Can we get a name and description so we know who to ask for? This would be a person in charge of the Foundry, capable of assigning jobs to folks and getting stuff done.
Seeing as, for example, there are massive threads in the Art of Star Trek Online forum section listing bugs for things like uniforms and ships. How about the devs responsible for fixing them (if there is actually anyone allocated to this) make a blog/interview/whatever stating that they at least acknowledge they exist and how far along they are with actually fixing them?
You could do this once every few weeks/months and at least people wouldn't feel like they're banging their heads against a desk trying to get these things noticed.
I always think more developer-community interaction is marvelous and I will always encourage more.
One thing I'd like to see in STO is an adaptation of Planetside 2's brilliant Roadmap feature. For those who haven't seen it, it basically plans the future of the game and is heavily focused on community involvement. It takes the form of a forum discussion and many topics are discussed for implementation in to the game.
The key thing is that you can 'thumbs up or 'thumbs down' any topic and also make suggestions on how the individual idea/enhancement/design can be improved. It also gives the devs something to strive for so that they can focus on the more popular or in demand changes. They can respond by amending the ideas for discussion and also give approximate timescales for completion.
If something needs more attention you bring it forward and the less popular ideas can move back on the 'roadmap'. If things are not ready to be implemented for the given approximation, you as Devs can move it back and give a new timescale. It's not a bad thing either because the honesty and transparency about the dev process really helps the community understand what you've been able to accomplish already and no-one minds a little slippage.
This feature really works and it's a great way to engage with your community and involve them in the development of their game that they've invested in. It also roots out unpopular changes or makes you go back to the drawing board or even tweaks them ever so slightly so they're a big success.
I've had my own ideas put in to Planetside 2 through this system and I'm proud to say my suggestions made a difference in a game I play and love.
Cryptic/PWE, you really either don't get it, or don't care, as long as it looks like you care. I really do hate to say that, but it seems true. What is needed is for you to react to events and lead into changes. For instance:
The whole server mess at LOR launch. We never got a full answer on that. What would have made me happy is a dev blog from your server guys saying this is what happened, this is what went wrong, and this is what we did to fix it. With details, so those of us who know severs can say, of yeah, I can see that. Admit to the problem, and say what you did to fix it. This is how you win points. Anytime a situation like that comes up, you much put something out thtat reacts to the event and in detail, not just a one line from you Branflakes, because that's not your job to know what is wrong with the servers.
On the other hand, lead into changes. For instance, the blog on the dilithium mine today, told us nothing except that there is a dilithium mine, that it will give discounts, and that it will look pretty. All of this is alread known to those among us who care about the game, and you rush to download the latest patch for tribble just to see the new shiny. And known in more detail. This blog could have been made as soon as the decision was made to go forward with the mine. Today is when you make a post in the forums saying, hey we finally got the dilithium mine up and running, go and let us know what you think. That is what generates buzz and makes people come back each day to play. As it is now, its an anoyance. Another case of yeah Cryptic, so coming out next patch full of bugs as usual?
That is what you must do. Lead the change, and react to the bad news.
Players should be able to submit questions into a queue system where other players can +1 them or -1 them. Any question over a certain threshold MUST be answered, and the top five or ten questions should be answered in high detail. This will allow you to cut through the junk and answer stuff people care most about.
Additional Suggestion: Have costumes and ships as a mini-ask-Cryptic that occurs separately from the main one.
A great thread to see pop up. More communication and information is always a good thing and I look forward to seeing more!
My suggestion for a 'segment':
Unsure what to call it, but something like Dev journeys or Dev war stories
Things the devs have done in the game that have, or have not, worked out for what ever reason. The thought and design process as to why and how things were done. This comes from listening to some great podcast episodes or forum threads where a dev is allowed to go into detail about something they've done. Why it turned out the way it has, why some things did or did not work out etc.
For example, Cryptic Cats UI overhaul journey. Borticus's investigation on fire at will and weapons modifiers being applied correctly. Captain geckos struggles with introducing ship armor slots. Tacos info on wind being present even in interior maps, etc
Hearing about these on pod casts/forums is extremely fascinating I find and gives great insight into the problems and their solutions which for me as a player gives a much better understanding on the systems in the game and how they work.
Thing is, the community has to stir an issue up enough for a podcast to attempt to even approach a dev (if they can even get a hold of them) and talk about said topics.
I'm sure there's many things devs from different departments could talk about that the community wouldn't know or notice otherwise. Or that Cryptic want to go into more detail on for the communities benefit.
Perhaps someone from art department can talk about challenges with outfit clipping on toons, maybe a dev has been working on weapons/ship balancing, or doing something to the doff system. Maybe network engineers talking about how they worked through the recent network overloads after LOR launched.
Hearing about such things, and in depth, will give the community knowledge of things that are being done that we perhaps otherwise would never know unless we kicked up a stink. Is possibly another way to show/tell what else Cryptic is doing behind the scenes besides the big ticket news items.
I stopped reading Ask Cryptic when it became apparent to me... at least.... that the feature was answering the same general questions with the same vague answers.
Scrolling down one would find page after page of "Still no word on ___?" and "You are avoiding questions on ___" and "Why did you tell us the same thing you told us last time."
In order for this to work we need answers to questions -- not the same vague answers to the same 20 questions every month. If the devs can't give us a concrete answer besides "Well we are working on it and it will be awesome!" or "soon!" that question should not be selected for answering.
