Oh dear... The story of the "intentionally worse" KDF ships... It's funny, because I remember how in PvP, people complained about the vast OPness of Klingon ships ,with their cloak and battle cloak, improved turn rate, and the ability to use DHCs.
Sorry, if the potency of ships was really a serious reason for a faction's success, Romulans would be the largest faction.
The reason for the inability of KDF and RR to get equal to the Federation is the same it always was - Star Trek is a franchise aimed at real humans depicting primarily humans (or almost humans) working for Starfleet. All the other is just pointless hand-wringing and the only way to get Klingons to be the popular race choice in a Star Trek game is making it a game where you definitely cannot play on the side of Starfleet. (And even there, they could still lose to the Borg, if we take those polls the thread's creator loves to cite at face value.)
and how big a portion of this game is PvP? hmm? almost none, Mustrum. Yes, in PVP, Cloaking is effective-it is totally and completely a waste in PvE, for teh most part utterly irrelevant for the majority of the game.
Now? Not at all. Then? It was important enough that PvPers where heavily involved in the first big power rebalances Cryptic undertook (which was overal pretty good for the game, as it made a lot of useless powers useful for PvP and PvE, and enabled an interesting meta. Not without flaws, of course.)
The forums were full of envy for Carriers and Bird of Preys and Cloak.
Back then levelling was not any slower then now, and PvP was the only meaningful content that could be considered for endgame, so there was no reason whatsoever to stick to the Fed side for more then seeing the missions it had. The cool PvP stuff was on the KDF.
There was no mass exodus from players to the KDF, however.
And the Romulans has ships that are powerful for PvE and PvP, as evidenced by the Scimitar, and they had a real storyline from the beginning. Still no exodus to the Romulans.
but it's not about Power, Mustrum, it's about the quality of the product. the faction-specific content for KDF is rife with bugs and defects, the writing in cross-faction material is perfunctory to outright bad from a KDF perspective, and, of course, faction-specific elements that would have been a draw (or could have) are moved to Federation side in an improved form regularly-whether it's improved in terms of availability or capability or simply having bugs and defects fixed.
All the claims of "they don't try hard enought" or "they intentionally sabotage the KDF and RR for some reasons" seem to fall flat in the face of what Cryptic did to aid the Klingons and the Romulans to become more played.
The example of the Varanus also has a neat counter-example in Fed Ships. You might think that the Varanus was not "good enough". But that was back in a time where Cryptic thought a Cruiser with 3 bridge officer seats devoted to engineering and a turn rate even worse than equal tier ships was a good idea. And it worked - people bought the ships and later created forum threadnaughts complaining the Galaxy Class wasn't powerful enough and needed some way to get more DPS. The Varnus by comparison had obviously Fed-Science_Vessel competitive stats, a completely new model, and it was also working. No problem with quality there. (And since it was one of the newer generation of ships, its model was probably better than some of the launch-Fed-clunkers)
Mechanically, everything was stacked against the Galaxy Class, but it was a sales success compared to the Varanus. This tells me that the stats matter a lot less to the buyers than the emotional bond to these ships. The Galaxy Class is a ship with 7 seasons and 1 movie worth of promotional material. The Varanus is a non-canon ship.
Unfortunately, Cryptic can't convince CBS to make a 7 season show about a new Klingon vessel. So the KDF will be forever screwed over by the nature of the franchise. Not evil conspirators or incompetence or lack of resources.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Mechanically, everything was stacked against the Galaxy Class, but it was a sales success compared to the Varanus. This tells me that the stats matter a lot less to the buyers than the emotional bond to these ships. The Galaxy Class is a ship with 7 seasons and 1 movie worth of promotional material. The Varanus is a non-canon ship.
Unfortunately, Cryptic can't convince CBS to make a 7 season show about a new Klingon vessel. So the KDF will be forever screwed over by the nature of the franchise. Not evil conspirators or incompetence.
This sums it up perfectly.
Starfleet is simply the 'face' of Star Trek. The shows have always been federation-centered, with even the more prominent aliens simply being the 'neighbors'.
