Bahh.. I dont know why it is so important to know where and how many people are working in which departmend.
I am sorry but this is none of our business. Why should they tell us something or are forced to tell us this?
Maybe we should start to go to Walmart with pen and paper and ask the cashier about all the employes working there. How are those infos helping us?
Just because some people are mad that their toy isn't working the way they want it to be, doesn't give anyone the right to be that harsh.
Yes I know now everyone is screaming "I pay for this game", but hey, I am so honest to say that in all those jobs I have done till now, I have done also a lot of mistakes. And in each job I did I needed time to find my place and the experience to do it right.
I can imagine that it isn't that easy to find the bugged codelines within a few millions of codelines without breaking the whole game. Play Jenga, you will know what I mean.
Yes I know all of us have bought Keys for the Boxes, yes we all have bought costumes and ships and slots .. from the Z-Store. But do you know how long a company can live with let's say 20 Dollers from a gamer? That's the usual amount I spent in two weeks.
Cryptic has to pay for the rent, electicity, gas/water, garbage removal, and their whole staff. Commercial Rent is much higher than your usual flat rent.
A friend of mine pays about 700 Dollars for not even 5qm space for his Bretzel Shop.
So guys, please, get down from your high horse. Dan and his team isn't digging in the nose. There is much more behind the facade than we all know.
6 months is a bit more than i was asking, i was asking specifically since Season 7 (not counting the season update itself either), because S7 broke at least 3 important things that i know of and only one has been fixed so far.
That one fix was some time ago and since then there is only silence, no Patchnote nothing.
So where is he? Vacation? Busy on Neverwinter? Finally coding a new UI that doesn't run on a single cpu core, dragging the Framerate of the game down for everyone with less than 20 GHz per core???....
In this case, I feel I should actually -defend- Cryptic. Or more specifically, ThomastheCat. There's been a few tidbits here and there on Twitter, and latest in yesterdays Q&A with Daniel Stahl, that ThomastheCat is currently working on a rather major revamp/reskin of the existing game UI. And as far as I know, those who work on the visuals of the UI, are not the same people as those who work on the coding side of the UI. That would be the 'Programming' guys, which are notably absent in fixing bugs caused by S7.
Quote from yesterday's Q&A:
Q: Darkthunder: Any details you can share on the "NEW UI" slated for Season 8? Or is it just minor touch-ups to existing UI?
A: New UI that Thomas the Cat is working on is a reskinning and reLCARsing of existing UI - improving - not replcaing
Q: Darkthunder: Color Customization to new UI?
A: We are going to support your choice UI coloring
Somewhere I remember seeing either Branflakes or DStahl mentioning that Cryptic has around 40 - 50 employees and they were still hiring. I don't think they're still hiring, but that still leaves us with around 40 - 50 employees. This is all very well and good...
...but what the heck are they doing?
What I want to know is how many employees are working on a given task at a given time. How many ship artists? How many systems guys? How many pencil-pushers are there? I think if the community had a better idea of what the team was made out of, we could understand the limitations better. If there was only one guy making costumes, then it would make sense as to why those are such a once and a while thing, but if there's five of them.....
have you not seen the amazing things the team has released these past years. yes the big things come rarely, but making stuff for a game is harder than you think even if you have a team. It can apply to anything else as well. Think about all the hard work they put in to new Romulus, all that detail and such...im sure everyone's stuck with a task and im sure they all work hard....
LOL i don't think they could do everything they just did with 40-50 people. there's more people than 40, im highly confident in that.
I am sorry but this is none of our business. Why should they tell us something or are forced to tell us this?
It becomes useful to know for those times when the playerbase asks a question about why X, Y or Z hasn't happened like it was promised, and the reason/excuse given is that the company doesn't have enough manpower, resources or both.
In other words, if the reason that something hasn't happened is that there aren't enough employees, then the company itself has opened the door to that topic of conversation and people want to know who does what there.
LOL i don't think they could do everything they just did with 40-50 people. there's more people than 40, im highly confident in that.
You'd be surprised. Apparently they ran STO with such a barebones staff during the Atari days that they didn't even have any cups in their kitchen. That's coming from the head honcho in charge of the game at the time.
But there is the difference between saying "We promise..." and "We will do..".
For us gamers, the one person we have contact to is Bran, and not Mr. or Mrs. Smith who sits 10h a day in front of a pc and smirking bugs out.
