I'd best get the romulan story finished before this all starts then.
*******************************************
A Romulan Strike Team, Missing Farmers and an ancient base on a Klingon Border world. But what connects them? Find out in my First Foundary mission: 'The Jeroan Farmer Escapade'
We'll be keeping it up to date as development progresses and additional questions or concerns arise.
Thank you for continuing to post your feedback, ideas, questions and concerns regarding Arc!
Cheers,
Brandon =/\=
BranFlakes, it's cool that you made the blog-type post, but to be honest it lacks a big portion of the essential information that everyone was loking for here.
For ex., just like the fellow player that made this post, I would very much like to hear detailed answers to these questions:
1) Does ARC have to be kept running in the background while running the game of your choice, regardless if you wish to use ARC's Features or not?
2) Does ARC have options to allow it to shut itself down after the game you wish to play is running?
3) Can you do simultaneous updates for the Holodeck/Tribble/Redshirt installations? (This was a positive feature, to me, for NCSoft's launcher)
4) Are there options to keep ARC from activating upon Windows startup?
I have enough background applications already (Considering the Steam client has those options).
And clarification would be appreciated regarding this one as well:
How does Arc interact with Steam? Or does it replace Steam?
Furthermore, I would like clarification regarding these that I read in the blog-type post regarding ARC:
"We perform controlled tests in the QA environment and make absolutely sure that Arc remains lightweight and doesn?t take very much memory. Currently, the only time you should see Arc utilizing taxing system resources is when it is extracting the files that have been downloaded during game installation. We are intentionally keeping system resource usage low to ensure that Arc to maximize the number of hardware configurations that can support it. In terms of hard drive space, Arc currently takes less than 100MB, but we list ?1GB? in the system requirements to ensure that you have enough space to download at least one game."
Can anyone point out just how taxing it is to system resources - as in numbers?
"Arc uses a custom built-in browser which you can invoke during gameplay by pressing SHIFT-TAB."
Does this built-in browser automatically launch with ARC and tries to visit the internet?
And also one very important thing! Many people here very expressing concerns about the broadband usage. We need you to share any information you have reagrding this. Or to put it plain and simple, I already pay for STO because I like the game and the devs' work and I'm not about to pay PWE being cheap with my broadband.
One more time, I urge you to reconsider this being mandatory. It has the counter effect on many people including me. STO is the only MMO I play and this won't change. The only thing ARC can do is to bug me and drive me off the game if it has issues.
I understand that PWE wants to centralize the access to all their games, but for the love of Trek make it optional and even put some enticing bonuses to people that would use ARC, so the platform can have it's marketing or ease of access influence to the demographic you're targeting with this, but it will leave us that only enjoy STO at peace.
P.S. If there are any players of STO currently using ARC, I politely ask them to share any insight they might have from using ARC regarding these questions. I would appreciate it very much.
Item 1:
We have lifetime and normal subscribers that accumulate ZEN on a monthly basis. Items on the ZEN store become relatively free for Lifetime members after a while.
Action 1:
We will implement Lock Boxes as a solution so the probability of getting these items is between 0 and 1 encouraging gambling.
Item 2:
STO is doing really well, our other games are not.
Action 2:
Give them a launcher with ads and Zen offers to encourage gambling in our other games.
First off I am still pissed off about the bugs that STO has had since launch.
Secondly my mailbox lost hundreds of emails to myself with equipment and doffs.
Thirdly Cryptic customer service sends me robo replys and then closes the ticket.
Fourthly I am STILL short 1500 Zen and have no ledger showing any records
Fifthly, I found this damn Pando media booster on my PC that I never asked for or wanted
Now they want to force ARC on me?
Well guess what things just got nasty so nasty that I have decided to do something about this TRIBBLE. Some of you might assume I have gone off my rocker others might think this is a lie. Until it comes to pass...
CRYPTIC will be bought ..... hostile takeover if necessary and brought back to the USA within the next 90 days. I have reached my end with the Chinese Overlords. They can keep thier crappy little games. I am a lifer and have been around this game since launch. I too have suffered the incompetence of the ownership that will not listen to the customers.
I will NEVER play Neverwinter Nights I have 40+ years of tabletop D&D books and accessories from 4 different editions. This goes for for all mmos the ONLY reason I gave STO a chance was because I was curious and have been a lifelong Trekkie. But now I have had enough of the corporate lies and deciet.
