Both for what we got, and how we got it.
Feels wise, I am young enough to not have seen TOS first, DS9 is "my" Trek. So I really have no interest in a 23c faction.
Mechanic wise, the almost complete overlap between the 23c faction stuff and Fed stuff makes it seem rather pointless.
Like the Delta Recruit event, I enjoyed starting again and playing though the whole story. Not a fan of time travel but overall the expansion was done decently and I am enjoying the new spec tree. I just don't feel the new faction really added anything to the game, it is both too small and not unique enough.
what about using some Foundry missions, as i saw quite good ones based in TOS era, so why not to take them it, revamp if its needed and put in 23th century, everyone happy, creators, players ok maybe not all but mostly certainly, as never everyone are happy,
From what I've heard, Foundry missions and main game missions are built very differently (in the complicated technical details of how the game works). They can't be copy and pasted from one format to the other, which is probably why we have the spotlight system as its own, separate thing instead of Foundry entries into the main arcs.
If cryptic wanted to use a community creation for something more official, they'd have to rebuild it themselves and that's not saving them any time in development. There's also the secondary question of just what missions get picked to be included in the main game. And really that's a big question, even with spotlighting. Apex will be going up thanks to a public vote (as a few other community challenges have) but for a series of main-game missions that would be directly supplementing Cryptic arcs I think you would really have to put the whole thing to a developer panel (costing them more time and effort.)
I think the only viable solution to this (barring the gradual release of more TOS-era missions by Crpytic) is for players to take it upon themselves (if they feel that the main-game TOS content is lacking) to look into TOS foundry missions on their own. No vetting process, no extra technical steps, just a direct channel between the many of us producing missions and the audience. The search interface isn't particularly good but one tag, TOS, is easy to browse for (a point for authors to keep in mind. Have a TOS mission already? Make sure its labeled.)
It's also worth noting that at some point in the reasonably near future we'll be getting a selection of AOY maps in the Foundry (thanks purely to dev volunteer time). Once those are in, you can bet more authors are going to start producing missions more directly related to AOY than pre-existing TOS missions have been.
Post edited by duncanidaho11 on
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
Aside from the fact the rep kit modules aren't Mk XIII ultra rare like everything else, I'm fine with it. They finally got the Daedalus class in game, that was the one thing I was wanting to see.
Let us upgrade the Seleya Ceremonial Lirpa and Kri'stak Blade
A) It clearly is not as much a faction as much as romulans are a faction. Its very weak, short, and incomplete. Granted the few episodes are done well and are good stories.
I dont think TOS series is worthy of its own expansion. I know it's the mother of Star Trek, but its seems obscure to me to do a whole expansion and all that DLC to me. Its odd the devs decided to spend time creating all that TOS content when its so fleeting. I ignore the TOS aspect of my AoY recruit, he flies an Odyssey and wears the TNG/DS9 uniform, and does everything else modern.
C) Its strange and redundant to create another kind of Fed faction. And obviously not fair to the other factions for more Fed content. I think they should have just made a whole other unrelated faction such as coop borg or Dominion/Cardassian, etc. And just make that REALLY as much as a faction as the Rom faction...
The 'expansion' felt more like a new season update with a large ship pack added. If you compare this to what we got with the Romulan expansion... there are whole worlds in between. And the 'faction' is just four known species with a new background story.
AOY was enjoyable but it pales if you compare it to earlier expansions.
I think they watered TOS down by releasing Kelvin along with. And in doing so, I think they watered down all the possibilities they could have had with the Kelvin Timeline, too.
I mean, if 50th Anniversary was going to be about honoring TOS, it should have been about TOS.
Though I enjoy the seeing the new costumes while wandering around ESD and the visuals of "being there" in a TOS mission, it wasn't lasting.
I am not sure it constitutes a "new faction".
Now, if a "faction" is going to be just ships and costumes?? Which is shared with everyone else?? It just seems like they just added a new "race" to the Fed side (though, it's kinda not a new race).... I am not even sure how to quantify it.
It is rather confusing.
If this is what "adding a faction" is going to be, going forward. Feel bad for fans.
"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
I do like the unique vfx and clever goodies that are added for TOS characters, but the "Faction"-specific story was disappointingly short. Well-written, enjoyable, but too short.
Add to that there is only one (1) free TOS ship, which is unreclaimable by the way. Even Romulans have at least one for each free promotion ship. Kinda disappointing there.
Then the new BOFFs and BOFF abilities are character-bind-on-pickup, and unobtainable post Caleb IV.
As a whole, the TOS "faction" feels like basic Starfleet, with some different vfx and new starting experience.
