    Hmm...

    I am not so sure I have ever trust Neilsen results. Most Sci fans dont.
  • kodachikunokodachikuno Member Posts: 6,020 Arc User1
    equinox976 wrote: »
    nikeix wrote: »
    This may come as a shock, but Nielsen Media Research is actually quite good at running this sort of study to get actionable results. If they only polled 600 its because they had a good feel for how to get the data the client was asking for with a sample that size.

    Hmm...

    I am not so sure I have ever trust Neilsen results. Most Sci fans dont.

    ^so much this
    tumblr_mr1jc2hq2T1rzu2xzo1_400.gif
    tacofangs wrote: »
    STO isn't canon, and neither are any of the books.
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  • narthaisnarthais Member Posts: 452 Arc User
    equinox976 wrote: »
    anodynes wrote: »
    I'm sorry OP, but your premises, like so many who have brought up this poll in the past, are flawed.

    Indeed. Ask anybody who has worked in stat's, and they will tell you that (stat's) can be 'massaged' to give you pretty much any answer that you want. Statisticians are only kept around nowadays (mostly by government and PR/Spin firms) because there are still a lot of people who are unaware of the above fact, and that such people will continue to swallow pretty much anything.

    Then again... only 75.6% of what I have just said is true.

    "Lies, damn lies and statistics."
  • snoggymack22snoggymack22 Member Posts: 7,084 Arc User
    darakoss wrote: »
    sophlogimo wrote: »
    Factions are a bad idea for a theme-park style MMO anyway.

    It worked very well for SWG.

    I see what you did there!

    :smiley:
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
  • starkaosstarkaos Member Posts: 11,556 Arc User
    nikeix wrote: »
    This may come as a shock, but Nielsen Media Research is actually quite good at running this sort of study to get actionable results. If they only polled 600 its because they had a good feel for how to get the data the client was asking for with a sample that size.

    Even if Nielsen Media Research is good at running this sort of study, the poll is extremely flawed. The poll asks which of the following opposing factions do you want to play as and includes the Federation as an option. Naturally, most people would dismiss the Federation as an option since it is the main faction. If it asked which of the following factions do you want to play as or removed the Federation from the original poll, then it would be a reasonable poll.

    Then there is the problem of how they got the data. If it is an internet poll that anyone can do, then we can get certain internet groups to mess up the numbers. Polls only work if it is a completely random group of people.
  • davefenestratordavefenestrator Member Posts: 10,661 Arc User
    Also, Cryptic did try to make KDF more attractive with the story missions from level 1-up instead of forcing you to create a Fed first.

    If that poll was even slightly credible, Cryptic would have seen a massive shift of players to the KDF, with stacks of cash monies from all of them buying ships and other unlocks. They did not see a 58% greater demand for KDF, they saw the Federation still dominating by a wide margin.

    Cryptic likes money. If that poll was not something that "should be hauled away AS garbage" then they would have switched over to offering that much larger KDF player base a bunch of new ships and story episodes. Reality has a Federation bias.
  • starkaosstarkaos Member Posts: 11,556 Arc User
    Also, Cryptic did try to make KDF more attractive with the story missions from level 1-up instead of forcing you to create a Fed first.

    If that poll was even slightly credible, Cryptic would have seen a massive shift of players to the KDF, with stacks of cash monies from all of them buying ships and other unlocks. They did not see a 58% greater demand for KDF, they saw the Federation still dominating by a wide margin.

    Cryptic likes money. If that poll was not something that "should be hauled away AS garbage" then they would have switched over to offering that much larger KDF player base a bunch of new ships and story episodes. Reality has a Federation bias.

    And it took 3.5 years for the KDF to get story missions from level 1 to 20. The KDF originally started off as an afterthought as a PVP faction with no story missions so the Federation would have someone to fight. Always heard the devs saying that 18% of the STO characters were KDF, but that was before the Romulan Republic. Then there is the Delta Rising Operations Pack with 5 Federation ships, 2 KDF ships, and 2 RR ships. The KDF has always been treated poorly by Cryptic.
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  • kyrrokkyrrok Member Posts: 1,352 Arc User
    edited May 2016
    Post deleted.
  • davefenestratordavefenestrator Member Posts: 10,661 Arc User
    starkaos wrote: »
    Also, Cryptic did try to make KDF more attractive with the story missions from level 1-up instead of forcing you to create a Fed first.

