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Podcast UGC Interviews CaptainGeko
pwebranflakes
Member Posts: 7,741
In this week's episode of Podcast UGC, Lead Designer Al "CaptainGeko" Rivera stops by to chat about Legacy of Romulus and answer community submitted questions.
Link to the interview.
Link to the interview.
Post edited by pwebranflakes on
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Guess I'm not getting any homework done tonight.
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them."
-Thomas Marrone
2) my question about the starbase interior was because it sucks to zone into the starbase zone then beam to your starbase just to get queued up for something just to have to zone and beam back in to your starbase afterwards. I realize that the starbase instance is closed but if you where on the starbase originally why can't it pretend that you are at the very least beaming back to the starbase again
3) geko is one of the best person to be interviewed because a) he knows a lot of answers and b) he knows how to craft a response and c) has a bladder that can handle a 4 hr interview
4) my other question about "whether we can expect as much content in the future" wasn't answered how I wished. Probably because I don't quite understand how you could make as much content in the past 6 months. I thought it was through hiring. If it was then I don't understand how come you cannot continue. I understand you guys have been working yourself to death to get this out but all this productivity can't all be overtime.
5) ban the exploiters. It hurts your bottomlife and deflates the value of dilithium for everyone.
I'm not trying to make a point. I would just like to know if Podcast UGC's epic 4 hour interview has the slightest relevance for UGC.
I see 2 show notes that have anything to do with the Foundry. Any chance someone could give me the time stamps of those UGC moments of Podcast UGC?
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them."
-Thomas Marrone
Scrapping it from the game totally? Those pushing for it and the Jupiter on the C-Store are going to be disappointed.
What?? No! Why? They already took the Jupiter out of the game, why the Typhoon? You would think with all the threads that have been around since the launch of the game asking for it to be playable, they would at least keep it in as an NPC...
About 3 hours in or so.
Actually, the Jupiter is alive and well. All the dreadnoughts in "Fleet Alert" are Jupiters.
I guess completely scrapping the Typhoon would be a bit cruel. But if they at least added alternative skins, I could live with that.
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them."
-Thomas Marrone
I wouldn't be too concerned about what a developer says on a non-official website. Cryptic created this situation themselves with the update on February 14th. More than two months later they haven't rolled back that update or even attempted to shut down the foundry which sends a clear signal they don't really care. If they were to start punishing their customers for their own faulty implementation of game mechanics, I predict a serious public relations issue and they have never done anything remotely that stupid on earlier occasions. They fix the error, leave their customers alone and prepare for another currency conversion to clean up the mess.
I usually played less then 1 foundry mission per month, but now i know to avoid them like a plague.
I like my typhoons as they are... what could be better?
I agree. It felt like listening to a stubborn child who keeps nagging until he gets his ice cream cone...
While there was a bit of interesting stuff in that interview - less then out of the average, monthly "ask cryptic" -, it mostly just seemed like a four-hour platform for the interviewers to present their ideas as to where the game was supposed to be headed, reheating a lot of stuff from the last interview, while not really being interested in getting information out of Gecko that might have been interesting to the whole community.
Everyone was content to do 3 missions in return for their dil, then cryptic remove that and make it dil per mission, and that's when the grinds started in earnest..
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
My opinions are my own, and do not represent those of Perfect World Entertainment, or Cryptic Studios
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Geko is referring to a very blatant exploit that appeared in the last couple of weeks. If you don't know what I'm talking about, don't worry about it.
I found him a bit harsh with his statement-its just an observation and quite happy to be proven wrong.
Another point raised on the podcast -How the Romulan Republic getting the ships?
Why is it hard to understand why the Romulan Republic has access to the Naval ships of the Romulan Fleet?
On the canon side we have Romulan Fleet commanders willing to support a Human Clone and his slave Remans overthrowing the legitmate senate.
I think with Romulus gone-you would have situation where fleet and squadron commanders would look to flock to the various factions based on long standing loyalties- incentives of power etc. I can imagine Selas use of Hirogen and borg tech-might not sit well with Romulan commanders as well.
They may not fully support D'tans goals in the long run -but hes a far better alternative to Sela and the Tal Shiar. Throw in the other methods mentioned in game and its viable.
It was a good chat and I did learn alot.
Lol, thought I was the only one who notice that....in my head I was like dude you know nothing so you should not be telling her you know more, everyone plays video games differently, because we are like snowflakes.
The cstore neg'var has been talked about for well over 1 1/2 years.
Heretic was working on it before the doff system.
I wouldn't put too much thought into it. When released it won't have that "two years development time" feel to it
the 14th of February is a bit more than a couple weeks ago.
9 Episodes = 30+ episodes...?
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
It's pronounced "S.T.O." "Stow" sounds idiotic! lol
I am never listening to this podcast again because of this Arrogant person. How dare he jump all over gecko's back on the Alien gen thing for 30 min. He sent him a 3 page e-mail, over a 2 hour tweet barrage, 2 podcast attacks on the issue?? WTF - Gecko you are a hero for putting up with this person - out and out attacking you and telling you that you were wrong for that lenght of time. I would have walked out on this TRIBBLE - you were calm and put up with it.
