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How am i supposed to test anything Cryptic?

SystemSystem Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
So i just logged back on to Tribble after having waited a week or so after having been Dilithium gated at Cmdr for my rank up ship. I received my 1200pt C-Store tribble stipend which i grudgingly (and would have zero bearing on what i would actually buy if i had a choice - which defeats the purpose of granting the stipend i'd have thought) decided to use to get an Excelesior from the store to ungate myself, even though i am a tactical captain.

Here's my experience from this morning's attempt:

- Log in
- Claim Excelsior from the Cstore after checking that nothing had changed in terms of me being gated for ship purchase at rank up.
- Commission a new Engineering officer from my available (unused roster) and promote several of my existing BOff's.
- Run round and spec into cruisers.
- Run to Officer training NPC and discover that not one of my officers can be trained. The system is broken.
- Log out.

I'm sorry but what sort of half arsed testing environment are you people running? How can i test anything with any degree of seriousness when:
- Intially my progress gets gated because you f'ed the initial dilithium implementation.
- You break a core mechanic that people trying to work around the above broken implementation would need to use to be able to keep progressing their test character.

I get it's a test environment and not everything is final, but seriously, some of this stuff just should not be broken. Dilithium i can understand as it's a (new) WIP, but the BOff system is fundamental to how you expect players to progress through the BASIC game.

So now it looks like i wont bother logging in for another week and you lose access to someone who could potentially help. So far, great job!
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments

  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited October 2011
    I'd say write a bug report but... uhm... yeah.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited October 2011
    Retraining has been broken for too long now and no word of another patch soon... Cryptic folks, do a quick patch for this so we can keep playing and testing, and then go back to working on the big patch, please!
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited October 2011
    So i just logged back on to Tribble after having waited a week or so after having been Dilithium gated at Cmdr for my rank up ship. I received my 1200pt C-Store tribble stipend which i grudgingly (and would have zero bearing on what i would actually buy if i had a choice - which defeats the purpose of granting the stipend i'd have thought) decided to use to get an Excelesior from the store to ungate myself, even though i am a tactical captain.

    Here's my experience from this morning's attempt:

    - Log in
    - Claim Excelsior from the Cstore after checking that nothing had changed in terms of me being gated for ship purchase at rank up.
    - Commission a new Engineering officer from my available (unused roster) and promote several of my existing BOff's.
    - Run round and spec into cruisers.
    - Run to Officer training NPC and discover that not one of my officers can be trained. The system is broken.
    - Log out.

    I'm sorry but what sort of half arsed testing environment are you people running? How can i test anything with any degree of seriousness when:
    - Intially my progress gets gated because you f'ed the initial dilithium implementation.
    - You break a core mechanic that people trying to work around the above broken implementation would need to use to be able to keep progressing their test character.

    I get it's a test environment and not everything is final, but seriously, some of this stuff just should not be broken. Dilithium i can understand as it's a (new) WIP, but the BOff system is fundamental to how you expect players to progress through the BASIC game.

    So now it looks like i wont bother logging in for another week and you lose access to someone who could potentially help. So far, great job!

    This disappointment could have been avoided by reading the release notes.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited October 2011
    From the latest Tribble patch notes:
    Known Issues:
    • Players will not be able to train Bridge Officers in new powers at this time.

    Amazing what a little light reading can do. They know about it and warned the players about it. I'm sure they are working to get it going again.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited October 2011
    kostamojen wrote: »
    Retraining has been broken for too long now and no word of another patch soon... Cryptic folks, do a quick patch for this so we can keep playing and testing, and then go back to working on the big patch, please!

    It's not a very big deal to be honest. When i came across it i just shrugged and kept going. It's a slight annoyance at best, i'm still blasting through missions and testing the Doff system.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited October 2011
    Cormoran wrote: »
    It's not a very big deal to be honest. When i came across it i just shrugged and kept going. It's a slight annoyance at best, i'm still blasting through missions and testing the Doff system.
    Considering klingons right now aren't even getting BO's from leveling, the combination of these two factors makes playing almost impossible.

