You know....I remember the furor BEFORE Legacy of Romulus even dropped on Holodeck....
When players found out that meant Romulans would have access to the top tier ships (which at the time was T-5s).
"Starfleet would NEVER allow access, much less FLY, their FLAGSHIPS....LEAST of all Romulans!!!"
Cryptic actually had to change it. The Executive Producer even had to publish a letter on the subject.
To this day....Romulans do not have access to T-5 or higher ships on either side of the fence.
Believe the player's attitudes have changed that much??? LOL! Ask them about sharing Vengeance or any of the other top tier FED ONLY ships with Romulans, again....much less with the Klingons.
The raging will be glorious!! Again! LOL!
"Spend your life doing strange things with weird people." -- UNK
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
No thanks, If anything factions are in dire need of being further defined.
Romulans especially could do with becoming a completely standalone faction with their own Fleet Starbase.
"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid." - Q
And the great thing is, my Romulan Fed Allied Fleet Admiral can't even pilot any of the Fed ships I've purchased in the C-Store as a result! Can't even use the Admiralty cards for them, either. Woohoo! Gotta love the pundits.
It's not you- it's me. I just need my space.
Being critical doesn't take skill. Being constructively critical- which is providing alternative solutions or suggestions to a demonstrated problem, however, does.
The factions will probably remain as of now, but they wont seperate the community any more with a third factions (like if the Cardassians enters the game)
You mean forth... We already have three.
And for the main subject...
No. Hell no. I'm Romulan, and don't want to become a Feddie-bear. Because that's what would happen.
Ok, it's bad for us Klingons/Romulans. Especially Klings, we are missing carriers and science ships, proper tv hair styles and ridges, clothes. But I have to hold hope we will get them.
Off-topic Noob question:
Does anyone know where STF Infected: The Conduit (Elite) is? Trying to get accolades from it. Or do you just change your difficulty in order to qualify in Advance queue?
last time I checked crptic removed most of borg elite ques outta game
Actually that's not true in the least.
The old Elite Queues were renamed to "Advanced" and the few Elite Queues we have now are an entirely new level of difficulty created balanced around the power creep.
"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid." - Q
How about instead of Cryptic hiding behind the "Not enough players play KDF or ROM to justify content" they actually spend a season and bring the gaming experience of both those factions up to parity with the Federation, giving players a real reason and gaming immersion to roll one. Once they do that and if it fails then i'll eat humble pie and say oh ok no one wants to play them Single faction it is.
Actually, if you grabbed it in time, Fed-Roms have access to one T5 Federation ship - the Ambassador.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
How about instead of Cryptic hiding behind the "Not enough players play KDF or ROM to justify content" they actually spend a season and bring the gaming experience of both those factions up to parity with the Federation, giving players a real reason and gaming immersion to roll one. Once they do that and if it fails then i'll eat humble pie and say oh ok no one wants to play them Single faction it is.
QFT
Exactly my feeling on it. Work on bringing up the standards of the other factions before throwing in the towel.
Give people choices instead of taking them away because it's "easier" or "cost-effective" to just lump everyone together. I'm really hoping the whole AOY thing isn't some sort of lead-in to an upcoming blending of all the factions "to defend the timeline" TRIBBLE or something and they mean to actually round back to KDF/Roms and finish out the content next.
It's not you- it's me. I just need my space.
Being critical doesn't take skill. Being constructively critical- which is providing alternative solutions or suggestions to a demonstrated problem, however, does.
Exactly my feeling on it. Work on bringing up the standards of the other factions before throwing in the towel.
Give people choices instead of taking them away because it's "easier" or "cost-effective" to just lump everyone together. I'm really hoping the whole AOY thing isn't some sort of lead-in to an upcoming blending of all the factions "to defend the timeline" **** or something and they mean to actually round back to KDF/Roms and finish out the content next.
I love this idea that the factions aren't equal when each faction has their own set of faction specific missions, along with all the shared storylines.
Roms actually have the most missions of any faction, due to them having more faction unique missions then Klinks or Feds.
