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FACT: There are MORE than 6 missions in the Agents of Yesterday TOS expansion

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  • kodachikunokodachikuno Member Posts: 6,020 Arc User1
    nikeix wrote: »
    and 5 ships (4 locked up in the zeni-store)
    Which reminds me.. Gecko stated flatly ALL fed players can use the TOS ships if you bought them
    tumblr_mr1jc2hq2T1rzu2xzo1_400.gif
    tacofangs wrote: »
    STO isn't canon, and neither are any of the books.
  • phenomenaut01phenomenaut01 Member Posts: 714 Arc User
    patrickngo wrote: »
    daveyny wrote: »
    nikeix wrote: »
    Seriously, I'm ready for July to be here so people that think non-temporal recruit TOS captains have more that 6 missions and 5 ships (4 locked up in the zeni-store) as unique "faction content" can strangle on the reality that this is a paint job on the existing FED leveling path along with a new arc-or-so of missions available to everyone being released along with it. They are not HIDDING major bullet points from you. This is a sales pitch and cards are on the table. They'll have some perks that haven't been revealed, like a 5th race for Life-Timers, but the idea of creating a third "splinter faction" and sinking development time into more content that only those players can utilize is nuts. Do You WANT Crytic To Go Under? Because that's what you're asking for.

    And I don't say 're-painted leveling path' as if its a bad thing. Its a VERY REASONABLE THING if...

    A: your expectations match the demonstrable reality of small studio's output. Sorry people, Cryptic is NOT big and they do not just churn out 28 episodes on a whim.

    B: you grasp that the target audience for Agents of Yesterday and the console launches is NEW PLAYERS. The amount of time being lavished on T2 through 5 ships is insane outside of creating a tool to break-in new customers who DON'T already have endgame captains and T6 ships in their stables.

    The Console players aren't going to get the TOS Expansion till sometime early in 2017.
    According to Mr. Gecko in his latest interview, consoles will only get up to the beginning of Season 11.5.

    He also talked about how much (A LOT) They discovered They had to change in the game, in order to create and maintain the ambiance of the Classic Trek Series.

    I believe this is the actual reason the number of specific TOS episodes will be on the low side...
    They didn't realize just how much time and effort it would take, until They actually started doing it.

    He even says that there may be a few things that They may have missed.

    I can't wait to see the 90 or so new Patches They created for use in the Tailor.
    B)

    I think that you don't get to have an MMO that's been going for 6 years without being able to create a competent production schedule. So I think they knew exactly what they were getting into. If this is supposed to have nearly as many or a similar number of episodes as Legacy of Romulus had - as has been suggested, then it would seem to me that they could easily handle the workflow, especially considering the number of reused assets and (many assets are even reused on alien ships...as was the case during the production of TOS), let's face it, the simplicity of most of those assets (to match the aesthetic of TOS).

    Let's not forget that there are a bunch of things in the rest of the game that aren't accessible to TOS players until later on. This is probably a far easier expansion to produce than creating the "entire" Delta Quadrant was.

    So which is it:

    1) "This isn't a full expansion, because it only has a few episodes in it."

    or

    2) "They didn't realize what they were getting into with this expansion because they have too MANY episodes in it."

    Because it can't be both.

    Sure, it's worth noting that during all of the work on this expansion, they've been working on relighting every map in the game, redoing the game for the console launch (which included a complete revamp of the UI), setting up everything for this years Summer Event, continuing to release FE's and add to the Admiralty system, and also work through some persistent bugs.

    So they've been busy, but I hardly think they've been overwhelmed by anything.

    but there are so very many things they are completely overwhelmed by-and have been for six years.

    1. Overwhelmed by the task of being "Forced" to create content for KDF (and now, Romulan) players.
    2. Overwhelmed to paralysis by the task of managing a game with PvP.
    3. Overwhelmed by the task of selling things to the one portion of the star trek fanbase that is proven to buy Anything (Klingon fans)-this was so overwhelming they had to take three years from the release of the Bortasque to the release of the Mogh just to get their feet under them...
    4. Overwhelmed by the incredibly difficult task of balancing AOE vs. Point-target effects. (Hence, the absolute superiority of BFAW, CSV and Torp spread over every other tactical ability in the game except Kemocite...)

    Those are just four things Cryptic's completely overwhelmed when they contemplate. More items include, but aren't limited to:

    5. Completely at-sea and overwhelmed by the task of replacing the exploration system they were overwhelmed too far to maintain when they pulled it...
    6. Utterly and completely overwhelmed by the difficulty of the task of addressing bugs that only hit a small portion of the player population-specifically, bugs associated with the KDF and Romulan factions they're too overwhelmed with work to actually put any development into post release.
    7. overwhelmed to the point of incapable when the question of improving NPC AI instead of dumping in hitpoints, making NPC's vulnerable to debuffs, etc. etc. etc.

    If You accept their answers to the questions of KDF, PvP, Romulan, Bug Fixes, Balancing, and Exploration, then Cryptic is entirely too small a shop, and it's unfair to ask them to work on those things.

