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Cryptic - Anyone home?
quasimojo1
Posts: 642 Arc User
The "Reloaded" update has been out for a almost a month now and we have our vehicles. Since then, there hasn't been any significant activity on PTS, or forward-looking developer communication. The UNTIL Report now hasn't been updated in almost 5 months.
Is there anything in the pipeline at all for us to look forward to, or has development on the game now completely stopped (as opposed to just being at a diminished pace)?
Thank you for any reassurances.
Is there anything in the pipeline at all for us to look forward to, or has development on the game now completely stopped (as opposed to just being at a diminished pace)?
Thank you for any reassurances.
LTS since 2009. Author of ACT parser module for CO. Founder of Rampagers. Resident curmudgeon.
"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." -- W. Edwards Deming
"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." -- W. Edwards Deming
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VARIANT
"Nearly all men can withstand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
-Abraham Lincoln-
It would be nice to have some assurance that there are still ongoing plans for the game's development.
What are you talking about thundrax just put out a great one!!!!
Champions Online: Be the hero you wish you could be in a better game.
We did get some a few nice fixes in the last maintenance patch, though, so at least someone's working on something!
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
I wouldn't call Reloaded "big." Heck, I question calling it an "update."
On Alert threw everything on its ear. It brought a lot of good to the table, but at the same time left a lot of work to be done.
Teaming below 40 outside alerts STILL sucks for a wide variety of reasons, instanced content that isn't alerts is practically pointless for leveling as well, as much as people ***** about the difficulty slider not doing enough, it doesn't even effect queued instances to begin with, the in game market is all sorts of screwed up for half a dozen combined reasons, the spec trees themselves could really use a bit more work to make them competitive with each other, bugs bugs and more bugs...
Uh what else is there...
Oh, AP rewards still suck, and it's even worse now in contrast to what you can do combining overworld missions with smashes. As well as the fact jack squat drops in Alerts, now that "Algo Blues" are no longer a thing. Which is a damn shame, since at least with the way things used to be, some of the most well made and interesting content was where the best gear was...
I could go on. While they're busy pissing around with lockboxes, there's a mountain of crap, old and new, still piling up as time goes on. I'll give them they did a decent job on Toggles, but even there we've got an odd man out and a few unfilled niches (debuffer, ranged/melee hybrid, flat non-crit damage).
...I just recently realized something really disturbing. We're all eating Sodapop3's "humble pie."
I like cats :cool:.
UGC Campaign: The Coldblooded Scrolls
If these forums were a girl, I wouldn't call her back either.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
We'll get dev time back.
Except that Cryptic isn't young and attractive--it has been around for a while and there are other companies that have built a better rep than them--and doesn't have a world of potential ahead of it (NW Foundry aside). We're also not a girl looking for a cheap date, we're (potentially) paying costumers looking to throw our money at the company, or if they're not available, at the next game company that meets our needs. And clingy costumers are the ones the provide the most money on the long run, and companies that get picky with their costumers and treat them like there are plenty of more fish on the sea tend to lose those costumers and run out of fish line when it comes time to fish for more.
All in all Im not sure that the dating analogy works when talking about a company at all.
I really hope you're right, Smacks.
I.... don't recall ever getting dev time back.....
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
CO is young. It's attractive to you or you would (or at least SHOULD) be off doing something else. I think your presence here either refutes your assertion regarding potential or is further evidence of the "stellar women that end up with total losers" phenomenon. Which is it? Are you are a fixer?
Also, I was never a cheap date, and I don't appreciate the implication! I always paid for my half!
But seriously, moving on to the next company/game that meets your needs better should be modus operandi for you and each and every one of us (in dating too!).
Clingy people are fundamentally unhappy people who require validation and attention from external sources due to their inability to generate rewards internally and regardless of whether or not their contribution to the relationship is worth either. They aren't money trees, they are attention pits. It might be semantics, but I think the people who want the product you are selling and have the means to pay for it are always going to be the people who pay the most. So you can chase the endlessly moving target of pleasing the fundamentally unpleasable, or make a product and see who buys it.
But whatever, this is a total digression from the main point...
Right, because dating is purely an altruistic exercise. It doesn't involve anyone wanting to be appreciated for what they believe they uniquely bring to the table, or a sense of entitlement based on level of participation.
Truth is, I think every relationship where people provide inputs in hope that other people will provide specific outputs can be related to the dating dynamic. But whatever, I'm sure we can at least agree to disagree. If not, well you might be accidentally proving my point.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Development certainly dropped off after On Alert, but I don't remember it ever dropping off to this (apparent) level: nothing but a couple of minor fixes on PTS in the last month.
I think as a customer it's reasonable to expect a certain minimal amount of information about the future of a product in order to decide how much of an additional time/financial investment to put into it, at least in the short-term.
If we're just on pause for a couple of months while NWN is wrapped up, okay..please just be up-front about that and I think most CO fans will begrudgingly accept it.
Thanks for your consideration.
