1). Gated/forced content , players wanting more options in the content to get rewards. No one likes having to do same content over and over.
I don't know if this counts as "forced" content, but I think there's an overall sentiment that people feel like they are forced to play the game in certain ways that they feel is unjustified. Example - You must go through specific missions in order to get fleet marks, as opposed to the diversity offered by Investigate Officer Reports, or whatever substitute may be cooked up for the Foundry.
In fact arguably I think the fleet system is an example of it - yes, this is an MMO, but I for one also enjoy the single player aspects. I don't play story missions in a team, pretty much ever, and don't plan on starting. And I'm fine with PUGs for the most part. While I enjoy the fleets I'm a part of, I would enjoy the game without them, as well.
I think if something exemplifies the gated content frustration it is the Starbase system, really - think about it. Many of the best ships in the game are behind a 6-18 month grind, and now the devs are trying to make that even worse? That's not going to make friends and win people over, especially since, IMO, the ships go beyond simple gear - they tend to be a lot closer to an identity. TNG would have markedly changed, for instance, if the Enterprise abruptly changed class and name. And I don't think it'd be in a good way.
Personally I think that most of this can be worked through. Question is - are they willing to do it? I don't know. I hope so.
I see what you are saying though. Too much of the same thing. Sadly, bugs are all too common in this game. Heck, if they can't fix a bug, bring in an outsider so he can look at the code with fresh eyes.
It feels like they spend more time nerfing things and not enough time working out real bugs. I am sure they are smart people. Why can't these things be figured out already?
A while back I had a convo with someone about this. Cryptic, pretty much admits the game engine, is the same, or nearly so, across their games. They like it that way, for whatever reason. My thought is that some of these bugs are due to that inane insistence. The bugs are coming from things outside of STO. It also lends a bit of Credence as to why they can't fix them. They don't know WHAT is causing them.
I think that content is in the eye of beholder. Just because it has Cryptic's blessing isn't going to tell me its good. All the spotlighted missions have been played by branflakes and that's how they become spotlighted. I still think player driven ratings are better but if there was a better sorting UI people could filter for their mission style first and then by ratings.
Someone had proposed that the system that actually measure the average playtime to qualify a mission be used to categorize missions by playtime into buckets that you can filter. Authors could also choose diplomatic (story) or combat mission or both buckets to further filter the missions.
As it stands with searching either author or keyword it doesn't really do much and it sometimes even fails at doing that. Top Rated doesn't have an algorithm to analyze how many plays either so new missions that are highly rated end up higher on the list. Missions that have been played more or been out for a longer time need to be weighted heavier or a mission should be out for a prerequisite time period before it qualifies to be top rated or have at least minimum number of ratings.
One of the things that I proposed in my Rewards Revamp (see below link) was that ALL content in the game, including the Foundry, be given a Commendation Category designation that awarded CXP for that category, similar to Rescue Deferi Captives (Daily) which awards 10 Diplomatic CXP.
CXP can be converted to Fleet Marks after achieving Tier 4, which would then make all content in the game an indirect source of Fleet Marks.
If implented, then the UI in the Foundry could be tweaked to search on those Commendation Categories to find the type of content that players might be looking to play.
Star Trek Online Volunteer Community Moderator and Resident She-Wolf
Community Moderators are Unpaid Volunteers and NOT Employees of Gearbox/Cryptic
Views and Opinions May Not Reflect the Views and Opinions of Gearbox/Cryptic
Based on decades in management... and my experience running a successful business I am going to make the following observations:
1) Time Management: I don't think that internally Cryptic practices any form of time management. This shows in the sheer number of items that are not finished or unobtainable (Flamethrower, Robes for KDF, Android Officer, among others ) despite being promised is astounding. Brandon comes on here and via his blog postings and his links to other Dev postings... we are promised things that just never arrive. So what does a Cryptic Dev DO all day? It seems to me three months is more than enough time to finish a flamethrower code or to install uniform options on the KDF side.... I don't think the leaders monitor their workers... who do NOT stay on task... resulting in yet another half-baked mostly unfinished season. Getting four consecutive Romulan Data Chips that state "PLACEHOLDER TEXT -- STORY GOES HERE" turned me off to the history collection REAL quick. Projects need to be completed on time, or the season needs to be delayed. I would have rather waited an extra month and a half for a FINISHED WORKABLE Season Seven rather than what we have now.