    Because they are overwhelmed-they can't do it. It's the answer given by Geko, Zeronius Rex, and others whenever those issues come up. "We'd like to but..." has been boilerplate at Cryptic since 2010, and with every one of these expansions, it only gets worse.

    Hanlon's Law applies to explain all of this-"in the absence of direct evidence, anything that appears to be malice, is more likely incompetence."


    You keep using that word, I don't think it means what you think it means. :p

    Again, the decisions they've made have been to support the majority of the playerbase, rather than cater to the minority.

    If you want evidence to support that, then you can just look back over everything that you said they were "overwhelmed" with and can't do, and put that up against everything they have done and will continue to do.

    Could they do all of those things? Absolutely.

    Would they recoup their money from doing even half of those things on even a minor scale? Nope.

    They threw a ton of time and money into the LoR expansion, while at the same time brought the KDF up to factional standards by giving it a tutorial, a full storyline, and they even threw in the Klingon Academy. It didn't meet their goals as far as revenue.

    Believe me, I guarantee that if the Romulan Faction was a even mostly successful, they would have since expanded it out to become it's own unique faction, rather than have it branch off into the Fed/Klingon storylines.

    But it wasn't.

    The relative failure of the Romulan faction is probably why there hasn't been another faction based expansion since then - despite the fact that there is a demand for a Cardassian faction (which has far more lore in the canon to draw from than the Romulans do - though not as much as the Klingons). Even if they did a Cardassian faction as a part of a DS9 expansion, with exploration into the Gamma Quadrant and pulling from all of the lore and storylines from that show, I don't think they believe it will be successful enough to merit the development time.

    The fact that they are pushing the factions closer together into this "Alliance" and moved towards cross-faction FE's and multi-faction ships is further evidence that the Klingons and Romulans just aren't paying for themselves, and therefore are not sustainable.

    Game companies want to make money. They NEED to make money. If there was money to be had there, they would make the content that you suggested.

    That's why there has only been 1 Klingon-centric computer game released ever...and that was 20 years ago.
  • phenomenaut01phenomenaut01 Member Posts: 714 Arc User
    nikeix wrote: »
    and 5 ships (4 locked up in the zeni-store)
    Which reminds me.. Gecko stated flatly ALL fed players can use the TOS ships if you bought them

    I didn't think that there was any question about that, but it's good to have confirmation.
  • kodachikunokodachikuno Member Posts: 6,020 Arc User1
    nikeix wrote: »
    and 5 ships (4 locked up in the zeni-store)
    Which reminds me.. Gecko stated flatly ALL fed players can use the TOS ships if you bought them

    I didn't think that there was any question about that, but it's good to have confirmation.

    He went out of his way to say it so, there prolly was. There have been some crazy questions tossed out.
    tumblr_mr1jc2hq2T1rzu2xzo1_400.gif
    tacofangs wrote: »
    STO isn't canon, and neither are any of the books.
  • phenomenaut01phenomenaut01 Member Posts: 714 Arc User
    nikeix wrote: »
    and 5 ships (4 locked up in the zeni-store)
    Which reminds me.. Gecko stated flatly ALL fed players can use the TOS ships if you bought them

    I didn't think that there was any question about that, but it's good to have confirmation.

    He went out of his way to say it so, there prolly was. There have been some crazy questions tossed out.

    True. Very true.

    Of course, if everyone would just hold their horses, it would all come out eventually. But we wants it nows!!! :D
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  • hunteralpha84hunteralpha84 Member Posts: 524 Arc User
    Nope. Don't care. Could be six missions or one hundred missions it's still just a glorified tutorial.

    Do not want.
  • nikeixnikeix Member Posts: 3,972 Arc User
    nikeix wrote: »
    and 5 ships (4 locked up in the zeni-store)
    Which reminds me.. Gecko stated flatly ALL fed players can use the TOS ships if you bought them

    Ouch. The "Faction" with approaching nothing at all to call its own. I can see why the designers had reservations about calling it one - they tend to have a vestigial conscience... unlike marketing wonks who have theirs surgically removed.
  • sunfranckssunfrancks Member Posts: 3,925 Arc User
    edited June 2016
    nikeix wrote: »
    nikeix wrote: »
    and 5 ships (4 locked up in the zeni-store)
    Which reminds me.. Gecko stated flatly ALL fed players can use the TOS ships if you bought them

    Ouch. The "Faction" with approaching nothing at all to call its own. I can see why the designers had reservations about calling it one - they tend to have a vestigial conscience... unlike marketing wonks who have theirs surgically removed.

    Sadly, yeah.

    All this new "Faction" is, is a new tutorial including 6 missions, and the Delta type event all rolled into one.

    It is already known that once you're done with the event, you will just be treated as a normal Fed character.