"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." -- W. Edwards Deming
hugs are fun
but SMASHING is better!
-=-=-=-=-=-(CO in-game handle: @WarCan )-=-=-=-=-=-
"Okay, you're DEAD, what do you do NEXT?"
That we've gotten something like Reloaded and pvp is still utterly untouched?
That's freakin stupid.
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
CoX shutting down is a major event in terms of the development of this game. We know there's been an influx of players. We don't know exactly how big, or how many of them will stick with CO for any meaningful period of time. I'd surmise that the devs are checking out the population data, and if this represents what seems to be a semi-permanent population increase, they may be able to get the resources they need to embark on something relatively ambitious (ala CO Foundry, Nemesis expansion, etc.) whereas if this turns out to be just a blip on the radar, they're going to have to stick with a more modest development schedule.
Time will tell if I'm right.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
S'not what I said, I said I don't remember getting any dev time back (of what we'd lost).
The CO team's production has been pretty steady since launch with a tendency toward decline. After the launch of STO I don't recall a sudden reinvigoration or deluge. We got APs, Comic series, FFA and Reloaded each slightly longer and slightly easier than the last, and Dev presence has also been in steady decline - people either got promoted, moved to a different team, or left. As far as I know CO hasn't brought any new folk into the team since Splo and Crush, and by that point we'd already lost at least 5 known people. I want to say there was one dude, or possibly it was just a job opening around the time CoX's sunset was announced, but I'm not even entirely sure about that.
And I could be completely wrong. All I'm saying is that I, personally, don't remember getting any dev time back, just continued using the dev time we have left.
You're completely missing the point. Even if there are parallels to dating and vendor/costumer relations the point remains that ignoring their costumers can cost a company money. Do they want my (our) money or not? That is the question, and the attitude you expressed in your post leans towards "not", which is the opposite of what companies are suppose to be about.
My guess was that the decisions are over 'how to make vehicles more appealing' but I think you're on to something here too.
Also, boobs.
"Without data, you're just another person with an opinion." -- W. Edwards Deming
I quote Eliot Lefebvre's penultimate Mild-Mannered Reporter column:
This is what Cryptic needs to address, and they need to do it quickly. Trailturtle has done a fine job of welcoming former CoH players, both here and in the CoX chat channel. But the silence from everybody not named Trailturtle is dreadful. Brad Stokan speaks only in press releases. The developers are too few and too busy to participate in the forums any more. The forum dev tracker has been broken since moving to PWE, but maybe that's a good thing now. Incoming CoH players looking to catch up can't see how little there is to catch up on.
When CoH'ers ask "What's next?" in chat, Champions veterans only have remembrances of States of the Game past. Every answer begins with "Before Neverwinter, they were planning...".
Nothing we've seen in the last year is forward-thinking. Nothing looks like a long-term investment. (If vehicles were, they wouldn't be in gambleboxes.) I'm sure Cryptic knows full well how much of a backlog Champions has, but we have no idea what the plan is for resolving that backlog, if one even exists.
tl;dr: We have no faith.
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
My suspicion is that there are things going on behind the scenes we are not privy to, including devs without a forum presence. Remember, many devs simply don't like doing the forum thing for reasons of temperament or inclination. We don't know what they're planning or up to, or how many there are. I've heard people shouting that there are only 2.5 devs, with their entire evidence being "These ones post on the forums regularly."
But if I had to hazard a guess, I'd speculate that the afternoon of August 31st, the bigwigs at Cryptic and Perfect World sat down and had a meeting to discuss how to respond to NCSoft's announcement of CoH's closure. Because their primary competition for the superhero niche shutting down is a big deal. Decisions were made. It is possible that because of Cryptic's commitments, as well as simply available resources and the time involved, it may be a little while before we see the fallout of those decisions.
We do know that until recently, there was a job posting on the Cryptic website for a Content Developer for CO. We know it's for CO because it specifically asked for "comic book knowledge" and Foundry experience. Since it is no longer listed, we can assume that the position has been filled.
I do know that developing new stuff is very time consuming. In CoH, it could take someone six months for a single costume set - like Retro Sci-Fi - or nine months or more for a new power set to go from concept to live release. Expecting the company to immediately reallocate resources, abandon work in progress, and so on is unrealistic. As is expecting in a month or three them to whip together something major like a new zone or anything.
But if they're smart, they're laying down groundwork to take advantage of this. Both in the talent from Paragon Studios that they can pick up and in getting staff and resources lined up to work on CO when they're available. Right now, the bulk of their staff are tied up scrambling to get Neverwinter done on schedule. That's just how it is. It's behind schedule, Perfect World is breathing down their necks, and they need it done.
Though it wouldn't hurt for another UNTIL update, just to show the players that, yeah, they're listening and that CO will continue to receive attention and hasn't been forgotten.
Giving them the benefit of the doubt is just not a luxury the company has earned. I consider myself on good friendly terms with most of the devs I've talked to, but Brad Stokan is not amongst those persons.