2) Quality Assurance: My question to Cryptic and I really would like an answer: Do you test internally? At all? After seeing the severity of the bugs in this latest patch... I really would like to learn all about your internal process. This is something that I can actually help you with, should you care to improve. If you wish to hire a Quality Engineer, please contact me!
Lets look at it from the player POV: A) Broken major healing power that jams controls for 120 sec, and totally screws up cloak and any sort of "transform" or "mode switch" power. Promised store unlocks... not available after unlocking the store.
How did you not notice that the unlocks in the store were not hooked up? I'm not criticizing I'm genuinely curious! Do devs self-check their code segments before integrating? What about after Or does someone check the code and send it back for further tuning? Does anyone check the game on a production build?
What about the starship powers that are broken? Did no one sit down and run a handful of missions on both factions? The lockout glitch was discovered by me within ten min of patching. First mission I ran. The cloak and transform glitches shortly thereafter. Would have taken an internal tester the same amount of time... and the code could have been adjusted or not released.
Same thing with the store unlocks. Did no one fire up the game, run the unlock mission and alert the Dev that the store wasn't stocking? Apparently not.
Finally, we warn you via Tribble that something is broken -- I've seen it happen -- yet the next day the patch releases and breaks the game. Why not stop the patch release and fix what we discovered? I don't think you have an internal process to get the Tribble info to someone who can abort the live-patch in time to avoid breaking the game.
In order to fix this, you need a dedicated playtest team. You need to test on the actual live environment under real-world conditions. Not just your ultra-tuned totally debugged internal Dev shard. Finally you need to release patches to Tribble a week to two weeks before "live" and put a process in place to abort patch release if the testers discover broken stuff.
3) Old Bugs: This goes with the above questions and observations. I know I've submitted tickets on the Romulan and Klingon weapon glitches for the plot missions. I did so back in Season Five, and I submit tickets every few months. I've talked to Das Overflake and I've emailed Dan... problem is untouched.
Is there a process in place, or anyone even assigned to fix long-standing bugs? Does not look like it. Ties into time management above. Time needs to be dedicated to fixing what is already broken before releasing more broken content.
4) Lastly and this is a personal call -- feel free to disregard. There is a distinct lack of creativity in this game. Plasma Beams, Plasma Torpedoes, Omega Plasma, Plasma Energy Bolts, Plasma Riders, Plasma Consoles... do I need to go on? We also have multiple colored-cloud dispensers that all basically do the same thing. Theta, Warp Plasma, Tetyron Plasma, and the gas canisters on the Regent.
We have beams. We have pulses. We have torpedo. We have mines. There are other weapons in the Star Trek universe -- Merculite Rockets for example. What about really primitive weapons like X-ray pulse lasers and NPB beams? Dual-cannon turrets? Voyager had a IsoKinetic Cannon. This is where other Trek games shined... Unique gimmicks and abilities above and beyond the standard pew pew.
I would like to see more variety in weapons going forward. And for the love of all that's important PLEASE give plasma and cloud-dispensers a break for awhile!
My final thoughts on the matter are this: The fan outrage isn't just about the fleet-marks. You dumped a massively broken patch on us for a three day weekend and made no attempt to roll it back. I would have tolerated the fleet-mark nonsense grudgingly... but on top of being unable to play my favorite ships for WHO KNOWS how long -- it's intolerable.
It all comes down to listening to your fans. We are fed up with the lack of quality assurance and we are fed up with the heavy-handed adjustments and nerfing of the reward systems.
Please. Fix. This.
Listen to this devs, your loyal trusting customers will stop spending.....
By the way you don't supply beef to Finda's do you?!
Where ever you go, there you are.......
Join The Space Invaders,..... Federation and KDF fleets.
I see what you are saying though. Too much of the same thing. Sadly, bugs are all too common in this game. Heck, if they can't fix a bug, bring in an outsider so he can look at the code with fresh eyes.
It feels like they spend more time nerfing things and not enough time working out real bugs. I am sure they are smart people. Why can't these things be figured out already?
Seniority and corporate inbreeding. Basically the folks who are "senior" have it their way right away to the exclusion of everything and everyone else. Of course this is my opinion, as I explained above... based on decades of experience dealing with these problems.