Ask Cryptic should not be a tool for generating buzz, Cryptic generates enough buzz with blog posts and twitter. Ask Cryptic should give real concrete answers to questions asked by the playerbase.
the second is similar to the monthly engineering reports that was in the 1st year of sto along with the ask cryptic. ask cryptic was around the 1st of month and engineering report was around the 15th of the month
@Branflakes: Brandon as you well know I've been very outspoken when it comes to things going right, just as much as I'm willing to be when they aren't.
This ask Cryptic, etc player submitted forum doesn't work (obviously since you're trying to change it), but to be honest I don't think you're going far enough. More polls and surveys with actual responses back is a great start, but I'd like to propose something more than just more specialized submit and answer.
What I suggest is a "town hall meeting" every month. The first one being at the beginning of the week and with Dan, The mid month one with content devs, and the end month with systems devs.
These would take place in-game either in a little used map or a new multi instance map created for this purpose. Obviously it would be a moderated "forum" and would allow for direct conversation / Q&A.
Of course with anything it all Hinges on a renewed level of communication between players and devs. As has been said before by others, you can't just answer what is convenient everytime. For every trivial nitpick there is at least 1 or more very serious concern/problem/suggestion that more often that not never see the light of day or are ever acknowledged or responded to. This game has seen some major successes, but there are still many things holding it back from it's true potential, time to bring these out into the light and an honest collaboration between devs and players happens to take care of these things.
Please understand I'm not saying the players should determine the creative of STO, but that our feedback and constructive criticism and suggestions need to have more of a bearing on overall decisions.
And no more "teasers" or hints of things that may or may not ever be, but straight up information, and if you're going to do anything at all then when it is decided that enough players have voiced serious concern over an issue, that the solution to that issue actually does exactly what it was supposed to be. If you're going to design something that gives players some perks, but is also primarily intended to help provide more profit then just say so. We all know ya'll are a business and ya'll need to eat and everything so no reason to hind the fact. Some of us purchase items because we like shinies, others because we enjoy the game, others yet because they see the potential in the game and want to invest in the game, others just because it's free or because it has Star Trek in the Title.
The more transparency and honest communication between players and devs the stronger we all can be and overall the better the game will be as well.
So here it is all laid out:
1) When will the Romulan Starbase exterior and interior maps be converted into a skin option for fleetbases?
2) When will Brandon finally get that raise he deserves for putting up with us all?
3) When will the Fleet base system finally be resource balanced for all fleet sizes as the new Dil mine definitely does not so this.
4) Will we ever see a Romulan and Klingon cargo transport? The Feds have the Tuffli.
5) More mini-games and a commodity trade system?
6) Is there a chance of having a "Starship Design Academy" section added to the forums where players can submit original ship designs they've created with the express purpose of possibly seeing those ships considered for entry into the game or even to inspire designs based on them? It would be posted that any designs submitted to that forum section would become the property of Cryptic studies along with all rights, therefore removing any need for legal negotiations and the such.
7) Just exactly how many tacos does Tacofangs massacre in one sitting? Terrified tacos everywhere want to know
8) What is the projected lifespan of the game engine you use for STO if there is one? By this I mean are you able to evolve it as technology and expertise changes or will it eventually hit a cap of what it is capable of doing?
good, more options to ask others where dstahl has failed to answer. not one of my questions in game or in the ask cryptic monthly has produced one answer from his end, so i at least i wont have to deal with that problem any longer thankfully. (i already holding a grudge over that botched competition with that ent-f and will keep doing so..)
i would like to get some stronger answers from others for sure when they pop up ofc.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Perhaps this could be something "The Captain's Table" could be used for.
The only problem with that is that not everyone has access to "the Captain's Table" and seeing as how it is reserved for lifetime members I don't think it has the amount of instances that would be needed.
Perhaps something centrally located in the middle of the three homeworlds/hubs maybe the lower sector of the Regulus sector block. Actually if they did that a modified version of the Utopia Planitia map (minus the centralize holoviewer) would provide enough room for players to stand in a multi-instance map.
The only problem with that is that not everyone has access to "the Captain's Table" and seeing as how it is reserved for lifetime members I don't think it has the amount of instances that would be needed.
Perhaps something centrally located in the middle of the three homeworlds/hubs maybe the lower sector of the Regulus sector block. Actually if they did that a modified version of the Utopia Planitia map (minus the centralize holoviewer) would provide enough room for players to stand in a multi-instance map.
Problem with that idea is only a certain amount can get in to the instance. Also if it was on a global channel it would be a crazy question spamfest. People will miss answers and the devs will undoubtably miss good questions. This always happens with live chats with the community.
Now podcast interviews should be good but no one ever really gives any one a roasting on certain issues. For example. Why the 3rd faction isn't really a 3rd faction? Hot question and never an depth answer. So people can have access to consoles from previously paid ships was one answer. Lol ...... Make them consoles account bound then if people bought them cstore. Some of the answers was just nonsense.
No 3 way pvp? Answer was we sat down and came to the conclusion we want it to be a 2 sided game. Not a very Star Trek answer and Nothing ever in depth on that subject, even from a technical point of view.
Territory control.... Answers we would like to.......then years later.... We would like to :eek:
Pvp and crafting in general: get the same kinda responses every time.
Sadly the podcasters are too worried to really press them on any subject incase they upset the devs. Which would result in them not doing any more interviews. Sadly this has made 90% of the podcast interviews seem extremely insignificant.