This game has never had the proper resources it needed to fix the problems. I am going to see that the bugs get fixed. That you WILL have live moderators monitoring chats and a 24 hr response time to your ticket by a HUMAN BEING not a damn roboreply. Say bye bye to the lock box TRIBBLE... The C-store worked just fine when it was used. And game play will get a MUCH needed overhaul and a balance. No more soft walls that the enemies can shoot you through... So before you ridicule me and laugh at the thought of CRYPTIC being bought... give me the 90 days to bring my financial resources to bear.
First off I am still pissed off about the bugs that STO has had since launch.
Secondly my mailbox lost hundreds of emails to myself with equipment and doffs.
Thirdly Cryptic customer service sends me robo replys and then closes the ticket.
Fourthly I am STILL short 1500 Zen and have no ledger showing any records
Fifthly, I found this damn Pando media booster on my PC that I never asked for or wanted
Now they want to force ARC on me?
Well guess what things just got nasty so nasty that I have decided to do something about this TRIBBLE. Some of you might assume I have gone off my rocker others might think this is a lie. Until it comes to pass...
CRYPTIC will be bought ..... hostile takeover if necessary and brought back to the USA within the next 90 days. I have reached my end with the Chinese Overlords. They can keep thier crappy little games. I am a lifer and have been around this game since launch. I too have suffered the incompetence of the ownership that will not listen to the customers.
I will NEVER play Neverwinter Nights I have 40+ years of tabletop D&D books and accessories from 4 different editions. This goes for for all mmos the ONLY reason I gave STO a chance was because I was curious and have been a lifelong Trekkie. But now I have had enough of the corporate lies and deciet.
This game has never had the proper resources it needed to fix the problems. I am going to see that the bugs get fixed. That you WILL have live moderators monitoring chats and a 24 hr response time to your ticket by a HUMAN BEING not a damn roboreply. Say bye bye to the lock box TRIBBLE... The C-store worked just fine when it was used. And game play will get a MUCH needed overhaul and a balance. No more soft walls that the enemies can shoot you through... So before you ridicule me and laugh at the thought of CRYPTIC being bought... give me the 90 days to bring my financial resources to bear.
I'm still concerned about this "built-in" browser.
Getting security and standardization right in a commercial web browser is hard enough that the companies who do this full time with financial resources still have issues.
My simple question is what is it? Is it something PWE built on their own, did they use code from Mozilla/Firefox, are they simply using an API for Internet Explorer, or what?
Is this browser going to get regular updates for security issues? In other words, is PWE going to fully support this browser now and for good as a state-of-the-art browser?
Frankly, I don't want to use it unless I know it's at least as secure as IE or Chrome.
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'm still concerned about this "built-in" browser.
Getting security and standardization right in a commercial web browser is hard enough that the companies who do this full time with financial resources still have issues.
My simple question is what is it? Is it something PWE built on their own, did they use code from Mozilla/Firefox, are they simply using an API for Internet Explorer, or what?
Is this browser going to get regular updates for security issues? In other words, is PWE going to fully support this browser now and for good as a state-of-the-art browser?
Frankly, I don't want to use it unless I know it's at least as secure as IE or Chrome.
I wouldn't mind having a built-in browser in the game, but it should not have anything to do with some bloat launcher in my opinion.
Kind of what EVE Online had when I last played it, it was essentially a licensed version of chrome with some limitations to rule out some security issues.
Just to make it clear, I do not want Arc, but wouldn't mind a browser in-game.
First off I am still pissed off about the bugs that STO has had since launch.
Secondly my mailbox lost hundreds of emails to myself with equipment and doffs.
Thirdly Cryptic customer service sends me robo replys and then closes the ticket.
Fourthly I am STILL short 1500 Zen and have no ledger showing any records
Fifthly, I found this damn Pando media booster on my PC that I never asked for or wanted
Now they want to force ARC on me?
Well guess what things just got nasty so nasty that I have decided to do something about this TRIBBLE. Some of you might assume I have gone off my rocker others might think this is a lie. Until it comes to pass...
CRYPTIC will be bought ..... hostile takeover if necessary and brought back to the USA within the next 90 days. I have reached my end with the Chinese Overlords. They can keep thier crappy little games. I am a lifer and have been around this game since launch. I too have suffered the incompetence of the ownership that will not listen to the customers.
I will NEVER play Neverwinter Nights I have 40+ years of tabletop D&D books and accessories from 4 different editions. This goes for for all mmos the ONLY reason I gave STO a chance was because I was curious and have been a lifelong Trekkie. But now I have had enough of the corporate lies and deciet.