I can't say I'm surprised, however, adding a faction to a game is a monstrous endeavor and Cryptic has a record for taking the shortest road to get things done. Most times this is an efficient way to get new content into STO without significant investment, but when adding an 'entire' faction to the game, the shortest route isn't always the best way to go.
did anyone tryed to stuck in 23th century as just do a replay till he don't get to lvl 60 without playing last mission so that he never gets in 25th century and does doffing works in 23th cenutry map?
So with my plan to do unaligned romulan this will also go, so 2 new alts will be on way soon :P, just if doffing work for tos alts in 23th century map
Add to that there is only one (1) free TOS ship, which is unreclaimable by the way. Even Romulans have at least one for each free promotion ship. Kinda disappointing there.
and if you are a lifetimer you do not get your tokken T5 ship ( for a console for example).
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
Its a new Fed tutorial with some extras to justify a Delta recruit V2 event.
A brand new sector map with loads of unused interacts which means most of the time and effort that went into it has been WASTED.
Ship equipment, kit modules and Bridge officer abilities with new visual and sound effects that you can't get anymore once you get dumped into the 'current' time.
The fact that this was done by a larger team, taking more time, then the LoR expansion is pretty amazing.
You'd think that with more people and time they could have surpassed LoR, instead they managed to make DR look somewhat decent by releasing this.
If this is what they consider an expansion worth all the time, effort and money spent on it then I fear what TRIBBLE they will try to dump onto us for the next 'expansion'.
The fact that this was done by a larger team, taking more time, then the LoR expansion is pretty amazing.
You'd think that with more people and time they could have surpassed LoR, instead they managed to make DR look somewhat decent by releasing this.
Unless that effort was going into other things, like for example story episodes released during the seasons. The two seasons leading up to LOR were completely dry, there was with only one episode (Temporal Ambassador). Compare that to the combined offerings of the Iconian War and first half of the Temporal Cold War.
We haven't had a direct dev quote on this (at least not to my knowledge), but it could be that they've shifted emphasis from big expansions and barren seasons to bigger seasons and smaller expansions (which I think you can track as an increasing trend over time. The lead-up to DR had more stuff than pre-LoR but DR itself didn't have quite as many featured episodes.) In which case, I don't see what we could really be hoping for in complaining about the sufficient AOY content load.
Without being able to magic up more dev time, where do you think the extra expansion episodes will come from? For a feedback topic like this we should probably keep consequences in mind and worry most about how things work now, not whether or not they fit some arbitrary pattern set by past events (since there may be a very good reason why that pattern should no longer hold.)
Post edited by duncanidaho11 on
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
I really enjoyed the AOY "faction". I wanted a whole lot more of it. I don't really see it as a faction though. I didn't vote because I liked it, expected what we got and, was a bit disappointed with it all at the same time. The biggest disappointment was not having unique dialogue in later missions where an AOY would have a different perspective than a standard Fed. The second most disappointing thing is not having enough content in the 23c.
We haven't had a direct dev quote on this (at least not to my knowledge), but it could be that they've shifted emphasis from big expansions and barren seasons to bigger seasons and smaller expansions (which I think you can track as an increasing trend over time. The lead-up to DR had more stuff than pre-LoR but DR itself didn't have quite as many featured episodes.) In which case, I don't see what we could really be hoping for in complaining about the sufficient AOY content load.
If this is true, I don't see it as a bad trend. Consistent content releases over time vs one huge content release that takes a month or so to complete.
As far as factions go, the TOS faction seems alright. Like every faction, people are going to want more content for it. Is it a recruiting gimmick, or is it going to get more content updates, only time will tell.
If this is true, I don't see it as a bad trend. Consistent content releases over time vs one huge content release that takes a month or so to complete.
As far as factions go, the TOS faction seems alright. Like every faction, people are going to want more content for it. Is it a recruiting gimmick, or is it going to get more content updates, only time will tell.
If the trend is indeed there (never presume, even on your own opinion ) I definitely prefer it too.
Personally, there might not be a whole lot more space for the TOS faction to grow. There's a lot of boxes to left to check but I think you could make a pretty convincing argument for the major elements (ship types and episodes) to be made multi-faction (may as well kill 3 content deprived birds with one stone).
I guess the current attitude to take on the TOS faction is that it is what it is. It does a job and that's separate from what the Romulan mini-faction tried to do. It's all about giving you a new individual perspective to take across the game, rather than trying to sell you on a separate species identity.
It's more subtle, but I think you can get a lot out of that aspect in particular.
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
commentary: if it had more 23c content linking STO to TOS i would be happy, on the other grasper, if it were to be completely severed from the current (25c ) storyline and made into its own complete pocket-verse exclusive to just 23c content and TOS stories, i would have a heart attack in sheer joy.