Like in most major companies there is one Receptionist who is doing the communication between Provider and Customer.
When we start communicating directly with everyone, the mess comes out and the DEVs are wasting time. Bran gets paid for beeing the messenger. He knows whom to talk to when a customer has a problem.
And I admire Bran for this work. I would have heaved the flag already.
I know you guys are mad about not getting the full gaming experience and having those Lag problems. I fully understand it.
But I have to say, and that is my own opinion, that all those insults in the last few days towards Dan, Bran and the rest of Cryptic, was way to much. I dont know how many posts and threads with the same complainments have been created.
Cryptic is a commercial company. Like thousend others. They have to earn money to go on and pay employes who have to pay their rent and look after their familys. Every company has to make profit and gross margin. It works this way.
We dont live in the world of milk and honey. The money doesn't fly down from the sky.
I think everyone here works in a company. Aren't you happy that your company earns enough money so that they can pay you your rent, food, luxury stuff?
And not everything can be solved by "it would be sooo easy to include a button that.."
There are no idots at Cryptic, but hundreds of wishes can't be done in a short time. And when old bugs aren't already corrected, then there has to be a reason. Maybe it is not that "easy" as everyone thinks.
I don't have the slightest idea of programming, so I will never tell them what to do or what is "so easy" do undo.
Cryptic consits of humans. Humans who have their own life, problems, and they also make errors.
I know what they're -not- doing, well 99% of them...
Here we are now going to the West Side
Weapons in hand as we go for a ride
Some may come and some may stay
Watching out for a sunny day
Where there's love and darkness and my sidearm
In game as @forgemccain
A leader of The Blackwatch Defenders
What changed regarding UI in the last 6 months:
- doffs
- the exchange
- the new reputation tab
- a better "asset" tab for characters
- all the starbase stuff
It may not be enough but i'm pretty sure this team is a bit overwhelmed currently. :P
That team is Thomas.
And I believe he's working on both the STO mobile app AND completely redoing the UI for May, which will enable color changes (per Stahl) and basically reorganize and visually redesign the whole UI.
He tweeted the other day that he was attempting to channel Okuda for the revamp and Okuda tweeted back, giving his blessing and a word of support.
What changed regarding UI in the last 6 months:
- doffs
- the exchange
- the new reputation tab
- a better "asset" tab for characters
- all the starbase stuff
It may not be enough but i'm pretty sure this team is a bit overwhelmed currently. :P
Also, isn't there just one UI guy; Thomas the CrypticCat?
you know like everything else he talks up, it will be a mediocre release, and probably gonna disapoint everyone.. not to mention.. they can barely roll 1 mission out the door without the servers crashing hardcore.. if they actually do release a "large scale" release, their building might blow up...
And you will still jump on the game the day this comes out, to do nothing but complain about every single thing in the game. This game pisses me off at times too, but I do not do nearlt the amount of whining I read from so many players who would TRIBBLE bricks if they decided to shut this game down.
I believe that since the new lords and masters took the helm cryptic have had one guy working on their games to keep the business looking legitimate while the other 39 put in 16 hour shifts excavating the secret under ground lair on the volcanic island of undisclosed location, and performing minor acts of infamy in the world at large.
Don?t worry, when the giant lazer nears completion we are sure to hear all about it. Probably when cryptic present their demands to the UN.
lmao wow someones imagination is in overdrive today
*Me*Why don't you just step away from the weapons console. You and I both know that you couldn't hit that cube, even if it was right in front of us. *Junior Tactical Officer* But sir the cube IS right in front of us. *Me* EXACTLY! Its right in front of us and you still missed it! Just step away from the console.
have you not seen the amazing things the team has released these past years. yes the big things come rarely, but making stuff for a game is harder than you think even if you have a team. It can apply to anything else as well. Think about all the hard work they put in to new Romulus, all that detail and such...im sure everyone's stuck with a task and im sure they all work hard....
LOL i don't think they could do everything they just did with 40-50 people. there's more people than 40, im highly confident in that.
Look, guys, I'm not meaning to rag on the Devs, I know that they're working as hard as they can. I mean, they kind of have to.
What I just want to know, is how hard can they work. Five people can do a lot more than one person can, and if theres only one person on one job, then it would make sense as to why somethings take longer than others. Thats all I want to know. :P
Are you still butthurt over what I said about the Sierra Uniforms? Really?
I honestly don't know what to think about that one.
