I personally feel that its most likely you never see dev's on here because its quite simply, too hostile of an environment. Look at how we treat each other.. One person expresses an opinion and the next so many replies are generally in the realm of name calling, insults, put down, negating and relegating that idea and person to the back of the bus.. Gods only know what we'd do to a dev should they dare come in here..
You've got a point.
Dan Stahl, for example, gets ragged on just about every time he posts something. Even if he's posting good news, someone will often start in complaining about something else.
I hate to even mention his name... you watch, someone will reply to this thread and complain about him.
Speaking of this thread...
This is what I personally call a "Venting Thread". Venting is healthy. It's okay. I don't want to squelch the venting. People are entitled to their opinions.
But insults (directed at anyone) and heated arguments with other players are no-nos. Let's please not go there. Let people vent, disagree respectfully if you must, but don't troll or flame. Vent threads can get out of hand and then guys like me have to come in with the Modhammer.
Would rather that didn't happen.
~Bluegeek
My views may not represent those of Cryptic Studios or Perfect World Entertainment. You can file a "forums and website" support ticket here Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
And a note on "so many patches, and now bugfixes?!?!?!"
After a launch like this, the priority is to get a stable build, that isn't doing crazy things, or crashing, or whatever. (If you were paying very close attention. . . you may have noticed this.) So, you work on the things that are causing those crazy things and crashes. While there may be plenty of other bugs, we delay working on those (or in this case, are already fixing those in a later branch.), because touching anything else has the potential of introducing NEW bugs, which could further complicate the issue, cause more crashes, and make it even harder to track down the original issue.
So, many of the bugs people are bringing up have likely been addressed already, but will be coming out later, once we have the build that the game is running on currently, more stable and working well.
So today's patch is kind of an experiment to see how the game will handle bug fixes along with more stability updates?
That is roughly 2 bug fixes per 2 work days, that doesn't require a 40+ Dev Team, that requires maybe ONE or TWO Devs ... three tops.
either everyone has been on vacation (well deserved if so), or i don't know what they are working on... not fxiing stuff on Holodeck anyway. Or maybe they are holding out on us and there will be something with 50+ lines next week or so.
I don't know what they are up to and the lack of communication is disturbing.
I do agree the # of fixes was low but:
1) It's Summer, people tend to take vacations. They might not have everyone on board.
2) Not all bugs are created equal. Some are harder to fix.
On the other had, it's frustrating that there are so many old bugs in the game.
Enjoy the game, don't whine, offer constructive feedback, discuss with forum members, the Devs will respond if they think it's appropriate or useful. Don't forget us posters here are a tiny minority of the game population and we certainly don't speak for everyone. -- Matt Johnson
Mind if I use this in my sig? It's possibly the most eloquent thing ever said on the forums by a player.
And true.
Formerly Known as Protector from June 2008 to June 20, 2012
Please enable us to buy a token with Zen to faction change a 25th Century FED to a TOS FED.
That is roughly 2 bug fixes per 2 work days, that doesn't require a 40+ Dev Team, that requires maybe ONE or TWO Devs ... three tops.
either everyone has been on vacation (well deserved if so), or i don't know what they are working on... not fxiing stuff on Holodeck anyway. Or maybe they are holding out on us and there will be something with 50+ lines next week or so.
I don't know what they are up to and the lack of communication is disturbing.
Clearly, you know zero about coding, especially on the level of STO. For every line of code that goes into a game of this size, there's always the potential of something down the line TRIBBLE up. Maybe not the top 10 most obvious places, but somewhere, there's always the chance. Therefore, you need at least two other people to check every possible contingency. And with there easily being over 1M lines of code in this game alone (another that I used to play, now gone, had 1.6M at game's end), that's an awful lot of stuff to check. Even at 40 developers, that's 25K lines per person to check. Could you do that in less than a day? Didn't think so.
Lane Bjorn Jorgensson, Captain, ISS Voltaire
Here's a map to show how much they've screwed up the game map.
And a note on "so many patches, and now bugfixes?!?!?!"
