Now as many of you are aware PE has in the recent past let go of the STO liscense, and because of this much has changed in the vision of what STO could/would/will be. PE's origonal concept was to have all players as members of the Federation, their was no real talk about PvP outside of Holodeck type encounters, almost like formal duels where players would have "fake" battles against eachother. With PE no longer at the helm it appears that speculation is all new and fresh as any new developer that picks up the game (which we know one has, just not who) may very well scrap every bit of work that PE did in an attempt to take a fresh approch.

In the origonal PE concept (as mentioned above) players were to be all Federation, though we had rumors and debates about sub-factions within the Federation that players could have joined. I would prapose that the new developer consider the possability of a mutli-factioned approch to STO and even bring in concepts of PvP (Player vs. Player) into the universe of STO. I know the focus of Star Trek to some is exploration and such but its hard to igonre the fact that most of the popular movies and intense sceans in the shows were all based around battles and war leading to the concept that battle will most likely play a major role in STO.

STO could benifit from the concept of having more than one faction, infact a fair ammount of Trek fans are fans of Klingons, and were even disturbed by the thought of the Klingon Empire being part of the Federation, or even just a massive amount of Klingon players being in the federation. Factions that could be considered (outside of the Federation) are the obvious major players: Cardassians, Klingons, Romulans, and so on. Some less likely playable factions could be: Borg, Ferangi, Gorn, Breen and so forth.

I've noted that in the recent past many MMOs have benifited from multi-factioned gameplay some major games are Dark Ages of Camelot, World of Warcraft, City of X and a few others. These games have all proven that players realy do get into competative co-op, as in working with your fellow player against your fellow player. Often times its more interesting to band together to fight the "most dangerous pray of all" rather than to just constantly go after various hostile NPCs (Nonplaying Characters).

PvP is a major aspect of multi-factioned games, and can be played out in a veriaty of ways:

Zone based PvP: This is where areas of the game world are designated for PvP interactions. Concepts for this in STO could be nutural zones, or contested regions.

Open PvP: This form of PvP often drives away the "Non hardcore" pvpers and it is when PvP can happen anywhere. If you have civilians they can become outlaws and pirates, causing problems where ever they go. Factions can have battles anywhere, even in orbit of the capital planets of said factions... no zone is safe.

Battle Ground PvP: This is similar to the concepts created by WoW, where players are "taken" to an instance or spesific zone in order to enjoy pvp in a controlled enviornment. Often goals are given to each team like capturing points or flags or who knows what.

These are just a few ideas of how PvP can work, though I would also point out that they can be mixed and so forth, Like having zone based pvp and battle grounds all in one game.

So there you have it, should STO have more than one faction, and should it have PvP?

I am going to be the objective one here.

Yes, it would be GREAT to have many factions at launch, especially the major ones, Klingon, Federation, Romulan, and Possibly Cardassian, however you need to think about how much work this creates.

For each races, you need to design an economic system, architecture, academy courses, ship designs, weapons, weapon strengths, race stats, the list goes on.

Multi Faction in STO is profoundly different than any other MMO because each race has its own homeworld and area of space. In WOW for example, you are just on one world, yeh there are many races, but its one world, one economy, one this, one that.

As i said, it would be GREAT to have all the major players at launch, but i dont think it will happen.

I am going to be the objective one here.

Yes, it would be GREAT to have many factions at launch, especially the major ones, Klingon, Federation, Romulan, and Possibly Cardassian, however you need to think about how much work this creates.

For each races, you need to design an economic system, architecture, academy courses, ship designs, weapons, weapon strengths, race stats, the list goes on.

Multi Faction in STO is profoundly different than any other MMO because each race has its own homeworld and area of space. In WOW for example, you are just on one world, yeh there are many races, but its one world, one economy, one this, one that.

As i said, it would be GREAT to have all the major players at launch, but i dont think it will happen.

Oh, I wasn't implying that they would all be there at the beginning. Perhaps half of them would, say the Klingons and Starfleet, then add in the Ferengi and Cardassian, et'al. Asking for it all at once is asking for too much, and thus low quality, high quantity game development.

If they could get it all in and deliver a great game with it all in at once, that would be killer, but I'm also a realist.

I love your idea, just not as a "launch" game.

Thats exactly what i was trying to say i think  nk1

Something just occured to me though, and i think this was mentioned way back when somewhere.....One problem with only launching with 2 or 3 MAIN factions and then launching other factions later on in expansions - is that The "launch" factions would have a major advantage over "expansion" factions in terms of numbers, size, devlopment, etc.

I think Starbear knocked it on the head:

A solution to having tons of content and more than one faction is, make 1/4th one faction, anther 1/4th another faction and 2/4ths a bunch of nutural stuff, both pvp and non pvp areas. The nice part about space is that it is an easy thing to expand, unlike terestrial planets that most games are based on you don't have to worry as much about geographical limits. Also with planets surfaces you could have only a section of the planet open to players and expand the rest of it later. Good stuff

Launch with all your factions, all 5 or 8 or 10 of them, but only launch with "25%" of the 'planned' content for each race. This way, all your races get launched then they are all equal.