Congratulation , you've got a forum stalker .
Five people can do a lot more than one person can, and if theres only one person on one job, then it would make sense as to why somethings take longer than others. Thats all I want to know. :P
While there's little chance that Cryptic will roll out their employment sheet , there are a few places where we can guesstimate , and the smaller they are , the better our chances to guess .
Take costumes for example .
Now I don't know if "hairstyles" falls under "costumes" for example , but we do know that we've gotten a slow but steady trickle of costumes , but almost no new hairstyles (in 3 years) .
Now , if we take Capt. Logan's estimation about him being able to crank out a ship in anywhere between 1-3 weeks -- just how long do you think it takes to make a new costume ?
(note : that unlike ships , costumes apparently need to have "variants" that can fit on all the different "dolls" that they have for our toons -- which is why some clothing is ok to use on fed toons , but impossible (apperantly) on kdf toons.)
Admittedly , once in a blue moon (actually once in ... 1-2 years apparently) they come out with a new texture for clothing -- and I suppose that that can take more time to develop , same goes for different hair "quality" (straight hair VS braided hair for example) .
But I'm not talking hair/clothing quality -- I'm talking about costumes and hair styles .
Now ask yourself how many ppl do you think they got on that and do you thing that they even have someone permanent like that on the STO team ?
How about Emotes ?
Going by the above examination , and the rate at which new emotes are being introduced in STO , do you think there is someone permanent on the STO team who only works on that ?
I don't .
But I'm not talking hair/clothing quality -- I'm talking about costumes and hair styles .
Now ask yourself how many ppl do you think they got on that and do you thing that they even have someone permanent like that on the STO team ?
How about Emotes ?
Going by the above examination , and the rate at which new emotes are being introduced in STO , do you think there is someone permanent on the STO team who only works on that ?
I don't .
Yeah, that's pretty much the entire point I'm trying to get at. I just want to know who's doing what, and who's capable of doing what. We can guess based on how often stuff comes out, and what devs post on the forums, but that's all it is. A guess.
People asked what we were doing 6 months ago, and the answer was Season 7.
People asked 6 months before that, and the answer was Season 6.
Why do people think we stop working on things?
I certainly can't give you a numbers break down, but just within the Art Department of STO, we have:
Environment
Character
Animation
FX
UI
Even if each of those were just a single individual (which they are not) that's 5 people. Combine that with various designers, production, QA, programming, etc. and you can easily get to 40-50.
As for a specific task, I can't say what we're working on currently, but for something like the Temporal Ambassador mission that we just released, that was me, and a content designer doing the grunt work on the interior. Another Env guy did the Azure Nebula space stuff. Christine did a bunch of writing, plus a bunch of work wrangling voice actors and working with audio to record/implement that. We had QA run through it a bunch, we had a character artist or two to work on the costumes, we had a couple of new FX. Add to that production to keep us organized, leads to keep us in line, and for that single episode, you're probably talking about 20+ people involved at some level.
And obviously, that's not the whole team, while we were working on that, many other people were working on other things.
ETA: I will say that no one is as specialized as "hair artist" or "Emotes animator." We have Animators, who do all of our animations, whether they are emotes or not. We have character artists, who do all of our characters, hair and all. So no, there is no one on the team dedicated to only making new emotes, that's just not how it works.
People asked what we were doing 6 months ago, and the answer was Season 7.
People asked 6 months before that, and the answer was Season 6.
Why do people think we stop working on things?
I certainly can't give you a numbers break down, but just within the Art Department of STO, we have:
Environment
Character
Animation
FX
UI
Even if each of those were just a single individual (which they are not) that's 5 people. Combine that with various designers, production, QA, programming, etc. and you can easily get to 40-50.
As for a specific task, I can't say what we're working on currently, but for something like the Temporal Ambassador mission that we just released, that was me, and a content designer doing the grunt work on the interior. Another Env guy did the Azure Nebula space stuff. Christine did a bunch of writing, plus a bunch of work wrangling voice actors and working with audio to record/implement that. We had QA run through it a bunch, we had a character artist or two to work on the costumes, we had a couple of new FX. Add to that production to keep us organized, leads to keep us in line, and for that single episode, you're probably talking about 20+ people involved at some level.
And obviously, that's not the whole team, while we were working on that, many other people were working on other things.
