Bottom line: alienating your customer base, fostering antagonism and distancing yourselves, is bad business.
really cause the dev's do pop in the forums from time to time....they jsut resently had a Q&A session...they are not alienating players....they are just not showing all their cards, and are going to keep what they working on a secret till we get closer to may.
I do hope you didn't stop there with my post, though. I know it was a bit long, but I think that with all the angst in this thread, which I contributed to, it serves a useful purpose :cool:
Course not. You do have some really good ideas in there and to solve them, once again I bring out territory control. You have your standard invasions, but you could also have trade and negotiation based deals. That by itself adds thousands of possibilities.
It would also give us plenty of stuff to do while Cryptic turns out story missions.
And I've said it before, and I've said it again. Cryptic needs to turn Foundry missions into real missions. Many are just that good.
Work shifts, pretty constantly. When we show our work, we get harangued for not delivering on perceived promises, or not putting things out 'on time.' When we don't show our work, people think we twiddle our thumbs all day. :::shrug:::
ETA: We work in an iterative manner. We make things quickly with the mindset that we are willing to change them drastically, or toss them out if they are't good, aren't fun, or aren't feasible. This is not a problem of not keeping to goals. I actually much prefer this to setting off in some direction, and trudging along no matter what, even if no one on the team believes in it. Iteration is all about trying things out. We may have built something, tried it, and then gone back to the drawing board on it.
Nay sayers gonna nay say.
Personaly if I were in charge the account server would be buggy, with things like account deletions or roll backs mysteriously affecting players..........
But I don't tolerate BS well.
Can't make everyone happy all of the time. And some people thing its their right to be made happy all of the time.
As a time traveller, Am I supposed to pack underwear or underwhen?
Not everything you see on the internet is true - Abraham Lincoln
Of course, Cryptic will not budge on the not charging for mission content.
...
I'm fine with Cryptic doing whatever they need to to make money, but I would like to see them showcase their products within mission content.
...
Really, it would not hurt Cryptic to put more focus on actual mission content in the game.
...
Anyway, I feel that this could be more of a Star Trek game AND more of an MMO at the same time. So much of the existing gameplay feels shallow and half-baked. Addressing that and delivering official mission content more regularly would benefit Cryptic greatly...
First you acknowledge that they won't make mission content...then you try to devise ways for them to do it.
Sorry mate, but you tripped yourself.
I doubt Cryptic doesn't want or can't make mission content, it's probably very simple - they've gone over their numbers and the fiscal reality is that they don't see market in it that would provide sufficient ROI...compared to lock boxes and dilithium-sucking fleet goals (although that's a rather pyramid scheme like the real global economy - amount of ships you can churn out into the Star Trek universe is finite and once they run out of that they're facing collapse as they struggle to find new means to squeeze the byline out of).
Personally, I think it's fine focusing on systems over content...providing that those systems actually renders playable mechanics with replay value; procedurally generated content to a degree, if you shall (such as a healthy and active PvP community, or a lively PvE one).
Problem is that the current systems being introduced are merely additional treadmills, and you can only stockpile so many until the players quit to find more attractive treadmills (or press-benches) elsewhere - and take their friends with them.
[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!!!
Four would be required to deliver an episode per month resulting in an episode being released each monday for the first four mondays of each month.
How much should they be paid? $80.00 per episode, minus the cost of cryptic-supplied gold account.
I didn't want to post in this thread again, but this part of your post is astounding. Have you been working on a foundry mission lately? One good foundry mission can take up to 40h to make. Probably more for some specific and very long missions. That's just one week of work, and you want people to work on them with a schedule, delivery dates, for a full week of work for such a ridiculous amount of money?
This isn't even a compensation, it's alms. And not a decent one because you give more in proportion to homeless people playing music in the streets for 2-3 minutes of fun. I hope you never run a buisness, sir, because you'll learn the hard way that if you want people to keep working for you, and if you want them to work hard to deliver quality stuff, you have to pay them well. Which means really above the minimum wage.
