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Cross Faction Features
Captain's Blog Stardate 92518.86
I briefly talked about this in another post a while ago but recently had a conversation with some fleet members about it. When are we going to get cross-faction features in STO? Officially we are in the year 2410 and the Romulan Republic, Klingon Empire, and Federation have an alliance. So when are the "faction walls" going to be broken down?
Currently when you are forming a team you can only invite people of the same faction, which doesn't make sense. When I go into a PvE queue mission, mixed faction teams are possible. Yet for some reason when you want to form a team, let's say in an adventure zone, you can't do it if someone is of the opposite faction. It doesn't make sense.
Let's not forget fleets. When the game was first released we had two factions that were at war, the Federation and Klingons. People started forming Federation fleets since you were forced to start playing as that faction. Eventually these people expanded to include a KDF fleet to hold their alternate characters. It worked at the time, but not anymore.
While it is cool to have them separated, it's no longer necessary to force it. Drop the barriers and let players have cross-faction fleets. This way if they want a faction specific fleet, they can control it themselves. Actually this would make Romulan-only fleets easier. Right now if you're a Romulan-KDF, you can't join a Romulan-Fed fleet. By allowing cross-faction fleets it gives players the options to have a true fleet per faction.
I understand that some things need to remain faction specific, like ships and uniforms, but when it comes to social interactions between players it doesn't need to be separated. Honestly, this is an absolutely necessary feature that they need to incorporate in the next season. To paraphrase President Ronald Reagan, "Cryptic, tear down this wall!"
Written by Attilio on November 30, 2014 at 09:58 pm
Comments
December 01, 2014 at 05:24 am
The inability to form cross-faction Teams in Adventure and Battle Zones (where you are supposed to fight for a common cause) is MOST annoying, so I totally agree with you!
(Btw, I really like the reference to Reagan's speech at the Brandenburg Gate in 1987. I watched that speech on TV as a kid with my then-barely knowledge of the english language.)
December 01, 2014 at 02:49 pm
Playing Devils advocate here... perhaps that aren't enough folks being vocal about what they want out of STO??
I do think that a cross faction system would be rather helpful to the game rather than some rehashed ship.
December 01, 2014 at 06:55 pm
I would love to see the barriers between factions removed entirely. I just don't see it happening...
There's an excellent chance that when the original licensing agreement was written up it was worded to include two factions. And because of that Cryptic doesn't want to risk renegotiation which is what it would take to alter the contract.
The other and equally likely issue is cost. Cryptic has very little to no incentive to remove the faction barriers. You can be sure that if they thought of a way to make more money off of the game through allowing mixed fleets... they'd have done it already.
New bridge packs, iconic races, and new ships all make money. Quality of life improvements for the player... those cost money. To borrow a tag line, Cryptic is a business and businesses are there to make money.
December 02, 2014 at 01:08 pm
Even with the need to have a static "two faction" opposition persistent in game, that certainly does not mean that the Federation and Klingons need to be at each others throats constantly... with expansion into other galaxies there will be those that see this as a direct challenge (i.e. Borg) and those that are unfamiliar with the U.F.F. and will attack just to see what type if fire power you are packing...
Reply to SevenpennyDecember 02, 2014 at 04:17 pm
The statement I made regarding two factions wasn't made from a lore stand point. But rather a legal stand point.
My communications company started out as satellite installation service. When I branched out to include custom installation work I was slapped with a cease and desist order almost immediately. Simply because my original contract didn't cover it... I was fortunate that the company I was dealing with at the time didn't pursue a breach of contract action and let me renegotiate my base contract to include other services.
A few letters on a piece of paper are an absolute game changer. Regardless I was just saying that it MIGHT be the reason for STO being split into two factions still.