What I speculate happens is: Senior Dev is tasked with "develop some new weapons for the Borg and Romulan Rep Systems." We get one unique weapon -- the cutting beam. And we get half a dozen "plasma" weapons. All basically the same. Rates of fire are slightly different. DPS, minor differences. Different animations. All do DOT. All have the same plasma-fire effect. Basically someone copy-pasted code, made a few adjustments and went home. Meanwhile Junior Dev watches Star Trek, and comes up with an idea for a Vulcan Pulsewave Torpedo (mentioned in DS9). He outlines the idea, codes up an initial concept and tests it. He also develops a Photonic Cannon and an Isokenitic Cannon, develops those and submits the package.
The Boss signs off on the Senior Dev's package without looking at it, and disregards the Junior Dev's concepts. I speculate this is how we ended up with multiple cloud dispensers too. "Make a unique power for the new run-about." Copy-paste the Theta Vent console, change the text, alter the DPS and recolor it. Runabouts are Space Tugboats... I would have liked to seen a grappling mode or a push mode. Fly at a target, latch on to it and drag it/push it across the screen for 15 seconds. Larger targets would lose turn-rate or be unable to turn at all. THAT sort of idea can't be implemented between episodes of Adventure Time after a three martini lunch though.
A lot of talent has departed. And with it, the ability to manipulate existing code. Those who remain are obviously not communicating with each other or the new folks... and they are disregarding basic QA/QC protocols. As above, I would not be surprised if someone is just rubber-stamping code changes and bypassing any sort of check/balance in place. BOSS: "Well if it came from Bob, it's beyond fault. He's been here the longest."
This is all for nothing though. Cryptic isn't going to change for us. We're stuck with what we have until it closes down and an new company tries again in 5-7 years.
181 pages D-Stahl. Isn't it about time you all re-thought this, like you did for STF Dilith?
These are just the people taking time to post, there's even mroe resentment in game.
Tieberion, Captain of the USS Excalibur NX-97000-B
181 pages D-Stahl. Isn't it about time you all re-thought this, like you did for STF Dilith?
These are just the people taking time to post, there's even mroe resentment in game.
there are still people logging on to the game who are just finding out about this. I tell them the IOR is gone and they think I am trolling them.
No, I am not who you think I am. I am someone different. I am instead a banana.
Sometimes when you do a hull heal, you get a 2 minute cooldown on ALL abilities. You cannot do anything except maneuver. Your shields will not regen either. You are basically a sitting duck.
This happened to me after we destroyed a ship and I was clicking abilities to recover. I clicked my hull heal and poof! 2 min cd on everything.
No, I am not who you think I am. I am someone different. I am instead a banana.
Basically Engineering Team in combination with BO and certain other powers locks everything into a 120 second cooldown cycle... rendering your ship inert.
If you play KDF, Engineering Team will drop your cloak and cause your Siege Destroyer to transform and dump the Javelin Charge you were collecting.
I've been able to get the lockout bug to occur with other combinations besides Engineering Team but no one is listening. I used Haz II and Cannon Rapid Fire and got locked out. Friend of mine reports Sci Team and FAW caused a lockout as well.
Imo, removing Ior unless it was made a 24 hour daily instead of redoable every 30mins is a good call. The main problem is the only other source of fleet marks is the events and another daily, there needs to be something else which requires effort yet is also semi-repeatable.
Because, lets be honest, how many of you actually played through a non-farming (Or 2 button finish) foundry mission every 30 minutes for your IOR completion?
Sometimes when you do a hull heal, you get a 2 minute cooldown on ALL abilities. You cannot do anything except maneuver. Your shields will not regen either. You are basically a sitting duck.
This happened to me after we destroyed a ship and I was clicking abilities to recover. I clicked my hull heal and poof! 2 min cd on everything.
Hmmm, I have had a couple of bugs, one being the not able to do anything while my ship randomly takes control of itself until I untarget, which is the one you describe and an another where my Vet ship wont change modes halfway through a battle for some reason.
Might be linked to the same bug....
Because, lets be honest, how many of you actually played through a non-farming (Or 2 button finish) foundry mission every 30 minutes for your IOR completion?
I don't think anyone disagrees that the IOR was abused. The problem is that they strip the IOR out and have nothing to substitute those marks with while they (Dstahl) admits everyone is hurting for fleet marks.
That, coupled with the usual Cryptic "we'll have something to fix this in May!" really angered the torches&pitchforks crowd. (Which includes me. Got my pitchfork right here.)
I've got quite a few fleet members experiencing the following issues:
1 - Two members are using Beam Overload with 1 Dual Beam Bank and 3 DHCs. When they use the ability, the DMG sometimes swaps with the cannons, so they'll do a 4k shot with the Dual Beam Bank but their DHCs do 20k+ dmg per hit. They've managed to one shot cubes, but it's not happening all the time, just on and off. It's a nice bug, but still a bug.
