I'd suspect a significant amount goes into Neverwinter development, since that's where the majority of Cryptics staff is working right now.
I actually wouldn't be surprised if STO didn't actually net much money after the cut CBS is sure to take.
TBH, I'm pretty happy with where the game is now and the direction it is heading considering how poorly it started off. They have made huge strides outside of that dry period when Atari was shopping them.
People seem to forget that Atari had this game on life support for 2 years. Think of a vampire sucking just enough blood so that the victim can stay alive and supply more over time. Most major development has occurred before and after the Atari acquisition. Of course some of it being monetization, the doff and Starbase systems as well as STF revamp, new social zones and all that nonsense occurred after Atari cashed out.
People also seem to forget that after Perpetual punted.... the clock was ticking or they would lose their IP license. MMO's go under development for years... they did this in two. As far as I am concerned, they are still fleshing out features that should have existed at release. Stuff like DOffing and Starbases should have been day one features, but sometimes you gotta roll with what you have.
But most of all... I think it's funny that people expect anything even remotely similar to the performance of WoW developers or the developers or any major MMO for "the money spent"...
Firstly WoW or any other major MMO vs this game is not a comparison. WoW is on an entirely different plane of existence when it comes to user numbers, dev numbers, and revenue...
I bet the amount of money WoW pays ATT is greater than Cryptic's annual revenue. So the answer to your money question is... it probably goes to all the same places in the similar respective proportions... Except when 11 million people are chipping in and playing the portions are a lot bigger and you get stuff like payed expansions with content that insane people burn through in a week.
When you get payed that much, content actually makes sense since there's a pool of 11 million people accessing it and paying for it. Your return on investment in content is MUCH greater since it would probably only take Blizzard a week to do what takes Cryptic a month or two because WoW dev team isn't smaller than the number of employees on hand at your local Super Walmart on a normal day like the STO dev team... and you can actually produce content at a rate that is acceptable as well as add game features.
join Date: Sep 2009 - I want my changeling lava lamp!
Some times one can start to wonder what they do use the EC for.
But as others have pointed out, they have a lot of other expenses that are not visible to us.
We would all like more content, but this game is never going to have as much content as TOR or WoW, since those game companies have used millions of dollars on getting those games to where they are today.
Hopefully we will get more content comes Season 7, if what Dstahl told us holds true...
Cryptic/ PW uses the our money to finance Neverwinter as their next big think.
STO is their best casdh cow until they no longer need it when NWN goes live.
Cryptic uses the money you spend on the game to hire people like me!
The money spent on any MMO is spent keeping the development team on staff producing new content and systems and to keep the MMO up and running. If you want evidence that money is being invested in the development of this game, just look to any new hires you see introducing themselves on these forums.
Daniel "FlyingTarg" Razza
Star Trek Online Lead Programmer
Cryptic uses the money you spend on the game to hire people like me!
The money spent on any MMO is spent keeping the development team on staff producing new content and systems and to keep the MMO up and running. If you want evidence that money is being invested in the development of this game, just look to any new hires you see introducing themselves on these forums.
Aren't you from the money that the company saves from the old hires who left? :P
Cryptic uses the money you spend on the game to hire people like me!
The money spent on any MMO is spent keeping the development team on staff producing new content and systems and to keep the MMO up and running. If you want evidence that money is being invested in the development of this game, just look to any new hires you see introducing themselves on these forums.
You're probably just another Tumerboy alt.
Mustrum "In another forum I frequent, the priest or whatever he is usually replies no such question 'Hookers and Blow' " Ridcully
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Seriously, please explain to me what part of voiceovers, FE's, new tech, and new hires isn't a reinvestment into this game? Because I'd love to hear you find some lame, flimsy excuse to cover your TRIBBLE regarding how plainly wrong you are.
I believe the last voice over we got was Leeta and the 2800 series. That was no less than 5-6 months ago I believe and most of those were very very short.