    Still no information to contradict that opinion, thus far...
    Fed: Eng Lib Borg (Five) Tac Andorian (Shen) Sci Alien/Klingon (Maelrock) KDF:Tac Romulan KDF (Sasha) Tac Klingon (K'dopis)
    Founder, member and former leader to Pride Of The Federation Fleet.
    What I feel after I hear about every decision made since Andre "Mobile Games Generalisimo" Emerson arrived...
    3oz8xC9gn8Fh4DK9Q4.gif





  • berginsbergins Member Posts: 3,453 Arc User
    I thought the "marketing wonks" were the ones who had reservations about calling it a faction. In fact, I'm almost positive that's the case.
    "Logic is a little tweeting bird chirping in a meadow. Logic is a wreath of pretty flowers which smell BAD." - Spock
  • bobbydazlersbobbydazlers Member Posts: 4,534 Arc User
    Nope. Don't care. Could be six missions or one hundred missions it's still just a glorified tutorial.

    Do not want.

    I think cryptic themselves are aware of that, the whole reason they have chosen to run the temporal recruit event to encourage players to create a ToS character, who cares if some of character are deleted or hardly ever used after the players have reaped the account rewards as long as they can say x amount of ToS characters were created within the first month or two of the expansion being released.

    some current players are also aware of this and its up to them if they are willing to create a disposable or hardly used alt just for the account rewards or not regardless of what form the rewards take, after all none of us knows yet what form the account rewards will take, they may be something that is hard to say no to or they could be insignificant, we will have to wait and see.
    some other players may be eager to create a ToS character regardless of the recruit event just to play the new content what little there is of it.

    personally I fall into both camps, I will create a ToS character not only so I can enjoy the new content but also for the account rewards whatever they may be, how much I use the character after I have played the ToS missions and received all the account rewards is yet to be seen though I will not delete him.

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

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

     and if that journey takes a little longer,

    so we can do something we all believe in,

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

  • daveynydaveyny Member Posts: 8,227 Arc User
    edited June 2016
    I'm just creating a TOS Toon because it's my favorite part of the Trek Universe.
    I've been waiting to fly TOS Era Ships (yes, including a T-6 Connie) for over six years now.
    I won't be giving up my Main, but in the foreseeable future "Captain TOS" will be who I'll be playing.
    B)
    STO Member since February 2009.
    I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born!
    Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
    upside-down-banana-smiley-emoticon.gif
  • edited June 2016
    This content has been removed.
  • starkaosstarkaos Member Posts: 11,556 Arc User
    Micro-faction or alternate tutorial system seems to be a better way to explain the TOS Starfleet compared to a faction. This could be the way that future "factions" like Cardassians and Borg Cooperative are added. Create 10 or less exclusive missions, add a few ships, and a few costumes and just integrate them with the actual factions. No need to worry about creating more than a couple Tier 6 ships or creating 30 missions.

  • edited June 2016
    This content has been removed.
  • phenomenaut01phenomenaut01 Member Posts: 714 Arc User
    patrickngo wrote: »
    patrickngo wrote: »
    daveyny wrote: »
    nikeix wrote: »
    Seriously, I'm ready for July to be here so people that think non-temporal recruit TOS captains have more that 6 missions and 5 ships (4 locked up in the zeni-store) as unique "faction content" can strangle on the reality that this is a paint job on the existing FED leveling path along with a new arc-or-so of missions available to everyone being released along with it. They are not HIDDING major bullet points from you. This is a sales pitch and cards are on the table. They'll have some perks that haven't been revealed, like a 5th race for Life-Timers, but the idea of creating a third "splinter faction" and sinking development time into more content that only those players can utilize is nuts. Do You WANT Crytic To Go Under? Because that's what you're asking for.

    And I don't say 're-painted leveling path' as if its a bad thing. Its a VERY REASONABLE THING if...

    A: your expectations match the demonstrable reality of small studio's output. Sorry people, Cryptic is NOT big and they do not just churn out 28 episodes on a whim.

    B: you grasp that the target audience for Agents of Yesterday and the console launches is NEW PLAYERS. The amount of time being lavished on T2 through 5 ships is insane outside of creating a tool to break-in new customers who DON'T already have endgame captains and T6 ships in their stables.

    The Console players aren't going to get the TOS Expansion till sometime early in 2017.
    According to Mr. Gecko in his latest interview, consoles will only get up to the beginning of Season 11.5.

    He also talked about how much (A LOT) They discovered They had to change in the game, in order to create and maintain the ambiance of the Classic Trek Series.

    I believe this is the actual reason the number of specific TOS episodes will be on the low side...
    They didn't realize just how much time and effort it would take, until They actually started doing it.

    He even says that there may be a few things that They may have missed.

    I can't wait to see the 90 or so new Patches They created for use in the Tailor.
    B)

    I think that you don't get to have an MMO that's been going for 6 years without being able to create a competent production schedule. So I think they knew exactly what they were getting into. If this is supposed to have nearly as many or a similar number of episodes as Legacy of Romulus had - as has been suggested, then it would seem to me that they could easily handle the workflow, especially considering the number of reused assets and (many assets are even reused on alien ships...as was the case during the production of TOS), let's face it, the simplicity of most of those assets (to match the aesthetic of TOS).

    Let's not forget that there are a bunch of things in the rest of the game that aren't accessible to TOS players until later on. This is probably a far easier expansion to produce than creating the "entire" Delta Quadrant was.