    If that poll was even slightly credible, Cryptic would have seen a massive shift of players to the KDF, with stacks of cash monies from all of them buying ships and other unlocks. They did not see a 58% greater demand for KDF, they saw the Federation still dominating by a wide margin.

    Cryptic likes money. If that poll was not something that "should be hauled away AS garbage" then they would have switched over to offering that much larger KDF player base a bunch of new ships and story episodes. Reality has a Federation bias.

    And it took 3.5 years for the KDF to get story missions from level 1 to 20. The KDF originally started off as an afterthought as a PVP faction with no story missions so the Federation would have someone to fight. Always heard the devs saying that 18% of the STO characters were KDF, but that was before the Romulan Republic. Then there is the Delta Rising Operations Pack with 5 Federation ships, 2 KDF ships, and 2 RR ships. The KDF has always been treated poorly by Cryptic.

    I disagree about the "poor treatment," but ignoring that: when they tried offering the same level up experience, not many players cared. There was no vast untapped yearning to play KDF like this worthless poll claims.

    I have 3 KDF alts and 3 Romulan myself, but I'm very much in the minority and I accept reality. Reality is that the vast majority prefer to be Captain Kirk / Picard / Archer / Sisko / Janeway not Kor.

    If 70+% of the money is spent for Federation characters, it makes sense for them to get the lion's share of the support from Cryptic. Cryptic is a business, not a non-profit with a mission to promote Klingon values.
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  • davefenestratordavefenestrator Member Posts: 10,661 Arc User
    and after 3.5 years without it, any impact it might've had was already used up-people already recognized the Red faction wasn't getting anything else, or anything more by then, so the patterns were already set.

    Sure, existing players had already given up. But MMOs have a high turnover of old people not letting me haz their stuffs when they quit replaced by new players all bright-eyed and without the dark sarcasm of these forums. If that poll wasn't garbage, these new, untainted players would be choosing KDF 58% MORE often than they chose Fed. That's the demand that the poll claims exists.

    Reality did not match that, at all. Cryptic did not see massive KDF signups from new players. New players starting off with a fresh viewpoint and a perfectly viable KDF alternative still chose Fed instead. Because they wanted to be Kirk, etc. like on their TV shows and movies.

    So Cryptic added the Romulan faction. The poll claims an 11% vote for Romulans so 64% as many of the new people should have chosen that faction as their main character as chose Feds. Nope, again the poll is proven worthless.

    Regardless of how unfair you think Cryptic has been in their treatment, the fact is that the poll in the OP was worthless in predicting what people would actually do.
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  • markhawkmanmarkhawkman Member Posts: 35,236 Arc User
    and after 3.5 years without it, any impact it might've had was already used up-people already recognized the Red faction wasn't getting anything else, or anything more by then, so the patterns were already set.
    Sure, existing players had already given up. But MMOs have a high turnover of old people not letting me haz their stuffs when they quit replaced by new players all bright-eyed and without the dark sarcasm of these forums. If that poll wasn't garbage, these new, untainted players would be choosing KDF 58% MORE often than they chose Fed. That's the demand that the poll claims exists.

    Reality did not match that, at all. Cryptic did not see massive KDF signups from new players. New players starting off with a fresh viewpoint and a perfectly viable KDF alternative still chose Fed instead. Because they wanted to be Kirk, etc. like on their TV shows and movies.
    That or Romulans.

    Patrick's trying to make it seem like there was no mention at all.... Sure the Romulan stuff overshadowed it in the news, but it was there. Anyone who read it would see it, and any newly created KDF characters would get automatically sent there.

    I personally took an old character that I created way back in season 3 when I first started playing and played through the entire storyline just to see what it was like.

    Pages and pages of whimpering like a baby grishnar will not change the fact that people DID talk about the KDF story release on the forums, and they DID notice it was there. Or at least those of us who didn't wallow in self pity the same way a targ wallows in mud.

    Is that giant wall of text self-pity? yes, yes it is. Why? because you could easily make an equally large list of problems with the Fed side. Different problems to be sure, but just as large.
    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
    My character Tsin'xing
    Costume_marhawkman_Tsin%27xing_CC_Comic_Page_Blue_488916968.jpg
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  • leemwatsonleemwatson Member Posts: 5,469 Arc User
    In September 2005, Perpetual Entertainment, the original company behind STO, has contracted Nielsen Media Research, a firm that measures media audiences, to conduct an extensive customer survey for a Star Trek MMORPG with over 600 active gamers on their preferences, including playable factions. These were their findings:

    Factions.jpg


    Perpetual Entertainment: "We also wanted to ensure that we were hearing from people beyond those that identify themselves as Star Trek enthusiasts since we assume their opinion is under represented within the existing Star Trek Online community forums."