    I mean, I can't even get any sort of hull heal right now for my klingon, and I have no interest in wasting limited skill points on skills I don't want to use so I can't even promote my crew.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited October 2011
    FurQue wrote:
    This disappointment could have been avoided by reading the release notes.

    Or, they could have made sure something as fundamental to the game as BOff training worked. There's a thought. Oh wait, something working that's not being sold in the C-Store...my bad.
    Cormoran wrote: »
    It's not a very big deal to be honest. When i came across it i just shrugged and kept going. It's a slight annoyance at best, i'm still blasting through missions and testing the Doff system.

    I'm not going to bother trying to fly an excelsior with a BOff setup based around the use of cannons. I might as well just fly with no BOff's. Having to relevel is annoying enough as it is considering the state of their test server atm.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited October 2011
    Or, they could have made sure something as fundamental to the game as BOff training worked. There's a thought. Oh wait, something working that's not being sold in the C-Store...my bad.



    I'm not going to bother trying to fly an excelsior with a BOff setup based around the use of cannons. I might as well just fly with no BOff's. Having to relevel is annoying enough as it is considering the state of their test server atm.

    You can use other boffs to train your boffs that still works, You could even get friends to train your boffs. Its just the skill trainers that don't work.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited October 2011
    I'm not going to bother trying to fly an excelsior with a BOff setup based around the use of cannons.

    Why not? 8 turret Excelsior ftw. My favorite ship setup ever. And perfectly viable.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited October 2011
    Meh. I haven't logged on since hitting LTC, because I don't want to promote boffs with powers I don't use.

    A patch for the boff training issue would have been very nice.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited October 2011
    Ya, I just wish everyone would read the entire release notes post before they complain. It would save alot of headaches on both ends of the aisle.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited October 2011
    Meh. I haven't logged on since hitting LTC, because I don't want to promote boffs with powers I don't use.

    A patch for the boff training issue would have been very nice.

    There is 4 ways to train boffs and only one of them isn't working. Why complain about that ?
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited October 2011
    There is 4 ways to train boffs and only one of them isn't working. Why complain about that ?

    because there is only 1 way to train a boff working right now and its very limited and you have to spend dilithium on it to buy a boff at least on kdf side, that is why complain, also they knew last thursday it was broken it should had been fixed before they took on on there long weekend., they want testing well you cant test if the basics arent working , you can only half test and thats no good.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited October 2011
    But it was clearly stated in the release notes, i dont see how you could possibly get annoyed at something that was announced before you decided to play. It will get fixed, its not like you need any boffs to progress in PVE.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited October 2011
    because there is only 1 way to train a boff working right now and its very limited and you have to spend dilithium on it to buy a boff at least on kdf side, that is why complain, also they knew last thursday it was broken it should had been fixed before they took on on there long weekend., they want testing well you cant test if the basics arent working , you can only half test and thats no good.

    You can buy boffs from the exchange with the skills you want, you can get friends to train your boffs or you can use boffs to train others boffs. I've used all 3 to get the skills I want on my boffs without an issue.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited October 2011
    FurQue wrote:
    But it was clearly stated in the release notes, i dont see how you could possibly get annoyed at something that was announced before you decided to play. It will get fixed, its not like you need any boffs to progress in PVE.

    I'm personally not annoyed, but I don't find much incentive to play when things are broken.

    Did they change it so that captains could train boffs in abilities other than the tier 3 ones?

    Yes, I can have another captain train my boff in Sci Team III for me. I can also hope I get a random boff assigned with the appropriately ranked skill and have it train my crew. I can see if there's a boff on the exchange, too, but that's expensive and time consuming when we're talking about say swapping Sci team I with Hazzard Emitters I or something similar.

    Cryptic has a slow full-build-only patch cycle, so this bug has sat around since the last build went live. Even having full knowledge of it, it still sucks.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited October 2011
    OK lets be fair about this yes the Did say that the Skill Trainer would be off line, BUT let's look at some the Alternatives to training offers

    1) VA can only Train LTC & CMDR skills ( and not all of them ie BO 3 ect ) which is why there is BO trainer to begin with.