This game has never had the proper resources it needed to fix the problems. I am going to see that the bugs get fixed. That you WILL have live moderators monitoring chats and a 24 hr response time to your ticket by a HUMAN BEING not a damn roboreply. Say bye bye to the lock box TRIBBLE... The C-store worked just fine when it was used. And game play will get a MUCH needed overhaul and a balance. No more soft walls that the enemies can shoot you through... So before you ridicule me and laugh at the thought of CRYPTIC being bought... give me the 90 days to bring my financial resources to bear.
-Arnthebard-
Yeah good luck with that, If you can do it then great but i doubt that will be the case.
NO TO ARC
Vice Admiral Volmack ISS Thundermole
Brigadier General Jokag IKS Gorkan
Centurion Kares RRW Tomalak
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
CRYPTIC will be bought ..... hostile takeover if necessary and brought back to the USA within the next 90 days. I have reached my end with the Chinese Overlords.
-Arnthebard-
I know this comment was made tongue-in-cheek, but I really do hope it happens by a company with the resources to do it. I've also been kind of hoping CBS pulls the license, though that would put Cryptic in a bad spot.
The last point on the FAQ seems to imply that they want ARC mandatory at some point.
"Will future versions of Perfect World games require Arc to download and patch?
From a technical standpoint, we would absolutely love to make Arc a central, exclusive platform that serves update and patching functionality for all our games, though we are not ready to do that just yet. First, we want to make the tool something that our players enjoy and feel genuinely improves their gameplay experience. If you have feedback about how Arc can better provide you access to your favorite Perfect World games, please feel free to post it on our forums. We?re looking forward to hearing your thoughts!"
"Exclusive" would be the key word there. How that affects Steam or how long that will take is anyone's guess. Hoping for a few more years of play before that happens. Players would "enjoy" not having to use ARC at all. It cannot provide me easier access than I already have.
I'm still concerned about this "built-in" browser.
Getting security and standardization right in a commercial web browser is hard enough that the companies who do this full time with financial resources still have issues.
My simple question is what is it? Is it something PWE built on their own, did they use code from Mozilla/Firefox, are they simply using an API for Internet Explorer, or what?
Is this browser going to get regular updates for security issues? In other words, is PWE going to fully support this browser now and for good as a state-of-the-art browser?
Frankly, I don't want to use it unless I know it's at least as secure as IE or Chrome.
the part in red will never happen tbh as they will not want to spend the cash on staff to keep it secure , it will not be an easy task and more than "PWE" will want to spend as it will reduce it's profits .
look at Microsoft they have spent millions on more than 9 versions of IE and it still is not 100% secure , do you think PWE will want to spend that much money/time on this ?
the part in red will never happen tbh as they will not want to spend the cash on staff to keep it secure , it will not be an easy task and more than "PWE" will want to spend as it will reduce it's profits .
look at Microsoft they have spent millions on more than 9 versions of IE and it still is not 100% secure , do you think PWE will want to spend that much money/time on this ?
Which is *precisely* why PWE should never embark on such a foolish endeavor. For crying out-loud, Dstahl recently admitted they don't even have the resources to do proper quality control for STO itself. How will they expect to maintain a secure, own browser?! Let alone that a browser has abso-frakkin'-lutely nothing to do with STO to begin with.
For crying out-loud, Dstahl recently admitted they don't even have the resources to do proper quality control for STO itself..
but they still keep adding stuff to the game without fixing it , at the rate this game is going it will not make season 10 due to the bugs breaking the game more than it is now . don't get me wrong I love the game but come on cryptic fix more of the game before adding more bugs , to me cryptic are reading this and thinking pffffffffffffffffffffffffffffft boring people moaning about game bugs
From some one who was just forced to download this Arc TRIBBLE after rebuilding a new machine, I have found 2 things I have seen asked and not answered( to my knowledge).
-There is a check mark box to not have this thing launch automatic when windows starts up.
-You can navigate to the directory you installed STO in and run the launcher from there. No Arc needed (for now). Haven't tried uninstalling Arc to see if STO still usable though.
-Rule of Acquisition #113: Always have sex with the boss.
-I am one of the many victims from the hijacked Caspian Division.
I will not let the childish acts of a criminal ruin this game for me.
-The actions of Cryptic, on the other hand......
IMO, this is just like like the early days of the Station Launcher from SOE... I am sure there are many of you out there that remember the days of launching MxO and/or SWG from their own launchers, and the debacle that started when the all-encompassing Station Launcher came into being.