Only DS9 was a bit different in the way that it was more like neutral ground (yet still with Starfleet partially in command).
I think we're also speaking past one another Mustrum. I'm looking at STO as an MMO, not as a theme-park for the stars of the television show.
and do you recall hte constant whine of the Cruiser fans, the epithet "Failaxy", or the bitching about "Escorts Online"??
or the agonized screaming from Fed Cruiser fans when BFAW wasn't proccing criticals?
I remember most of that, but here#S the thing. People didn't complain about the Failaxy and didn't buy it. They bought it in droves and then complained. And the Failaxy itself didn't recieve any improvements. But the Tier 6 variant did.
But the KDF players didn't buy that Varanus. And so there never was a Tier 6 version that got a decent upgrade.
(THough IIRC, the Varanus did get improved together with the DSSV or Nebula, I don't remember exactly, it's been so long. People complained about their low turn rates for a long time, and when they decided to upgrade the FEd ones, they also ugpraded the KDF one.)
Nobody who bought a Galaxy was buying it for any other reason than Nostalgia-which neither the Varanus, nor the Bortasque could rely on, but it took a write-in campaign to CBS to get us the B'rel-and the B'rel's been a good seller-good enough to have three (or four, if you count the B'rotlh) versions (not including the Fleet versions, which I guess make five-one at T5 and one at 6).
Likewise the D-7/K'Tinga has multiple versions at endgame, including a lockbox version with a gimped turn-rate.
Nostalgia is the only thing that's kept the doors open-if Cryptic had to (god forbid) rely on the quality of the GAME they delivered, STO would be out of business-because they have just enough team for a single-player third-person action shooter with a few co-op maps, but they're chained to a proposal/model that requires an actual full-function MMO.
And what I take from thatis that the KDF is inherently screwed over by the nature of the player population. The amount of nostalgia people have for Enterprises and Federation ships will always be much higher than that for KDF ships.
There isn't anything Cryptic can do about that. Nothing. No matter the resources, no matter the skill.
Which, they're not doing a good job of delivering, because they can't.
when you consider that so far, neither Lucas nor Disney has done a seven season show focusing on the inner workings of the Sith, yet their MMO properties have all had much stronger 'enemy faction' (Sith) play (read: Multiple Factions) than STO has managed or can manage, the "Majority of the IP" argument falls apart.
The amount of nostalgia is more a question of proportions in context of what exists. And the movies shown both protagonists and antagonists in equal measures.
Star Wars always had material for both sides, including the movies. The original movies had the Empire and the Rebellion.
And let'S face it - the prequests made sure the only thing of interest was the Sith/Jedi conflict. No one ever came to to a Star Wars forum saying he desperately wants to play a Trade Federation robot or whatever.
And despite all this, TOR decided that this whole concept of two playable factions should no longer be relevant for its future content. The new expansions does away with faction specific stuff in the story content.
so don't expect anything, but not because Trekkies don't have an interest in Klingons, it's because Geko doesn't and Cryptic doesn't have the resources if he did.
You still haven't really made that point. The Bortasque might have been a failure, but what was the reason? Because of the stats? If Fed players buy every ship and then complain about poor stats, that can't be it. It's because nostalgia isn't there. And so Cryptic really can only hope to sell B'Rels, Vor'Chas, Negh'Vars and K'tinga. With some luck perhaps a Raptor, because ENT. The only one missing now in that lineup is the Vor'Cha. After that, the KDF is done nostalgia-wise, at least until Tier 7.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Well, yeah, the Bort really is a solid ship. But the resemblance to the Negh'var is just that... resemblance. It will never be mistaken for one. Although it's easy to say "inspired by" when looking at it.
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
Cryptic has received -- and deserved -- a lot of criticism for how they've handled the non-Federation factions over the years. KDF definitely got the short end of the stick for a great deal of that time. Nobody argues that.
I simply fail to see how it is productive to keep bringing those things up as an indictment of Cryptic. The reason they did certain things 5, 6, and 7 years ago aren't necessarily true today. The game itself, and how they deal with KDF fans, has definitely changed over time as the market changed and as the overall storyline evolved. The utter collapse of PvP as a major feature of the game and as a community has also been a factor. But generally, the situation has improved instead of getting worse.