    So which is it:

    1) "This isn't a full expansion, because it only has a few episodes in it."

    or

    2) "They didn't realize what they were getting into with this expansion because they have too MANY episodes in it."

    Because it can't be both.

    Sure, it's worth noting that during all of the work on this expansion, they've been working on relighting every map in the game, redoing the game for the console launch (which included a complete revamp of the UI), setting up everything for this years Summer Event, continuing to release FE's and add to the Admiralty system, and also work through some persistent bugs.

    So they've been busy, but I hardly think they've been overwhelmed by anything.

    but there are so very many things they are completely overwhelmed by-and have been for six years.

    1. Overwhelmed by the task of being "Forced" to create content for KDF (and now, Romulan) players.
    2. Overwhelmed to paralysis by the task of managing a game with PvP.
    3. Overwhelmed by the task of selling things to the one portion of the star trek fanbase that is proven to buy Anything (Klingon fans)-this was so overwhelming they had to take three years from the release of the Bortasque to the release of the Mogh just to get their feet under them...
    4. Overwhelmed by the incredibly difficult task of balancing AOE vs. Point-target effects. (Hence, the absolute superiority of BFAW, CSV and Torp spread over every other tactical ability in the game except Kemocite...)

    Those are just four things Cryptic's completely overwhelmed when they contemplate. More items include, but aren't limited to:

    5. Completely at-sea and overwhelmed by the task of replacing the exploration system they were overwhelmed too far to maintain when they pulled it...
    6. Utterly and completely overwhelmed by the difficulty of the task of addressing bugs that only hit a small portion of the player population-specifically, bugs associated with the KDF and Romulan factions they're too overwhelmed with work to actually put any development into post release.
    7. overwhelmed to the point of incapable when the question of improving NPC AI instead of dumping in hitpoints, making NPC's vulnerable to debuffs, etc. etc. etc.

    If You accept their answers to the questions of KDF, PvP, Romulan, Bug Fixes, Balancing, and Exploration, then Cryptic is entirely too small a shop, and it's unfair to ask them to work on those things.

    Because they are overwhelmed-they can't do it. It's the answer given by Geko, Zeronius Rex, and others whenever those issues come up. "We'd like to but..." has been boilerplate at Cryptic since 2010, and with every one of these expansions, it only gets worse.

    Hanlon's Law applies to explain all of this-"in the absence of direct evidence, anything that appears to be malice, is more likely incompetence."


    You keep using that word, I don't think it means what you think it means. :p

    Again, the decisions they've made have been to support the majority of the playerbase, rather than cater to the minority.

    If you want evidence to support that, then you can just look back over everything that you said they were "overwhelmed" with and can't do, and put that up against everything they have done and will continue to do.

    Could they do all of those things? Absolutely.

    Would they recoup their money from doing even half of those things on even a minor scale? Nope.

    They threw a ton of time and money into the LoR expansion, while at the same time brought the KDF up to factional standards by giving it a tutorial, a full storyline, and they even threw in the Klingon Academy. It didn't meet their goals as far as revenue.

    Believe me, I guarantee that if the Romulan Faction was a even mostly successful, they would have since expanded it out to become it's own unique faction, rather than have it branch off into the Fed/Klingon storylines.

    But it wasn't.

    The relative failure of the Romulan faction is probably why there hasn't been another faction based expansion since then - despite the fact that there is a demand for a Cardassian faction (which has far more lore in the canon to draw from than the Romulans do - though not as much as the Klingons). Even if they did a Cardassian faction as a part of a DS9 expansion, with exploration into the Gamma Quadrant and pulling from all of the lore and storylines from that show, I don't think they believe it will be successful enough to merit the development time.

    The fact that they are pushing the factions closer together into this "Alliance" and moved towards cross-faction FE's and multi-faction ships is further evidence that the Klingons and Romulans just aren't paying for themselves, and therefore are not sustainable.

    Game companies want to make money. They NEED to make money. If there was money to be had there, they would make the content that you suggested.

    That's why there has only been 1 Klingon-centric computer game released ever...and that was 20 years ago.

    actually, Legacy of Romulus was profitable enough to PAY FOR Delta Rising. Per both dev statements at the time, and PW's shareholder reports. the Romulan stuff was exceedingly profitable.

    iirc, the sole Klingon game, like every other game of star trek that made it to market twenty years ago, had to pass approval by Majel Barrett Roddenberry-we don't know how many other games were turned away by that...

    your "Majority rules" certainly has been in effect-once you get past release, average of 5% resources to anything Not Immediately focused on Federation/Starfleet. 95% of resources going to one faction, it doesn't matter the IP parentage, that faction's goign to be "The most popular" bar none.

    for that matter, they would likely have done a BETTER job, and been even MORE profitable, without having any other faction at all-from the start.

    It was an error for cryptic to try to develop a game with multiple factions-because they don't have the commitment to make it work with multiple factions. Likewise, it was an error to release a game with PvP-because they can't handle managing it. they're compounding the error now, with leaving those elements (Klingons, Romulans, and PvP access) in the Console release when they don't have to do that-because as you yourself pointed out, those things will never be developed.