2 - Many members are experiencing a bug where when they change ship they cannot assign any of their BoFFs. They've changed zones, logged off, changed ship and done about everything that normally fixes this bug. Now their characters are unplayable and has been like it for days. The same thing has happened to my wife and she cannot play her main character anymore as it's been like it for 3 days.
So when it comes down to it Mr Stahl. It's not just the FM's that's the problem, or even just the bugs alone, the whole game needs to be looked at again and worked on & patched up to a standard which your consumer deserves. Stop throwing new ships at us, lockboxes and new outfits, that stuff can come later when we have a stable game.
Because, lets be honest, how many of you actually played through a non-farming (Or 2 button finish) foundry mission every 30 minutes for your IOR completion?
And why is that a problem? Exactly the same thing was being done whilst IOR was a daily - so what did Cryptic do? Make it a repeatable!
Cryptic was well aware of the potential to maximize the reward and minimize the effort with the Foundry (I refuse to call it exploiting because it wasn't) - they just didn't care - for a while - and now they do.
About rewards anyway - not the players or the Foundry authors.
Sometimes when you do a hull heal, you get a 2 minute cooldown on ALL abilities. You cannot do anything except maneuver. Your shields will not regen either. You are basically a sitting duck.
This happened to me after we destroyed a ship and I was clicking abilities to recover. I clicked my hull heal and poof! 2 min cd on everything.
At least you could maneuver. It happened to me and I couldn't even do that. Couldn't turn, couldn't throttle up, couldn't redist shields, nothing. Sitting duck is an understatement. This happened to me on Friday morning. By some strange coincidence, it coincides rather closely with my first post in this thread.
Nice! Is that the O-MFG-Industries Rage Master-900 from Bloodbath And Beyond? I'm more of a torch-lass. Check THIS out: the WTFBBQ-4500! Dual halogen illumination and oxyfuel pillage-and-burn mode with the Swedish Design comfort-grip. :cool:
So when it comes down to it Mr Stahl. It's not just the FM's that's the problem, or even just the bugs alone, the whole game needs to be looked at again and worked on & patched up to a standard which your consumer deserves. Stop throwing new ships at us, lockboxes and new outfits, that stuff can come later when we have a stable game.
I've got quite a few fleet members experiencing the following issues:
1 - Two members are using Beam Overload with 1 Dual Beam Bank and 3 DHCs. When they use the ability, the DMG sometimes swaps with the cannons, so they'll do a 4k shot with the Dual Beam Bank but their DHCs do 20k+ dmg per hit. They've managed to one shot cubes, but it's not happening all the time, just on and off. It's a nice bug, but still a bug.
2 - Many members are experiencing a bug where when they change ship they cannot assign any of their BoFFs. They've changed zones, logged off, changed ship and done about everything that normally fixes this bug. Now their characters are unplayable and has been like it for days. The same thing has happened to my wife and she cannot play her main character anymore as it's been like it for 3 days.
So when it comes down to it Mr Stahl. It's not just the FM's that's the problem, or even just the bugs alone, the whole game needs to be looked at again and worked on & patched up to a standard which your consumer deserves. Stop throwing new ships at us, lockboxes and new outfits, that stuff can come later when we have a stable game.
Well to be fair, the inherent problems with cryptic are cumulative. Meaning, the palyerbase were building up to this point with every bad decision cryptic make. The latest is just the last straw broke the camel's back so to speak and we are now seeing what 3 years of ups and downs have created...
Nice! Is that the O-MFG-Industries Rage Master-900 from Bloodbath And Beyond? I'm more of a torch-lass. Check THIS out: the WTFBBQ-4500! Dual halogen illumination and oxyfuel pillage-and-burn mode with the Swedish Design comfort-grip. :cool:
Sadly, I can only afford either the pitchfork or the torch.
I'm hoping that now that I won't be purchasing any zen, I'll be able to join the torch-owning community soon.
In all seriousness thou - can't believe there hasn't been a further dev comment on this. Not to mention an apology for what has to be the single most borked up patch in the history of STO.
So when it comes down to it Mr Stahl. It's not just the FM's that's the problem, or even just the bugs alone, the whole game needs to be looked at again and worked on & patched up to a standard which your consumer deserves. Stop throwing new ships at us, lockboxes and new outfits, that stuff can come later when we have a stable game.