    By contrast, Cryptic has conducted its own customer survey exclusively within the STO community. See the Interview With Star Trek Online Producer Craig Zinkievich.
    TrekMovie: Star Trek Online has two warring factions, The Federation and the Klingon Empire. We did a poll on the site and it showed that the vast majority were more interested in playing on the Federation side. Plus it seems there are more Federation fleets forming as well. Are you concerned there is going to be an imbalance in the game? [TrekMovie is also a Star Trek enthusiast site]

    Craig Zinkievich: No. Someone PMed me your poll, we did a poll very early on after we announced the game, and our numbers were right around the same numbers. So we have really tried to make sure that the design supports that natural imbalance. So the Klingon gameplay is going to be much different than what the Federation is getting. It is going to be a lot more focused on the PvP [Player vs. Player] and focused on the houses within the Klingon Empire than really big story episodic exploration-focused that the Federation faction is going to have.

    This directly contradicts the earlier statement by Jack Emmert, Cryptic Studios CEO: "Starfleet and Klingon. Yeah. So two factions, full PvE content."

    Why is it important to poll outside of Star Trek enthusiasts? There's something called self-selection bias:
    In statistics, self-selection bias arises in any situation in which individuals select themselves into a group, causing a biased sample with nonprobability sampling. [. . .] A poll suffering from such bias is termed a self-selected listener opinion poll or "SLOP".

    Someone will likely be tempted to say that only Star Trek enthusiasts should vote in such surveys and polls because this is called Star Trek Online and because the television show was focused on Starfleet and Federation. However, this is also a computer game, which advertises multiple factions. There have already been Star Trek computer games, such as Star Trek: Klingon, Star Trek: Klingon Academy and Star Trek: Klingon Honor Guard, which were exclusively from the Klingon perspective. Therefore, the arguments "Star Trek is about Starfleet! and "the show was about Starfleet!" are inapplicable.


    CBS calls the shots on majority of the STO content.

    Want evidence? Captain's Log: Interview with Star Trek Online lead writer Christine Thompson, part one:
    Thompson told me, "I gathered all of my notes together and sent them off to CBS and said 'I have this great idea for three Romulan political factions and a series of adventures on Romulus' and all of this really great stuff. I just got this email back from them that said, 'We have to talk.'"

    She was informed, before the 2009 movie was released, that Romulus and Remus had been destroyed in the "Prime Universe" in order to provide a foundation for the creation of the alternate universe in Abrams' film. It was then that she realized a large portion of her work was rendered useless. "About 20 pages of work went up in the air, and I went out to my car and screamed for a little bit, then came back in and started over," Thompson said.

    The team at Cryptic wasn't given a lot of advance warning about the issue and was told only that the planets were destroyed in the film script. They were also given advance copies of the Countdown comics that CBS asked Cryptic to include in her story as well.


    Back to the factions.

    Here's a quote from another early article titled "Isn't It A Little Early For A Star Trek Online Winback Weekend?":
    Has Star Trek Online really lost so many of its launch players in the past three months to warrant a Winback Weekend?

    And the first comment summed up a lot of issues with the game:
    1. Cryptic failed to finish the game.

    You only get one chance to make a first impression. Maybe no one at Cryptic has ever heard that old adage; if they had they might not have delivered a half-finished game.

    Star Trek Online is unfinished. It was unfinished at release and it's still unfinished, today. And not in just a small way, either, like things need to be polished up or there needs to be a little more content. No, STO is unfinished on an intergalactic scale.

    There were suppose to be two playable factions – the Federation and the Klingons. The Federation side is well fleshed out with a good variety of things to do; the Klingon side has nothing to do but PvP. Except for a few grind quests, there's zero PvE on the Klingon side.

    In any MMO, at least half the players want to play the bad guys – also known as the Klingons in Star Trek lore – but Cryptic didn't give those players the opportunity. If you wanted to play Klingons, but weren't that keen on PvP, chances are good you left the game and chances are good you left as soon as your first month's subscription expired.