After a launch like this, the priority is to get a stable build, that isn't doing crazy things, or crashing, or whatever. (If you were paying very close attention. . . you may have noticed this.) So, you work on the things that are causing those crazy things and crashes. While there may be plenty of other bugs, we delay working on those (or in this case, are already fixing those in a later branch.), because touching anything else has the potential of introducing NEW bugs, which could further complicate the issue, cause more crashes, and make it even harder to track down the original issue.
So, many of the bugs people are bringing up have likely been addressed already, but will be coming out later, once we have the build that the game is running on currently, more stable and working well.
How did we go from a stable tribble build to this?
Is tribble and holodeck so different and that is the reason?
Which then begs the question, why bother to test stuff on there in the first place?
And as my point proven, not one DEV has responded. Not even to say "we are considering these ideas." Or even, telling me to shut up. Or my ideas are bad.
NOT ONE dev response.
This is what makes me the most angry. 7 pages later.
And as my point proven, not one DEV has responded. Not even to say "we are considering these ideas." Or even, telling me to shut up. Or my ideas are bad.
NOT ONE dev response.
This is what makes me the most angry. 7 pages later.
I'm not an expert on coding for this game or anything, but I do know that for each action there is an equal reaction...it may not be today or tomorrow, but it will ripple to other areas. I know at my job, it'll take 4 or 5 highly qualified people each with at least a master's level of degree to sort out one problem just to have it rebound in another form some time later.
I play this game to have fun...I met some awesome people as a result of this game and we vent it up every night. It annoys me to have downtime during prime time playing hours...so fix the major stuff first please. Then if it is attainable...then little nit-picky stuff.
Thanks for working hard devs...you are definitely appreciated by me.
How did we go from a stable tribble build to this?
Is tribble and holodeck so different and that is the reason?
Which then begs the question, why bother to test stuff on there in the first place?
Genuine question....
Easier to throw a patch on Tribble if something breaks there... not as easy on Holodeck. Also, Holodeck can be a different beast, especially when any patch comes in contact with the players at large. Since the workload on Holodeck is much larger than Tribble, pulling that many resources could cause problems with the new patch, which was tested under a lower resource load (where 50 people access part of a fix on Tribble, that same fix is going to be accessed by possibly thousands at one time on the live server, which can do unexpected things sometimes)
Dan Stahl, for example, gets ragged on just about every time he posts something. Even if he's posting good news, someone will often start in complaining about something else.
I hate to even mention his name... you watch, someone will reply to this thread and complain about him.
And as my point proven, not one DEV has responded. Not even to say "we are considering these ideas." Or even, telling me to shut up. Or my ideas are bad.
NOT ONE dev response.
This is what makes me the most angry. 7 pages later.
You're right, there wasn't one dev response; there were two. Same dev, but still. The fact you missed those responses says something about the objections to lack of dev presence; it's not entirely accurate.
* not actual true story
Former moderator of these forums. Lifetime sub since before launch. Been here since before public betas. Foundry author of "Franklin Drake Must Die".
Easier to throw a patch on Tribble if something breaks there... not as easy on Holodeck. Also, Holodeck can be a different beast, especially when any patch comes in contact with the players at large. Since the workload on Holodeck is much larger than Tribble, pulling that many resources could cause problems with the new patch, which was tested under a lower resource load (where 50 people access part of a fix on Tribble, that same fix is going to be accessed by possibly thousands at one time on the live server, which can do unexpected things sometimes)
The primary difference between Tribble and Holodeck? Tens of thousands more concurrent players.
Both of those answers just strengthen the reasons to not have tribble and redshirt.
This update just magnify's not having them, as it pretty much went live with most of the reported bugs that were on them.
Might as well just release stuff straight to holodeck, and deal with any problems as they arise. Just like they are doing now....
Both of those answers just strengthen the reasons to not have tribble and redshirt.
This update just magnify's not having them, as it pretty much went live with most of the reported bugs that were on them.
Might as well just release stuff straight to holodeck, and deal with any problems as they arise. Just like they are doing now....
You would not be saying that if they released the bug that caused them to have to wipe tribble characters.... nothing like having too wipe your characters on holodeck to bring all the player base into the forums.
The game ending bugs never made it into Holodeck thanks to test servers.