That launcher was forced upon us so they could advertise their other games (the worthless ones they didn't want to spend money advertising for).
Like the SOE Launcher, this one will keep people from being able to login to ANY PWE/Cryptic game when the Arc Launcher is bugged. No playing customers = no paying customers, when this happens.
It basically forces you to add more bloatware onto your PC, thereby reducing gaming performance.
You'll get those "cheesy" advertisements on your Arc interface for their other games... You know, the ones that you won't be playing anyway.
This is just another method of "herding" the customer base and bombarding us with spam about their in-house games.
In all fairness, however, there are other gaming companies out there doing the same thing. PWE/Cryptic is just jumping on the band-wagon as it were.
-AoP- Warrior's Blood (KDF Armada) / -AoP- Qu' raD qulbo'Degh / -AoP- ProjectPhoenix Join Date: Tuesday, February 2, 2010
It is said that it is best to be polite when expressing concerns on the forums. Catching more flies with honey, and all that. Many people have been. Just to be insulted by this farce of a FAQ.
You are only making things worse. Stop it.
Honestly, my opinion of PWE (there is no Cryptic-Just watch the latest "On Screen" and observe the shirts they are wearing) is so low that I now believe that Arc will be stealth implemented. Just one more little forgotten line in the patch notes.
It's not a big deal, really. Nature abhors a vacuum and once you've successfully killed Star Trek Online Something else will come along to fill that void. That something else will have the benefit of a model not to follow.
PWE's actions tell us how little we are valued every day. The truth of the matter is PWE's time is running out.
I downloaded and installed Arc a while ago and found this out.
If you start a game through Arc, you cannot close the program while that game is running.
Personally, I do not like having to run Arc in the background just to play a game. I play CO and STO, and have multiple accounts for both games. This seems to be yet another hurdle to jump just to play an online game. This, I feel, is ridiculous. I find it much easier to switch accounts from the current launcher of each game.
Yes, the whole centralization thing sounds nice, and I would love to see our Accolades and stuff for our characters posted publicly. However, those things are available only for games such as Forsaken World, War of the Immortals, etc. FW and WotI are games I have dabbled with in the past and have "Achievements" posted there through Core Connect, which is supposedly what Arc is supposed to incorporate and improve upon based upon the FAQ. Maybe I would be more open to this if there was some actual benefit for us using Arc... maybe rewards similar to what we get for using programs such as Raptr, for example. If Arc was worth my while, I would probably even drop Raptr in favor of it. As it stands for now, If we get the option to not be required to run every PWE game through Arc, I'll just keep my setup as it is now and load each game manually.
IMO, it will be a while before they alter the actual game launcher coding to actually "force" us to use Arc to load their games. Until that day comes, if that day comes, I plan to keep things as they are on my PC until I see a real reason to add another program running in the background and using up my resources.
-AoP- Warrior's Blood (KDF Armada) / -AoP- Qu' raD qulbo'Degh / -AoP- ProjectPhoenix Join Date: Tuesday, February 2, 2010
I downloaded and installed Arc a while ago and found this out.
If you start a game through Arc, you cannot close the program while that game is running.
All I will say is this: If the above quoted is accurate, that is an automatic non-starter for me even trying ARC. I will no longer play STO ever when ARC becomes mandatory for all players.
Brandon, I implore you, either confirm or deny this ASAP!
Thank you for the time...
STO CBT Player - 400 day+ Vet, Currently Silver
Cryptic, would you actulaly like me to spend actual Money? It's Simple:
Full, Story-driven, select from start 1-50 Klingon Side
Scrap current Lock Box & Lobi system for something more reasonable
Expand Dil and Rep/Fleet Marks to regular story content
...Finally read that """"""""FAQ""""""""", I can't put enough quotes around that.........
...But it did lead me to another question - where do they get these questions from?
Do they just pull them out of the air and say they are player questions?......
...Finally read that """"""""FAQ""""""""", I can't put enough quotes around that.........
...But it did lead me to another question - where do they get these questions from?
Do they just pull them out of the air and say they are player questions?......
It wouldn't surprise me, but there's probably some method to their madness
...Finally read that """"""""FAQ""""""""", I can't put enough quotes around that.........
...But it did lead me to another question - where do they get these questions from?
Do they just pull them out of the air and say they are player questions?......
I hazzard a guess the "Generic FAQ Questions for Dummies" book where the real questions would be too hard to answer or show the "wonderful" feature in a bad light.