Currently authors are providing content to cryptic for free. We do that on our leisure time, but if there's any schedule or pressure to deliver content, then it's a job and you have to pay people accodingly, not like slaves you give alms for their good work.
The reality is, when you give in to someone's "bullying"(for lack of a better word) you are letting them control you. And letting someone control you is weak behavior. But putting aside their own ego, the devs should care enough about the majority of their customers who are well behaved not to cut them off because a small group of people misbehaved. Instead, they decided to punish the majority of people who were well behaved and not share info with them anymore just because a small group of people said mean things. So yes, on both accounts I call that weak behavior.
If they change back now because of posts like this, isn't it the same thing?
Former moderator of these forums. Lifetime sub since before launch. Been here since before public betas. Foundry author of "Franklin Drake Must Die".
I didn't want to post in this thread again, but this part of your post is astounding. Have you been working on a foundry mission lately? One good foundry mission can take up to 40h to make. Probably more for some specific and very long missions. That's just one week of work, and you want people to work on them with a schedule, delivery dates, for a full week of work for such a ridiculous amount of money?
This isn't even a compensation, it's alms. And not a decent one because you give more in proportion to homeless people playing music in the streets for 2-3 minutes of fun. I hope you never run a buisness, sir, because you'll learn the hard way that if you want people to keep working for you, and if you want them to work hard to deliver quality stuff, you have to pay them well. Which means really above the minimum wage.
Currently authors are providing content to cryptic for free. We do that on our leisure time, but if there's any schedule or pressure to deliver content, then it's a job and you have to pay people accodingly, not like slaves you give alms for their good work.
80 bucks > Free?
Also, the use of the word slave is inaccurate. Sweatshop worker is far more accurate. Currently, the foundry folks who are doing all this work for free are far more akin to a slave than one who would get paid a low wage for doing the same work.
If they change back now because of posts like this, isn't it the same thing?
They should not make any changes based upon anyone's posts in this specific thread. What they should do is realize that they have allowed a rude minority of people cause them to completely change the way they communicate with the well behaved majority of their community. And by allowing a vocal minority of people force them to change their policies, they have made themselves their slaves.
Also, the use of the word slave is inaccurate. Sweatshop worker is far more accurate. Currently, the foundry folks who are doing all this work for free are far more akin to a slave than one who would get paid a low wage for doing the same work.
PWE can't use contractors to do work that employees do without having substantial differences between job duties. They can't pay people less than minimum wage for work, and they have to comply with California and US labor laws, which among other things means they'd have to have valid employment contracts with these folks, give them benefits in accordance with other content artists, and pay them at least minimum wage.
80 bucks wouldn't get them a mission under those terms. It wouldn't get them a "kill five" with two text dialogs.
If you can give them any kind of orders at all, such as deadlines, quotas, requirements, they're employees. If you give them any compensation with a monetary value, except in very narrowly defined circumstances comprising a contest, they're employees. Same reason they can't compensate us moderators.
Former moderator of these forums. Lifetime sub since before launch. Been here since before public betas. Foundry author of "Franklin Drake Must Die".
The most Cryptic can do is compensate with game assets (items, dilithium, zen, gold sub, whatever).
I'm surprised they even allow "volunteers". After the UO debacle none does that anymore...unless they're very naive/benevolent or very cheap...
[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!!!
Also, the use of the word slave is inaccurate. Sweatshop worker is far more accurate. Currently, the foundry folks who are doing all this work for free are far more akin to a slave than one who would get paid a low wage for doing the same work.
It would only be better if participation is voluntary and limited participation doesn't cut you out of more participation later.
Though, frankly, I'd imagine that $1000 per mission would still be a substantial cost savings for Cryptic if the mission provided close to the equivalent value for Cryptic that an official mission did.