That's why these kinds of threads are so tiresome to see posted over and over and over again. They aren't saying anything new. They're pointing at past events to beat the Devs over the head about why they aren't putting more emphasis on KDF in the console versions now.
Did it ever occur to anybody that they could have easily NOT included the KDF and RR factions on console if they really wanted to? Why bother porting over all of that extra material to the console versions when they could've made it easier on themselves to just focus on Starfleet? Think of all the bugs they wouldn't have to bother squashing and the internal resources they could free up if they could just edit those factions out completely.
Clearly, they want the KDF and RR in the game as options. If they didn't, they wouldn't bother on console. But they also know perfectly well what the demands are and which factions they can't afford to ignore. If the strategy is to continue capitalizing on the 50th anniversary of TOS to bring in new players, then their focus on attracting players to the Federation is entirely understandable. Console bias, indeed. And why not?
Oh dear... The story of the "intentionally worse" KDF ships... It's funny, because I remember how in PvP, people complained about the vast OPness of Klingon ships ,with their cloak and battle cloak, improved turn rate, and the ability to use DHCs.
Sorry, if the potency of ships was really a serious reason for a faction's success, Romulans would be the largest faction.
The reason for the inability of KDF and RR to get equal to the Federation is the same it always was - Star Trek is a franchise aimed at real humans depicting primarily humans (or almost humans) working for Starfleet. All the other is just pointless hand-wringing and the only way to get Klingons to be the popular race choice in a Star Trek game is making it a game where you definitely cannot play on the side of Starfleet. (And even there, they could still lose to the Borg, if we take those polls the thread's creator loves to cite at face value.)
and how big a portion of this game is PvP? hmm? almost none, Mustrum. Yes, in PVP, Cloaking is effective-it is totally and completely a waste in PvE, for teh most part utterly irrelevant for the majority of the game.
Now? Not at all. Then? It was important enough that PvPers where heavily involved in the first big power rebalances Cryptic undertook (which was overal pretty good for the game, as it made a lot of useless powers useful for PvP and PvE, and enabled an interesting meta. Not without flaws, of course.)
The forums were full of envy for Carriers and Bird of Preys and Cloak.
Back then levelling was not any slower then now, and PvP was the only meaningful content that could be considered for endgame, so there was no reason whatsoever to stick to the Fed side for more then seeing the missions it had. The cool PvP stuff was on the KDF.
There was no mass exodus from players to the KDF, however.
And the Romulans has ships that are powerful for PvE and PvP, as evidenced by the Scimitar, and they had a real storyline from the beginning. Still no exodus to the Romulans.
but it's not about Power, Mustrum, it's about the quality of the product. the faction-specific content for KDF is rife with bugs and defects, the writing in cross-faction material is perfunctory to outright bad from a KDF perspective, and, of course, faction-specific elements that would have been a draw (or could have) are moved to Federation side in an improved form regularly-whether it's improved in terms of availability or capability or simply having bugs and defects fixed.
All the claims of "they don't try hard enought" or "they intentionally sabotage the KDF and RR for some reasons" seem to fall flat in the face of what Cryptic did to aid the Klingons and the Romulans to become more played.
The example of the Varanus also has a neat counter-example in Fed Ships. You might think that the Varanus was not "good enough". But that was back in a time where Cryptic thought a Cruiser with 3 bridge officer seats devoted to engineering and a turn rate even worse than equal tier ships was a good idea. And it worked - people bought the ships and later created forum threadnaughts complaining the Galaxy Class wasn't powerful enough and needed some way to get more DPS. The Varnus by comparison had obviously Fed-Science_Vessel competitive stats, a completely new model, and it was also working. No problem with quality there. (And since it was one of the newer generation of ships, its model was probably better than some of the launch-Fed-clunkers)
Mechanically, everything was stacked against the Galaxy Class, but it was a sales success compared to the Varanus. This tells me that the stats matter a lot less to the buyers than the emotional bond to these ships. The Galaxy Class is a ship with 7 seasons and 1 movie worth of promotional material. The Varanus is a non-canon ship.