    2. Atari and Cryptic failed to keep their greed in check.

    From the very beginning, Atari and Cryptic Studios have been too greedy. They went with the too-popular, $14.99-a-month model and made players pony up some extra cash for the collector's edition of the game. That's fine. Gamers are reluctantly getting used to this formula.

    But STO has gone a little too far. Right out of the gate, they've behaved like they're successful and have a solid player-base they can rely on to buy their stuff: There's so much desirable stuff in the STO cash store, you'd think it was a free-to-play game.

    If you want to play a Federation Klingon like Worf it will cost you money. So will playing a Ferengi. Do you want to respec? More money. Rename? More mullah. Special ships, emotes and bridge designs are all being touted in the cash store, and you can't get them in the game.

    More character slots? STO only allows three. That's right. Only 3! Is there another pay-to-play MMO that only allows three character slots? If you want more, you have to buy them from the cash store.

    All this nickel-and-diming of the player-base only helps to drive people from the game.

    The puzzle has been solved. :)

    This post is completely irrelevant to today's evidence due to the fact the latest 'date' quote in the material is 2009!
    "You don't want to patrol!? You don't want to escort!? You don't want to defend the Federation's Starbases!? Then why are you flying my Starships!? If you were a Klingon you'd be killed on the spot, but lucky for you.....you WERE in Starfleet. Let's see how New Zealand Penal Colony suits you." Adm A. Necheyev.
  • kiralynkiralyn Member Posts: 1,576 Arc User
    /shrug

    For many folks - and for the shows/movies in general, which is what the average person is familiar with - "Star Trek" = "Fed". So it's not a surprise that Fed is most popular.

    Also, people on the whole tend to go with the default. Even if something else is getting huge mention among the truly active fans (the ones bothering to speak out/etc). Like, I was amazingly surprised that, considering how much the internet buzz was "OMG, Female Shepard/Jennifer Hale is awesome in Mass Effect! GuyShep sucks!".... Bioware's statistics showed that 80% played GuyShep.

    So yeah. Most people play Fed. Duh. (It'd be interesting to see how many people just use the provided character appearances, and don't tweak their character's sliders, let alone their boffs.)



    ...personally, as an alt-a-holic who tends to try all the available PvE exploration/storyline/solo content in an MMO, I've got 5 Feds, 3 KDF, 1 Rom/Fed, and 1 Rom/KDF. And I'll be making a TOS/Fed (at least) when the expansion hits.
  • kyrrokkyrrok Member Posts: 1,352 Arc User
    edited May 2016
    I'm not that surprised or offended (at least not anymore) that Feds get more attention. But if anyone thinks that this game would actually get better if they just got rid of the KDF/Roms, they underestimate the laziness of the devs. I'm sure Geko would be most pleased to just be rid of Klingons entirely. But his satisfaction of giving the Klingon players the biggest "F**K YOU!!!" on their way out the door would still land what's left of the game in the current deteriorating state as it is now, or worse. No exploration, no decent story arc, no bug fixing, nothing.
  • kiralynkiralyn Member Posts: 1,576 Arc User
    kiralyn wrote: »
    For many folks - and for the shows/movies in general, which is what the average person is familiar with - "Star Trek" = "Fed". So it's not a surprise that Fed is most popular.

    Another thought - the average joe will also tend to go for "attractive", or at least "not ugly". So, outside of particular fans of a race, generic players would tend towards Human/Betazed/Trill/etc rather than Ferengi, Orions instead of Klingons, Roms instead of Remans.... similarly with "good guys" vs "bad guys"

    (gotta say, I'm always surprised at people wanting Cardassians. Between appearance and their general "villain" status in DS9....)

  • evilmark444evilmark444 Member Posts: 6,950 Arc User
    kiralyn wrote: »
    It'd be interesting to see how many people just use the provided character appearances, and don't tweak their character's sliders, let alone their boffs.

    I for one leave them alone for the most part, if I try to make them look like someone they tend to turn out ... monstrous ... and I end up defaulting them and quitting. I suck at using character sliders.
    Lifetime Subscriber since Beta
    eaY7Xxu.png
  • kyrrokkyrrok Member Posts: 1,352 Arc User
    edited May 2016
    kiralyn wrote: »
    kiralyn wrote: »
    For many folks - and for the shows/movies in general, which is what the average person is familiar with - "Star Trek" = "Fed". So it's not a surprise that Fed is most popular.