Because, lets be honest, how many of you actually played through a non-farming (Or 2 button finish) foundry mission every 30 minutes for your IOR completion?
I did, and I normally didn't run IOR more than once daily. I had other things I needed to accomplish. Did I run grinders sometimes? Sure. I also ran other things too as MY time permitted... in an earlier post I even mentioned The Corsairs as a story mission I particularly enjoyed running. IOR on a 30 minute CD was brain-dead stupidity. That doesn't make their solution any more intelligent.
Well to be fair, the inherent problems with cryptic are cumulative. Meaning, the palyerbase were building up to this point with every bad decision cryptic make. The latest is just the last straw broke the camel's back so to speak and we are now seeing what 3 years of ups and downs have created...
Yeah, it's essentially turning into a snowball effect. Now I understand that all games will have bugs, it's gonna happen. But there are some bugs which I feel can be avoided or dealt with faster. Personally I don't feel Cryptic have a strong testing phase and don't seem to make a lot of use out of their Tribble server.
I came from FFXI which I played for 8 years. So I'm use to a game where you'd probably get some new major content on average every 6 months minimum and the rest of the time would be spent addressing any bugs or exploits that show up in the game, but they wouldn't be as noticeable as what I see in STO. If they spent more time working on what we already have and slow down the amount of new content they keep chucking out I.E. ships, outfits, lockboxes etc, I'd be very content. Sometimes it's just nice to settle into a game and any MMO should have enough content to keep people entertained and having fun for at least 6 months before they need to release any other major content IMO.
In all seriousness thou - can't believe there hasn't been a further dev comment on this. Not to mention an apology for what has to be the single most borked up patch in the history of STO.
Its a long Holiday weekend, some of them probably also took Friday off to make it 4 days. We will likely not be hearing anything until tomorrow morning at the earliest.
Anyway...Power to the People! Keep up The Good Fight!
the maneuver bug is older than this patch. if you are destroyed and you respawn, often times you are still targeting a ship and if you are when you respawn, your ship will not respond. if you untarget, it gives you back control. an easy remedy, but still an annoying bug.
No, I am not who you think I am. I am someone different. I am instead a banana.
the maneuver bug is older than this patch. if you are destroyed and you respawn, often times you are still targeting a ship and if you are when you respawn, your ship will not respond. if you untarget, it gives you back control. an easy remedy, but still an annoying bug.
It seems that is the direction they are heading. If the players can come up with an easy enough 'remedy' they mark it as fixed.
Nice! Is that the O-MFG-Industries Rage Master-900 from Bloodbath And Beyond? I'm more of a torch-lass. Check THIS out: the WTFBBQ-4500! Dual halogen illumination and oxyfuel pillage-and-burn mode with the Swedish Design comfort-grip. :cool:
*casts Flaming Hand of Fiery Doom at Stahl*
Jack Emmert: "Starfleet and Klingon. ... So two factions, full PvE content." Al Rivera hates Klingons Star Trek Online: Agents of Jack Emmert All cloaks should be canon.
While on the subject of old annoying bugs how long has the revive bug been in the game for now?
Y'Know the one where you go to revive someone in ground combat, get half way through it and it stops and you have to start all over again. This can be infuriating at times AND ITS STILL NOT FIXED!
Comments
I don't know if this counts as "forced" content, but I think there's an overall sentiment that people feel like they are forced to play the game in certain ways that they feel is unjustified. Example - You must go through specific missions in order to get fleet marks, as opposed to the diversity offered by Investigate Officer Reports, or whatever substitute may be cooked up for the Foundry.
In fact arguably I think the fleet system is an example of it - yes, this is an MMO, but I for one also enjoy the single player aspects. I don't play story missions in a team, pretty much ever, and don't plan on starting. And I'm fine with PUGs for the most part. While I enjoy the fleets I'm a part of, I would enjoy the game without them, as well.
I think if something exemplifies the gated content frustration it is the Starbase system, really - think about it. Many of the best ships in the game are behind a 6-18 month grind, and now the devs are trying to make that even worse? That's not going to make friends and win people over, especially since, IMO, the ships go beyond simple gear - they tend to be a lot closer to an identity. TNG would have markedly changed, for instance, if the Enterprise abruptly changed class and name. And I don't think it'd be in a good way.
Personally I think that most of this can be worked through. Question is - are they willing to do it? I don't know. I hope so.