So if we're talking this game again, I really couldn't see less than $500: it needs to be, effectively, a low end living wage in a low cost of income area and it needs to be presented by Cryptic in such a way that players don't even know it's a Foundry mission, which also means placing content standards beyond what you normally see in a Foundry mission. There are certain tricks Foundry authors use that players should never see and, in particular, it has to be designed with the assumption that a team of 5 live players is playing it and none of the tricks are visible to any of the 5 players, regardless of where they are on the map.
I've written at length about this before. It's something Foundry authors tend to throw out the window but if you had a Foundry author or two designing official missions that will be dressed up to show up in the official tab, they need to be written so that no weird tricks can be seen by 5 live players regardless of whether they're where they should be, nobody can be trapped behind a wall even if 5 players are scattered around the map in unexpected places, etc.
It's not sharing your homebaked cookies at the fair if Cryptic did this. It is learning how to be a professional chef and embracing the added limitations and frustrations that go with that.
I'd do it for $500 a week, primarily because of where I live. But $80 is a pat on the head and a thank you, not a professional payrate for doing detail oriented professional work.
I agree. I'm not against the idea. At all. I'm in favor of improvements to the game that promote playing an RPG over resource gathering for the gameplay experience. So it's not me you're trying to convince here I don't think. It's the person I was originally replying to who likened 80 bucks to slave labor (though I stand by my assessment that it's more sweatshop labor than slave labor)?
The details can certainly change. Make it zen. Make it whatever. I'm fine with that.
That's nice - how about some actual content for STO - like Missions - the special quest is nice, but I want FE back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :mad:
That's nice - how about some actual content for STO - like Missions - the special quest is nice, but I want FE back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :mad:
Don't believe the misinformation; there are 40+ people working on STO. However, that increase to the dev team is fairly recent, it took time to bring them up to speed, and there's a significant lead time on new development. The fruits of the largest increases are what we should begin seeing soon; that's when we'll know if they've increased the team in a way that will give us substantive improvements, or not.
Former moderator of these forums. Lifetime sub since before launch. Been here since before public betas. Foundry author of "Franklin Drake Must Die".
They should not make any changes based upon anyone's posts in this specific thread. What they should do is realize that they have allowed a rude minority of people cause them to completely change the way they communicate with the well behaved majority of their community. And by allowing a vocal minority of people force them to change their policies, they have made themselves their slaves.
One change in policy makes them their slaves? Isn't that a bit... illogical?
I'd understand that POV if they repeatedly did so, but once, really? And then there's the whole 'trying to avoid abuse' angle I said earlier, which I feel makes their actions completely reasonable, even if it hasn't had the desired effect.
Was named Trek17.
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
40 Devs, imo, says it's possible that they beefed up KDF and Romulan as part of soft relaunch and major expansion.
40 ain't that many:
30: New lock boxes.
8: Fixing typos and misspellings in tooltips.
1: Fixing bugs.
1: New content.
:rolleyes:
jk... and it's funny because it's true :rolleyes:
Again, jk.
40 ain't that many:
30: New lock boxes.
8: Fixing typos and misspellings in tooltips.
1: Fixing bugs.
1: New content.
:rolleyes:
jk... and it's funny because it's true :rolleyes:
Again, jk.
:::singsong::: And a Tribble in a Maintenance Duct :::singsong:::
:::singsong::: And a Tribble in a Maintenance Duct :::singsong:::
ROFL. Wise tribble indeed. Hiding in the maintenance duct where the Tholians leave it alone.
That's that Christmas song that was copied after the Jewish PassOver, right?
[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!!!
Eh if the teams start getting the missing parts of the game in like KDF content, making the special iconic ships like defiant, retrofit b're/enhanced battle cloak, melee weapons, customizable kits, etc rolling on out then I would have nothing left to really want besides whatever they come out with. I just want to see them make this game feel more star trek... the lockboxes I know they gotta eat and pay the rent and stuff but when I play my characters I want to feel the immersion of Star Trek others can do as they wish but if its growing I want this to feel more like Star Trek.
At the end of the day you cant really fully blame Cryptic/PW for taking the easy route and allowing the game to limp along, if the majority of the playerbase are happy buying lockboxes and the increased constant grind has not stopped them doing that, then why should Cryptic/PW change course.