    They will continue to be ignored, continue to be neglected-because, as you said oh-so-smugly thinking you're counterpointing my statement...

    There is no business case for keeping, maintaining, or developing multi-faction play with this specific development team.

    the only difference is, YOU are presuming malice, and I don't think that's the case. It's not a matter of "Wouldn't" it's a matter of "They really can't."

    and six years of evidence backs me up on this, along with even a cursory examination of Cryptic's other titles.

    They are not capable of handling multiple faction games. They should never have tried here. The fact that they did, and that they started with a base that, in other hands, could have worked, is beside the point.

    a for how 'smart' their business acumen is on this...

    They are about to embark on a situation where they're going to multiply their previous ERRORS by three platforms, running code they won't maintain and have utterly failed to make work acceptably on THREE platforms instead of ONE.

    the major difference is, when Konsole Kids get ahold of a six year old game that isn't out of print, they expect all of the things promised to work.

    if there are multiple factions in a game for console, they will expect the factions to be balanced and viable.

    if there is PvP, they will expect it to be balanced and viable, they will expect a working matchmaking system, and that it will be both accessible and fun...

    If there is a customization that is not modding, they will expect it to function. They will expect elements key to function to work...Tailor, Loadouts, not-having-your-bridge-officers-take-a-break during map transfers, not having your tray empty and blank out 'just because' when you log back in.

    and when those things don't work, they're not going to stick around because the graphix are so good, and they're not going to stay for the IP's sake alone as a 'captive audience'.

    there are a lot of things we TRIBBLE about, but tolerate for the sake of this being the only 'Star Trek' property out there and the only Star Trek MMO...but everyone that is likely to do as we are, is probably already here.

    Going to console without fixing at least half the things I listed in the post you're replying to? and adding a 'faction' that isn't one? That's not a smart move if you're really interested in just making money, unless your business plan is 3 months or Less.

    NONE of those things are in-work, much less in the "ready to be completed" segment before console launch. They're doing a couple smart moves by not letting us transfer account info between servers, this will give them a grace period before the really broken TRIBBLE shows up-but this crew is overwhelmed and under-resourced on ONE platform, and they're going to THREE.

    I'm not being smug. Sorry you're reading that into the facts and all that.

    I've got no clue where you get the idea that the Roddenberry's have any say in anything regarding Star Trek, since it's always been a corporately owned franchise. http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Star_Trek_corporate_history

    Gene was removed from the movies after The Motion Picture wasn't the success that Paramount wanted (though allowed to continue as a consulting producer (executive in name only) and was asked to come back on for The Next Generation, but they were going to do it with or without him. After about a season or so, his role was reduced because his philosophy (not conflicts among the crewmembers, etc.) was hampering the writing of a dramatic television series.

    This 5%/95% stuff you keep throwing around is pretty nonsensical. I don't know the metrics any more than you do, but again, if the Romulan Faction and Klingon Faction expansion were profitable it would have been continued. LoR was launched to coincide with the F2P launch, and the push to purchase Zen and the pull in new players. While these new players were able to play the game without spending any Zen, they had a disadvantage on certain services that "legacy" F2P players got for playing before the transition. Many converted their memberships to Gold or Lifetime at that point as well. hence...profit.

    Delta Rising was far more profitable based on what little information that is out there. There was the statement by the producer at the time that "players love it" because STO had it's most profitable Zen sales day up to that point during that release.

    Sure, a lot of that is speculation, but again...business being business...if the factions were bringing in money, they would do more to support them. It's not rocket surgery.

    And I'm not sure if you recall or not, but STO was not initially designed to be a multi-faction game. Klingons were an afterthought due to fan desire, and it was decided that they would be PVP only. Fan's didn't desire that so - even with an extremely limited development time due to the hard release date set by CBS that required that they release the game or lose the IP altogether, Cryptic added in the bare bones Klingon Faction.

    There was a perceived desire for more factions, and a better Klingon faction, so they attempted that with their first true expansion. We haven't seen any new "true" factions since, and in fact we've seen a move towards centralizing all of the factions into one single faction.

    Again, as I've said, it's speculation on my part, but the business of game development dictates - even more so than most businesses, since one wrong move in a games design can cripple what income you have (consider Star Wars Galaxies as proof of that) - that you chase the profit.

    As far as consoles go...considering that their base is PC oriented so far, and that base is being nurtured well enough to sustain itself, any gain of players to STO from the consoles is almost literally icing on the cake. They're not after the PC player to switch over, in fact they've made that impossible without starting over. So the vast majority of the players brought in from console play is an additive to the existing numbers. If they decide they want to cater to that base a bit more to grow that number, then they of course will, but really, they don't have to.

    However, if console players seem to want more PVP, then they may expand on that to see if it grows that number some. That also means that that functionality will be added to the PC game, so win for PVPers there.

    But nothing will happen unless there's a market for it.