A while back I had a convo with someone about this. Cryptic, pretty much admits the game engine, is the same, or nearly so, across their games. They like it that way, for whatever reason. My thought is that some of these bugs are due to that inane insistence. The bugs are coming from things outside of STO. It also lends a bit of Credence as to why they can't fix them. They don't know WHAT is causing them.
Just my thought on it at least.
One of the things that I proposed in my Rewards Revamp (see below link) was that ALL content in the game, including the Foundry, be given a Commendation Category designation that awarded CXP for that category, similar to Rescue Deferi Captives (Daily) which awards 10 Diplomatic CXP.
CXP can be converted to Fleet Marks after achieving Tier 4, which would then make all content in the game an indirect source of Fleet Marks.
If implented, then the UI in the Foundry could be tweaked to search on those Commendation Categories to find the type of content that players might be looking to play.
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1) Time Management: I don't think that internally Cryptic practices any form of time management. This shows in the sheer number of items that are not finished or unobtainable (Flamethrower, Robes for KDF, Android Officer, among others ) despite being promised is astounding. Brandon comes on here and via his blog postings and his links to other Dev postings... we are promised things that just never arrive. So what does a Cryptic Dev DO all day? It seems to me three months is more than enough time to finish a flamethrower code or to install uniform options on the KDF side.... I don't think the leaders monitor their workers... who do NOT stay on task... resulting in yet another half-baked mostly unfinished season. Getting four consecutive Romulan Data Chips that state "PLACEHOLDER TEXT -- STORY GOES HERE" turned me off to the history collection REAL quick. Projects need to be completed on time, or the season needs to be delayed. I would have rather waited an extra month and a half for a FINISHED WORKABLE Season Seven rather than what we have now.
2) Quality Assurance: My question to Cryptic and I really would like an answer: Do you test internally? At all? After seeing the severity of the bugs in this latest patch... I really would like to learn all about your internal process. This is something that I can actually help you with, should you care to improve. If you wish to hire a Quality Engineer, please contact me!
Lets look at it from the player POV: A) Broken major healing power that jams controls for 120 sec, and totally screws up cloak and any sort of "transform" or "mode switch" power.
How did you not notice that the unlocks in the store were not hooked up? I'm not criticizing I'm genuinely curious! Do devs self-check their code segments before integrating? What about after Or does someone check the code and send it back for further tuning? Does anyone check the game on a production build?
What about the starship powers that are broken? Did no one sit down and run a handful of missions on both factions? The lockout glitch was discovered by me within ten min of patching. First mission I ran. The cloak and transform glitches shortly thereafter. Would have taken an internal tester the same amount of time... and the code could have been adjusted or not released.
Same thing with the store unlocks. Did no one fire up the game, run the unlock mission and alert the Dev that the store wasn't stocking? Apparently not.
Finally, we warn you via Tribble that something is broken -- I've seen it happen -- yet the next day the patch releases and breaks the game. Why not stop the patch release and fix what we discovered? I don't think you have an internal process to get the Tribble info to someone who can abort the live-patch in time to avoid breaking the game.
In order to fix this, you need a dedicated playtest team. You need to test on the actual live environment under real-world conditions. Not just your ultra-tuned totally debugged internal Dev shard. Finally you need to release patches to Tribble a week to two weeks before "live" and put a process in place to abort patch release if the testers discover broken stuff.
3) Old Bugs: This goes with the above questions and observations. I know I've submitted tickets on the Romulan and Klingon weapon glitches for the plot missions. I did so back in Season Five, and I submit tickets every few months. I've talked to Das Overflake and I've emailed Dan... problem is untouched.
Is there a process in place, or anyone even assigned to fix long-standing bugs? Does not look like it. Ties into time management above. Time needs to be dedicated to fixing what is already broken before releasing more broken content.
4) Lastly and this is a personal call -- feel free to disregard. There is a distinct lack of creativity in this game. Plasma Beams, Plasma Torpedoes, Omega Plasma, Plasma Energy Bolts, Plasma Riders, Plasma Consoles... do I need to go on? We also have multiple colored-cloud dispensers that all basically do the same thing. Theta, Warp Plasma, Tetyron Plasma, and the gas canisters on the Regent.
We have beams. We have pulses. We have torpedo. We have mines. There are other weapons in the Star Trek universe -- Merculite Rockets for example. What about really primitive weapons like X-ray pulse lasers and NPB beams? Dual-cannon turrets? Voyager had a IsoKinetic Cannon. This is where other Trek games shined... Unique gimmicks and abilities above and beyond the standard pew pew.