ETA: I will say that no one is as specialized as "hair artist" or "Emotes animator." We have Animators, who do all of our animations, whether they are emotes or not. We have character artists, who do all of our characters, hair and all. So no, there is no one on the team dedicated to only making new emotes, that's just not how it works.
*Looks for forum post like button..*
A hundred questions pop up in my head that I'd want to ask taco, but I know it's probably secret, grr.
People asked what we were doing 6 months ago, and the answer was Season 7.
People asked 6 months before that, and the answer was Season 6.
Why do people think we stop working on things?
I certainly can't give you a numbers break down, but just within the Art Department of STO, we have:
Environment
Character
Animation
FX
UI
Even if each of those were just a single individual (which they are not) that's 5 people. Combine that with various designers, production, QA, programming, etc. and you can easily get to 40-50.
As for a specific task, I can't say what we're working on currently, but for something like the Temporal Ambassador mission that we just released, that was me, and a content designer doing the grunt work on the interior. Another Env guy did the Azure Nebula space stuff. Christine did a bunch of writing, plus a bunch of work wrangling voice actors and working with audio to record/implement that. We had QA run through it a bunch, we had a character artist or two to work on the costumes, we had a couple of new FX. Add to that production to keep us organized, leads to keep us in line, and for that single episode, you're probably talking about 20+ people involved at some level.
And obviously, that's not the whole team, while we were working on that, many other people were working on other things.
ETA: I will say that no one is as specialized as "hair artist" or "Emotes animator." We have Animators, who do all of our animations, whether they are emotes or not. We have character artists, who do all of our characters, hair and all. So no, there is no one on the team dedicated to only making new emotes, that's just not how it works.
Realy That hard to believe consider the mission ship with pretty big bug which was not oringal in the patch notes.
I say deselect your entire bridge office core is rather major and rather easy to spot even for an amature but some who it got past QA
That's a known bug with the how the new Assignments menu works in Season 7, it does it with all the missions that force you into a ship that isn't your normal ship or shuttle.
Yes it's a bug, but it's hardly a major issue with the game as it takes, at most, 5 minutes to slot them all back in if you take your time over it.
Somewhere I remember seeing either Branflakes or DStahl mentioning that Cryptic has around 40 - 50 employees and they were still hiring. I don't think they're still hiring, but that still leaves us with around 40 - 50 employees. This is all very well and good...
...but what the heck are they doing?
What I want to know is how many employees are working on a given task at a given time. How many ship artists? How many systems guys? How many pencil-pushers are there? I think if the community had a better idea of what the team was made out of, we could understand the limitations better. If there was only one guy making costumes, then it would make sense as to why those are such a once and a while thing, but if there's five of them.....
Following the usual paradigm, the breakdown is thus:
10% managerial/administration
5% marketing
5% audio
10% programmers
5% engineers
5% QA
60% artists
?% CS
And I would estimate that NeverWinter is the current company focus which places 70-80% of HR/other resources in its grasp.
This leaves you with roughly 10-15 dedicated personnel, from the various aforementioned classification groups, allotted to STO with the occasional shift as the projects temporarily borrow from each other (goes both ways) as certain skills are required to complete a special task or to hit a schedule milestone.
If you manage to nab Dstahl onto a corner with a bottle of Romulan Ale I suspect you'd find this assessment predictably accurate within the given 12% margin of error.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
___________________________
Joined April 2008. Lifetime Subscriber. Original member of the original 2nd Fleet.
Expended $1,961 USD on this game - regretting it all. This game and some of its staff disappointed me, time and again, per every single cent spent!!!
Whatever they are working on is a heck of a lot more than what they are working on for CO.
I keep forgetting that title even exists.
I'll have to modify my analysis to match the data...mais, CBA IDC.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
___________________________
Joined April 2008. Lifetime Subscriber. Original member of the original 2nd Fleet.
Expended $1,961 USD on this game - regretting it all. This game and some of its staff disappointed me, time and again, per every single cent spent!!!
People asked what we were doing 6 months ago, and the answer was Season 7.
People asked 6 months before that, and the answer was Season 6.
Why do people think we stop working on things?
Because *points at Patchnotes*
That's why!
this is not the time to go back to Patchnotes with 5 Lines per week.
We need 25 - 50 lines per week to get this build into an acceptable shape, but you guys already have moved on to the next big thing on the schedule, because the almighty schedule tells you to.