Unfortunately, Cryptic can't convince CBS to make a 7 season show about a new Klingon vessel. So the KDF will be forever screwed over by the nature of the franchise. Not evil conspirators or incompetence or lack of resources.
I'd just like to throw in, that I loved TNG (not my favourite series, but I did like it) I quite like some of the new versions the Galaxy-Class (except for the three-nacelle variant) but I will never buy one, because it lacks the tactical capabilities I want in a ship... I'm getting an Archon-Class in near-immediate replacement of the Guardian-Class I scored a couple of days ago, because I can use the LtCmdr Universal slot as an additional tactical slot, and so gain more punch than the Guardian-Class... No amount of emotional bond to the Galaxy-Class will make the stats do things which it simply can't do... Cara may be an engineer by career, but the cardiac tubes of a warrior thump in that little chest of hers, and she likes ships that can do damage
What Mustrum is missing, is that for "Starfleet flavoured Barbie Dressup" there's an automatic market. a paperdoll mobile dressup app would work as well as an MMO and cost less to make. cryptic committed to something it as an organization demonstrated it can't deliver. They're very lucky to be able to rely on the words "Star Trek" for this game, because if that wasn't the case, they'd have had to close the shop years ago if the game was being judged on quality without that name.
which is why I keep going back to it not being a reasonable thing-asking for anything in terms of support for the minority factions-Cryptic simply can't achieve that, can't sustain it, they don't have the resources and it's not reasonable to expect them to do so.
Even without the Star Trek name, this game would survive. After all, there are very few MMOs that provide space and ground combat. The Star Trek name is a double edged sword. The name brings in Star Trek fans, but those same fans judge the game based on what they think Star Trek is. Without the Star Trek name, Cryptic would have the creativity to produce whatever ships and races they want instead of relying on the years and years of TV series and movies.
Micro-factions don't require much effort or support to produce as proven by the recent TOS Starfleet micro-faction. Just create a few missions, a few costumes, and a few C-Store ships and have them join up with the actual factions. There is absolutely no need to provide further support to the faction.
Amongst all the restating of entrenched positions, I'll reiterate my own: someone at Cryptic clearly gives a £"A% about Klingons, because of the amount of stuff in AoY for them.
I'm quite serious; during the "dark days" a big lament was the lack of cosmetic options for Klingons, with Cryptic's repeated defence being the work required to port costumes from NPCs to PCs.
Contrast that with AoY, where they went back and re-did the core Klingon template to let players run TOS Klingons, with the full uniforms for free. And THEN went back and corrected the bugs with the female uniforms. Oh, and put an expanded range of TOS-style weapons into K-13. (There's a regrettable lack of 23c Temporal C-store ships, but the iconic-and-sole-canon 23c cruiser was already in the Fleet stores). Scraps from the table, if you want to take a cynical view - but certainly not "left to rot".
Then there's all the Kelvin stuff - the D4X, probably the best-animated ship in the game, and again the work to make the Kelvin uniforms playable. Despite the fact that only a minority of a minority will actually use these (and there's quite a lot of variety in there as well - more than is needed for the throwaway NPCs).
Oh, and the D4 / D7 don't have anything comparable fedside.
So, if I was to draw a conclusion, it's that Cryptic now sees the KDF (and perhaps RR) as "premium format" factions - where new toys will be rare deliberately high priced.
Amongst all the restating of entrenched positions, I'll reiterate my own: someone at Cryptic clearly gives a £"A% about Klingons, because of the amount of stuff in AoY for them.
I'm quite serious; during the "dark days" a big lament was the lack of cosmetic options for Klingons, with Cryptic's repeated defence being the work required to port costumes from NPCs to PCs.