The needs of the many and all that................those of us that expected more will just have to do what we have been doing since we played all the present missions do death all those many moons ago...........log in now and again in the hope some actual new content other than repeated grind has been made.
Comments
really cause the dev's do pop in the forums from time to time....they jsut resently had a Q&A session...they are not alienating players....they are just not showing all their cards, and are going to keep what they working on a secret till we get closer to may.
I think those words lost all meaning a long time ago. :P
Course not. You do have some really good ideas in there and to solve them, once again I bring out territory control. You have your standard invasions, but you could also have trade and negotiation based deals. That by itself adds thousands of possibilities.
It would also give us plenty of stuff to do while Cryptic turns out story missions.
And I've said it before, and I've said it again. Cryptic needs to turn Foundry missions into real missions. Many are just that good.
Nay sayers gonna nay say.
Personaly if I were in charge the account server would be buggy, with things like account deletions or roll backs mysteriously affecting players..........
But I don't tolerate BS well.
Can't make everyone happy all of the time. And some people thing its their right to be made happy all of the time.
Not everything you see on the internet is true - Abraham Lincoln
Occidere populo et effercio confractus
First you acknowledge that they won't make mission content...then you try to devise ways for them to do it.
Sorry mate, but you tripped yourself.
I doubt Cryptic doesn't want or can't make mission content, it's probably very simple - they've gone over their numbers and the fiscal reality is that they don't see market in it that would provide sufficient ROI...compared to lock boxes and dilithium-sucking fleet goals (although that's a rather pyramid scheme like the real global economy - amount of ships you can churn out into the Star Trek universe is finite and once they run out of that they're facing collapse as they struggle to find new means to squeeze the byline out of).
Personally, I think it's fine focusing on systems over content...providing that those systems actually renders playable mechanics with replay value; procedurally generated content to a degree, if you shall (such as a healthy and active PvP community, or a lively PvE one).
Problem is that the current systems being introduced are merely additional treadmills, and you can only stockpile so many until the players quit to find more attractive treadmills (or press-benches) elsewhere - and take their friends with them.
___________________________
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 didn't want to post in this thread again, but this part of your post is astounding. Have you been working on a foundry mission lately? One good foundry mission can take up to 40h to make. Probably more for some specific and very long missions. That's just one week of work, and you want people to work on them with a schedule, delivery dates, for a full week of work for such a ridiculous amount of money?
This isn't even a compensation, it's alms. And not a decent one because you give more in proportion to homeless people playing music in the streets for 2-3 minutes of fun. I hope you never run a buisness, sir, because you'll learn the hard way that if you want people to keep working for you, and if you want them to work hard to deliver quality stuff, you have to pay them well. Which means really above the minimum wage.
Currently authors are providing content to cryptic for free. We do that on our leisure time, but if there's any schedule or pressure to deliver content, then it's a job and you have to pay people accodingly, not like slaves you give alms for their good work.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
If they change back now because of posts like this, isn't it the same thing?
80 bucks > Free?
Also, the use of the word slave is inaccurate. Sweatshop worker is far more accurate. Currently, the foundry folks who are doing all this work for free are far more akin to a slave than one who would get paid a low wage for doing the same work.
They should not make any changes based upon anyone's posts in this specific thread. What they should do is realize that they have allowed a rude minority of people cause them to completely change the way they communicate with the well behaved majority of their community. And by allowing a vocal minority of people force them to change their policies, they have made themselves their slaves.
PWE can't use contractors to do work that employees do without having substantial differences between job duties. They can't pay people less than minimum wage for work, and they have to comply with California and US labor laws, which among other things means they'd have to have valid employment contracts with these folks, give them benefits in accordance with other content artists, and pay them at least minimum wage.
80 bucks wouldn't get them a mission under those terms. It wouldn't get them a "kill five" with two text dialogs.