Whats more, this implication that theres content left to finish, when the only open story threads are
1. The AoY stuff with Leeta
2. The possible Hur'q connection to the Fek'ihri
This implication that theres all this content left undone with the Roms and Klinks is so objectively false it reeks from miles away.
OK, I'll bite- although I'm pretty sure it's going to lead to nowhere fast...
Why do you suppose there's such an imbalance to Faction population, then? Why is the attraction to the Fed side so much stronger? I'm sure you have some alternative theories and/or suggestions- seeing as how you've such a strong opinion on the matter.
How about offering up some constructive suggestions?
It's not you- it's me. I just need my space.
Being critical doesn't take skill. Being constructively critical- which is providing alternative solutions or suggestions to a demonstrated problem, however, does.
Because Star Trek was 99.99% focused on the Federation, with the Federation being the protagonists of every show, with the most lore and development, while the other two of the "big three" races, the Klingons and Romulans, got 1/10th the screentime AT BEST, and where almost always the badguys for the Federation to beat, except in the rare cases of Worf and B'elanna. In the few cases were other Klingons and Roms weren't the badguys, they were near universally just side-kicks to a Federation story, rarely getting any development to themselves outside of the fact the Klingons were warriors and the Roms were backstabbing spies.
Is it really that hard to see why 10 times more people would like the faction that easily got more then 10 times the development in the TV shows, and why said faction would likely have much more content then the others?
I mean seriously, outside of the whole Kahless/Sword of Kahless/Molor/Fek'ihri/Gre'thor thing, the Klingons have like zero history and lore to build on outside of the fact that they got attacked by the Hur'q at one point, and the stereotypical "MUH HONOR! MUH WARRIOR! MUH GREAT HOUSE CONFLICTS!" stuff that we saw every other episode they were in. And STO has already covered literally all of that in one arc or another.
See where I've bolded in your response. We're actually more in agreement here than you know.
Yes, the "amount" of Episodes available is on par with Fed- but excluding ships available, etc. it's the storylines themselves that are really, really weak. There's not a lot of "originality" in the KDF storyline or even the atmosphere, for example.
100 pennies in a pile does not equal 100 quarters in a pile just because the amount is the same.
It's not you- it's me. I just need my space.
Being critical doesn't take skill. Being constructively critical- which is providing alternative solutions or suggestions to a demonstrated problem, however, does.
Yes, the "amount" of Episodes available is on par with Fed- but excluding ships available, etc. it's the storylines themselves that are really, really weak. There's not a lot of "originality" in the KDF storyline or even the atmosphere, for example.
100 pennies in a pile does not equal 100 quarters in a pile just because the amount is the same.
Personally, I think the Fek'ihri arc is still one of the BEST in the game.
And the Romulan story arc beginning from the tutorial and ending with Hakeev's death is THE best piece of story content in STO.
By compare, the Federation's unique story arc, the Klingon War arc, is nothing but a random hodgepodge of barely connected missions, with little actual plot, a villian who is barely there, along with near zero pay off.
The Fed's easily have the worst unique arc of the three factions.
How so? (the arc, I mean)
As far as "atmosphere", I think they (the dev team) did a wonderful job recreating/setting the stage and tone for the Feds, it's probably the best of the 3, IMO followed closely by the Rom (New Romulus, etc.) areas. KDF has clearly had the worst in terms of neglected improvement- although I'll grant they did redo Qu'nos at one point to improve it.
My point is more "quality" over "quantity", in which I think we can all really agree. The ships are another "sticking point" with a lot of KDF players, because the quality of the newest ones in particular in terms of artistic design and so forth is just lazy according to most. (I've seen it termed as "lego block ships" etc, for example)
Whereas Fed has a tremendous amount of variety in ship designs, although I won't touch on the (personal opinion) horrid looking retro-throwback ships they just released for AOY. I've bought quite a few of the others (not new ones) in the past, as they're definitely decent quality and perform rather well.