Keep the suggestions coming! They are great so far
Please also remember that these web article features will be monthly, and will replace the current 'Ask Cryptic' web article feature, starting this month. We'll be conducting at least one per month, as we did previously with the 'Ask Cryptic', and would like to rotate through the different suggestions, including those in the OP and those that you all may come up with.
Anything that reminds me of the old Engineering Reports would be fantastic. I used to love those. Maybe a quick list along those lines could be tacked-on to the end of these new articles? Doesn't have to be long. Maybe one new short-, mid-, and long-range project could be talked about every month.
Also, sometimes I like to be teased. Something that used to happen before new Featured Episodes was a quick, out-of-context screenshot would go up somewhere, and we'd all spend the next week or so speculating about it. I'd love to see that happen again with whatever future content is in the pipeline. Make it as vague as you want! Doesn't even have to be a screen; could be a piece of concept art or a photo of a whiteboard or something. Anything would be nice.
I'd like to reiterate what a few other posters have pointed out:-
Engineering Reports
These were awesome, they gave everyone a good idea of what was been worked on, the way it was sib-sectioned into *currently been worked on* *been discussed* and the like gave people a genuine idea of what was actually happening and what was not coming for a while, this served as a fantastic basis for people asking questions at the Ask Cryptic.
Ask Cryptic
Like many others, I stopped really reading these a while ago, the problem is NOT the format of Ask Cryptic, it's the way the questions are answered. For a while now, hot topics been debated on the forums have been ignored in Ask Cryptics as they are apparently too contreversal, yet these are the things people want to hear answers to. If a question can not be answered with a solid responce other than *coming soon* or if it's a question that gets asked alot, then it simply should not get picked for answering. I've read some awesome questions in the player submission threads, only to see Ask Cryptics coming out with really bland questions, many of which the community already know the answers too. With the engineering reports, we were really able to ask more relevant questions.
Polls
I'm all for having polls, but at the same time I'm also weary. If the community is not been kept informed as to what is been developed, the context of the poll questions can not be known and as such can easily skew results. So if we were to get more polls, I'd hope that there would be a detailed post explaining all the options so players can make informed decisions on them. Otherwise they just get misused as a way to justify design decisions. Also, I'd hope they actually serve agenuine purpose, a few of the poll's over the years seem to have not served a purpose, I remember one where players were asked what they wanted adding to the game next, some of the most popular responces been 'One galaxy map to rule them all', 'crafting revamp', 'exploration revamp' and 'pvp revamp', none of those seem to of been worked on though.
Social Media
Not sure really how to include this, I use Twitter and Facebook to find out about new dev blog's and server maintenance times. I used to check Twitter quite alot for Tweet Leaks, infact I know alot of people that did this, but since Cryptic seems to of put a policy in place stopping dev's doing this, I don't really check it out as much now.
I think the main thing to take away from this, is that more transparency of what's been worked on (like it used to be) in my eyes is the best way to go. The Engineering reports were amazing and reminded me of some of the amazing posts the developers over at WoW used to do. Now it just feels like like any interaction with the player base from the dev's is jus ta PR tool for marketing and generating hype, it just doesn't feel genuine or honest anymore. I'm guessing this is because the marketing and communications department is adding to much beuracracy to the process to allow dev's to say anything without having to go though specific channels first?
Cryptic need to take more notice of major discussions that take place on the forums, regardless of how controversial they may be. Dancing around or completely avoiding the issue in Ask Cryptic just aggravates people further. Please remember it is a PR and feedback event, not a PWE promotions event.
If you continue to do 'Ask Cryptic' style posts, it would benefit you a lot to add some sort of 'like/dislike' system where each 'answer' can be liked or disliked.
That way you can get a rough approximation of how the forum community feels about your answer of any given question- do they like it? Do they not like it?
Then the potential for followup exists- for instance, something I'd definitely 'dislike' is when Cryptic 'replies' to a question by hijacking that question to give a totally unrelated answer to an unasked question, the old bait and switch. This happens at least once every Ask Cryptic, and Cryptic never actually answers the original question.
But means to actually inform Cryptic that we, the players, haaaaaaaaaaate when you do this are pretty slim.
But when you get some two thousand likes on that one specific question, maybe it'd process that 'we did something here that players don't like', and then you could do a followup at the end of the week.
You could post a thread going "These are the top X most disliked answers we gave last ask cryptic, and we want to know why- discuss." and get some discussion going.
Because as it is, every ask cryptic I see at least one question being hijacked to pontificate about something unrelated, and it isn't showing any signs of stopping.
Frankly, these all need to be run on a monthly basis and not rotated. I like the idea of the previous poster have having a like/dislike system on the questions as they are right to say that questions are often hijacked. Furthermore some of the questions that are picked are so blatently picked for the ability to provide an easy answer.
I want to see more transparency and honesty in this game as frankly your customer satisfaction at the moment is heavily damaged, the recent non-existent mark bonus without comment was appalling. I want to see the hard questions answered and not avoided.
I would like to see the polls go out on a quarterly basis, and each quarter there is a poll for EACH dev team. We get to decide on one task that they complete or work on during the next three months.
1) I haven`t heard any complaints from the community about the monthly "Ask Cryptic" feature. I also don`t agree, that "Ask Cryptic"s are generating disappointment. The disappointment is there before the question is answered - but a good answer may transfer disappointment into excitement...
2) The actual expansion of STO is done really well - it adds more, better content. And it is based on a survey. I wonder what the numbers say or will say. Has it been as successfull as expected? If I get the sentiment right, it has not. But Cryptic delivered exactly what people wanted! And that in good quality. So what is going wrong here? The answer is: people don`t know what they want.