    2) buy a BO off the Exchange (humm on tribble most of the BO on the Exchange all have the same skills with Minimal changes to the order there in, try finding one with HY 2 or TS 2 with out spending over 500,000 EC how many LT have that much EC ?)

    3) Have friend Train your BO (Same as the first dose no good for Ens & LT level Skills)

    I Had to grind all the way to Capt (before the Discount token for ships came out) in a tier 2 Ship was no fun add to that you could not train your BO skills to even help you was Pain in the you know what .
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited October 2011
    There is 4 ways to train boffs and only one of them isn't working. Why complain about that ?

    Burn a BO to train them... (...who knew Medical Tricorder, Beam Overload, Emergency Power to Shields, Hazard Emitters and Polarize Hull were so freakin' rare?)

    Train them as a captain (or get someone else to do it for you)...

    Use the (broken) vendor...

    I'm missing the fourth method?
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited October 2011
    zshack wrote: »
    Ya, I just wish everyone would read the entire release notes post before they complain. It would save alot of headaches on both ends of the aisle.

    That doesnt save anything, especially not headache, since it just states the obvious instead of answering the OPs question:
    "HOW ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO TEST ANYTHING UNDER THAT CONDITIOND"

    Another one of that kind is that ship purchase issue:
    I know they want to add more dillithium sources, but right now Story missions DONT have dillithium.
    But two epic-crfyptic-ails work here together perfectly:
    1. the needless forced story progression forces you to level with story missions = no dillithium
    2. The - unbelievabley retardet -idea to force people to farm dillithium to get ships (even with tokkens)
    = no ships.

    Didnt they want to test the currency that way? Wasnt that the reason why they wantet us to make NEW characters? Well then: THAT WAY it doesnt work, and since everybody WILLING to test levled NOW and for sure much less ppl will level ANOTHER char on tribble, there wont be ANY conclusive test on that thanks to that TRIBBLE...
    So the test itsself is a fail... beside the fact that EVERY F2P relatet change is just plain and simply awfull the test itsself already failed....
    Burn a BO to train them... (...who knew Medical Tricorder, Beam Overload, Emergency Power to Shields, Hazard Emitters and Polarize Hull were so freakin' rare?)

    Train them as a captain (or get someone else to do it for you)...

    Use the (broken) vendor...

    I'm missing the fourth method?

    Also: Training them just works for SOME class relatet skills on the Commander and Lt.COmmander abilitys, not at all Ensign and Lt. Wich is where the most ability ARE.

    Burning them: Just works if you - unlike the KDF - get BOs to "burn". And they have to have ACCIDANTLY the abilitys you want.

    You can still purchase the white BOs... now for A LOT of Dillithium of course.... but the choice there is very limitet.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited October 2011
    The problem with the Tribble forum is the apologists trolling the forum. For people who like to point out "Read the Patch notes" you obviously need to learn to read yourself, the title of thread clearly spells out the problem is that there are problems, not ignorance of the problem.

    Fanboys are such a detriment to anything getting fixed or improved with all the "Everything is fine, your just a idiot" nonsense. The OP makes a valid point, these things are broken and/or non viable and have been for awhile. Your a expert hardcore dude who doesnt need BOs for PvE? Good for you, want a cookie? Not even 90% of players are as hardcore, so these problems affect normal players greatly.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited October 2011
    The problem with the Tribble forum is the apologists trolling the forum. For people who like to point out "Read the Patch notes" you obviously need to learn to read yourself, the title of thread clearly spells out the problem is that there are problems, not ignorance of the problem.

    Fanboys are such a detriment to anything getting fixed or improved with all the "Everything is fine, your just a idiot" nonsense. The OP makes a valid point, these things are broken and/or non viable and have been for awhile. Your a expert hardcore dude who doesnt need BOs for PvE? Good for you, want a cookie? Not even 90% of players are as hardcore, so these problems affect normal players greatly.

    I understand people are having problems but they are making it out like its the be all and end all that the skill trainer doesn't work. We've all had problems training boffs but some of us have found ways around that issue and are sharing those ways.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited October 2011
    The problem with the Tribble forum is the apologists trolling the forum. For people who like to point out "Read the Patch notes" you obviously need to learn to read yourself, the title of thread clearly spells out the problem is that there are problems, not ignorance of the problem.