Other points that have also been made are technological exclusives such as Cloaking, Universal Boff slots, and many other items that have bled over to the Fed side over the last few years, which now relegate KDF as not being so exclusive. I'm not going to bother arguing semantics over it (especially since Roms indeed had Battle Cloak, etc. in canon) but I am going to say it's a good point that the definition has become watered down and convoluted.
It's not you- it's me. I just need my space.
Being critical doesn't take skill. Being constructively critical- which is providing alternative solutions or suggestions to a demonstrated problem, however, does.
As far as "atmosphere", I think they (the dev team) did a wonderful job recreating/setting the stage and tone for the Feds, it's probably the best of the 3, IMO followed closely by the Rom (New Romulus, etc.) areas. KDF has clearly had the worst in terms of neglected improvement- although I'll grant they did redo Qu'nos at one point to improve it.
My point is more "quality" over "quantity", in which I think we can all really agree. The ships are another "sticking point" with a lot of KDF players, because the quality of the newest ones in particular in terms of artistic design and so forth is just lazy according to most. (I've seen it termed as "lego block ships" etc, for example)
Whereas Fed has a tremendous amount of variety in ship designs, although I won't touch on the (personal opinion) horrid looking retro-throwback ships they just released for AOY. I've bought quite a few of the others (not new ones) in the past, as they're definitely decent quality and perform rather well.
Other points that have also been made are technological exclusives such as Cloaking, Universal Boff slots, and many other items that have bled over to the Fed side over the last few years, which now relegate KDF as not being so exclusive. I'm not going to bother arguing semantics over it (especially since Roms indeed had Battle Cloak, etc. in canon) but I am going to say it's a good point that the definition has become watered down and convoluted.
Because it explored the most interesting part of Klingon society, and did so in a way that combined the more sci-fi elements of Trek, with the more fantasy like elements that mythology usually has, and also leaves something of a mystery in its wake as you never REALLY know if you did some of the stuff you did, or if you were just getting high off of the gasses.
As for the atmosphere, I still find the Klingon tutorial and early missions are more exiting and interesting then what the Feds got, which are very run of the mill MMO style missions most games use, and could be replaced with near everything and still work due to how plain the are. I do agree it could use some improvements, and Gecko has said the early Klingon missions such as the Fek'ihri and Warzone arcs are going to get revamped at some point in the future, but even pre-revamp, I still find it better then the snore fest that is the Federation content.
Feds SHOULD have more variety in ships. The Federation is a coalition of various species working together in union, and has a wealth of species, each with their own history of designs, to build off of. The Klingon Empire and Romulan Republic are mono-species empires, and thus only have one species, their own, to get designs from. This makes sense, and why it was so in both the TV shows and the game.
I don't really see that as an argument. Most MMOs do that. guild wars 2 has 5 unique races, and each race can get basically everything all the other races have. Thats a natural and logical result of all of them coming together to fight a common enemy. Exclusives should never be what defines a faction, just as consoles shouldn't be defined by exclusive titles either.
Oh, I agree that "exclusives" alone isn't what should define faction- I merely offered that as yet another reason why the whole argument exists. There's a lot of other points that have been made previously even outside of this.
My position is that this game would be best served if they rounded back and made the definition greater between factions, rather than uniting them- because really the latter is the laziest route and you can pretty much say goodbye to any semblance of future "PvP" or anything else if that happens. For the record, I'm primarily a PvE'er, but I'd love to see some improvement and/or reasonable PvP system introduced in this game.
As I've said before, it could continue to be a "good" game or evolve into a "great" one, but the choice is ultimately on PWE/Cryptic to do so. I've really not much hope in this, because I truly feel their target audience seems to be one of attractive impulse spenders and therefore long-term revenue isn't really their goal, but I'd love to be proven wrong and will GLADLY eat crow if they did so.
It's not you- it's me. I just need my space.
Being critical doesn't take skill. Being constructively critical- which is providing alternative solutions or suggestions to a demonstrated problem, however, does.
That's not how societies work. Just to get Klingons, Romulans, and Feds to work together is a stretch. But they would never be allies forever, Most mmos can't afford to do separate storylines. GW2 certainly isn't being innovative by making one storyline. It's just cheaper. Swtor is doing the same thing. It's cheaper to shoe horn all the distinctive classes into one boring generic storyline. Least Cryptic can do is support them as separate entities by keeping restrictions.