So I don`t want surveys to determine the future of STO. I also don`t want to interview one dev - that is done by many magazines, podcasts etc.
I want dStahl to decide, what happens and when. I trust him to know Star Trek. I trust him to bring as much Star Trek into STO as the finances allow him to do. I think he knows better what players want, then the players itself. So I want to hear from him once a month, what he thinks, on which point he is unsure (and needs some community feedback) , which things have to be done and which things he would like to do, but the time don`t fit.
I don't think Ask Cryptic is a fail because of the questions. When then it failed because of the questions picked and the meaningless, non-informative answers given. Sure, it's much more satisfying to let the company or the person in charge shine than answer tough questions about how so many game breaking or fun killing issues are constantly ignored (or at a player point of view - not fixed). As an example i'll pick the afk-leecher problem - it's just too little to say "WE DON'T LIKE IT" in 6 months.
Also it's just not enough using "making awesome new content" [= another kill all enemies (fast, for optional) mission where the challenging part is to decide fast if you'r bailing out or earning rewards for others afk or unable to contribute to the mission (insufficient ship-build/lack of experience/speech barrier] as an excuse for not fixing real problems / improving bad working things.
Interview a Dev: sounds not very interesting to me. Most used question would be "What are you currently working on" and most used answer on new stuff would be "yeah, that sounds great. i'll suggest this. (maybe it will implemented in the next few years)." Why not reviving the old engineering reports?
And to be honest: First i would prefer to see more fixed bugs than new ones made on three consecutive patches as to read something trivial or that maybe or maybe not will be in the game ... sometimes.
I think players also need sometimes to take a business perspectice. There is something called pareto principle, which states, that you need 20% of total time to get 80% done. And yeah, you need 80% of total time to get the last 20% done.
So with Cryptic being a relatively small company you need to think about those last 20%. You can spend your 80% of totaltime eleminating all bugs. But you also could add new content, new game mechanis or just have 80% less productions costs (if time=money).
@Branflakes: The real question isn't what type of Format this should entail, but what level of commitment Cryptic is going to put into this. If the level of commitment is going to remain the same then it doesn't matter what format is used, it will still be an overall failure.
However, if Cryptic is going to seriously and consistently openly discuss issues, ideas, feedback, setbacks, and follow through and follow up then and only then is there really any purpose to all this. Really everything with this hinges on one single question:
So with that Brandon my question is, What level of commitment is Cryptic willing to take with this moving forward?
imho the Ask Cryptic is mostly just pretending to have open communication and answering questions while none of the current topics are responded to.
only those are picked that dStahl wants to talk about himself or has a good PR response ready to shoot.
He plays it safe.
So why not just drop the pretense and let him do a pure State of the Game PR Blog once a month and be done with it?
I get that not everybody is following every interview and every podcast out there and that repeating the same questions has some value to get information out there.
But if not one bit of NEW info is in there... then it really gets to the point where these Ask Cryptics are obsolete because everything has been answered somewhere else already.
Also i remember that dStahl did respond at least for a day or two to replies and questions in the Engineering Reports, he never does that for the Ask Cryptic even if there are things to talk about or clarify. Where is the discussion? There is no "communication", no "discussion", just a short Q&A.
What i really would want is simply more Devs on the Forum responding to curent Topics.
By all means stay away from the flame-bait threads in General Discussion but the other sub-forums are usually full of good clean topics.
Every time the communication gets going and ideas are bounced off each other the end product is better than before.
There are too many things by now done and developed behind the curtain and too often i hear good ideas from players that will not be implemented simply because it is too late, the Dev Team already moved on to the next project on the schedule.
Drop the Secrecy, and just use the Forums to communicate again.
Seriously the open communication was it that kept me subscribed for the first 2 Years, i was following the Dev Tracker every day, even if i didn't play for weeks.
Even if it resulted in one or the other PR disaster, the results were always better than without any communication.
The DOff System and how Heretic handled it is the best example, it was a HIT and he communicated with us on a almost daily basis on the Forum and even in the DOFFJOBS channel, and that was a big reason why it became so successful with the Playerbase, when we had a problem we told him and he fixed it. When he had an idea he came to us and either teased us or asked for feedback / ideas etc.
There are still a few good ones around (you know who you are), but too many Devs are just too silent and do not use us players as a resource.
Keep the suggestions coming! They are great so far
Please also remember that these web article features will be monthly, and will replace the current 'Ask Cryptic' web article feature, starting this month. We'll be conducting at least one per month, as we did previously with the 'Ask Cryptic', and would like to rotate through the different suggestions, including those in the OP and those that you all may come up with.
Cheers,
Brandon =/\=
So these things are going to happen anyway? You've already decided the Ask Cryptic is done and gone, so you're not really asking for feedback--you're trying to measure how nasty or positive the response will be from the fans.
A recurring suggestion I'm seeing is that "Ask Cryptic" should be left alone, and that Cryptic should suck it up and start answering the tough questions.
You're just looking for another way to provide us a PR stunt every month that highlights the things you want us to hear under the guise of open dialogue.
While we're on this topic, I'd like to note that I hate how prevalent these Podcast interviews have become. I'll generally read anything you guys throw on the front page, but there's a limit to my endurance. If there's no transcript, there's no chance I'm going to suffer through listening to a couple of amateurs blunder through an hour of material just to hear the brief section where a Cryptic employee dodges any hard questions asked and repeats Cryptic talking points in response to any of the softballs offered up to them by the interviewers.