Cryptic/PWE does not listen or care about the opinons of their player base they are doing what they want when they want to regardless if the players want it or not.
I for one will not be downloading this ARC bs once its implemented i will be leaving the game simple as that.
I was about to sink a some cash into the game to buy some stuff from the c-store but....no chance of that now.
I may start looking elswhere for something to play cryptic really screwed the pooch with this ARC crapola.
Cryptic/PWE better think about if they push players to hard they will have a massive die off of players and that gamers will warn one another about crappy games or games that force stuff on you that you dont want.
Cryptic/PWE does not listen or care about the opinons of their player base they are doing what they want when they want to regardless if the players want it or not.
I for one will not be downloading this ARC bs once its implemented i will be leaving the game simple as that.
I was about to sink a some cash into the game to buy some stuff from the c-store but....no chance of that now.
I may start looking elswhere for something to play cryptic really screwed the pooch with this ARC crapola.
Cryptic/PWE better think about if they push players to hard they will have a massive die off of players and that gamers will warn one another about crappy games or games that force stuff on you that you dont want.
You will not rage quit. I have seen this near-exact posts in regarding almost every new feature in STO, like ftp and linking our accounts to the pwe main site.
I do agree with one poster that ARC does not need to be running while I play, that just wasting computer resources.
Those things had minimal impact on our ability to play STO.
So we had to change our forum username?
Irrevalent.
F2Players? More players=good.
But Arc is not even remotely on the level of those changes.
This is a major change that does not offer Cryptic players any benefit whatsoever.
I had a little look at PWE's game profile integration feature a long time back, before Arc was even concieved of.
It has lots of options for publicly sharing info about stuff you did in every game except Star Trek Online and Champions Online.
Now tell me, why should I care about sharing info about games I don't play or characters that I will not create?
And that's the impression I'm getting about PWE here, they claim integration, but really, Cryptic is still completely seperate from PWE.
We will always be second best to PWE and they won't really care what we say, since we aren't playing the games they want us to.
That is the sole reason PWE acquired Cryptic, to try and increase their playerbase (and profit margin) in their other games.
I'm assuming that didn't work, so they said, okay, let's find a way to make them notice our other games and Arc was created.
By the way, NCSoft tried a similar thing on a smaller scale with Tabula Rasa and all it achieved was to lose a significant portion of their North American and European playerbase.
There's a lesson to be learned there, don't push the wrong game at a target demographic who has no interest in it whatsoever.
If we were interested in their games, we wouldn't need Arc to get us to play them.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
Why does everyone try to make a cheap Steam Knockoff?
Origin... UPlay... That Thing SINS used/is using... now this... why? I don't need any of those, especially when they are not working properly...
Any chance that once this becomes mandatory, somebody will figure out how to disable it and spread the cheers?
STO Member since February 2009. I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born! Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
Comments
Looks like some of us will be leaving soon
Vice Admiral Volmack ISS Thundermole
Brigadier General Jokag IKS Gorkan
Centurion Kares RRW Tomalak
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
A Romulan Strike Team, Missing Farmers and an ancient base on a Klingon Border world. But what connects them? Find out in my First Foundary mission: 'The Jeroan Farmer Escapade'
BranFlakes, it's cool that you made the blog-type post, but to be honest it lacks a big portion of the essential information that everyone was loking for here.
For ex., just like the fellow player that made this post, I would very much like to hear detailed answers to these questions:
And clarification would be appreciated regarding this one as well:
Furthermore, I would like clarification regarding these that I read in the blog-type post regarding ARC:
"We perform controlled tests in the QA environment and make absolutely sure that Arc remains lightweight and doesn?t take very much memory. Currently, the only time you should see Arc utilizing taxing system resources is when it is extracting the files that have been downloaded during game installation. We are intentionally keeping system resource usage low to ensure that Arc to maximize the number of hardware configurations that can support it. In terms of hard drive space, Arc currently takes less than 100MB, but we list ?1GB? in the system requirements to ensure that you have enough space to download at least one game."
Can anyone point out just how taxing it is to system resources - as in numbers?
"Arc uses a custom built-in browser which you can invoke during gameplay by pressing SHIFT-TAB."
Does this built-in browser automatically launch with ARC and tries to visit the internet?
And also one very important thing! Many people here very expressing concerns about the broadband usage. We need you to share any information you have reagrding this. Or to put it plain and simple, I already pay for STO because I like the game and the devs' work and I'm not about to pay PWE being cheap with my broadband.