Considering how much they promoted Leeta's voiceover and all we got was like 8 lines, I'm very surprised that's all we saw. Or well heard.
The space stations? If so cool but some folks have complained about how a lot of the art has been reused. And from what I;ve read, it almost sounds like a hash of the doff system.
Who? Granted there's been an increase in staff since PW took over but again we're going back months.
Now I grant you 5-6 months ago, I was drooling over the amount of bugs that they were fixing. We all saw the patch reports that Branflakes was posting. Some of them were 2 posts in length. Been a long while since we had one of those.
Though on the other hand major bugs like the transfer character issue don;t seem to be getting much love lately. Nor minor bugs like me and my not getting into the foundry.
I believe the last voice over we got was Leeta and the 2800 series. That was no less than 5-6 months ago I believe and most of those were very very short.
Considering how much they promoted Leeta's voiceover and all we got was like 8 lines, I'm very surprised that's all we saw. Or well heard.
The last celebrity voiceover, yes. Insofar as recognizable voices, this is basically the last we;ve gotten and that is pretty sad.
But voicework isn't cheap, from what I understand. And though certainly not stellar or celebrity, we've gotten many many voiceovers for many things since then, and are getting a little more with S6
For a short list: Adm. T'Nae, K'valk, B'Vat, Cmdr. Burgess, Capt. Kurland, Capt. Shon. There are several more I haven't listed, as well.
I believe [FE's] on the shopping block.
At present, yes. 'tis a sad thing. But for their time, they were a sure sign that money being put into the game was being used for it.
Being a cautious optimist, I feel the money that was going into FE's will be slightly evident as it is redirected into other areas if/when they get chopped. But not nearly evident enough to keep the whiners quiet, unfortunately. S7 will show us the result of that, I'm sure.
The space stations? If so cool but some folks have complained about how a lot of the art has been reused. And from what I;ve read, it almost sounds like a hash of the doff system.
I kinda does feel like a DOff hash, but it's got its own flair. Plus refitting so many lower tier ships for endgame use took some effort, but again is nothing they've never done before.
I believe it's a mistake to consider Starbases something new and unique; rather, they're the next logical step in the systems that have been introduced. To think of them otherwise is to set yourself up for disappointment.
Who? Granted there's been an increase in staff since PW took over but again we're going back months.
JamJamz, Ensign Ro, Lt. Cmdr Miller all jump to mind. Jamz and Miller are the only vocal ones, though; we hear of Ro(we) mostly by other dev reference. Borticus, as well. And doubtless there are many others whose jobs may not necessarily need them to be active on the forums.
Though I'd argue it's not so much about the who as it is the how many, seeing as we're discussing investing in STO.
Now I grant you 5-6 months ago, I was drooling over the amount of bugs that they were fixing. We all saw the patch reports that Branflakes was posting. Some of them were 2 posts in length. Been a long while since we had one of those.
Though on the other hand major bugs like the transfer character issue don;t seem to be getting much love lately. Nor minor bugs like me and my not getting into the foundry.
Agreed, more or less. Though in Cryptic's defense, the S6 release notes for Tribble have been fairly extensive as well. Not two pages of bugfixes, sadly, but not insubstantial either. I expect the actual release will be amazing.
All things considered, I think our money is, in some noticeable portion, going into STO. I just think it isn't nearly what it deserves or what we want to go into it.
I bet most of it goes to PWE and CBS and Paying the Dev team.
LOL. thats kind of obvious isnt it?
There is not really much if any money needed for physical materials, the devs just sit behind their desk and creating content for a game is pretty much that.
The devs and other guys over at Cryptic are 1 by 1 all lazy bums and thats why they're keep kicking them out of the company.
Cryptic uses the money you spend on the game to hire people like me!
The money spent on any MMO is spent keeping the development team on staff producing new content and systems and to keep the MMO up and running. If you want evidence that money is being invested in the development of this game, just look to any new hires you see introducing themselves on these forums.