Either way doesn't matter. Paramount/CBS would never allow it.
"Great men are not peacemakers, Great men are conquerors!" - Captain Archer" "When diplomacy fails, there's only one alternative - violence. Force must be applied without apology. It's the Starfleet way." - Captain Janeway #Support Mirror Universe I.S.S. Prefixes
That's not how societies work. Just to get Klingons, Romulans, and Feds to work together is a stretch. But they would never be allies forever, Most mmos can't afford to do separate storylines. GW2 certainly isn't being innovative by making one storyline. It's just cheaper. Swtor is doing the same thing. It's cheaper to shoe horn all the distinctive classes into one boring generic storyline. Least Cryptic can do is support them as separate entities by keeping restrictions.
Either way doesn't matter. Paramount/CBS would never allow it.
the fact that it happens in the story (albeit we only know it happens some time between 2410 and the signing of the temporal accords) means CBS either doesn't care, or understands this is the inevitable outcome.
Flat no to handling out ships for other factions, I don't care that your Starfleet officer is a Klingon you can't have a b'rel. Lets see a new type of ship, Alliance vessels, these ships would be a whole new style, not Republic, Starfleet, or Klingon looking. They would be cross-faction ships that shows off what the big three can do together.
Crossfaction teaming is a major thing that should have happened before the war was properly over.
Crossfaction Armandas yes, fleets iffy.
Left field idea. I don't know what the challenge should be but it should be big, maybe hitting level 60 and finishing all currents missions released. What ever it is finishing the challenge will allow the race that you finished that challenge with to become playable for the other two factions. I made the idea and I'm iffy about it so there is that.
All in all no to just slapping the factions together and call it done, that's sloppy.
I still agree on "unite the factions".
We need more crossfaction options and access.
Allow KDF and FED to team up outside of queue stuff.
I noticed what kills playing KDF for most people is that everyone got tons of friends they wanna play with, but all of them are playing FED side. So they themself end up going back to playing fed.
Current storyline clearly states we are working together, yet we can't team up and do regular missions, farm adventure zone, or farm battle zones together.
Honestly this game haven't had much use for the player factions besides for the story in the first few levels. Even in pvp, from what I understand, there isn't much faction war. People can still queue up and make the teams they want.
Also allow us to join eachothers players fleets.
IMO a crossfaction Armada option isn't enough.
And not saying we should have access to eachothers high tier endgame ships.
That should still be a limit: ROM ships for Rommies. - KDF ships for KDF. - FED ships for FED.
But instead allow us to join eachothers fleets and buy our own faction ships from them, just like Romulan players. Gain access to eachothers bases and stuff, while keeping our own uniforms and ships.
"Please, Captain, not in front of the Klingons." Spock to Kirk, as Kirk is about to hug him.
Star Trek V: "The Final Frontier"
At this point the faction population imbalance is already a self-perpetuating feedback loop. On multiple levels.
Feds have larger population > multiplayer game is better with a larger population > more players want to play Fed
Feds have larger population > Cryptic makes more profit selling things to the larger population > Feds get more things to buy > more players want to play Feds
And that's on top of the natural bias new players will have toward Fed as the most well-known faction of the franchise.
Fragmenting the playerbase was a bad idea. The factions will never be equal unless they're united. The minority factions will just continue to be marginalized unless they're brought into a single market.
Also allow us to join eachothers players fleets.
IMO a crossfaction Armada option isn't enough.
And not saying we should have access to eachothers high tier endgame ships.
That should still be a limit: ROM ships for Rommies. - KDF ships for KDF. - FED ships for FED.
But instead allow us to join eachothers fleets and buy our own faction ships from them, just like Romulan players. Gain access to eachothers bases and stuff, while keeping our own uniforms and ships.
The reason why I feel iffy about crossfaction fleets is how strongly fleets are connected to factions. There is fleet weapons, pets, ships, how fleet holdings look compared to each other, and more things I might have forgot.