    Fanboys are such a detriment to anything getting fixed or improved with all the "Everything is fine, your just a idiot" nonsense. The OP makes a valid point, these things are broken and/or non viable and have been for awhile. Your a expert hardcore dude who doesnt need BOs for PvE? Good for you, want a cookie? Not even 90% of players are as hardcore, so these problems affect normal players greatly.

    The other problem with the Tribble TEST SERVER is that you get idiots who expect it all to be working perfectly. That's not the point of a TEST SERVER. Yes, the Devs could have released something to fix the BOff trainers a little sooner, but so what if they didn't? It's only a week, and I'm sure there are other things that are also not working as intended that the Devs are also working on.

    Yes, it's a pain in the *** because you can't get specific skills for your BOffs. I know this because I am in exactly the same boat. I can't for the life of me get BOffs with beam related skills, only cannons, which doesn't really help me. Well, unless I go and spend loads on the exchange hoping to find the skills I want on my BOffs. Am I bothered? Not really. Why? Because it is a TEST SERVER. I expect things to be broken. How did I get around the problem? I all but stopped doing missions, although that really isn't neccessary (the few I have done since promoting my BOffs have gone without a problem), and instead am focusing on the Duty Officer system. Result? Other than flying from sector to sector, I do very little actual flying, yet have still levelled most of the way through Lt Cmdr and Cmdr ranks.

    It is a TEST SERVER. Expect problems. And if you run into an unsurmountable problem, report it and go test a different aspect of the game until it is fixed.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited October 2011
    Bort1980 wrote: »
    The other problem with the Tribble TEST SERVER is that you get idiots who expect it all to be working perfectly. That's not the point of a TEST SERVER. Yes, the Devs could have released something to fix the BOff trainers a little sooner, but so what if they didn't? It's only a week, and I'm sure there are other things that are also not working as intended that the Devs are also working on.

    Yes, it's a pain in the *** because you can't get specific skills for your BOffs. I know this because I am in exactly the same boat. I can't for the life of me get BOffs with beam related skills, only cannons, which doesn't really help me. Well, unless I go and spend loads on the exchange hoping to find the skills I want on my BOffs. Am I bothered? Not really. Why? Because it is a TEST SERVER. I expect things to be broken. How did I get around the problem? I all but stopped doing missions, although that really isn't neccessary (the few I have done since promoting my BOffs have gone without a problem), and instead am focusing on the Duty Officer system. Result? Other than flying from sector to sector, I do very little actual flying, yet have still levelled most of the way through Lt Cmdr and Cmdr ranks.

    It is a TEST SERVER. Expect problems. And if you run into an unsurmountable problem, report it and go test a different aspect of the game until it is fixed.

    the problem with your entire statment is even with all the "Testing" the Live builds are constantly filled with bugs, especially bugs that could have been easily fixed. (the "klingon" label on the Sirius Sector borders comes to mind.) Builds that are rushed out the door rather quickly to Live, the "Rhode Island" glitch comes to mind for this one.

    The Testing environment available to the public is there to test the build in a stress test environment. TBH any build you see on tribble should have already passed basic QA Inspection before being made available to the public, but with the sheer number of bugs, and the gargantuan changes in the systems design. Also, how can one file a bug report when the ticketing system itself is bugged, can't report it.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited October 2011
    the problem with your entire statment is even with all the "Testing" the Live builds are constantly filled with bugs, especially bugs that could have been easily fixed. (the "klingon" label on the Sirius Sector borders comes to mind.) Builds that are rushed out the door rather quickly to Live.

    The Testing environment available to the public is there to test the build in a stress test environment. TBH any build you see on tribble should have already passed basic QA Inspection before being made available to the public, but with the sheer number of bugs, and the gargantuan changes in the systems design. Also, how can one file a bug report when the ticketing system itself is bugged, can't report it.

    I'll agree with you on some of these points. You would hope that they would catch most, if not all, of the bugs before a build goes to Holodeck. Maybe not so much on Tribble, or do you really expect the devs to try every character build, every ability, every system, every ship for both factions? That is what the public test server is for, not just stress test, but to find bugs in places where the devs either didn't think to look, or didn't have time to because they are working on the build itself.