I guess its a symptom of the same problem that keeps getting rehashed in this thread. I'm willing to scan a document to see which non-answers were given that time around, but I won't invest any real time into something I know won't be substantive.
In general, I understand the position Cryptic takes with their users. They're in it for the money and a business like this generally doesn't want to be held hostage by their customers. In fact, you're generally better off treating your customers like lab rats, but this isn't your typical situation. This isn't Madden [Insert Year Here] or Halo that you can sell to the brainless masses. It's a game tied to a very iconic IP and that both loses you the masses and gains you a devoted cult. You're also the only active instance of that beloved IP, so you have a fanatical, captive audience willing to pour their wallets out into your coffers if only you would make their Star Trek fantasies come alive in an interactive world and you still ignore them.
I know it won't happen, but I'd love for Cryptic to actually implement the Like/Dislike system mentioned in this thread for development issues. I think it'd surprise Cryptic to learn of the disparity between the things they put effort into vs the things players are willing to spend money on.
As promised - here are my tiny ideas for the ASK CRYPTIC.
My intention is to combine the things, reaching the goal of a better communication and get the comm grown together.
You - the team - suggest a small number of subjects (e.g. Romulans, Fleets, development/state of the game)
at a beginning of every month. In the first 1 or 2 weeks the community (on all the platforms and languages) is
called upon to choose a single one out of your suggestions. This can be done by a poll.
To reach as many players as possible (to get the best "average" opinion) you could use next
to the forum and facebook the newsletter ingame.
Perhaps it is also possible to include a link out of the newsletter - straight to the polls/surveys?!
After that period of vote the users can ask questions to that topic. If it?s too hard to do it in 4 weeks - why not 6 weeks instead?
The important thing in that will be - like others said before - choose only questions that can be answered conrete.
You know what I mean
Now it?s gonna be a bit crazy for some of you but I still want to mention it:
What?s about a hangout/chat on Google+/Youtube? One of the team is answering questions in a livestream (e.g. 1 hour).
Of course there are a lot of other similar platforms (besides G+) to get feedback from the community and to answer their questions
Could be fun and informative for all of us within a narrow time frame.
The videos could be linked in related blogs or older ASK CRYPTICs.
I have my own experiences with it - the google-devs are doing it for example.
The community asks per chat and the devs answering per webcam.
This could be done weekly eventually?!
Please excuse my weird English - it is not my native tongue
Comments
Can we get a name and description so we know who to ask for? This would be a person in charge of the Foundry, capable of assigning jobs to folks and getting stuff done.
I'm not sure if Zero counts as this person.
Who is in charge of the Foundry these days?
You could do this once every few weeks/months and at least people wouldn't feel like they're banging their heads against a desk trying to get these things noticed.
I always think more developer-community interaction is marvelous and I will always encourage more.
One thing I'd like to see in STO is an adaptation of Planetside 2's brilliant Roadmap feature. For those who haven't seen it, it basically plans the future of the game and is heavily focused on community involvement. It takes the form of a forum discussion and many topics are discussed for implementation in to the game.
The key thing is that you can 'thumbs up or 'thumbs down' any topic and also make suggestions on how the individual idea/enhancement/design can be improved. It also gives the devs something to strive for so that they can focus on the more popular or in demand changes. They can respond by amending the ideas for discussion and also give approximate timescales for completion.
If something needs more attention you bring it forward and the less popular ideas can move back on the 'roadmap'. If things are not ready to be implemented for the given approximation, you as Devs can move it back and give a new timescale. It's not a bad thing either because the honesty and transparency about the dev process really helps the community understand what you've been able to accomplish already and no-one minds a little slippage.
This feature really works and it's a great way to engage with your community and involve them in the development of their game that they've invested in. It also roots out unpopular changes or makes you go back to the drawing board or even tweaks them ever so slightly so they're a big success.
I've had my own ideas put in to Planetside 2 through this system and I'm proud to say my suggestions made a difference in a game I play and love.
Give it some thought!!
The whole server mess at LOR launch. We never got a full answer on that. What would have made me happy is a dev blog from your server guys saying this is what happened, this is what went wrong, and this is what we did to fix it. With details, so those of us who know severs can say, of yeah, I can see that. Admit to the problem, and say what you did to fix it. This is how you win points. Anytime a situation like that comes up, you much put something out thtat reacts to the event and in detail, not just a one line from you Branflakes, because that's not your job to know what is wrong with the servers.
On the other hand, lead into changes. For instance, the blog on the dilithium mine today, told us nothing except that there is a dilithium mine, that it will give discounts, and that it will look pretty. All of this is alread known to those among us who care about the game, and you rush to download the latest patch for tribble just to see the new shiny. And known in more detail. This blog could have been made as soon as the decision was made to go forward with the mine. Today is when you make a post in the forums saying, hey we finally got the dilithium mine up and running, go and let us know what you think. That is what generates buzz and makes people come back each day to play. As it is now, its an anoyance. Another case of yeah Cryptic, so coming out next patch full of bugs as usual?
That is what you must do. Lead the change, and react to the bad news.
Nouveau riche LTS member
Well this is just brilliant!
I'm always looking forward to more Dev - Community interactions, this is the way to go STO!
www.divisionhispana.com
My suggestion for a 'segment':
Unsure what to call it, but something like Dev journeys or Dev war stories
Things the devs have done in the game that have, or have not, worked out for what ever reason. The thought and design process as to why and how things were done. This comes from listening to some great podcast episodes or forum threads where a dev is allowed to go into detail about something they've done. Why it turned out the way it has, why some things did or did not work out etc.