Gecko I would completely back you if you refused to ever go back to these people without an official apology for his behavior!@!!
(If anyone wants to listen - his attack on Al Rivera begins at 30 min into the interview)
It was unnecessarily long winded and embarrassing sitting through the first 45 minutes.
Anyway this is the info I got out of it.
Armor slots on ships - Talked about at the 1h03m30s mark
Far off concept it sounds like, if it'll happen at all, there are different ideas being considered, 1 armor slot for a ship, or multiple armor slots on ships with cruisers having more and escorts less, or different types of armor such as a more heavier armor for cruisers. The basis for it is itemization, more diverse set pieces and making cruisers tankier or a "tank" in the traditional mmorpg sense.
Class Kits - @1h35m
Devs are looking at having simply "a kit" and slotting it with various powers up to 5 I think, since there are 5 tiers', as well as revamping Ophidian cane so that it is a kit power and can be combined with your regular powers in your kit. They didn't have time to do this for LoR, but hope to get it out for the following season.
LoR ship pack - @1h52m
Full value is around 180$, it's sold at 125$ at the moment. You save a lot of money if you intend to buy the ships with IRL money eventually. You can use all the lower Tier ship consoles on the T5 ships, plus you get the cosmetic parts of the lower tier ships and can mix and match your ship looks.
Romulan flagship - @2h1m
Not at launch for LoR, but it is a "no brainer".
Allied factions, @2h14m
Comes down to not partitioning your playerbase, so the "only way" to introduce new factions is to keep the core gameplay essentially a two faction system only. Data shows introducing a new faction is a good way to introduce new players to your Game, PW data backs this up. It's also about content generation, not having to make content at "end game" for each separate faction, making it considerably more time consuming the more factions you add.
Federation tutorial / early Fed content revamp, @2h27m40s
It's gonna happen, but not for LoR.
Cloak drop when interacting @2h31m
It's not a bug, the code to avoid the cloak dropping on interactions is there, but someone has to go through every single interaction dialog and change it, massive time consuming. It stems from an inconsistency in how designers setup the interacts.
Next season - @2h34m
Count on it being light on changes/content. Cryptic has been crunching for the past 6 months on LoR and it's exhausting, people will take time off and the usual R&R which happens after larger projects. The type of effort put into LoR won't be the level put in to upcoming seasons. It'll be more in line with similar previous season updates.
Trading BOFFs / training BOFFs - @2h37m30s
Geko really dislikes the setup, it's too convoluted and packed in different UIs. The gameplay itself is fine. Considering kits for BOFFs when they revamp the Kits for Captains, such that BOFFs have kits and you slot their powers similar to your own (revamped) kit.
Considering itemizing powers, so it's more of a technical journal/manual for BOFFs you can slot on them. With a production system for the manuals to trade/sell/slot for BOFFs maintaining the class unique trained skills.
Presets for ship layouts (BOFFs, DOFFs) - @2h40m
Something Geko wants to do. It's a no brainer.
Scanning function - @2h41m40s
It simply looks for the nearest thing you can interact with. Geko would like to make it smarter, hopes to find some code/tech to avoid having to change every single mission interaction by hand to fit under a new system.
Non-combat content - @2h45m
Too complicated to summarize, it's something that Geko would like to see more of.
One huge Sector Space - @2h56m15s
If it was easy to do, it would have been done. There's the technology aspect, uncertainty about how scalable the architecture is. All mission content would have to be redone, at least 3 months worth of time and effort from the content team to even do that. The entire DOFF system would need to be changed.
Foundry exploit - @3h6m
They have a solution to fix it, time to deploy the fix is taking longer because of LoR development schedule/time pressure to meet deadline in May. CSR is being very aggressive about it. Missions are being removed, permanent account bans and dilithium is being removed. It is equivalent of theft to Cryptic.
State of the economy - @3h9m
Too broad, too convoluted to summarize. Would like to include Latinum in a reputation system and see more items added to the Lat store.
Fleet security - @3h17m
Account Guard is really solid. That you can get TRIBBLE is very unlikely that it happens. Bigger chance you give out passwords, or use it more places than one. Cryptic takes security very serious. Cryptic has a solid backend logging most actions regarding fleets and accounts, ip, computer names ect.
Cryptic would like to address some issues regarding how fleets are setup and permissions. Again LoR is taking the priority for time. Idea is to implement safeguards so that one person cannot destroy a fleet.
Foundry Reputation - @3h32m
Something they have talked about. Bit too random/convolution to summarize. Talks about Foundry rewards, security, and other bits.
Klingons - @3h38m
Long and random.
Well to be fair the most embarrassing thing is the 15 min long(It felt like 30) attack on Al from 30min in to 45 min in.
At 45 min in the other 2 interviewers are so mad and embarrassed they finally say that's enough and are trying to sound funny but you can tell they are pissed off.
15 minutes, 45 minutes, whatever. The podcast was entirely too long winded so it just sorta blurred together. The alien gen thing is harped on about towards the end of the podcast as well.
Thank you for the break-down. Now I can listen to the parts that are relevant to me.