    Again....I'm not being smug. That's just how the world works. Okay...maybe that's a bit smug. But it doesn't alter the facts.
  • phenomenaut01phenomenaut01 Member Posts: 714 Arc User
    sunfrancks wrote: »
    nikeix wrote: »
    nikeix wrote: »
    and 5 ships (4 locked up in the zeni-store)
    Which reminds me.. Gecko stated flatly ALL fed players can use the TOS ships if you bought them

    Ouch. The "Faction" with approaching nothing at all to call its own. I can see why the designers had reservations about calling it one - they tend to have a vestigial conscience... unlike marketing wonks who have theirs surgically removed.

    Sadly, yeah.

    All this new "Faction" is, is a new tutorial including 6 missions, and the Delta type event all rolled into one.

    It is already known that once you're done with the event, you will just be treated as a normal Fed character.

    Still no information to contradict that opinion, thus far...

    "Thus far..."

    That's pretty much a nail on the head right there.

    Not all of the info is out yet, so there's absolutely no reason to believe that the sky is falling and to start calling AoY DOA (not that you were doing so, but there seems to be some of that floating around here).



  • sunfranckssunfrancks Member Posts: 3,925 Arc User
    sunfrancks wrote: »
    nikeix wrote: »
    nikeix wrote: »
    and 5 ships (4 locked up in the zeni-store)
    Which reminds me.. Gecko stated flatly ALL fed players can use the TOS ships if you bought them

    Ouch. The "Faction" with approaching nothing at all to call its own. I can see why the designers had reservations about calling it one - they tend to have a vestigial conscience... unlike marketing wonks who have theirs surgically removed.

    Sadly, yeah.

    All this new "Faction" is, is a new tutorial including 6 missions, and the Delta type event all rolled into one.

    It is already known that once you're done with the event, you will just be treated as a normal Fed character.

    Still no information to contradict that opinion, thus far...

    "Thus far..."

    That's pretty much a nail on the head right there.

    Not all of the info is out yet, so there's absolutely no reason to believe that the sky is falling and to start calling AoY DOA (not that you were doing so, but there seems to be some of that floating around here).



    Exactly.

    Cannot jump to conclusions or make a decision until we get the full info.

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  • phenomenaut01phenomenaut01 Member Posts: 714 Arc User
    starkaos wrote: »
    Micro-faction or alternate tutorial system seems to be a better way to explain the TOS Starfleet compared to a faction. This could be the way that future "factions" like Cardassians and Borg Cooperative are added. Create 10 or less exclusive missions, add a few ships, and a few costumes and just integrate them with the actual factions. No need to worry about creating more than a couple Tier 6 ships or creating 30 missions.
    This is also what actually makes the most sense in regards to those factions as well.


    The Borg Cooperative for instance is in the Delta Quad, and has no access to the Alpha/Beta Quad, and thus all the early game content there. And they dont get access to local space until the beginning of Delta Rising, when the alliance shows up in the Delta Quad via the Dyson spheres. A Borg Cooperative faction would logically start you off at level 50ish, take you through a 6-8 mission starter arc, then merge up with the main storyline after the “Friends in Unlikely Places” mission or so of Delta Rising.


    Similarly, a Jem Hadar faction, while not lacking the ability to reach local space, since the wormhole is still there and still open, would be kept out of local space by The Dominion, and would stay out of the events of the game until the Gamma Quad expansion hits, and then join up with whatever storyline is going on there. There would be an introductory arc, maybe with a mission were you play as one of the Jem'Hadar ships helping to defend Earth in Midnight, then it would skip to the Gamma Quad expansion's plotline.


    The Cardassians have likewise stayed out of events in the game up until The Iconian War. Their rebuilding efforts seemingly keeping them too busy to deal with the True Way, or even defend their own planet from the Undine planet killers that attacked Cardassia during the Undine part of the dyson sphere storyline. Like the factions above, we would probably start off at level 50ish, have an introductory arc, then join with the main storyline around the time the Iconian War hits, maybe have the Iconians destruction of the Preserver Archive planet in the Alpha Quad spur them into doing something, or something like that.

    It actually makes more sense, and is actually I personally think, a more attractive idea to make any future factions a sort of "end game perk" than anything else.

    I think we're all pretty tired of playing through the same old 2409 storylines repeatedly. And I'm not that interested in experiencing the long drawn out Iconian War from the Cardassian perspective. I'd rather that they use that as a launching point for new stories. Might be a way to perk up things.
  • phenomenaut01phenomenaut01 Member Posts: 714 Arc User
    1. Cardassians with more lore in canon then Romulans? Not by a long shot.


    Cardassian have had more stories told about them and from their perspective on the television series than the Romulans have. While Romulans have had a number of books, those aren't considered official canon so they don't really count towards "lore".

    According to Memory Alpha, Cardassians have at the very least appeared in 100 episodes of TV, while the Romulans have only shown up in 57 if you count the movies. Even accounting for error and discounting the "hey look, there's a Cardassian walking by in the background" type of appearances, the numbers speak for themselves.

    Of course, there's a lot of similarities between the Romulan and Cardassian stories if you think about it (conquering race, oppressive secret security organization, snazzy ears and foreheads, etc), so really you could have interchanged the races in some of those stories and it wouldn't have mattered.
  • starswordcstarswordc Member Posts: 10,966 Arc User
    Sci Fi writers have no sense of scale.