Not employed by Cryptic or PWE. At all. They don't even get to give me assignments, or they'd have to pay me.
You are free labor, that is why volunteer jobs for corporations should be illegal. They are exploiting you to save resources that should be spent on professional, experienced people, or people in training. AKA: Support Staff. But we all know that PWEs support staff is scarce and nearly non existent. Because pinching pennies is more important than quality.
"I quit" threads get closed for a lot of reasons. I note most of the ones I see. The last five I caught before the close on this forum had several things in common:
A. All of them were quitting for childish reasons
B. All of them used profanity, four of the five used creative spellings or broken words to bypass the filter
C. All of them made verifiably false statements (which I may add so have you)
D. All five of them are still posting about in-game happenings and issues days and weeks after their tantrums.
Blizzard once upon a time posted statistics on I quit threads. Half didn't quit. Of those who did, half were back within three months, three fourths within six. That was a total of seven out of eight returning, which is significantly higher than the average of all cancelled accounts (slightly over half).
They are what they are: childish rants who believe by threatening to quit and drawing attention on themselves they are somehow making their concerns more urgent.
You cannot generalize why people quit as above...IRL great companies take feedback even from those disgruntled people who say...quit a job or drop off of a project. You are in denial by generalizing and more so by omitting "real" responses and feedback if you don't address these issues. You show that "DON'T CARE" attitude is rampart by forcing a viewpoint out of the forums before passing the feedback. Some might be childish but not all...this is from a company that don't care about bug tickets. I have a sleuth of tickets unresolved since STO launched 3 years ago...testimony to the "dont care attitude"
STO has been broken since 3 yrs ago and cripping up with lots of bugs
that are unfixed and will continue to do so....its a reality but if you don't like it...people are free to take thier business somewhere else...just that feedback is useless at least for Devs.....:D
You would not be saying that if they released the bug that caused them to have to wipe tribble characters.... nothing like having too wipe your characters on holodeck to bring all the player base into the forums.
The game ending bugs never made it into Holodeck thanks to test servers.
You have a point. One would hope though, that a bug of that magnitude would be caught in internal testing and never hit the test server in the first place
There are a great many things that can be (and are) tested on Tribble. Tribble serves a valuable purpose. However, there are also a few things that Tribble can't do, like having thousands of people play on it at once. There are some bugs that lay dormant for years, just waiting for the right time to spring forth. The trigger for those can be any number of things, but more people than are usually on our servers (say, like during the launch of a major expansion) is one of them.
You cannot generalize why people quit as above...IRL great companies take feedback even from those disgruntled people who say...quit a job or drop off of a project. You are in denial by generalizing and more so by omitting "real" responses and feedback if you don't address these issues. You show that "DON'T CARE" attitude is rampart by forcing a viewpoint out of the forums before passing the feedback. Some might be childish but not all...this is from a company that don't care about bug tickets. I have a sleuth of tickets unresolved since STO launched 3 years ago...testimony to the "dont care attitude"
STO has been broken since 3 yrs ago and cripping up with lots of bugs
that are unfixed and will continue to do so....its a reality but if you don't like it...people are free to take thier business somewhere else...just that feedback is useless at least for Devs.....:D
Perhaps they are not quite as focused on responding individually to any one individuals specific ticket as you personally would like to see. Instead they are focused on fixing any similar issues that might be affecting thousands of players. In other words - the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.
They do care about their business and keeping it running while supplying us, the players, with this entertainment option. They are in business to make money. And they've been offering this game to the public for free for sometime now and yet are still making enough money to provide a free expansion to the game.
STO isn't "broken" and has been completely playable for over 3 years. At least it has been for me and probably thousands of others. If it was broken as you say, then neither of us would be here bothering to post in these forums. We would have long ago found some other means or ways in which to entertain ourselves and spend out entertainment money on.
The biggest issue prevalent in the STO community is not that Cryptic developers don't care about these forums or responding publicly on them (they do care about THEIR game because it means they have a job), it is the multitude of emotionally immature posters that abuse their privileges to post any sort of emotionally enraged, exaggerated rant that they can type out without bothering to actually stop for a second and apply some critical or logical thinking skills.