Dude .... I'm gonna follow you as you have the right avatar for the job and a great name.
May I ask ... Do you have a twitter account as well?
Cryptic uses the money you spend on the game to hire people like me!
The money spent on any MMO is spent keeping the development team on staff producing new content and systems and to keep the MMO up and running. If you want evidence that money is being invested in the development of this game, just look to any new hires you see introducing themselves on these forums.
All I really care about is having something actually new to do on holodeck and for the actual broken systems/abiltiies to get fixed and for the abilities that work fine to quit getting broken LOL.
Oh yeah plus we have no idea what you actually do for Cryptic... for now I am going to assume that you are the Chief Cup Officer.
Cryptic uses the money you spend on the game to hire people like me!
The money spent on any MMO is spent keeping the development team on staff producing new content and systems and to keep the MMO up and running. If you want evidence that money is being invested in the development of this game, just look to any new hires you see introducing themselves on these forums.
All I really care about is having something actually new to do on holodeck and for the actual broken systems/abiltiies to get fixed and for the abilities that work fine to quit getting broken LOL.
Oh yeah plus we have no idea what you actually do for Cryptic... for now I am going to assume that you are the Chief Cup Officer.
My official title is Lieutenant Flyingtarg, Chief Cup Officer, I'll have you know.
Daniel "FlyingTarg" Razza
Star Trek Online Lead Programmer
Cryptic uses the money you spend on the game to hire people like me!
The money spent on any MMO is spent keeping the development team on staff producing new content and systems and to keep the MMO up and running. If you want evidence that money is being invested in the development of this game, just look to any new hires you see introducing themselves on these forums.
A. We always here about how there's large amounts of turnover in the industry and that people come and go. You're coming after someone else left. That's keeping things static.
B. Where is Neverwinter's funding coming from if they aren't making money? STO and CO.
At least some portion of STO and CO's profits are being sunken into NWN at the moment.
If we're lucky it will sustain itself and the higher ups will have enough sense to reinvest in the previous games instead of sucking all the experienced talent out and tossing rookies on it like they've been doing. No offense, new folks can't be expected to walk in and do the job as well as someone with 1+ year(s) experience would if they'd been left there.
Cryptic uses the money you spend on the game to hire people like me!
The money spent on any MMO is spent keeping the development team on staff producing new content and systems and to keep the MMO up and running. If you want evidence that money is being invested in the development of this game, just look to any new hires you see introducing themselves on these forums.
Plus all that cash you're saving on Champions developers must help....
Cryptic uses the money you spend on the game to hire people like me!
The money spent on any MMO is spent keeping the development team on staff producing new content and systems and to keep the MMO up and running. If you want evidence that money is being invested in the development of this game, just look to any new hires you see introducing themselves on these forums.
yea u guys have a lot of employees .............when will this translate into real story driven content?
Comments
Do you use the same criteria to determine where you buy a burger from?
I actually wouldn't be surprised if STO didn't actually net much money after the cut CBS is sure to take.
TBH, I'm pretty happy with where the game is now and the direction it is heading considering how poorly it started off. They have made huge strides outside of that dry period when Atari was shopping them.
People also seem to forget that after Perpetual punted.... the clock was ticking or they would lose their IP license. MMO's go under development for years... they did this in two. As far as I am concerned, they are still fleshing out features that should have existed at release. Stuff like DOffing and Starbases should have been day one features, but sometimes you gotta roll with what you have.
But most of all... I think it's funny that people expect anything even remotely similar to the performance of WoW developers or the developers or any major MMO for "the money spent"...
Firstly WoW or any other major MMO vs this game is not a comparison. WoW is on an entirely different plane of existence when it comes to user numbers, dev numbers, and revenue...