For example, Cryptic Cats UI overhaul journey. Borticus's investigation on fire at will and weapons modifiers being applied correctly. Captain geckos struggles with introducing ship armor slots. Tacos info on wind being present even in interior maps, etc
Hearing about these on pod casts/forums is extremely fascinating I find and gives great insight into the problems and their solutions which for me as a player gives a much better understanding on the systems in the game and how they work.
Thing is, the community has to stir an issue up enough for a podcast to attempt to even approach a dev (if they can even get a hold of them) and talk about said topics.
I'm sure there's many things devs from different departments could talk about that the community wouldn't know or notice otherwise. Or that Cryptic want to go into more detail on for the communities benefit.
Perhaps someone from art department can talk about challenges with outfit clipping on toons, maybe a dev has been working on weapons/ship balancing, or doing something to the doff system. Maybe network engineers talking about how they worked through the recent network overloads after LOR launched.
Hearing about such things, and in depth, will give the community knowledge of things that are being done that we perhaps otherwise would never know unless we kicked up a stink. Is possibly another way to show/tell what else Cryptic is doing behind the scenes besides the big ticket news items.
the second is similar to the monthly engineering reports that was in the 1st year of sto along with the ask cryptic. ask cryptic was around the 1st of month and engineering report was around the 15th of the month
RIP KDF and PvP 2014-07-17 Season 9.5 - Death by Dev
***Disenchanted***
Real Join Date: Monday, 17 May 2010
This ask Cryptic, etc player submitted forum doesn't work (obviously since you're trying to change it), but to be honest I don't think you're going far enough. More polls and surveys with actual responses back is a great start, but I'd like to propose something more than just more specialized submit and answer.
What I suggest is a "town hall meeting" every month. The first one being at the beginning of the week and with Dan, The mid month one with content devs, and the end month with systems devs.
These would take place in-game either in a little used map or a new multi instance map created for this purpose. Obviously it would be a moderated "forum" and would allow for direct conversation / Q&A.
Of course with anything it all Hinges on a renewed level of communication between players and devs. As has been said before by others, you can't just answer what is convenient everytime. For every trivial nitpick there is at least 1 or more very serious concern/problem/suggestion that more often that not never see the light of day or are ever acknowledged or responded to. This game has seen some major successes, but there are still many things holding it back from it's true potential, time to bring these out into the light and an honest collaboration between devs and players happens to take care of these things.
Please understand I'm not saying the players should determine the creative of STO, but that our feedback and constructive criticism and suggestions need to have more of a bearing on overall decisions.
And no more "teasers" or hints of things that may or may not ever be, but straight up information, and if you're going to do anything at all then when it is decided that enough players have voiced serious concern over an issue, that the solution to that issue actually does exactly what it was supposed to be. If you're going to design something that gives players some perks, but is also primarily intended to help provide more profit then just say so. We all know ya'll are a business and ya'll need to eat and everything so no reason to hind the fact. Some of us purchase items because we like shinies, others because we enjoy the game, others yet because they see the potential in the game and want to invest in the game, others just because it's free or because it has Star Trek in the Title.
The more transparency and honest communication between players and devs the stronger we all can be and overall the better the game will be as well.
So here it is all laid out:
1) When will the Romulan Starbase exterior and interior maps be converted into a skin option for fleetbases?
2) When will Brandon finally get that raise he deserves for putting up with us all?
3) When will the Fleet base system finally be resource balanced for all fleet sizes as the new Dil mine definitely does not so this.
4) Will we ever see a Romulan and Klingon cargo transport? The Feds have the Tuffli.
5) More mini-games and a commodity trade system?
6) Is there a chance of having a "Starship Design Academy" section added to the forums where players can submit original ship designs they've created with the express purpose of possibly seeing those ships considered for entry into the game or even to inspire designs based on them? It would be posted that any designs submitted to that forum section would become the property of Cryptic studies along with all rights, therefore removing any need for legal negotiations and the such.
7) Just exactly how many tacos does Tacofangs massacre in one sitting? Terrified tacos everywhere want to know
8) What is the projected lifespan of the game engine you use for STO if there is one? By this I mean are you able to evolve it as technology and expertise changes or will it eventually hit a cap of what it is capable of doing?
i would like to get some stronger answers from others for sure when they pop up ofc.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
The only problem with that is that not everyone has access to "the Captain's Table" and seeing as how it is reserved for lifetime members I don't think it has the amount of instances that would be needed.
Perhaps something centrally located in the middle of the three homeworlds/hubs maybe the lower sector of the Regulus sector block. Actually if they did that a modified version of the Utopia Planitia map (minus the centralize holoviewer) would provide enough room for players to stand in a multi-instance map.
Problem with that idea is only a certain amount can get in to the instance. Also if it was on a global channel it would be a crazy question spamfest. People will miss answers and the devs will undoubtably miss good questions. This always happens with live chats with the community.
Now podcast interviews should be good but no one ever really gives any one a roasting on certain issues. For example. Why the 3rd faction isn't really a 3rd faction? Hot question and never an depth answer. So people can have access to consoles from previously paid ships was one answer. Lol ...... Make them consoles account bound then if people bought them cstore. Some of the answers was just nonsense.
No 3 way pvp? Answer was we sat down and came to the conclusion we want it to be a 2 sided game. Not a very Star Trek answer and Nothing ever in depth on that subject, even from a technical point of view.