Would it not be possible to run a series of virtual clients on the test server to simulate the effects of high population figures?
You can make 'em log in, but you can't make 'em act like real players...
My views may not represent those of Cryptic Studios or Perfect World Entertainment. You can file a "forums and website" support ticket here Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
The biggest issue prevalent in the STO community is not that Cryptic developers don't care about these forums or responding publicly on them (they do care about THEIR game because it means they have a job), it is the multitude of emotionally immature posters that abuse their privileges to post any sort of emotionally enraged, exaggerated rant that they can type out without bothering to actually stop for a second and apply some critical or logical thinking skills.
I'm not going to disagree that there are people who take the Fire!, Ready, Aim approach.
But this isn't a helpful generalization. It might even aggravate the situation.
Sometimes people just want to vent. Blow steam. If that helps them deal with their frustration, and they aren't specifically breaking forum rules, no problem.
The OP just wants to know that the Devs are not code-zombies who only care about their paychecks. One Dev has posted in here at least three times, supporting the hypothesis that the Devs do care about the game and how players feel about it. I hope that makes the OP feel a bit better about things. If not, well, somebody tried.
My views may not represent those of Cryptic Studios or Perfect World Entertainment. You can file a "forums and website" support ticket here Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
I personally feel that its most likely you never see dev's on here because its quite simply, too hostile of an environment. Look at how we treat each other.. One person expresses an opinion and the next so many replies are generally in the realm of name calling, insults, put down, negating and relegating that idea and person to the back of the bus.. Gods only know what we'd do to a dev should they dare come in here.. We sometimes make the worst of Klingon culture look like the most poofter-ish of snobby society.. Frankly, we make ourselves appear as if we have no class. We appear to be nothing but a bunch of over aged childish malcontents needing to give everyone else a bad time. Perhaps it is we, who doesnt really care?
^^^ this guy.
+
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Your Javelin deals 125417 (89066) Disruptor Damage(Critical) to Tholian Recluse. > lol
Both of those answers just strengthen the reasons to not have tribble and redshirt.
This update just magnify's not having them, as it pretty much went live with most of the reported bugs that were on them.
Might as well just release stuff straight to holodeck, and deal with any problems as they arise. Just like they are doing now....
So, you would rather them throw untested code onto the live server and HOPE it sticks? If that was the case, STO would be down more than it would be up since without proper testing on Tribble, there would be a LOT more game-breaking bugs. If you're whining NOW, imagine if they didn't test it? The game would be dead in a month.
Do me a favor? Don't EVER make an MMO. EVER! Of course, all the flame wars on your forums for said game about you being a moron for not testing code before releasing it would be a fun read.
I am just going to chime in, offer my .02, EC whatever have you.
I have been following STO for almost as long as it has been around. I joined the forums back when perpetual still had the IP (I realize I can't back that up with much, since the forums changed, but there it is). I watched as Perpetual floundered and I watched my hopes for the next great chapter of Star Trek go down the drain.
Then here comes Cryptic. They saved the day. I pre-ordered the collectors edition before I could even think about what I was doing. I watched as Atari dumped Cryptic and left them to flounder in the cold of space.
Mr. Stahl left sometime in there, and I knew the game was finished. I have ALWAYS respected how he ran things, and while I know he is not the ENTIRE team, he was crucial.
Enter PWE. Enter FTP. DStahl comes back. This game turned in a good direction, mostly. Remastered missions, new content, New ships. The NEXT ENTERPRISE. So many good things. Admittedly, I am not 100% a fan of the lockboxes or how the rep system works. I think that the lockboxes, and some of the new ship combo packs (Starting with the Odyssey) seem like a bit of a money grab, but you can buy ALL of those ships, and even MOST (if not all) of the reward packs on the Exchange, or by converting Dil to Zen.
I dunno what point I am trying to make here so I will just say this: STO has come a LONG way from launch. Many things have gotten better, sure, somethings need fixing still, but overall I feel like it is improved.
Again, Sorry to ramble. I feel like the Devs care.
Comments
You've got a point.
Dan Stahl, for example, gets ragged on just about every time he posts something. Even if he's posting good news, someone will often start in complaining about something else.