For example... these dudes probably run their servers out of the same building in Los Gatos... WoW pays ATT unthinkable amounts of money to run 10 massive data centers throughout the world.... and this story was back in 2009 http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/11/25/wows-back-end-10-data-centers-75000-cores/
I bet the amount of money WoW pays ATT is greater than Cryptic's annual revenue. So the answer to your money question is... it probably goes to all the same places in the similar respective proportions... Except when 11 million people are chipping in and playing the portions are a lot bigger and you get stuff like payed expansions with content that insane people burn through in a week.
When you get payed that much, content actually makes sense since there's a pool of 11 million people accessing it and paying for it. Your return on investment in content is MUCH greater since it would probably only take Blizzard a week to do what takes Cryptic a month or two because WoW dev team isn't smaller than the number of employees on hand at your local Super Walmart on a normal day like the STO dev team... and you can actually produce content at a rate that is acceptable as well as add game features.
But as others have pointed out, they have a lot of other expenses that are not visible to us.
We would all like more content, but this game is never going to have as much content as TOR or WoW, since those game companies have used millions of dollars on getting those games to where they are today.
Hopefully we will get more content comes Season 7, if what Dstahl told us holds true...
It is visible. They're a publicly traded company. They have to file SEC stock reports.
PW as a whole has a 84% gross profit and something like a 35% Net profit.
STO is their best casdh cow until they no longer need it when NWN goes live.
The money spent on any MMO is spent keeping the development team on staff producing new content and systems and to keep the MMO up and running. If you want evidence that money is being invested in the development of this game, just look to any new hires you see introducing themselves on these forums.
Star Trek Online Lead Programmer
Aren't you from the money that the company saves from the old hires who left? :P
Welcome on board though
@Liath | My PRIMUS Page | Altaholics | New Vehicle Models | New Emblems | Flag Tights
Asterelle's Forum Enhancement Extension | Game Side Panel Add-In* | Game Server Status Add-In
*Updated to work on Embedded/Non embedded forums post August 2015 Changes
Mustrum "In another forum I frequent, the priest or whatever he is usually replies no such question 'Hookers and Blow' " Ridcully
If that's what you think, then you're blind.
Seriously, please explain to me what part of voiceovers, FE's, new tech, and new hires isn't a reinvestment into this game? Because I'd love to hear you find some lame, flimsy excuse to cover your TRIBBLE regarding how plainly wrong you are.
I Support Disco | Disco is Love | Disco is Life
Unfortunately I see both sides of an issue and what jexsamx wrote kind of well bother is the wrong word but close enough.
I believe the last voice over we got was Leeta and the 2800 series. That was no less than 5-6 months ago I believe and most of those were very very short.
Considering how much they promoted Leeta's voiceover and all we got was like 8 lines, I'm very surprised that's all we saw. Or well heard.
I believe they're on the shopping block.
The space stations? If so cool but some folks have complained about how a lot of the art has been reused. And from what I;ve read, it almost sounds like a hash of the doff system.
Who? Granted there's been an increase in staff since PW took over but again we're going back months.
Now I grant you 5-6 months ago, I was drooling over the amount of bugs that they were fixing. We all saw the patch reports that Branflakes was posting. Some of them were 2 posts in length. Been a long while since we had one of those.
Though on the other hand major bugs like the transfer character issue don;t seem to be getting much love lately. Nor minor bugs like me and my not getting into the foundry.
Someone who understands these 100+ pages should check what the STO revenue is.
But voicework isn't cheap, from what I understand. And though certainly not stellar or celebrity, we've gotten many many voiceovers for many things since then, and are getting a little more with S6
For a short list: Adm. T'Nae, K'valk, B'Vat, Cmdr. Burgess, Capt. Kurland, Capt. Shon. There are several more I haven't listed, as well.
At present, yes. 'tis a sad thing. But for their time, they were a sure sign that money being put into the game was being used for it.