    And arguably no human really has a sense of scale for astronomical distances...

    Trying to come up with a reasonable speed for ships to travel while still telling consistently the kind of stories to tell is pretty hard. You either are too fast, making people wonder why there haven't been extra galactic excursions already and we haven't seen the other side of the Milky Way, or so slow that you can't really tell any type of star system hopping story (without handwaving many hours, days or weeks.)

    Incidentally, Mass Effect managed to do a pretty good job here. Leaving the mass relays aside, your average FTL drive is capable of about 12 LY/day, about 4400c. That's fast enough to make interstellar travel relatively convenient (there's several stars within a 20 light-year radius of Earth, e.g. the Centauri trinary system, Wolf 359, Barnard's Star), but going the 2.5 million light-years to the Andromeda Galaxy is still a significant challenge (570 years before you factor in that starships have to periodically discharge the accumulated electric charge of their mass effect cores into a planetary magnetic field).
    "Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
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  • starkaosstarkaos Member Posts: 11,556 Arc User
    1. Cardassians with more lore in canon then Romulans? Not by a long shot.


    Cardassian have had more stories told about them and from their perspective on the television series than the Romulans have. While Romulans have had a number of books, those aren't considered official canon so they don't really count towards "lore".

    According to Memory Alpha, Cardassians have at the very least appeared in 100 episodes of TV, while the Romulans have only shown up in 57 if you count the movies. Even accounting for error and discounting the "hey look, there's a Cardassian walking by in the background" type of appearances, the numbers speak for themselves.

    Of course, there's a lot of similarities between the Romulan and Cardassian stories if you think about it (conquering race, oppressive secret security organization, snazzy ears and foreheads, etc), so really you could have interchanged the races in some of those stories and it wouldn't have mattered.

    And Deep Space 9 being set on a former Cardassian ore refinery has a lot to do with that. Before DS9, they were only in a few TNG episodes while the Romulans have been around since the first season of TOS. At the end of TNG, Romulans had 27 appearances while Cardassians had 9 or 10 if you include the Cardassian Borg in First Contact.
  • phenomenaut01phenomenaut01 Member Posts: 714 Arc User
    starkaos wrote: »
    1. Cardassians with more lore in canon then Romulans? Not by a long shot.


    Cardassian have had more stories told about them and from their perspective on the television series than the Romulans have. While Romulans have had a number of books, those aren't considered official canon so they don't really count towards "lore".

    According to Memory Alpha, Cardassians have at the very least appeared in 100 episodes of TV, while the Romulans have only shown up in 57 if you count the movies. Even accounting for error and discounting the "hey look, there's a Cardassian walking by in the background" type of appearances, the numbers speak for themselves.

    Of course, there's a lot of similarities between the Romulan and Cardassian stories if you think about it (conquering race, oppressive secret security organization, snazzy ears and foreheads, etc), so really you could have interchanged the races in some of those stories and it wouldn't have mattered.

    And Deep Space 9 being set on a former Cardassian ore refinery has a lot to do with that. Before DS9, they were only in a few TNG episodes while the Romulans have been around since the first season of TOS. At the end of TNG, Romulans had 27 appearances while Cardassians had 9 or 10 if you include the Cardassian Borg in First Contact.

    I doubt you could tell me much about the Romulans based on the 2 (they were mentioned in 1 other one) of TOS.

    The episodes of TNG helped to build the Romulans into a respectable villain and even an interesting race what with the whole Unification thing, but you can't overlook the fact that the Cardassians were intrinsically tied to the storyline of DS9 - it literally couldn't exist in the form that it does without them.

    We could both argue this point to death I think. :D

    Personally, the whole destruction of Romulus really ruined the Romulans in my opinion. They don't serve any real purpose to me anymore, at least until they get their new planet put together. Where as the Cardassians still have a homeworld (albeit one that's in recovery) and left a swatch of destruction across an entire region of the Alpha quadrant before tucking tail and running home.

    My point is, I think there's just more story to tell with the Cardassians at this point in the timeline.

    More doesn't necessarily mean better mind you.
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  • phenomenaut01phenomenaut01 Member Posts: 714 Arc User
    A little numbers stats related to the current topic

    Klingons(not counting Worf or B'Elanna): 123 appearances
    Vulcans(not counting Spock, Tuvok, or T'pol): 112 appearances
    Cardassians: 101 appearances
    Ferengi(not counting Quark): 92 appearances
    Romulans: 59 appearances
    Jem Hadar: 38 appearances
    Vorta: 33 appearances
    Borg: 31 appearances

    Who'd have thunk that the Borg had fewer appearances than the Vorta? I suppose it's quality over quantity (not that all of the Borg episodes were that great).

    The Ferengi number surprises me. I mean, every 3 or 4 episodes of DS9 is a Ferengi episode - or so it seems (every time I go back and watch that series I see the listing and I want to skip those episodes, but they're just so damn entertaining. Just plain screwball comedy at times. It shouldn't work in Trek, but it does for me for some reason), but I wouldn't think the number would be that high really if you discount Quark from the equation.