    Being honest though, if you get people coming onto the server just to look at the new shinies who aren't really interested in testing, if they find something wrong, are they going to bother reporting it unless it is game breaking, like the OP and BOff skill trainers?

    As for filing a bug report, if it isn't working in game, use the forums. You are posting in here, so what is stopping you from creating a new thread saying 'I have found this problem...'? Quite a few other people seem to have found this to be a good idea.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited October 2011
    You can buy boffs from the exchange with the skills you want, you can get friends to train your boffs or you can use boffs to train others boffs. I've used all 3 to get the skills I want on my boffs without an issue.

    no you can on kdf side there are none of that right now till they fix it for kdf side
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited October 2011
    I understand people are having problems but they are making it out like its the be all and end all that the skill trainer doesn't work. We've all had problems training boffs but some of us have found ways around that issue and are sharing those ways.

    you just dont get it we are teling the f2p how can you test it when the basics of it is not working, and the skill training broke the same day the activated the kdf side which means is extreamly linited, you can only train your lower two levels from the white boffs your buy with dilithium which are very limited choses there, and some one asked how can we be annoyed they annouced it simply because they have left it broken for a week, something that is basic to the game and to testing, just because some one tells us about it doesnt make it right.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited October 2011
    you just dont get it we are teling the f2p how can you test it when the basics of it is not working, and the skill training broke the same day the activated the kdf side which means is extreamly linited, you can only train your lower two levels from the white boffs your buy with dilithium which are very limited choses there, and some one asked how can we be annoyed they annouced it simply because they have left it broken for a week, something that is basic to the game and to testing, just because some one tells us about it doesnt make it right.

    Test the new bits that do work. Or, at least, mostly work. Or, make do with your basic BO skills until the trainers are fixed. That's what the rest of us did.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited October 2011
    There is plenty of new Content to Test on Tribble and lack of being bale to train the "perfect" BOFF skills is a minor problem that might make running missions a smidge harder. People need to learn what a Beta test is and that most of them run with known issues. I have never been in a beta test without some pretty big known issues early on, and have been in plenty of beta tests so broken that Tribble seems like the pinnacle of aweseomeness by comparison. If the BOFF issue is a deal breaker, wait until a patch occurs that fixes it and play then. Posting about a known issue in a beta test is about the most pointless and futile thing a person can do.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited October 2011
    Rexy wrote:
    There is plenty of new Content to Test on Tribble and lack of being bale to train the "perfect" BOFF skills is a minor problem that might make running missions a smidge harder. People need to learn what a Beta test is and that most of them run with known issues. I have never been in a beta test without some pretty big known issues early on, and have been in plenty of beta tests so broken that Tribble seems like the pinnacle of aweseomeness by comparison. If the BOFF issue is a deal breaker, wait until a patch occurs that fixes it and play then. Posting about a known issue in a beta test is about the most pointless and futile thing a person can do.

    Yes. Exactly. Thank you :)
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited October 2011
    Well...

    First of all: This is, at least officially, not a tech beta.
    We even got a new tech test server called reshirt... and there is that other small beta-test server where the paid beta is running for years now... what was its name? A.. yes... holodeck.

    This is supposed to be the Beta for f2p.
    And a lot of f2p elements are not working.

    We are there to find out if the new currency works. But we CANT since we dont get dillithium the way we are supposed to.
    We are supposed to make the whole leveling progress but its a pain since... bo training doesnt work.
    And this ISNT a "minor" issue. A texture not working is a minor issue. The BO-clones on the bridge are a test-server minior issue.
    Singel missione not working right in one or the other ways are minor issues (although that become major issues thanks to the forced mission progression that makes it impossible to go on if only ONE mission in between is broken).

    Nobody complains about those "minor issues", although it makes me wonder why so many things are broken that work on the Holodeck testserver.

    Not beeing able to train BOs is a major issues, not getting any (KDF) is an even bigger issue. Like it or not.

    And I dont get how they intent to really TEST the leveling progress under f2p if they let us level under broken conditions instead of working conditions.
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