Contrast that with AoY, where they went back and re-did the core Klingon template to let players run TOS Klingons, with the full uniforms for free. And THEN went back and corrected the bugs with the female uniforms. Oh, and put an expanded range of TOS-style weapons into K-13. (There's a regrettable lack of 23c Temporal C-store ships, but the iconic-and-sole-canon 23c cruiser was already in the Fleet stores). Scraps from the table, if you want to take a cynical view - but certainly not "left to rot".
Then there's all the Kelvin stuff - the D4X, probably the best-animated ship in the game, and again the work to make the Kelvin uniforms playable. Despite the fact that only a minority of a minority will actually use these (and there's quite a lot of variety in there as well - more than is needed for the throwaway NPCs).
Oh, and the D4 / D7 don't have anything comparable fedside.
So, if I was to draw a conclusion, it's that Cryptic now sees the KDF (and perhaps RR) as "premium format" factions - where new toys will be rare deliberately high priced.
yes, someone does. Crypticjoejing, (who belongs on your christmas card list if you're a KDF fan), because all that stuff you mentioned? the costume work? artwork? bug fixes? was stuff he was doing on his free time, unpaid, weekends and evenings. giving up his free time because it wasn't funded.
but in terms of official support? KDF were abandoned. which is why the updates and upgrades and bug-fixes you cite, didn't actually hit live until after AoY was a month old on Holodeck.
zero percent support from Geko or the producers, Staq.
The lockbox ships were done mainly to sell lockboxes, because it's well known that proportionally, KDF players buy more than they should to get ships to fill what Cryptic doesn't supply-which is why Qo'noS space often looks like Slick Brung's Used Shiplot instead of a faction hub.
I often feel like I am the only Klingon in orbit.
Actually I last played my Nausicaan, so since they had that Feet Nausicaan Destroyer I feel justified.
My KDF Rommies fly the C-store Korotinga, which is as close as I have gotten to the canon Rommie D7 as far as appearances go. That having been said, I will also add here, that the number of UFP ships that a Rommie can also use, is much higher than the the number of KDF ships the same Rommie could use if they had been on the other side. I noticed a few times that C-store giveaways that gave ships tended to select ships on the UFP side that Rommies could claim, but not so on the KDF side. While it is true the Rommies get to use their own ships with exclusivity, it still makes things so much easier on the UFP/Rom.
The most glaring was a giveaway where my KDF Rom tried to claim a Gorn support ship, and couldn't, this happening right after my UFP Rom had just claimed the Fed offering for that day with no troubles. I submitted a ticket and was told that my Rom/KDF was not in an eligible faction to claim the Gorn ship. Hmmm. My Orion could claim it, so it wasn't 'Gorn' exclusive. Anyway, the point is that the UFP/Rom gets more ships not only because the UFP has more ships to begin with, but also because the game removes more barriers for the Roms in that faction. Just saying ....
I do fly all the Kobali, Dyson Sci, etc, but I try to represent actual faction allegiance most of the time with more traditional ships. Being able to get a decent K'tinga is the best reason to have a KDF Fleet in my opinion, though admittedly right behind that is a chance to generate activity.
It occurs to me that Cryptic missed an opportunity. The first place you hear of a KDF battle cruiser referred to as a 'warbird' is in the new movies (I am 99% sure anyway) Going with this observation, it seems like if they can give us a T6 Connie, why can't they give us a T6 'Warbird' class battle cruiser? It seems to me that since Kirk altered the simulation, we could assume that 'Warbirds' were a lot tougher normally, than they were when we saw Kirk finally beat the NWS
Anyway, I could probably ramble on for awhile, but I need to cut this off (the crowd cheers )
I will sum up by saying that I don't think the imbalance will ever change, unless, it gets slowly more pronounced. We 'complainers' may not change it, but you can't blame us for venting.
Amongst all the restating of entrenched positions, I'll reiterate my own: someone at Cryptic clearly gives a £"A% about Klingons, because of the amount of stuff in AoY for them.
I'm quite serious; during the "dark days" a big lament was the lack of cosmetic options for Klingons, with Cryptic's repeated defence being the work required to port costumes from NPCs to PCs.