    Personally, to heck with the Cardassians, I really want a Ferengi faction. But I know that's never going to happen. :( Hopefully someday they'll at least make a mission on Ferenginar for me to sit there in the rain and (literally) soak it all in.

  • phenomenaut01phenomenaut01 Member Posts: 714 Arc User

    A little numbers stats related to the current topic

    Klingons(not counting Worf or B'Elanna): 123 appearances
    Vulcans(not counting Spock, Tuvok, or T'pol): 112 appearances
    Cardassians: 101 appearances
    Ferengi(not counting Quark): 92 appearances
    Romulans: 59 appearances
    Jem Hadar: 38 appearances
    Vorta: 33 appearances
    Borg: 31 appearances

    Looking at it again, that seems like a lot of Vulcan appearances, not counting Spock and T'Pol. I mean, they were mostly absent from TNG and DS9 except for a handful of episodes. But I guess that Enterprise had a lot of Vulcan in it.
  • edited June 2016
    This content has been removed.
  • starkaosstarkaos Member Posts: 11,556 Arc User
    starkaos wrote: »
    1. Cardassians with more lore in canon then Romulans? Not by a long shot.


    Cardassian have had more stories told about them and from their perspective on the television series than the Romulans have. While Romulans have had a number of books, those aren't considered official canon so they don't really count towards "lore".

    According to Memory Alpha, Cardassians have at the very least appeared in 100 episodes of TV, while the Romulans have only shown up in 57 if you count the movies. Even accounting for error and discounting the "hey look, there's a Cardassian walking by in the background" type of appearances, the numbers speak for themselves.

    Of course, there's a lot of similarities between the Romulan and Cardassian stories if you think about it (conquering race, oppressive secret security organization, snazzy ears and foreheads, etc), so really you could have interchanged the races in some of those stories and it wouldn't have mattered.

    And Deep Space 9 being set on a former Cardassian ore refinery has a lot to do with that. Before DS9, they were only in a few TNG episodes while the Romulans have been around since the first season of TOS. At the end of TNG, Romulans had 27 appearances while Cardassians had 9 or 10 if you include the Cardassian Borg in First Contact.

    I doubt you could tell me much about the Romulans based on the 2 (they were mentioned in 1 other one) of TOS.

    The episodes of TNG helped to build the Romulans into a respectable villain and even an interesting race what with the whole Unification thing, but you can't overlook the fact that the Cardassians were intrinsically tied to the storyline of DS9 - it literally couldn't exist in the form that it does without them.

    We could both argue this point to death I think. :D

    Personally, the whole destruction of Romulus really ruined the Romulans in my opinion. They don't serve any real purpose to me anymore, at least until they get their new planet put together. Where as the Cardassians still have a homeworld (albeit one that's in recovery) and left a swatch of destruction across an entire region of the Alpha quadrant before tucking tail and running home.

    My point is, I think there's just more story to tell with the Cardassians at this point in the timeline.

    More doesn't necessarily mean better mind you.

    Which is why I am hoping that the new Star Trek series retcons the destruction of Romulus to occur in a parallel universe. Although since the new Star Trek series is supposed to deal with new crews, then having one focused around a Romulan Star Empire crew dealing with the aftermath of the supernova would be interesting.
  • phenomenaut01phenomenaut01 Member Posts: 714 Arc User
    Who'd have thunk that the Borg had fewer appearances than the Vorta? I suppose it's quality over quantity (not that all of the Borg episodes were that great).

    The Ferengi number surprises me. I mean, every 3 or 4 episodes of DS9 is a Ferengi episode - or so it seems (every time I go back and watch that series I see the listing and I want to skip those episodes, but they're just so damn entertaining. Just plain screwball comedy at times. It shouldn't work in Trek, but it does for me for some reason), but I wouldn't think the number would be that high really if you discount Quark from the equation.

    Personally, to heck with the Cardassians, I really want a Ferengi faction. But I know that's never going to happen. :( Hopefully someday they'll at least make a mission on Ferenginar for me to sit there in the rain and (literally) soak it all in.
    Looking at it again, that seems like a lot of Vulcan appearances, not counting Spock and T'Pol. I mean, they were mostly absent from TNG and DS9 except for a handful of episodes. But I guess that Enterprise had a lot of Vulcan in it.
    Well these numbers do count any time anyone spotted a Vulcan or something in the background. so its not like it was a named, or in any way important, character. The Borg may have appeared in less episodes/movies, but they were almost always the focus of those episodes/movies, whereas the Vorta were often just in the background.

    This also counts illusions, holograms, and other such appearances of those races.

    Also, there WAS at one point going to be a Ferengi based featured series with Chase Masterson doing VA for it, but it got axed like the Augment missions did.

    Yeah, I remember hearing something about that series. Hopefully one day it'll happen. The Ferengi are a tough lot to right for I imagine. They can't be taken too seriously or they just don't work. The first few appearances on TNG can attest to that.
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