Territory control.... Answers we would like to.......then years later.... We would like to :eek:
Pvp and crafting in general: get the same kinda responses every time.
Sadly the podcasters are too worried to really press them on any subject incase they upset the devs. Which would result in them not doing any more interviews. Sadly this has made 90% of the podcast interviews seem extremely insignificant.
Please also remember that these web article features will be monthly, and will replace the current 'Ask Cryptic' web article feature, starting this month. We'll be conducting at least one per month, as we did previously with the 'Ask Cryptic', and would like to rotate through the different suggestions, including those in the OP and those that you all may come up with.
Cheers,
Brandon =/\=
Also, sometimes I like to be teased. Something that used to happen before new Featured Episodes was a quick, out-of-context screenshot would go up somewhere, and we'd all spend the next week or so speculating about it. I'd love to see that happen again with whatever future content is in the pipeline. Make it as vague as you want! Doesn't even have to be a screen; could be a piece of concept art or a photo of a whiteboard or something. Anything would be nice.
Engineering Reports
These were awesome, they gave everyone a good idea of what was been worked on, the way it was sib-sectioned into *currently been worked on* *been discussed* and the like gave people a genuine idea of what was actually happening and what was not coming for a while, this served as a fantastic basis for people asking questions at the Ask Cryptic.
Ask Cryptic
Like many others, I stopped really reading these a while ago, the problem is NOT the format of Ask Cryptic, it's the way the questions are answered. For a while now, hot topics been debated on the forums have been ignored in Ask Cryptics as they are apparently too contreversal, yet these are the things people want to hear answers to. If a question can not be answered with a solid responce other than *coming soon* or if it's a question that gets asked alot, then it simply should not get picked for answering. I've read some awesome questions in the player submission threads, only to see Ask Cryptics coming out with really bland questions, many of which the community already know the answers too. With the engineering reports, we were really able to ask more relevant questions.
Polls
I'm all for having polls, but at the same time I'm also weary. If the community is not been kept informed as to what is been developed, the context of the poll questions can not be known and as such can easily skew results. So if we were to get more polls, I'd hope that there would be a detailed post explaining all the options so players can make informed decisions on them. Otherwise they just get misused as a way to justify design decisions. Also, I'd hope they actually serve agenuine purpose, a few of the poll's over the years seem to have not served a purpose, I remember one where players were asked what they wanted adding to the game next, some of the most popular responces been 'One galaxy map to rule them all', 'crafting revamp', 'exploration revamp' and 'pvp revamp', none of those seem to of been worked on though.
Social Media
Not sure really how to include this, I use Twitter and Facebook to find out about new dev blog's and server maintenance times. I used to check Twitter quite alot for Tweet Leaks, infact I know alot of people that did this, but since Cryptic seems to of put a policy in place stopping dev's doing this, I don't really check it out as much now.
I think the main thing to take away from this, is that more transparency of what's been worked on (like it used to be) in my eyes is the best way to go. The Engineering reports were amazing and reminded me of some of the amazing posts the developers over at WoW used to do. Now it just feels like like any interaction with the player base from the dev's is jus ta PR tool for marketing and generating hype, it just doesn't feel genuine or honest anymore. I'm guessing this is because the marketing and communications department is adding to much beuracracy to the process to allow dev's to say anything without having to go though specific channels first?
That way you can get a rough approximation of how the forum community feels about your answer of any given question- do they like it? Do they not like it?
Then the potential for followup exists- for instance, something I'd definitely 'dislike' is when Cryptic 'replies' to a question by hijacking that question to give a totally unrelated answer to an unasked question, the old bait and switch. This happens at least once every Ask Cryptic, and Cryptic never actually answers the original question.
But means to actually inform Cryptic that we, the players, haaaaaaaaaaate when you do this are pretty slim.
But when you get some two thousand likes on that one specific question, maybe it'd process that 'we did something here that players don't like', and then you could do a followup at the end of the week.
You could post a thread going "These are the top X most disliked answers we gave last ask cryptic, and we want to know why- discuss." and get some discussion going.
Because as it is, every ask cryptic I see at least one question being hijacked to pontificate about something unrelated, and it isn't showing any signs of stopping.
I want to see more transparency and honesty in this game as frankly your customer satisfaction at the moment is heavily damaged, the recent non-existent mark bonus without comment was appalling. I want to see the hard questions answered and not avoided.
I would like to see the polls go out on a quarterly basis, and each quarter there is a poll for EACH dev team. We get to decide on one task that they complete or work on during the next three months.
2) The actual expansion of STO is done really well - it adds more, better content. And it is based on a survey. I wonder what the numbers say or will say. Has it been as successfull as expected? If I get the sentiment right, it has not. But Cryptic delivered exactly what people wanted! And that in good quality. So what is going wrong here? The answer is: people don`t know what they want.
So I don`t want surveys to determine the future of STO. I also don`t want to interview one dev - that is done by many magazines, podcasts etc.
I want dStahl to decide, what happens and when. I trust him to know Star Trek. I trust him to bring as much Star Trek into STO as the finances allow him to do. I think he knows better what players want, then the players itself. So I want to hear from him once a month, what he thinks, on which point he is unsure (and needs some community feedback) , which things have to be done and which things he would like to do, but the time don`t fit.
So I just want to keep the "Ask DStahls"!
Also it's just not enough using "making awesome new content" [= another kill all enemies (fast, for optional) mission where the challenging part is to decide fast if you'r bailing out or earning rewards for others afk or unable to contribute to the mission (insufficient ship-build/lack of experience/speech barrier] as an excuse for not fixing real problems / improving bad working things.