Comments
When players found out that meant Romulans would have access to the top tier ships (which at the time was T-5s).
"Starfleet would NEVER allow access, much less FLY, their FLAGSHIPS....LEAST of all Romulans!!!"
Cryptic actually had to change it. The Executive Producer even had to publish a letter on the subject.
To this day....Romulans do not have access to T-5 or higher ships on either side of the fence.
Believe the player's attitudes have changed that much??? LOL! Ask them about sharing Vengeance or any of the other top tier FED ONLY ships with Romulans, again....much less with the Klingons.
The raging will be glorious!! Again! LOL!
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
All four factions should be converted into mini-factions... then by endgame, they're all on the same side.
There is absolutely no benefit to walling off a bunch of content from everyone.
Romulans especially could do with becoming a completely standalone faction with their own Fleet Starbase.
Being critical doesn't take skill. Being constructively critical- which is providing alternative solutions or suggestions to a demonstrated problem, however, does.
You mean forth... We already have three.
And for the main subject...
No. Hell no. I'm Romulan, and don't want to become a Feddie-bear. Because that's what would happen.
Actually that's not true in the least.
The old Elite Queues were renamed to "Advanced" and the few Elite Queues we have now are an entirely new level of difficulty created balanced around the power creep.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
QFT
Exactly my feeling on it. Work on bringing up the standards of the other factions before throwing in the towel.
Give people choices instead of taking them away because it's "easier" or "cost-effective" to just lump everyone together. I'm really hoping the whole AOY thing isn't some sort of lead-in to an upcoming blending of all the factions "to defend the timeline" TRIBBLE or something and they mean to actually round back to KDF/Roms and finish out the content next.
Being critical doesn't take skill. Being constructively critical- which is providing alternative solutions or suggestions to a demonstrated problem, however, does.
OK, I'll bite- although I'm pretty sure it's going to lead to nowhere fast...
Why do you suppose there's such an imbalance to Faction population, then? Why is the attraction to the Fed side so much stronger? I'm sure you have some alternative theories and/or suggestions- seeing as how you've such a strong opinion on the matter.
How about offering up some constructive suggestions?
Being critical doesn't take skill. Being constructively critical- which is providing alternative solutions or suggestions to a demonstrated problem, however, does.
This would be Cryptic in the story, making a profit over petty differences.
See where I've bolded in your response. We're actually more in agreement here than you know.
Yes, the "amount" of Episodes available is on par with Fed- but excluding ships available, etc. it's the storylines themselves that are really, really weak. There's not a lot of "originality" in the KDF storyline or even the atmosphere, for example.
100 pennies in a pile does not equal 100 quarters in a pile just because the amount is the same.
Being critical doesn't take skill. Being constructively critical- which is providing alternative solutions or suggestions to a demonstrated problem, however, does.
How so? (the arc, I mean)
As far as "atmosphere", I think they (the dev team) did a wonderful job recreating/setting the stage and tone for the Feds, it's probably the best of the 3, IMO followed closely by the Rom (New Romulus, etc.) areas. KDF has clearly had the worst in terms of neglected improvement- although I'll grant they did redo Qu'nos at one point to improve it.
My point is more "quality" over "quantity", in which I think we can all really agree. The ships are another "sticking point" with a lot of KDF players, because the quality of the newest ones in particular in terms of artistic design and so forth is just lazy according to most. (I've seen it termed as "lego block ships" etc, for example)
Whereas Fed has a tremendous amount of variety in ship designs, although I won't touch on the (personal opinion) horrid looking retro-throwback ships they just released for AOY. I've bought quite a few of the others (not new ones) in the past, as they're definitely decent quality and perform rather well.
Other points that have also been made are technological exclusives such as Cloaking, Universal Boff slots, and many other items that have bled over to the Fed side over the last few years, which now relegate KDF as not being so exclusive. I'm not going to bother arguing semantics over it (especially since Roms indeed had Battle Cloak, etc. in canon) but I am going to say it's a good point that the definition has become watered down and convoluted.