I would like to see more variety in weapons going forward. And for the love of all that's important PLEASE give plasma and cloud-dispensers a break for awhile!
My final thoughts on the matter are this: The fan outrage isn't just about the fleet-marks. You dumped a massively broken patch on us for a three day weekend and made no attempt to roll it back. I would have tolerated the fleet-mark nonsense grudgingly... but on top of being unable to play my favorite ships for WHO KNOWS how long -- it's intolerable.
It all comes down to listening to your fans. We are fed up with the lack of quality assurance and we are fed up with the heavy-handed adjustments and nerfing of the reward systems.
Please. Fix. This.
Listen to this devs, your loyal trusting customers will stop spending.....
By the way you don't supply beef to Finda's do you?!
Join The Space Invaders,..... Federation and KDF fleets.
Seniority and corporate inbreeding. Basically the folks who are "senior" have it their way right away to the exclusion of everything and everyone else. Of course this is my opinion, as I explained above... based on decades of experience dealing with these problems.
What I speculate happens is: Senior Dev is tasked with "develop some new weapons for the Borg and Romulan Rep Systems." We get one unique weapon -- the cutting beam. And we get half a dozen "plasma" weapons. All basically the same. Rates of fire are slightly different. DPS, minor differences. Different animations. All do DOT. All have the same plasma-fire effect. Basically someone copy-pasted code, made a few adjustments and went home. Meanwhile Junior Dev watches Star Trek, and comes up with an idea for a Vulcan Pulsewave Torpedo (mentioned in DS9). He outlines the idea, codes up an initial concept and tests it. He also develops a Photonic Cannon and an Isokenitic Cannon, develops those and submits the package.
The Boss signs off on the Senior Dev's package without looking at it, and disregards the Junior Dev's concepts. I speculate this is how we ended up with multiple cloud dispensers too. "Make a unique power for the new run-about." Copy-paste the Theta Vent console, change the text, alter the DPS and recolor it. Runabouts are Space Tugboats... I would have liked to seen a grappling mode or a push mode. Fly at a target, latch on to it and drag it/push it across the screen for 15 seconds. Larger targets would lose turn-rate or be unable to turn at all. THAT sort of idea can't be implemented between episodes of Adventure Time after a three martini lunch though.
A lot of talent has departed. And with it, the ability to manipulate existing code. Those who remain are obviously not communicating with each other or the new folks... and they are disregarding basic QA/QC protocols. As above, I would not be surprised if someone is just rubber-stamping code changes and bypassing any sort of check/balance in place. BOSS: "Well if it came from Bob, it's beyond fault. He's been here the longest."
This is all for nothing though. Cryptic isn't going to change for us. We're stuck with what we have until it closes down and an new company tries again in 5-7 years.
I'm guessing..... no.
These are just the people taking time to post, there's even mroe resentment in game.
there are still people logging on to the game who are just finding out about this. I tell them the IOR is gone and they think I am trolling them.
Sometimes when you do a hull heal, you get a 2 minute cooldown on ALL abilities. You cannot do anything except maneuver. Your shields will not regen either. You are basically a sitting duck.
This happened to me after we destroyed a ship and I was clicking abilities to recover. I clicked my hull heal and poof! 2 min cd on everything.
Yup, had a fleet member log on last night asking the same question. They too thought we were pulling their leg until they saw it for themselves.....
Basically Engineering Team in combination with BO and certain other powers locks everything into a 120 second cooldown cycle... rendering your ship inert.
If you play KDF, Engineering Team will drop your cloak and cause your Siege Destroyer to transform and dump the Javelin Charge you were collecting.
I've been able to get the lockout bug to occur with other combinations besides Engineering Team but no one is listening. I used Haz II and Cannon Rapid Fire and got locked out. Friend of mine reports Sci Team and FAW caused a lockout as well.
Because, lets be honest, how many of you actually played through a non-farming (Or 2 button finish) foundry mission every 30 minutes for your IOR completion?
Hmmm, I have had a couple of bugs, one being the not able to do anything while my ship randomly takes control of itself until I untarget, which is the one you describe and an another where my Vet ship wont change modes halfway through a battle for some reason.
Might be linked to the same bug....
I don't think anyone disagrees that the IOR was abused. The problem is that they strip the IOR out and have nothing to substitute those marks with while they (Dstahl) admits everyone is hurting for fleet marks.