Contrast that with AoY, where they went back and re-did the core Klingon template to let players run TOS Klingons, with the full uniforms for free. And THEN went back and corrected the bugs with the female uniforms. Oh, and put an expanded range of TOS-style weapons into K-13. (There's a regrettable lack of 23c Temporal C-store ships, but the iconic-and-sole-canon 23c cruiser was already in the Fleet stores). Scraps from the table, if you want to take a cynical view - but certainly not "left to rot".
Nah, those are from Night of the Comet. BUT! the AoY update to 23c Klingon uniforms was applied to Night of the Comet and various other missions set in the 23c. I have to say, it looked nice on my team(2 Orions, 2 Gorn and a Lethean).
Nah, those are from Night of the Comet. BUT! the AoY update to 23c Klingon uniforms was applied to Night of the Comet and various other missions set in the 23c. I have to say, it looked nice on my team(2 Orions, 2 Gorn and a Lethean).
Ahh, okay, I haven't got as far as that mission on my KDF alt
Who knows why CBS and/or Paramount does anything they do. They nearly killed Trek with Nemesis then divided Star Trek fans by rebooting the entire franchise. Now it seems we're getting another prequel series which did not go so well with Enterprise but they seem intent on NOT doing what fans want.
I seriously hope that some company would purchase Star Trek and do something great with this once great franchise.
"Live Long and Prosper but always carry a fully charged phaser, just in case!". Arrr'ow
So AoY can be played from a Klingon perspective? Interesting...
Slick Brung
Not what I'd meant; my point is that aside from the Lieutenant-level missions (which admittedly are great fun) a 23c KDF character is just as 23c as any AoY-Fed.
While there were no AoY missions for the KDF, what they have done is put in everything necessary to make a thematically-perfect TOS Klingon and crew (with K-13, you have uniforms, BOffs, weapons, and ships all present and correct).
So AoY can be played from a Klingon perspective? Interesting...
Slick Brung
Not what I'd meant; my point is that aside from the Lieutenant-level missions (which admittedly are great fun) a 23c KDF character is just as 23c as any AoY-Fed.
While there were no AoY missions for the KDF, what they have done is put in everything necessary to make a thematically-perfect TOS Klingon and crew (with K-13, you have uniforms, BOffs, weapons, and ships all present and correct).
Ahhh, yes, I see what you mean And absolutely, one of my Klingon BOFFs is of 23rd Century appearance with contemporary clothing, with the headcanon that he's a vague descendent of a 23rd Century Klingon (with mostly Human heritage) so he needed to have that appearance One of the Orions (who is character-copied across on my Fed main as a Starfleet Intelligence officer) wears the 23rd Century mesh top, with enough colour variants to make it just look like a civilian female garment, as would be worn by the 'jeans and sparkly top brigade'
Comments
The forums were full of envy for Carriers and Bird of Preys and Cloak.
Back then levelling was not any slower then now, and PvP was the only meaningful content that could be considered for endgame, so there was no reason whatsoever to stick to the Fed side for more then seeing the missions it had. The cool PvP stuff was on the KDF.
There was no mass exodus from players to the KDF, however.
And the Romulans has ships that are powerful for PvE and PvP, as evidenced by the Scimitar, and they had a real storyline from the beginning. Still no exodus to the Romulans.
All the claims of "they don't try hard enought" or "they intentionally sabotage the KDF and RR for some reasons" seem to fall flat in the face of what Cryptic did to aid the Klingons and the Romulans to become more played.
The example of the Varanus also has a neat counter-example in Fed Ships. You might think that the Varanus was not "good enough". But that was back in a time where Cryptic thought a Cruiser with 3 bridge officer seats devoted to engineering and a turn rate even worse than equal tier ships was a good idea. And it worked - people bought the ships and later created forum threadnaughts complaining the Galaxy Class wasn't powerful enough and needed some way to get more DPS. The Varnus by comparison had obviously Fed-Science_Vessel competitive stats, a completely new model, and it was also working. No problem with quality there. (And since it was one of the newer generation of ships, its model was probably better than some of the launch-Fed-clunkers)
Mechanically, everything was stacked against the Galaxy Class, but it was a sales success compared to the Varanus. This tells me that the stats matter a lot less to the buyers than the emotional bond to these ships. The Galaxy Class is a ship with 7 seasons and 1 movie worth of promotional material. The Varanus is a non-canon ship.