Being critical doesn't take skill. Being constructively critical- which is providing alternative solutions or suggestions to a demonstrated problem, however, does.
Oh, I agree that "exclusives" alone isn't what should define faction- I merely offered that as yet another reason why the whole argument exists. There's a lot of other points that have been made previously even outside of this.
My position is that this game would be best served if they rounded back and made the definition greater between factions, rather than uniting them- because really the latter is the laziest route and you can pretty much say goodbye to any semblance of future "PvP" or anything else if that happens. For the record, I'm primarily a PvE'er, but I'd love to see some improvement and/or reasonable PvP system introduced in this game.
As I've said before, it could continue to be a "good" game or evolve into a "great" one, but the choice is ultimately on PWE/Cryptic to do so. I've really not much hope in this, because I truly feel their target audience seems to be one of attractive impulse spenders and therefore long-term revenue isn't really their goal, but I'd love to be proven wrong and will GLADLY eat crow if they did so.
Being critical doesn't take skill. Being constructively critical- which is providing alternative solutions or suggestions to a demonstrated problem, however, does.
Either way doesn't matter. Paramount/CBS would never allow it.
"When diplomacy fails, there's only one alternative - violence. Force must be applied without apology. It's the Starfleet way." - Captain Janeway
#Support Mirror Universe I.S.S. Prefixes
the fact that it happens in the story (albeit we only know it happens some time between 2410 and the signing of the temporal accords) means CBS either doesn't care, or understands this is the inevitable outcome.
Flat no to handling out ships for other factions, I don't care that your Starfleet officer is a Klingon you can't have a b'rel. Lets see a new type of ship, Alliance vessels, these ships would be a whole new style, not Republic, Starfleet, or Klingon looking. They would be cross-faction ships that shows off what the big three can do together.
Crossfaction teaming is a major thing that should have happened before the war was properly over.
Crossfaction Armandas yes, fleets iffy.
Left field idea. I don't know what the challenge should be but it should be big, maybe hitting level 60 and finishing all currents missions released. What ever it is finishing the challenge will allow the race that you finished that challenge with to become playable for the other two factions. I made the idea and I'm iffy about it so there is that.
All in all no to just slapping the factions together and call it done, that's sloppy.
We need more crossfaction options and access.
Allow KDF and FED to team up outside of queue stuff.
I noticed what kills playing KDF for most people is that everyone got tons of friends they wanna play with, but all of them are playing FED side. So they themself end up going back to playing fed.
Current storyline clearly states we are working together, yet we can't team up and do regular missions, farm adventure zone, or farm battle zones together.
Honestly this game haven't had much use for the player factions besides for the story in the first few levels. Even in pvp, from what I understand, there isn't much faction war. People can still queue up and make the teams they want.
Also allow us to join eachothers players fleets.
IMO a crossfaction Armada option isn't enough.
And not saying we should have access to eachothers high tier endgame ships.
That should still be a limit: ROM ships for Rommies. - KDF ships for KDF. - FED ships for FED.
But instead allow us to join eachothers fleets and buy our own faction ships from them, just like Romulan players. Gain access to eachothers bases and stuff, while keeping our own uniforms and ships.
Spock to Kirk, as Kirk is about to hug him.
Star Trek V: "The Final Frontier"
Feds have larger population > multiplayer game is better with a larger population > more players want to play Fed
Feds have larger population > Cryptic makes more profit selling things to the larger population > Feds get more things to buy > more players want to play Feds
And that's on top of the natural bias new players will have toward Fed as the most well-known faction of the franchise.
Fragmenting the playerbase was a bad idea. The factions will never be equal unless they're united. The minority factions will just continue to be marginalized unless they're brought into a single market.
I play Fed & Rom/KDF. I like having different ships, costumes and feel. I'm not worried about new shineys. I have fun with the ones I have.
The reason why I feel iffy about crossfaction fleets is how strongly fleets are connected to factions. There is fleet weapons, pets, ships, how fleet holdings look compared to each other, and more things I might have forgot.
"Let them eat static!"