In the meantime Obisek calls us names and has the complete wrong Voice Over if you play Azure Nebula as KDF (no KDF players in the QA department either eh? how does something so obvious go unnoticed and so easy to fix unfixed?... wrong filepath to the audio files *shrug*), Bridge Officers beam in at the start of the KDF version of that Starbase-*LockBox room*-defense ...
Tau Dewa Red Alert is just an Empty Map that makes you warp out (have not even been able to play it yet).
In Mine Trap is a bugged building you can't repair and always stays at 50% .....
not to mention the horrible shape the UI is in (my personal pet peeve that makes the game just feel horrible at the moment).
Don't take this the wrong way, but right now i could not care less about -not Season 8 but bigger- while there are still things from Season 6 + 7 to fix.
And what do you think we expect from -not Season 8- if Season 6+7 are allowed to stay in this shape for so long?
Don't take this the wrong way, i know you Dev's are all slaves to the schedule, i know you guys are working hard on whatever it is the schedule tells you to work on, so my problem is not with you Taco or any other Dev's work for that matter, but with whoever sets the wrong priorities at the top all the time, or too tight deadlines to get stuff done.
Comments
I am sorry but this is none of our business. Why should they tell us something or are forced to tell us this?
Maybe we should start to go to Walmart with pen and paper and ask the cashier about all the employes working there. How are those infos helping us?
Just because some people are mad that their toy isn't working the way they want it to be, doesn't give anyone the right to be that harsh.
Yes I know now everyone is screaming "I pay for this game", but hey, I am so honest to say that in all those jobs I have done till now, I have done also a lot of mistakes. And in each job I did I needed time to find my place and the experience to do it right.
I can imagine that it isn't that easy to find the bugged codelines within a few millions of codelines without breaking the whole game. Play Jenga, you will know what I mean.
Yes I know all of us have bought Keys for the Boxes, yes we all have bought costumes and ships and slots .. from the Z-Store. But do you know how long a company can live with let's say 20 Dollers from a gamer? That's the usual amount I spent in two weeks.
Cryptic has to pay for the rent, electicity, gas/water, garbage removal, and their whole staff. Commercial Rent is much higher than your usual flat rent.
A friend of mine pays about 700 Dollars for not even 5qm space for his Bretzel Shop.
So guys, please, get down from your high horse. Dan and his team isn't digging in the nose. There is much more behind the facade than we all know.
In this case, I feel I should actually -defend- Cryptic. Or more specifically, ThomastheCat. There's been a few tidbits here and there on Twitter, and latest in yesterdays Q&A with Daniel Stahl, that ThomastheCat is currently working on a rather major revamp/reskin of the existing game UI. And as far as I know, those who work on the visuals of the UI, are not the same people as those who work on the coding side of the UI. That would be the 'Programming' guys, which are notably absent in fixing bugs caused by S7.
Quote from yesterday's Q&A:
have you not seen the amazing things the team has released these past years. yes the big things come rarely, but making stuff for a game is harder than you think even if you have a team. It can apply to anything else as well. Think about all the hard work they put in to new Romulus, all that detail and such...im sure everyone's stuck with a task and im sure they all work hard....
LOL i don't think they could do everything they just did with 40-50 people. there's more people than 40, im highly confident in that.
It becomes useful to know for those times when the playerbase asks a question about why X, Y or Z hasn't happened like it was promised, and the reason/excuse given is that the company doesn't have enough manpower, resources or both.
In other words, if the reason that something hasn't happened is that there aren't enough employees, then the company itself has opened the door to that topic of conversation and people want to know who does what there.
You'd be surprised. Apparently they ran STO with such a barebones staff during the Atari days that they didn't even have any cups in their kitchen. That's coming from the head honcho in charge of the game at the time.
For us gamers, the one person we have contact to is Bran, and not Mr. or Mrs. Smith who sits 10h a day in front of a pc and smirking bugs out.
Like in most major companies there is one Receptionist who is doing the communication between Provider and Customer.
When we start communicating directly with everyone, the mess comes out and the DEVs are wasting time. Bran gets paid for beeing the messenger. He knows whom to talk to when a customer has a problem.
And I admire Bran for this work. I would have heaved the flag already.
I know you guys are mad about not getting the full gaming experience and having those Lag problems. I fully understand it.
But I have to say, and that is my own opinion, that all those insults in the last few days towards Dan, Bran and the rest of Cryptic, was way to much. I dont know how many posts and threads with the same complainments have been created.