The lead of this game was a concept artist.. while that in no way disqualifies him to provide direction of the game, he's proven to give us less of the same (which is worse than MORE of the same).
Few and infrequent communication. Tiny hyperbolic updates. No content. We called for Rob's head for these very problems. Don't think we won't gather a mob for them making it worse.
Eventually you get tired of t he short lease and just let it go its separate way. That's where I'm at. I love my friends in CO and I love the game as a whole. But it's just a game. I wont invest time or money into one form of enjoyment if the enjoyment is gone.
I don't think I am missing anything at all. Companies are about profit, I think we both seem to agree on that. Just like daters are about dates.
The point is that your (our) money isn't just money. It's money minus the cost of appeasement in whatever form that ends up taking. The cost of appeasement might just be development time plus forum flame war moderation time which can be calculated for the most part. What cant be calculated is how much more money they will make (or lose for that matter) beyond the vocal forum minority. Could be lots, nots, or loss. They have to make predictions on this sort of thing beyond the scope of this single game and analyze it before they could ever commit.
The people who don't use these forums are more likely to play or not play, and pay or not pay, based on an assessment from a much simpler set of credentials, i.e. want or do not want. Forum peeps (and I'm generalizing here) have a much higher chance of going through a significantly more complex decision-making process involving want or do not want in the perspective of their passion/conviction/addiction and their assessment of the impact on their personal dev request for an earnable character-specific emblem-signal spotlighted into the sky whenever team requests are received.
What I'm trying to say is that our money is far from pure money and it's not very dependable math.
I'm not devaluing the bug hunting, the feature innovation, or the education that goes on in these forums, nor am I suggesting that the game couldn't use some attention. I'm just saying that I wouldn't expect a lot of interaction from people who made a game that we want to like more, but can't until they put effort towards changing into a game that's easier for us to like more, especially because we are holding a couple bucks over their head.
And to my original analogy, I wouldn't call us back either, unless I absolutely had too.
My suggestion? Step away from the game for a few weeks, or months, or year, and see if any change has occurred when you get back. Vote with your dollar.
I'll let you know what you missed.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
(though I admit, PatchworkCat was a staff member.)
wtf is a dater? you mean like proffesional daters? we call them hookers around here.
Champions Online: Be the hero you wish you could be in a better game.
So they are using the ready, fire, aim approach?
I miss Robobo, he was at least communicative and seemed to have a genuine love for the game.
Brad who?
CO... silent devs. Barely any updates. No new powers despite some obvious holes (Plant-based powers, most notably). No new real story arcs (not just smash-and-grab 2-minute-long Alert missions) for a long time. And no information about upcoming costumes, powers, or missions (not even whether there's going to be any).
I like CO for the most part as a game (at least, after two days and not yet subscribed - I'm looking forward to going Gold and making Freeform versions of many of my CoH favorites and seeing how they compare), but it feels somehow... empty.
"It is unthinkable. But such is the nature of villainy, don't you think? To do the unthinkable, to challenge the impossible, to conquer all before you and make destiny your own." - Ghost Widow
And that's why I like villains.
Bring Back Tumorboy!
Bring Back Tumorboy!
Bring Back Tumorboy!
A blank calander especially for content is not very inspirational to new customers... but you already know this and many of you just reading this are going "DUUUHH!!"
^^^this...
^^^this...
annnnd ^^^this...
M-O-O-N, that spells @Rhyatt
Originally Posted by mijjestic: Ultimately, though, MMO players throwing stones at each other in this fashion is basically one nerd pointing and laughing at another nerd whose glasses are thicker.
Laws yes!
It's "Tacofangs" now.
It's been the holidays for most of 2012? Huh.
It's a holiday year, I guess!
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
This.
Target1one
"ENOUGH!!! You are ALL of you BENEATH me! I am a GOD, you dull creature, and I will NOT be BULLIED by--" -- Loki
*SMASH* *SMASH* *SMASH* <pause> *SMASHSMASH* "... puny god..." -- Hulk
Hear, hear!
I hope Smacks is right too.
(Can I call you Smacks? Would you rather "Biff"? Or do you prefer "Mr. Smackwell"? Just askin'.)
If it is about to launch...where's our beta invites?
Ha. Before the forums merged a while ago, I was simply Smackwell. The Biff is new to the name, so that's why people still refer to me as Smack or Smacky or idiot. Call me whatever you want. :P
It's not like the developers went over to STO for three days. Takes a while. I don't remember the exact time frame, but it was very obvious that we were missing some folk for a while.
You're a cool person, justinbieberfan4evar.
Indeed, I was there. We also never really got a full team back after that too
Still if Neverwinter WERE about to launch we would've gotten beta invites.
Making a new game is no reason to abandon an existing game though. If they dont have enough staff to support a game and make a new one GET MORE STAFF.
Shooting yourself in the foot by running a game with no support will lose you hundreds of perspective customers for the new game you are favoring as well as bad word of mouth about no support and updates on the current games go round.