I hate to even mention his name... you watch, someone will reply to this thread and complain about him.
Speaking of this thread...
This is what I personally call a "Venting Thread". Venting is healthy. It's okay. I don't want to squelch the venting. People are entitled to their opinions.
But insults (directed at anyone) and heated arguments with other players are no-nos. Let's please not go there. Let people vent, disagree respectfully if you must, but don't troll or flame. Vent threads can get out of hand and then guys like me have to come in with the Modhammer.
Would rather that didn't happen.
~Bluegeek
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
So today's patch is kind of an experiment to see how the game will handle bug fixes along with more stability updates?
I do agree the # of fixes was low but:
1) It's Summer, people tend to take vacations. They might not have everyone on board.
2) Not all bugs are created equal. Some are harder to fix.
On the other had, it's frustrating that there are so many old bugs in the game.
Mind if I use this in my sig? It's possibly the most eloquent thing ever said on the forums by a player.
And true.
Please enable us to buy a token with Zen to faction change a 25th Century FED to a TOS FED.
Clearly, you know zero about coding, especially on the level of STO. For every line of code that goes into a game of this size, there's always the potential of something down the line TRIBBLE up. Maybe not the top 10 most obvious places, but somewhere, there's always the chance. Therefore, you need at least two other people to check every possible contingency. And with there easily being over 1M lines of code in this game alone (another that I used to play, now gone, had 1.6M at game's end), that's an awful lot of stuff to check. Even at 40 developers, that's 25K lines per person to check. Could you do that in less than a day? Didn't think so.
Here's a map to show how much they've screwed up the game map.
This is true, a good example is the beta thoridor patrol, they're having trouble locking that one down, as it does not affect all players.
How did we go from a stable tribble build to this?
Is tribble and holodeck so different and that is the reason?
Which then begs the question, why bother to test stuff on there in the first place?
Genuine question....
NOT ONE dev response.
This is what makes me the most angry. 7 pages later.
Ummmm Tacofangs made two posts??
I play this game to have fun...I met some awesome people as a result of this game and we vent it up every night. It annoys me to have downtime during prime time playing hours...so fix the major stuff first please. Then if it is attainable...then little nit-picky stuff.
Thanks for working hard devs...you are definitely appreciated by me.
Easier to throw a patch on Tribble if something breaks there... not as easy on Holodeck. Also, Holodeck can be a different beast, especially when any patch comes in contact with the players at large. Since the workload on Holodeck is much larger than Tribble, pulling that many resources could cause problems with the new patch, which was tested under a lower resource load (where 50 people access part of a fix on Tribble, that same fix is going to be accessed by possibly thousands at one time on the live server, which can do unexpected things sometimes)
-END OF LINE
Dan Stahl airlocked my cat. True story*.
The primary difference between Tribble and Holodeck? Tens of thousands more concurrent players.
You're right, there wasn't one dev response; there were two. Same dev, but still. The fact you missed those responses says something about the objections to lack of dev presence; it's not entirely accurate.
* not actual true story
Correction, it was actually 3 posts!
Mine Trap Supporter
Both of those answers just strengthen the reasons to not have tribble and redshirt.
This update just magnify's not having them, as it pretty much went live with most of the reported bugs that were on them.
Might as well just release stuff straight to holodeck, and deal with any problems as they arise. Just like they are doing now....
You would not be saying that if they released the bug that caused them to have to wipe tribble characters.... nothing like having too wipe your characters on holodeck to bring all the player base into the forums.
The game ending bugs never made it into Holodeck thanks to test servers.