Cryptic is a commercial company. Like thousend others. They have to earn money to go on and pay employes who have to pay their rent and look after their familys. Every company has to make profit and gross margin. It works this way.
We dont live in the world of milk and honey. The money doesn't fly down from the sky.
I think everyone here works in a company. Aren't you happy that your company earns enough money so that they can pay you your rent, food, luxury stuff?
And not everything can be solved by "it would be sooo easy to include a button that.."
There are no idots at Cryptic, but hundreds of wishes can't be done in a short time. And when old bugs aren't already corrected, then there has to be a reason. Maybe it is not that "easy" as everyone thinks.
I don't have the slightest idea of programming, so I will never tell them what to do or what is "so easy" do undo.
Cryptic consits of humans. Humans who have their own life, problems, and they also make errors.
Like everyone of us has done before.
http://youtu.be/pVKnF26qFFM
"You shoot him, I shoot you, I leave both your bodies here and go out for a late night snack.
I'm thinking maybe pancakes." ~ John Casey
except half would be wearing fed uniforms and half klingon.
Here we are now going to the West Side
Weapons in hand as we go for a ride
Some may come and some may stay
Watching out for a sunny day
Where there's love and darkness and my sidearm
In game as @forgemccain
A leader of The Blackwatch Defenders
That team is Thomas.
And I believe he's working on both the STO mobile app AND completely redoing the UI for May, which will enable color changes (per Stahl) and basically reorganize and visually redesign the whole UI.
He tweeted the other day that he was attempting to channel Okuda for the revamp and Okuda tweeted back, giving his blessing and a word of support.
We constantly make jokes wondering if we have -any- devs around.
You want to see how much support STO has over CO? Go look at your patch notes compared to ours.
Never, ever doubt that you have more support than we do.
Razira's Primus Database Page
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
And you will still jump on the game the day this comes out, to do nothing but complain about every single thing in the game. This game pisses me off at times too, but I do not do nearlt the amount of whining I read from so many players who would TRIBBLE bricks if they decided to shut this game down.
lmao wow someones imagination is in overdrive today
*Junior Tactical Officer* But sir the cube IS right in front of us.
*Me* EXACTLY! Its right in front of us and you still missed it! Just step away from the console.
Are you still butthurt over what I said about the Sierra Uniforms? Really?
I honestly don't know what to think about that one.
Look, guys, I'm not meaning to rag on the Devs, I know that they're working as hard as they can. I mean, they kind of have to.
What I just want to know, is how hard can they work. Five people can do a lot more than one person can, and if theres only one person on one job, then it would make sense as to why somethings take longer than others. Thats all I want to know. :P
Congratulation , you've got a forum stalker .
While there's little chance that Cryptic will roll out their employment sheet , there are a few places where we can guesstimate , and the smaller they are , the better our chances to guess .
Take costumes for example .
Now I don't know if "hairstyles" falls under "costumes" for example , but we do know that we've gotten a slow but steady trickle of costumes , but almost no new hairstyles (in 3 years) .
Now , if we take Capt. Logan's estimation about him being able to crank out a ship in anywhere between 1-3 weeks -- just how long do you think it takes to make a new costume ?
(note : that unlike ships , costumes apparently need to have "variants" that can fit on all the different "dolls" that they have for our toons -- which is why some clothing is ok to use on fed toons , but impossible (apperantly) on kdf toons.)
Admittedly , once in a blue moon (actually once in ... 1-2 years apparently) they come out with a new texture for clothing -- and I suppose that that can take more time to develop , same goes for different hair "quality" (straight hair VS braided hair for example) .
But I'm not talking hair/clothing quality -- I'm talking about costumes and hair styles .
Now ask yourself how many ppl do you think they got on that and do you thing that they even have someone permanent like that on the STO team ?
How about Emotes ?
Going by the above examination , and the rate at which new emotes are being introduced in STO , do you think there is someone permanent on the STO team who only works on that ?
I don't .
How grand. :rolleyes:
Yeah, that's pretty much the entire point I'm trying to get at. I just want to know who's doing what, and who's capable of doing what. We can guess based on how often stuff comes out, and what devs post on the forums, but that's all it is. A guess.
People asked 6 months before that, and the answer was Season 6.
Why do people think we stop working on things?
I certainly can't give you a numbers break down, but just within the Art Department of STO, we have:
Environment
Character
Animation
FX
UI
Even if each of those were just a single individual (which they are not) that's 5 people. Combine that with various designers, production, QA, programming, etc. and you can easily get to 40-50.