If you can give them any kind of orders at all, such as deadlines, quotas, requirements, they're employees. If you give them any compensation with a monetary value, except in very narrowly defined circumstances comprising a contest, they're employees. Same reason they can't compensate us moderators.
I'm surprised they even allow "volunteers". After the UO debacle none does that anymore...unless they're very naive/benevolent or very cheap...
___________________________
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!!!
Getting paid in Zen would work. Heh.
It would only be better if participation is voluntary and limited participation doesn't cut you out of more participation later.
Though, frankly, I'd imagine that $1000 per mission would still be a substantial cost savings for Cryptic if the mission provided close to the equivalent value for Cryptic that an official mission did.
So if we're talking this game again, I really couldn't see less than $500: it needs to be, effectively, a low end living wage in a low cost of income area and it needs to be presented by Cryptic in such a way that players don't even know it's a Foundry mission, which also means placing content standards beyond what you normally see in a Foundry mission. There are certain tricks Foundry authors use that players should never see and, in particular, it has to be designed with the assumption that a team of 5 live players is playing it and none of the tricks are visible to any of the 5 players, regardless of where they are on the map.
I've written at length about this before. It's something Foundry authors tend to throw out the window but if you had a Foundry author or two designing official missions that will be dressed up to show up in the official tab, they need to be written so that no weird tricks can be seen by 5 live players regardless of whether they're where they should be, nobody can be trapped behind a wall even if 5 players are scattered around the map in unexpected places, etc.
It's not sharing your homebaked cookies at the fair if Cryptic did this. It is learning how to be a professional chef and embracing the added limitations and frustrations that go with that.
I'd do it for $500 a week, primarily because of where I live. But $80 is a pat on the head and a thank you, not a professional payrate for doing detail oriented professional work.
If it's an option? Sure. Why not?
If it has mandatory participation and detailed rules beyond just using the Foundry, it needs to be an offsite job position/distance internship/etc.
I agree. I'm not against the idea. At all. I'm in favor of improvements to the game that promote playing an RPG over resource gathering for the gameplay experience. So it's not me you're trying to convince here I don't think. It's the person I was originally replying to who likened 80 bucks to slave labor (though I stand by my assessment that it's more sweatshop labor than slave labor)?
The details can certainly change. Make it zen. Make it whatever. I'm fine with that.
That's nice - how about some actual content for STO - like Missions - the special quest is nice, but I want FE back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :mad:
Don't believe the misinformation; there are 40+ people working on STO. However, that increase to the dev team is fairly recent, it took time to bring them up to speed, and there's a significant lead time on new development. The fruits of the largest increases are what we should begin seeing soon; that's when we'll know if they've increased the team in a way that will give us substantive improvements, or not.
I'd understand that POV if they repeatedly did so, but once, really? And then there's the whole 'trying to avoid abuse' angle I said earlier, which I feel makes their actions completely reasonable, even if it hasn't had the desired effect.
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
I enjoyed being wrong today.
40 Devs, imo, says it's possible that they beefed up KDF and Romulan as part of soft relaunch and major expansion.
40 ain't that many:
30: New lock boxes.
8: Fixing typos and misspellings in tooltips.
1: Fixing bugs.
1: New content.
:rolleyes:
jk... and it's funny because it's true :rolleyes:
Again, jk.
:::singsong::: And a Tribble in a Maintenance Duct :::singsong:::
ROFL. Wise tribble indeed. Hiding in the maintenance duct where the Tholians leave it alone.
That's that Christmas song that was copied after the Jewish PassOver, right?
___________________________
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!!!
*points at latest patchnotes*
4 lines
Balloon size nerf
2 new obsolete Buttons for the Event
and more copies of Q at the academies
not one actual bug fix, no nothing that matters, only some minor *current event*-tweaking.
still not feeling it bro
The needs of the many and all that................those of us that expected more will just have to do what we have been doing since we played all the present missions do death all those many moons ago...........log in now and again in the hope some actual new content other than repeated grind has been made.
We can only live in hope....anyway back to GW2.