    Another thought - the average joe will also tend to go for "attractive", or at least "not ugly". So, outside of particular fans of a race, generic players would tend towards Human/Betazed/Trill/etc rather than Ferengi, Orions instead of Klingons, Roms instead of Remans.... similarly with "good guys" vs "bad guys"

    (gotta say, I'm always surprised at people wanting Cardassians. Between appearance and their general "villain" status in DS9....)

    But as it stands now, the Klingons, the Remans, much of the ugly people are no longer the villains. PvP is quite dead. There is no reason in my mind to think of them as evil, not in 2410.
  • darthkuribohdarthkuriboh Member Posts: 211 Arc User
    lordsteve1 wrote: »
    Simple fact is that for a small company like Cryptic factions split the workforce so you loose out in other areas. If there was no Romulan faction all those resources would go into the remaining two.
    Every added extra faction or mechanic needs resources and eventually you end up with very watered down content as resources get stretched or dry up for some areas.
    Also the way the plot of the game js going the factions don't make much sense anymore. We're all allies and share technology. We've all been through a galactic war together so any kind of forced separation feels a bit odd.
    I'd rather they just did away with them all and merged everything giving players full freedom to follow their own pathway.

    I, and many hundreds of others, would absolutely quit STO if they take the Empire (or the Romulans) away.
  • hugin1205hugin1205 Member Posts: 489 Arc User
    I can understand why there are more Fed Players than KDF/Rom ones. Star Trek was about federation. The others species were mostly the evil ones.
    [That said, Romulans featured less in the series than Klingons. Yet I get the Impression that Romulans were better received than Klingons (I have no data on active Players though - just a Feeling).]

    Cryptic sees Klingons as a failed faction. Bugs on KDF side take much longer to be adressed (like the tailor bug), KDF have fewer uniforms, ships and so on. Which Signals to Players: well, don't Play this side....so of Course it Fails. And because of that it's also harder to get KDF fleets going and so on.

    Now, no matter what imput, there will always be more Feddies than others. But doing a Klingon/Romulan recruitment Event and add some KDF/Rom science ships, carriers and so on could help.

    Also I'd like to be able to Team up with other side for missions. This would mean that a few Things Need to be done though:
    1 - PvP revamp no more factions, just Teams and/or random crossover Pugs
    2 - PvE Queues: adjustment to some PvEs. ie Fleet alert would be a defense against Borg, Cardassians or Tal Shiar with a mixed Group. Storywise you can even pack in a "different house" klingon force as enemies - but no federation. Most endgame stuff is cross faction anyway.

    However, I think that dropping factions would open many doors - it would be easier to insert more factions at some Point. And Players could experience the missions from other side as an ally (and do some missions that they cannot do otherwise).
    18 characters
    KDF: 2 tacs, 2 engs, 3 scis
    KDF Roms: 3 tacs, 1 eng, 1 scis
    FED: 2 tacs, 1 eng, 2 scis
    TOS: 1 tac
    all on T5 rep (up to temporal)
    all have mastered Intel tree (and some more specs Points)
    highest DPS: 60.982
  • darthkuribohdarthkuriboh Member Posts: 211 Arc User
    Also, Cryptic did try to make KDF more attractive with the story missions from level 1-up instead of forcing you to create a Fed first.

    If that poll was even slightly credible, Cryptic would have seen a massive shift of players to the KDF, with stacks of cash monies from all of them buying ships and other unlocks. They did not see a 58% greater demand for KDF, they saw the Federation still dominating by a wide margin.

    Cryptic likes money. If that poll was not something that "should be hauled away AS garbage" then they would have switched over to offering that much larger KDF player base a bunch of new ships and story episodes. Reality has a Federation bias.

    They do see stacks of cash from us. On average, we spend more than feddybear players, both buying ships and buying other things like dil or customizations.
  • warpangelwarpangel Member Posts: 9,427 Arc User
    kiralyn wrote: »
    It'd be interesting to see how many people just use the provided character appearances, and don't tweak their character's sliders, let alone their boffs.

    I for one leave them alone for the most part, if I try to make them look like someone they tend to turn out ... monstrous ... and I end up defaulting them and quitting. I suck at using character sliders.
    Face sliders in games do tend to be quite hard to get good results with. The base face models were made by professional artists presumably with the goal of looking good, so it isn't easy for the average player to improve upon with simple morphing controls.
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