You are free labor, that is why volunteer jobs for corporations should be illegal. They are exploiting you to save resources that should be spent on professional, experienced people, or people in training. AKA: Support Staff. But we all know that PWEs support staff is scarce and nearly non existent. Because pinching pennies is more important than quality.
| Join Date: January 2009 | Computer | Fleet: Broken Wings |
You cannot generalize why people quit as above...IRL great companies take feedback even from those disgruntled people who say...quit a job or drop off of a project. You are in denial by generalizing and more so by omitting "real" responses and feedback if you don't address these issues. You show that "DON'T CARE" attitude is rampart by forcing a viewpoint out of the forums before passing the feedback. Some might be childish but not all...this is from a company that don't care about bug tickets. I have a sleuth of tickets unresolved since STO launched 3 years ago...testimony to the "dont care attitude"
STO has been broken since 3 yrs ago and cripping up with lots of bugs
that are unfixed and will continue to do so....its a reality but if you don't like it...people are free to take thier business somewhere else...just that feedback is useless at least for Devs.....:D
You have a point. One would hope though, that a bug of that magnitude would be caught in internal testing and never hit the test server in the first place
Perhaps they are not quite as focused on responding individually to any one individuals specific ticket as you personally would like to see. Instead they are focused on fixing any similar issues that might be affecting thousands of players. In other words - the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.
They do care about their business and keeping it running while supplying us, the players, with this entertainment option. They are in business to make money. And they've been offering this game to the public for free for sometime now and yet are still making enough money to provide a free expansion to the game.
STO isn't "broken" and has been completely playable for over 3 years. At least it has been for me and probably thousands of others. If it was broken as you say, then neither of us would be here bothering to post in these forums. We would have long ago found some other means or ways in which to entertain ourselves and spend out entertainment money on.
The biggest issue prevalent in the STO community is not that Cryptic developers don't care about these forums or responding publicly on them (they do care about THEIR game because it means they have a job), it is the multitude of emotionally immature posters that abuse their privileges to post any sort of emotionally enraged, exaggerated rant that they can type out without bothering to actually stop for a second and apply some critical or logical thinking skills.
Would it not be possible to run a series of virtual clients on the test server to simulate the effects of high population figures?
You can make 'em log in, but you can't make 'em act like real players...
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
True I suppose, worth a thought though
I'm not going to disagree that there are people who take the Fire!, Ready, Aim approach.
But this isn't a helpful generalization. It might even aggravate the situation.
Sometimes people just want to vent. Blow steam. If that helps them deal with their frustration, and they aren't specifically breaking forum rules, no problem.
The OP just wants to know that the Devs are not code-zombies who only care about their paychecks. One Dev has posted in here at least three times, supporting the hypothesis that the Devs do care about the game and how players feel about it. I hope that makes the OP feel a bit better about things. If not, well, somebody tried.
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
^^^ this guy.
+
Your Javelin deals 125417 (89066) Disruptor Damage(Critical) to Tholian Recluse. > lol
So, you would rather them throw untested code onto the live server and HOPE it sticks? If that was the case, STO would be down more than it would be up since without proper testing on Tribble, there would be a LOT more game-breaking bugs. If you're whining NOW, imagine if they didn't test it? The game would be dead in a month.
Do me a favor? Don't EVER make an MMO. EVER! Of course, all the flame wars on your forums for said game about you being a moron for not testing code before releasing it would be a fun read.
-END OF LINE
I have been following STO for almost as long as it has been around. I joined the forums back when perpetual still had the IP (I realize I can't back that up with much, since the forums changed, but there it is). I watched as Perpetual floundered and I watched my hopes for the next great chapter of Star Trek go down the drain.
Then here comes Cryptic. They saved the day. I pre-ordered the collectors edition before I could even think about what I was doing. I watched as Atari dumped Cryptic and left them to flounder in the cold of space.
Mr. Stahl left sometime in there, and I knew the game was finished. I have ALWAYS respected how he ran things, and while I know he is not the ENTIRE team, he was crucial.
Enter PWE. Enter FTP. DStahl comes back. This game turned in a good direction, mostly. Remastered missions, new content, New ships. The NEXT ENTERPRISE. So many good things. Admittedly, I am not 100% a fan of the lockboxes or how the rep system works. I think that the lockboxes, and some of the new ship combo packs (Starting with the Odyssey) seem like a bit of a money grab, but you can buy ALL of those ships, and even MOST (if not all) of the reward packs on the Exchange, or by converting Dil to Zen.
I dunno what point I am trying to make here so I will just say this: STO has come a LONG way from launch. Many things have gotten better, sure, somethings need fixing still, but overall I feel like it is improved.
Again, Sorry to ramble. I feel like the Devs care.
$.02.