Unfortunately, Cryptic can't convince CBS to make a 7 season show about a new Klingon vessel. So the KDF will be forever screwed over by the nature of the franchise. Not evil conspirators or incompetence or lack of resources.
This sums it up perfectly.
Starfleet is simply the 'face' of Star Trek. The shows have always been federation-centered, with even the more prominent aliens simply being the 'neighbors'.
Only DS9 was a bit different in the way that it was more like neutral ground (yet still with Starfleet partially in command).
But the KDF players didn't buy that Varanus. And so there never was a Tier 6 version that got a decent upgrade.
(THough IIRC, the Varanus did get improved together with the DSSV or Nebula, I don't remember exactly, it's been so long. People complained about their low turn rates for a long time, and when they decided to upgrade the FEd ones, they also ugpraded the KDF one.)
And what I take from thatis that the KDF is inherently screwed over by the nature of the player population. The amount of nostalgia people have for Enterprises and Federation ships will always be much higher than that for KDF ships.
There isn't anything Cryptic can do about that. Nothing. No matter the resources, no matter the skill.
The amount of nostalgia is more a question of proportions in context of what exists. And the movies shown both protagonists and antagonists in equal measures.
Star Wars always had material for both sides, including the movies. The original movies had the Empire and the Rebellion.
And let'S face it - the prequests made sure the only thing of interest was the Sith/Jedi conflict. No one ever came to to a Star Wars forum saying he desperately wants to play a Trade Federation robot or whatever.
And despite all this, TOR decided that this whole concept of two playable factions should no longer be relevant for its future content. The new expansions does away with faction specific stuff in the story content.
You still haven't really made that point. The Bortasque might have been a failure, but what was the reason? Because of the stats? If Fed players buy every ship and then complain about poor stats, that can't be it. It's because nostalgia isn't there. And so Cryptic really can only hope to sell B'Rels, Vor'Chas, Negh'Vars and K'tinga. With some luck perhaps a Raptor, because ENT. The only one missing now in that lineup is the Vor'Cha. After that, the KDF is done nostalgia-wise, at least until Tier 7.
My character Tsin'xing
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
I simply fail to see how it is productive to keep bringing those things up as an indictment of Cryptic. The reason they did certain things 5, 6, and 7 years ago aren't necessarily true today. The game itself, and how they deal with KDF fans, has definitely changed over time as the market changed and as the overall storyline evolved. The utter collapse of PvP as a major feature of the game and as a community has also been a factor. But generally, the situation has improved instead of getting worse.
That's why these kinds of threads are so tiresome to see posted over and over and over again. They aren't saying anything new. They're pointing at past events to beat the Devs over the head about why they aren't putting more emphasis on KDF in the console versions now.
Did it ever occur to anybody that they could have easily NOT included the KDF and RR factions on console if they really wanted to? Why bother porting over all of that extra material to the console versions when they could've made it easier on themselves to just focus on Starfleet? Think of all the bugs they wouldn't have to bother squashing and the internal resources they could free up if they could just edit those factions out completely.
Clearly, they want the KDF and RR in the game as options. If they didn't, they wouldn't bother on console. But they also know perfectly well what the demands are and which factions they can't afford to ignore. If the strategy is to continue capitalizing on the 50th anniversary of TOS to bring in new players, then their focus on attracting players to the Federation is entirely understandable. Console bias, indeed. And why not?
Even without the Star Trek name, this game would survive. After all, there are very few MMOs that provide space and ground combat. The Star Trek name is a double edged sword. The name brings in Star Trek fans, but those same fans judge the game based on what they think Star Trek is. Without the Star Trek name, Cryptic would have the creativity to produce whatever ships and races they want instead of relying on the years and years of TV series and movies.