6 months later, release Expansion one, which adds a further "25%" to each race, expand their planets, expand the size of space.

Then a further 6 months later, release the final "50%, thus "completing" each race.

That way, throughout the expansion process, we keep all of our races equal, we get all races from the start, and potentially we get a game to play a bit sooner  nk4

Wow... two different things. Multi-faction and PvP.

Multi-faction at launch

Yes and no.  I would be hurt if I had a pared-down Federation just so the Cardassians and Ferengi could be included.  As much fun as PvP can potentially be, its not the core of MMO gaming, and I don't think a whole game should be modified to accomodate PvP, ever. 

That said, PvP should be included at launch.  I recommend the Maqui as a playable faction.  Ships that are PvP-enabled, whether PC or NPC, could get missions against the Maqui.  Of course, the Maqui would have PvP constantly, between each other, between federation and any other factions that get added.  Unlocking one could be easy... you could have a "low key" Maqui recruiter in each area of the tutorial/starfleet academy... once you finish you can go with him and booyah... your PvP all day long.

PvP

Bad PvP is abusive and not fun, providing only psychological payoff for the victor, with no actual enjoyable gameplay for either party.  Griefing is, in short, taking the fun out of a game... if a game is not fun, then it becomes useless.  It should go in the trash, imho.

We've seen weak implimentations of consequence based RP fail to address griefing... they test the limits, so you have to draw the line close.  There's no such thing as "oh it was only one time violating the neutral zone."  You break the rules, you have a problem instantly.  No one is going to forgive you or take it easy on you... especially if you don't take it easy on others.

It's Open Consequence-based PvP that's most faithful to the fiction.  You CAN go to Kronos and start shooting, but there are consequences.  If you cross another faction, not only does that faction have a problem with you, but so does the Federation (or your faction) because you almost started a war! That's loss of prestige and a bump down in tier missions, a missed promotion, probably and on top of that you have the offended faction gunning for you as well.  Multiple offenses, especially of the same type might move your faction, especially Starfleet, to demote you.  Other factions, as they come on, might have other disciplinary functions for those who abuse PvP.

At that point, a person, griefer or otherwise, has to really think, is making this breach worth losing this much on this character.  Of course, if a mission is generated, all bets are off, at least as far as your faction goes, because you got the mission from them... and PvP missions wouldn't be hard to come by, because they'd be set up to create, as much as possible, fair matches.

PvP is great when its fair, and it folds out of and into a storyline.  But the free-for-all camping foolishness has to have ZERO tolerance, especially for factions like the Federation.  The most important thing is that fear of PvP should not change players' actions.  When PvP is out of control, people begin to play in unrealistic repetitive immersion-breaking ways in order to win and get ahead in PvP.  The only way to keep PvP in check is with swift harsh consequences for breaking the rules... at the same time, you don't want to artificially enforce the rules, as that has the same immersion breaking effect for many.

Multi-Faction done right

As aluded to, different factions have radically different skillsets, technology, mission types and advancement chains.  I think its conceivable for a well funded game to pull out three major factions at launch, Klingons, Romulans and Feds.  That's conceivable... I think trying to do any more is greedy and is asking for low quality gaming... where faction is just window dressing.  That's something worth shooting for, and that's something worth waiting six months to a year for.  I say launch with Fed and Maqui, give us Klingons and Roms in 3-6 months; Cards, Ferengi, Andorians and Borg in 6-9 months; and a bunch of "minor" factions: Orions, Breen, Tholians, Jem'Hadar, Bajorans, and Xindi inside a year.  Each with notably different gameplay and advancement options.  If the foundations for each faction are different, starting with unfinished factions is not really an option, because then you have an unfinished game, which is not as fun as a finished game.

I don't think the time difference will be a huge problem in balance.  Each newly playable faction will have been present in the game from launch, and have tons of active NPCs of varying purpose and use, even from faction to faction.

I'm also of the mind that different factions should have different PvP rules.  While Borg and Federation have no in-faction PvP, the Maqui may be a free for all.  The Klingon may have clan-based PvP and the Romulans may have a deuling system.

War

I think war should be reached cooperatively by both sides.  Taking certain mission chains can lead to a battle with a given faction.  Outside of mission based skirmishes (which can be pretty large)... a battle involves a raid of some sort undertaken by one side against a resource or vital area of the other side (target based on which mission chains are used)... it can be a surprise to the frequentors of said faction (perhaps given 2-3 minutes warning) but would not be to those running the storylines that have created the battle.  These can be relatively huge, and many many players can be involved.

I think continuous wars should be controlled by the NPC faction heads, and feed into well organized GM storylines and have real meaningful mission creation teams put on them to design additional content suited to the conflict that is immersive.

Conclusion

I'm all for good PvP, I'm all for having all the factions.  I agree PvP should be in game at launch... but hamstringing the game, or the entire universe, just to cater to PvPing is a bad idea, and strikes me as very shortsighted.