As for a specific task, I can't say what we're working on currently, but for something like the Temporal Ambassador mission that we just released, that was me, and a content designer doing the grunt work on the interior. Another Env guy did the Azure Nebula space stuff. Christine did a bunch of writing, plus a bunch of work wrangling voice actors and working with audio to record/implement that. We had QA run through it a bunch, we had a character artist or two to work on the costumes, we had a couple of new FX. Add to that production to keep us organized, leads to keep us in line, and for that single episode, you're probably talking about 20+ people involved at some level.
And obviously, that's not the whole team, while we were working on that, many other people were working on other things.
ETA: I will say that no one is as specialized as "hair artist" or "Emotes animator." We have Animators, who do all of our animations, whether they are emotes or not. We have character artists, who do all of our characters, hair and all. So no, there is no one on the team dedicated to only making new emotes, that's just not how it works.
*Looks for forum post like button..*
A hundred questions pop up in my head that I'd want to ask taco, but I know it's probably secret, grr.
Only one pops into mine "So how the Romulan tutorial mission coming?"
Thanks for the information Taco.
Realy That hard to believe consider the mission ship with pretty big bug which was not oringal in the patch notes.
I say deselect your entire bridge office core is rather major and rather easy to spot even for an amature but some who it got past QA
This is unfortunately true.
That's a known bug with the how the new Assignments menu works in Season 7, it does it with all the missions that force you into a ship that isn't your normal ship or shuttle.
Yes it's a bug, but it's hardly a major issue with the game as it takes, at most, 5 minutes to slot them all back in if you take your time over it.
Following the usual paradigm, the breakdown is thus:
10% managerial/administration
5% marketing
5% audio
10% programmers
5% engineers
5% QA
60% artists
?% CS
And I would estimate that NeverWinter is the current company focus which places 70-80% of HR/other resources in its grasp.
This leaves you with roughly 10-15 dedicated personnel, from the various aforementioned classification groups, allotted to STO with the occasional shift as the projects temporarily borrow from each other (goes both ways) as certain skills are required to complete a special task or to hit a schedule milestone.
If you manage to nab Dstahl onto a corner with a bottle of Romulan Ale I suspect you'd find this assessment predictably accurate within the given 12% margin of error.
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Joined April 2008. Lifetime Subscriber. Original member of the original 2nd Fleet.
Expended $1,961 USD on this game - regretting it all. This game and some of its staff disappointed me, time and again, per every single cent spent!!!
I keep forgetting that title even exists.
I'll have to modify my analysis to match the data...mais, CBA IDC.
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Joined April 2008. Lifetime Subscriber. Original member of the original 2nd Fleet.
Expended $1,961 USD on this game - regretting it all. This game and some of its staff disappointed me, time and again, per every single cent spent!!!
Because *points at Patchnotes*
That's why!
this is not the time to go back to Patchnotes with 5 Lines per week.
We need 25 - 50 lines per week to get this build into an acceptable shape, but you guys already have moved on to the next big thing on the schedule, because the almighty schedule tells you to.
In the meantime Obisek calls us names and has the complete wrong Voice Over if you play Azure Nebula as KDF (no KDF players in the QA department either eh? how does something so obvious go unnoticed and so easy to fix unfixed?... wrong filepath to the audio files *shrug*), Bridge Officers beam in at the start of the KDF version of that Starbase-*LockBox room*-defense ...
Tau Dewa Red Alert is just an Empty Map that makes you warp out (have not even been able to play it yet).
In Mine Trap is a bugged building you can't repair and always stays at 50% .....
not to mention the horrible shape the UI is in (my personal pet peeve that makes the game just feel horrible at the moment).
Don't take this the wrong way, but right now i could not care less about -not Season 8 but bigger- while there are still things from Season 6 + 7 to fix.
And what do you think we expect from -not Season 8- if Season 6+7 are allowed to stay in this shape for so long?
Don't take this the wrong way, i know you Dev's are all slaves to the schedule, i know you guys are working hard on whatever it is the schedule tells you to work on, so my problem is not with you Taco or any other Dev's work for that matter, but with whoever sets the wrong priorities at the top all the time, or too tight deadlines to get stuff done.
No one is "butthurt"...I just shouldn't of been surprised to see another selfish self-entitled thread/post.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]