I agree. The TOS "pocketverse" would have been a major thing, with a temporal fleet asset to link timelines together (the "pulled" Deep-Space station that vanished into time could serve as a cross hub fr non fleet players)
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
I liked it but I refuse to call it a faction when it's not. The number of missions has nothing to do with it. It's a quality alternate start for the Federation that happens to add some cross faction content, that's it.
Personally, there might not be a whole lot more space for the TOS faction to grow. There's a lot of boxes to left to check but I think you could make a pretty convincing argument for the major elements (ship types and episodes) to be made multi-faction (may as well kill 3 content deprived birds with one stone).
I guess the current attitude to take on the TOS faction is that it is what it is. It does a job and that's separate from what the Romulan mini-faction tried to do. It's all about giving you a new individual perspective to take across the game, rather than trying to sell you on a separate species identity.
It's more subtle, but I think you can get a lot out of that aspect in particular.
While players and developers may have their own arbitrary rules for what defines a faction, players will want more content for their faction. I can see lots of room for additional content, but ultimately, it is up to Cryptic to support it. Being able to craft 23c equipment would be a good start. More end-game ships (or ships that can use a 23c skin). Cross-faction 23c content would probably be acceptable to most TOS players.
The question is, will Cryptic continue to provide TOS content after the AOY arc is over? If not, if this is some kind of self-contained season, then TOS players who believed this was a faction, will probably be disappointed in the long run.
This is one of the pitfalls I see with introducing new factions, even mini-factions. Players will become invested and will want their faction to continue to receive support, which may not be feasible or even intended.
If you stay behind to play, it is going to be a very, very long slog as you can never claim a Tier 2 and above ship.
'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.'
I'm old enough to remember TOS during its first run, so I enjoyed the sense of nostalgia I felt playing the 23rd century missions; however, it was simply too short. Other than the feeling that you barely get a chance to savor the 23rd century before being thrust into the "modern" 25th century same-old grind, it came off feeling like nothing more than an alternative FED tutorial. Unless the Devs have plans to re-visit this period in future episodes, it simply serves no purpose in my mind.
Something else that may have helped is if they had also done a version from the KDF and/or ROM side just to get a different angle/perspective on events.
I'm along the lines of AngryTarg. It was cool to be in that period of time, but it was over way too fast and there was so much more that could of been done there. And the inability to back is bothersome.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
Comments
Feels wise, I am young enough to not have seen TOS first, DS9 is "my" Trek. So I really have no interest in a 23c faction.
Mechanic wise, the almost complete overlap between the 23c faction stuff and Fed stuff makes it seem rather pointless.
Like the Delta Recruit event, I enjoyed starting again and playing though the whole story. Not a fan of time travel but overall the expansion was done decently and I am enjoying the new spec tree. I just don't feel the new faction really added anything to the game, it is both too small and not unique enough.
From what I've heard, Foundry missions and main game missions are built very differently (in the complicated technical details of how the game works). They can't be copy and pasted from one format to the other, which is probably why we have the spotlight system as its own, separate thing instead of Foundry entries into the main arcs.
If cryptic wanted to use a community creation for something more official, they'd have to rebuild it themselves and that's not saving them any time in development. There's also the secondary question of just what missions get picked to be included in the main game. And really that's a big question, even with spotlighting. Apex will be going up thanks to a public vote (as a few other community challenges have) but for a series of main-game missions that would be directly supplementing Cryptic arcs I think you would really have to put the whole thing to a developer panel (costing them more time and effort.)
I think the only viable solution to this (barring the gradual release of more TOS-era missions by Crpytic) is for players to take it upon themselves (if they feel that the main-game TOS content is lacking) to look into TOS foundry missions on their own. No vetting process, no extra technical steps, just a direct channel between the many of us producing missions and the audience. The search interface isn't particularly good but one tag, TOS, is easy to browse for (a point for authors to keep in mind. Have a TOS mission already? Make sure its labeled.)
It's also worth noting that at some point in the reasonably near future we'll be getting a selection of AOY maps in the Foundry (thanks purely to dev volunteer time). Once those are in, you can bet more authors are going to start producing missions more directly related to AOY than pre-existing TOS missions have been.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
Let us upgrade the Seleya Ceremonial Lirpa and Kri'stak Blade
I ignore the TOS aspect of my AoY recruit, he flies an Odyssey and wears the TNG/DS9 uniform, and does everything else modern.
C) Its strange and redundant to create another kind of Fed faction. And obviously not fair to the other factions for more Fed content. I think they should have just made a whole other unrelated faction such as coop borg or Dominion/Cardassian, etc. And just make that REALLY as much as a faction as the Rom faction...