Interview a Dev: sounds not very interesting to me. Most used question would be "What are you currently working on" and most used answer on new stuff would be "yeah, that sounds great. i'll suggest this. (maybe it will implemented in the next few years)." Why not reviving the old engineering reports?
And to be honest: First i would prefer to see more fixed bugs than new ones made on three consecutive patches as to read something trivial or that maybe or maybe not will be in the game ... sometimes.
So with Cryptic being a relatively small company you need to think about those last 20%. You can spend your 80% of totaltime eleminating all bugs. But you also could add new content, new game mechanis or just have 80% less productions costs (if time=money).
However, if Cryptic is going to seriously and consistently openly discuss issues, ideas, feedback, setbacks, and follow through and follow up then and only then is there really any purpose to all this. Really everything with this hinges on one single question:
So with that Brandon my question is, What level of commitment is Cryptic willing to take with this moving forward?
only those are picked that dStahl wants to talk about himself or has a good PR response ready to shoot.
He plays it safe.
So why not just drop the pretense and let him do a pure State of the Game PR Blog once a month and be done with it?
I get that not everybody is following every interview and every podcast out there and that repeating the same questions has some value to get information out there.
But if not one bit of NEW info is in there... then it really gets to the point where these Ask Cryptics are obsolete because everything has been answered somewhere else already.
Also i remember that dStahl did respond at least for a day or two to replies and questions in the Engineering Reports, he never does that for the Ask Cryptic even if there are things to talk about or clarify. Where is the discussion? There is no "communication", no "discussion", just a short Q&A.
What i really would want is simply more Devs on the Forum responding to curent Topics.
By all means stay away from the flame-bait threads in General Discussion but the other sub-forums are usually full of good clean topics.
Every time the communication gets going and ideas are bounced off each other the end product is better than before.
There are too many things by now done and developed behind the curtain and too often i hear good ideas from players that will not be implemented simply because it is too late, the Dev Team already moved on to the next project on the schedule.
Drop the Secrecy, and just use the Forums to communicate again.
Seriously the open communication was it that kept me subscribed for the first 2 Years, i was following the Dev Tracker every day, even if i didn't play for weeks.
Even if it resulted in one or the other PR disaster, the results were always better than without any communication.
The DOff System and how Heretic handled it is the best example, it was a HIT and he communicated with us on a almost daily basis on the Forum and even in the DOFFJOBS channel, and that was a big reason why it became so successful with the Playerbase, when we had a problem we told him and he fixed it. When he had an idea he came to us and either teased us or asked for feedback / ideas etc.
There are still a few good ones around (you know who you are), but too many Devs are just too silent and do not use us players as a resource.
So these things are going to happen anyway? You've already decided the Ask Cryptic is done and gone, so you're not really asking for feedback--you're trying to measure how nasty or positive the response will be from the fans.
A recurring suggestion I'm seeing is that "Ask Cryptic" should be left alone, and that Cryptic should suck it up and start answering the tough questions.
You're just looking for another way to provide us a PR stunt every month that highlights the things you want us to hear under the guise of open dialogue.
I'm not buying it.
I guess its a symptom of the same problem that keeps getting rehashed in this thread. I'm willing to scan a document to see which non-answers were given that time around, but I won't invest any real time into something I know won't be substantive.
In general, I understand the position Cryptic takes with their users. They're in it for the money and a business like this generally doesn't want to be held hostage by their customers. In fact, you're generally better off treating your customers like lab rats, but this isn't your typical situation. This isn't Madden [Insert Year Here] or Halo that you can sell to the brainless masses. It's a game tied to a very iconic IP and that both loses you the masses and gains you a devoted cult. You're also the only active instance of that beloved IP, so you have a fanatical, captive audience willing to pour their wallets out into your coffers if only you would make their Star Trek fantasies come alive in an interactive world and you still ignore them.
I know it won't happen, but I'd love for Cryptic to actually implement the Like/Dislike system mentioned in this thread for development issues. I think it'd surprise Cryptic to learn of the disparity between the things they put effort into vs the things players are willing to spend money on.
My intention is to combine the things, reaching the goal of a better communication and get the comm grown together.
You - the team - suggest a small number of subjects (e.g. Romulans, Fleets, development/state of the game)
at a beginning of every month. In the first 1 or 2 weeks the community (on all the platforms and languages) is
called upon to choose a single one out of your suggestions. This can be done by a poll.
To reach as many players as possible (to get the best "average" opinion) you could use next
to the forum and facebook the newsletter ingame.
Perhaps it is also possible to include a link out of the newsletter - straight to the polls/surveys?!
After that period of vote the users can ask questions to that topic. If it?s too hard to do it in 4 weeks - why not 6 weeks instead?
The important thing in that will be - like others said before - choose only questions that can be answered conrete.
You know what I mean
Now it?s gonna be a bit crazy for some of you but I still want to mention it:
What?s about a hangout/chat on Google+/Youtube? One of the team is answering questions in a livestream (e.g. 1 hour).
Of course there are a lot of other similar platforms (besides G+) to get feedback from the community and to answer their questions
Could be fun and informative for all of us within a narrow time frame.
The videos could be linked in related blogs or older ASK CRYPTICs.
I have my own experiences with it - the google-devs are doing it for example.
The community asks per chat and the devs answering per webcam.
This could be done weekly eventually?!
Please excuse my weird English - it is not my native tongue