That, coupled with the usual Cryptic "we'll have something to fix this in May!" really angered the torches&pitchforks crowd. (Which includes me. Got my pitchfork right here.)
1 - Two members are using Beam Overload with 1 Dual Beam Bank and 3 DHCs. When they use the ability, the DMG sometimes swaps with the cannons, so they'll do a 4k shot with the Dual Beam Bank but their DHCs do 20k+ dmg per hit. They've managed to one shot cubes, but it's not happening all the time, just on and off. It's a nice bug, but still a bug.
2 - Many members are experiencing a bug where when they change ship they cannot assign any of their BoFFs. They've changed zones, logged off, changed ship and done about everything that normally fixes this bug. Now their characters are unplayable and has been like it for days. The same thing has happened to my wife and she cannot play her main character anymore as it's been like it for 3 days.
So when it comes down to it Mr Stahl. It's not just the FM's that's the problem, or even just the bugs alone, the whole game needs to be looked at again and worked on & patched up to a standard which your consumer deserves. Stop throwing new ships at us, lockboxes and new outfits, that stuff can come later when we have a stable game.
And why is that a problem? Exactly the same thing was being done whilst IOR was a daily - so what did Cryptic do? Make it a repeatable!
Cryptic was well aware of the potential to maximize the reward and minimize the effort with the Foundry (I refuse to call it exploiting because it wasn't) - they just didn't care - for a while - and now they do.
About rewards anyway - not the players or the Foundry authors.
At least you could maneuver. It happened to me and I couldn't even do that. Couldn't turn, couldn't throttle up, couldn't redist shields, nothing. Sitting duck is an understatement. This happened to me on Friday morning. By some strange coincidence, it coincides rather closely with my first post in this thread.
Nice! Is that the O-MFG-Industries Rage Master-900 from Bloodbath And Beyond? I'm more of a torch-lass. Check THIS out: the WTFBBQ-4500! Dual halogen illumination and oxyfuel pillage-and-burn mode with the Swedish Design comfort-grip. :cool:
Also signed by The Marie.
Well to be fair, the inherent problems with cryptic are cumulative. Meaning, the palyerbase were building up to this point with every bad decision cryptic make. The latest is just the last straw broke the camel's back so to speak and we are now seeing what 3 years of ups and downs have created...
Sadly, I can only afford either the pitchfork or the torch.
I'm hoping that now that I won't be purchasing any zen, I'll be able to join the torch-owning community soon.
In all seriousness thou - can't believe there hasn't been a further dev comment on this. Not to mention an apology for what has to be the single most borked up patch in the history of STO.
Also signed by Tilliou
I did, and I normally didn't run IOR more than once daily. I had other things I needed to accomplish. Did I run grinders sometimes? Sure. I also ran other things too as MY time permitted... in an earlier post I even mentioned The Corsairs as a story mission I particularly enjoyed running. IOR on a 30 minute CD was brain-dead stupidity. That doesn't make their solution any more intelligent.
Yeah, it's essentially turning into a snowball effect. Now I understand that all games will have bugs, it's gonna happen. But there are some bugs which I feel can be avoided or dealt with faster. Personally I don't feel Cryptic have a strong testing phase and don't seem to make a lot of use out of their Tribble server.
I came from FFXI which I played for 8 years. So I'm use to a game where you'd probably get some new major content on average every 6 months minimum and the rest of the time would be spent addressing any bugs or exploits that show up in the game, but they wouldn't be as noticeable as what I see in STO. If they spent more time working on what we already have and slow down the amount of new content they keep chucking out I.E. ships, outfits, lockboxes etc, I'd be very content. Sometimes it's just nice to settle into a game and any MMO should have enough content to keep people entertained and having fun for at least 6 months before they need to release any other major content IMO.
Its a long Holiday weekend, some of them probably also took Friday off to make it 4 days. We will likely not be hearing anything until tomorrow morning at the earliest.
Anyway...Power to the People! Keep up The Good Fight!
It seems that is the direction they are heading. If the players can come up with an easy enough 'remedy' they mark it as fixed.
*casts Flaming Hand of Fiery Doom at Stahl*
Al Rivera hates Klingons
Star Trek Online: Agents of Jack Emmert
All cloaks should be canon.
Y'Know the one where you go to revive someone in ground combat, get half way through it and it stops and you have to start all over again. This can be infuriating at times AND ITS STILL NOT FIXED!