AOY was enjoyable but it pales if you compare it to earlier expansions.
I mean, if 50th Anniversary was going to be about honoring TOS, it should have been about TOS.
Though I enjoy the seeing the new costumes while wandering around ESD and the visuals of "being there" in a TOS mission, it wasn't lasting.
I am not sure it constitutes a "new faction".
Now, if a "faction" is going to be just ships and costumes?? Which is shared with everyone else?? It just seems like they just added a new "race" to the Fed side (though, it's kinda not a new race).... I am not even sure how to quantify it.
It is rather confusing.
If this is what "adding a faction" is going to be, going forward. Feel bad for fans.
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
Add to that there is only one (1) free TOS ship, which is unreclaimable by the way. Even Romulans have at least one for each free promotion ship. Kinda disappointing there.
Then the new BOFFs and BOFF abilities are character-bind-on-pickup, and unobtainable post Caleb IV.
As a whole, the TOS "faction" feels like basic Starfleet, with some different vfx and new starting experience.
I can't say I'm surprised, however, adding a faction to a game is a monstrous endeavor and Cryptic has a record for taking the shortest road to get things done. Most times this is an efficient way to get new content into STO without significant investment, but when adding an 'entire' faction to the game, the shortest route isn't always the best way to go.
So with my plan to do unaligned romulan this will also go, so 2 new alts will be on way soon :P, just if doffing work for tos alts in 23th century map
It's a faction if the developers and/or publishers say so. Your approval is not required for this to be factual.
and if you are a lifetimer you do not get your tokken T5 ship ( for a console for example).
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
A brand new sector map with loads of unused interacts which means most of the time and effort that went into it has been WASTED.
Ship equipment, kit modules and Bridge officer abilities with new visual and sound effects that you can't get anymore once you get dumped into the 'current' time.
The fact that this was done by a larger team, taking more time, then the LoR expansion is pretty amazing.
You'd think that with more people and time they could have surpassed LoR, instead they managed to make DR look somewhat decent by releasing this.
If this is what they consider an expansion worth all the time, effort and money spent on it then I fear what TRIBBLE they will try to dump onto us for the next 'expansion'.
Unless that effort was going into other things, like for example story episodes released during the seasons. The two seasons leading up to LOR were completely dry, there was with only one episode (Temporal Ambassador). Compare that to the combined offerings of the Iconian War and first half of the Temporal Cold War.
We haven't had a direct dev quote on this (at least not to my knowledge), but it could be that they've shifted emphasis from big expansions and barren seasons to bigger seasons and smaller expansions (which I think you can track as an increasing trend over time. The lead-up to DR had more stuff than pre-LoR but DR itself didn't have quite as many featured episodes.) In which case, I don't see what we could really be hoping for in complaining about the sufficient AOY content load.
Without being able to magic up more dev time, where do you think the extra expansion episodes will come from? For a feedback topic like this we should probably keep consequences in mind and worry most about how things work now, not whether or not they fit some arbitrary pattern set by past events (since there may be a very good reason why that pattern should no longer hold.)
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
Even more so when the recruitment event ends.
As far as factions go, the TOS faction seems alright. Like every faction, people are going to want more content for it. Is it a recruiting gimmick, or is it going to get more content updates, only time will tell.
What I expected? Yes!
Join Date: Tuesday, February 2, 2010
If the trend is indeed there (never presume, even on your own opinion
Personally, there might not be a whole lot more space for the TOS faction to grow. There's a lot of boxes to left to check but I think you could make a pretty convincing argument for the major elements (ship types and episodes) to be made multi-faction (may as well kill 3 content deprived birds with one stone).
I guess the current attitude to take on the TOS faction is that it is what it is. It does a job and that's separate from what the Romulan mini-faction tried to do. It's all about giving you a new individual perspective to take across the game, rather than trying to sell you on a separate species identity.
It's more subtle, but I think you can get a lot out of that aspect in particular.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
I agree. The TOS "pocketverse" would have been a major thing, with a temporal fleet asset to link timelines together (the "pulled" Deep-Space station that vanished into time could serve as a cross hub fr non fleet players)
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
The question is, will Cryptic continue to provide TOS content after the AOY arc is over? If not, if this is some kind of self-contained season, then TOS players who believed this was a faction, will probably be disappointed in the long run.
This is one of the pitfalls I see with introducing new factions, even mini-factions. Players will become invested and will want their faction to continue to receive support, which may not be feasible or even intended.
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.'
Something else that may have helped is if they had also done a version from the KDF and/or ROM side just to get a different angle/perspective on events.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1