Micro-factions don't require much effort or support to produce as proven by the recent TOS Starfleet micro-faction. Just create a few missions, a few costumes, and a few C-Store ships and have them join up with the actual factions. There is absolutely no need to provide further support to the faction.
I'm quite serious; during the "dark days" a big lament was the lack of cosmetic options for Klingons, with Cryptic's repeated defence being the work required to port costumes from NPCs to PCs.
Contrast that with AoY, where they went back and re-did the core Klingon template to let players run TOS Klingons, with the full uniforms for free. And THEN went back and corrected the bugs with the female uniforms. Oh, and put an expanded range of TOS-style weapons into K-13. (There's a regrettable lack of 23c Temporal C-store ships, but the iconic-and-sole-canon 23c cruiser was already in the Fleet stores). Scraps from the table, if you want to take a cynical view - but certainly not "left to rot".
Then there's all the Kelvin stuff - the D4X, probably the best-animated ship in the game, and again the work to make the Kelvin uniforms playable. Despite the fact that only a minority of a minority will actually use these (and there's quite a lot of variety in there as well - more than is needed for the throwaway NPCs).
Oh, and the D4 / D7 don't have anything comparable fedside.
So, if I was to draw a conclusion, it's that Cryptic now sees the KDF (and perhaps RR) as "premium format" factions - where new toys will be rare deliberately high priced.
I often feel like I am the only Klingon in orbit.
Actually I last played my Nausicaan, so since they had that Feet Nausicaan Destroyer I feel justified.
My KDF Rommies fly the C-store Korotinga, which is as close as I have gotten to the canon Rommie D7 as far as appearances go. That having been said, I will also add here, that the number of UFP ships that a Rommie can also use, is much higher than the the number of KDF ships the same Rommie could use if they had been on the other side. I noticed a few times that C-store giveaways that gave ships tended to select ships on the UFP side that Rommies could claim, but not so on the KDF side. While it is true the Rommies get to use their own ships with exclusivity, it still makes things so much easier on the UFP/Rom.
The most glaring was a giveaway where my KDF Rom tried to claim a Gorn support ship, and couldn't, this happening right after my UFP Rom had just claimed the Fed offering for that day with no troubles. I submitted a ticket and was told that my Rom/KDF was not in an eligible faction to claim the Gorn ship. Hmmm. My Orion could claim it, so it wasn't 'Gorn' exclusive. Anyway, the point is that the UFP/Rom gets more ships not only because the UFP has more ships to begin with, but also because the game removes more barriers for the Roms in that faction. Just saying ....
I do fly all the Kobali, Dyson Sci, etc, but I try to represent actual faction allegiance most of the time with more traditional ships. Being able to get a decent K'tinga is the best reason to have a KDF Fleet in my opinion, though admittedly right behind that is a chance to generate activity.
It occurs to me that Cryptic missed an opportunity. The first place you hear of a KDF battle cruiser referred to as a 'warbird' is in the new movies (I am 99% sure anyway) Going with this observation, it seems like if they can give us a T6 Connie, why can't they give us a T6 'Warbird' class battle cruiser? It seems to me that since Kirk altered the simulation, we could assume that 'Warbirds' were a lot tougher normally, than they were when we saw Kirk finally beat the NWS
Anyway, I could probably ramble on for awhile, but I need to cut this off (the crowd cheers
I will sum up by saying that I don't think the imbalance will ever change, unless, it gets slowly more pronounced. We 'complainers' may not change it, but you can't blame us for venting.
Qapla!
ANDD!!!
Existing TOS era missions got updated to use them!
My character Tsin'xing
My character Tsin'xing
My character Tsin'xing
I seriously hope that some company would purchase Star Trek and do something great with this once great franchise.
Co-Leader of Serenity's Grasp
My character Tsin'xing
Not what I'd meant; my point is that aside from the Lieutenant-level missions (which admittedly are great fun) a 23c KDF character is just as 23c as any AoY-Fed.
While there were no AoY missions for the KDF, what they have done is put in everything necessary to make a thematically-perfect TOS Klingon and crew (with K-13, you have uniforms, BOffs, weapons, and ships all present and correct).