Being a cautious optimist, I feel the money that was going into FE's will be slightly evident as it is redirected into other areas if/when they get chopped. But not nearly evident enough to keep the whiners quiet, unfortunately. S7 will show us the result of that, I'm sure.
I kinda does feel like a DOff hash, but it's got its own flair. Plus refitting so many lower tier ships for endgame use took some effort, but again is nothing they've never done before.
I believe it's a mistake to consider Starbases something new and unique; rather, they're the next logical step in the systems that have been introduced. To think of them otherwise is to set yourself up for disappointment.
JamJamz, Ensign Ro, Lt. Cmdr Miller all jump to mind. Jamz and Miller are the only vocal ones, though; we hear of Ro(we) mostly by other dev reference. Borticus, as well. And doubtless there are many others whose jobs may not necessarily need them to be active on the forums.
Though I'd argue it's not so much about the who as it is the how many, seeing as we're discussing investing in STO.
Agreed, more or less. Though in Cryptic's defense, the S6 release notes for Tribble have been fairly extensive as well. Not two pages of bugfixes, sadly, but not insubstantial either. I expect the actual release will be amazing.
All things considered, I think our money is, in some noticeable portion, going into STO. I just think it isn't nearly what it deserves or what we want to go into it.
I Support Disco | Disco is Love | Disco is Life
LOL. thats kind of obvious isnt it?
There is not really much if any money needed for physical materials, the devs just sit behind their desk and creating content for a game is pretty much that.
The devs and other guys over at Cryptic are 1 by 1 all lazy bums and thats why they're keep kicking them out of the company.
I skimmed it very quickly but didn't see any mention of a breakdown.
Probably missed it though.
Continue to fail us... players expect nothing...
We still give them money... we complain... we still give them money
^lolwut
Dude .... I'm gonna follow you as you have the right avatar for the job and a great name.
May I ask ... Do you have a twitter account as well?
U.S.S. Maelstrom, NCC-71417 (Constitution III-class/flagship) --- Fleet Admiral Hauk' --|-- Dahar Master Hauk --- I.K.S. qu'In 'an bortaS (D7-class / flagship)
All I really care about is having something actually new to do on holodeck and for the actual broken systems/abiltiies to get fixed and for the abilities that work fine to quit getting broken LOL.
Oh yeah plus we have no idea what you actually do for Cryptic... for now I am going to assume that you are the Chief Cup Officer.
Greetings stranger.
My official title is Lieutenant Flyingtarg, Chief Cup Officer, I'll have you know.
Star Trek Online Lead Programmer
A. We always here about how there's large amounts of turnover in the industry and that people come and go. You're coming after someone else left. That's keeping things static.
B. Where is Neverwinter's funding coming from if they aren't making money? STO and CO.
At least some portion of STO and CO's profits are being sunken into NWN at the moment.
If we're lucky it will sustain itself and the higher ups will have enough sense to reinvest in the previous games instead of sucking all the experienced talent out and tossing rookies on it like they've been doing. No offense, new folks can't be expected to walk in and do the job as well as someone with 1+ year(s) experience would if they'd been left there.
The same thing every other employer does.
Not hard to understand if you work, a given if you own your business.
Think this is the 10th time I've replied to a thread like this......:rolleyes:
Vent threads are cool, I guess.
Plus all that cash you're saving on Champions developers must help....
Commanding Officer: Captain Pyotr Ramonovich Amosov
Dedication Plaque: "Nil Intentatum Reliquit"
Careful ... Please don't make Zeux mad or it will be hell for the rest of us.
U.S.S. Maelstrom, NCC-71417 (Constitution III-class/flagship) --- Fleet Admiral Hauk' --|-- Dahar Master Hauk --- I.K.S. qu'In 'an bortaS (D7-class / flagship)
yea u guys have a lot of employees .............when will this translate into real story driven content?
join date: Jan. 2012
lmao
join date: Jan. 2012
Must of have had it easy today. Starbucks did free coffee.