One more time, I urge you to reconsider this being mandatory. It has the counter effect on many people including me. STO is the only MMO I play and this won't change. The only thing ARC can do is to bug me and drive me off the game if it has issues.
I understand that PWE wants to centralize the access to all their games, but for the love of Trek make it optional and even put some enticing bonuses to people that would use ARC, so the platform can have it's marketing or ease of access influence to the demographic you're targeting with this, but it will leave us that only enjoy STO at peace.
P.S. If there are any players of STO currently using ARC, I politely ask them to share any insight they might have from using ARC regarding these questions. I would appreciate it very much.
Item 1:
We have lifetime and normal subscribers that accumulate ZEN on a monthly basis. Items on the ZEN store become relatively free for Lifetime members after a while.
Action 1:
We will implement Lock Boxes as a solution so the probability of getting these items is between 0 and 1 encouraging gambling.
Item 2:
STO is doing really well, our other games are not.
Action 2:
Give them a launcher with ads and Zen offers to encourage gambling in our other games.
Dear Bran, seems you missed 2 important items:
Q: Will Arc be made mandatory for all PWE games?
A: ...
Q: Will STO continue to be available thru STEAM, sans Arc?
A: ...
Secondly my mailbox lost hundreds of emails to myself with equipment and doffs.
Thirdly Cryptic customer service sends me robo replys and then closes the ticket.
Fourthly I am STILL short 1500 Zen and have no ledger showing any records
Fifthly, I found this damn Pando media booster on my PC that I never asked for or wanted
Now they want to force ARC on me?
Well guess what things just got nasty so nasty that I have decided to do something about this TRIBBLE. Some of you might assume I have gone off my rocker others might think this is a lie. Until it comes to pass...
CRYPTIC will be bought ..... hostile takeover if necessary and brought back to the USA within the next 90 days. I have reached my end with the Chinese Overlords. They can keep thier crappy little games. I am a lifer and have been around this game since launch. I too have suffered the incompetence of the ownership that will not listen to the customers.
I will NEVER play Neverwinter Nights I have 40+ years of tabletop D&D books and accessories from 4 different editions. This goes for for all mmos the ONLY reason I gave STO a chance was because I was curious and have been a lifelong Trekkie. But now I have had enough of the corporate lies and deciet.
This game has never had the proper resources it needed to fix the problems. I am going to see that the bugs get fixed. That you WILL have live moderators monitoring chats and a 24 hr response time to your ticket by a HUMAN BEING not a damn roboreply. Say bye bye to the lock box TRIBBLE... The C-store worked just fine when it was used. And game play will get a MUCH needed overhaul and a balance. No more soft walls that the enemies can shoot you through... So before you ridicule me and laugh at the thought of CRYPTIC being bought... give me the 90 days to bring my financial resources to bear.
-Arnthebard-
I for one, welcome our new angry overlord.
Getting security and standardization right in a commercial web browser is hard enough that the companies who do this full time with financial resources still have issues.
My simple question is what is it? Is it something PWE built on their own, did they use code from Mozilla/Firefox, are they simply using an API for Internet Explorer, or what?
Is this browser going to get regular updates for security issues? In other words, is PWE going to fully support this browser now and for good as a state-of-the-art browser?
Frankly, I don't want to use it unless I know it's at least as secure as IE or Chrome.
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
I wouldn't mind having a built-in browser in the game, but it should not have anything to do with some bloat launcher in my opinion.
Kind of what EVE Online had when I last played it, it was essentially a licensed version of chrome with some limitations to rule out some security issues.
Just to make it clear, I do not want Arc, but wouldn't mind a browser in-game.
Yeah good luck with that, If you can do it then great but i doubt that will be the case.
Vice Admiral Volmack ISS Thundermole
Brigadier General Jokag IKS Gorkan
Centurion Kares RRW Tomalak
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
I, for two, do too.
I know this comment was made tongue-in-cheek, but I really do hope it happens by a company with the resources to do it. I've also been kind of hoping CBS pulls the license, though that would put Cryptic in a bad spot.
"Will future versions of Perfect World games require Arc to download and patch?
From a technical standpoint, we would absolutely love to make Arc a central, exclusive platform that serves update and patching functionality for all our games, though we are not ready to do that just yet. First, we want to make the tool something that our players enjoy and feel genuinely improves their gameplay experience. If you have feedback about how Arc can better provide you access to your favorite Perfect World games, please feel free to post it on our forums. We?re looking forward to hearing your thoughts!"
"Exclusive" would be the key word there. How that affects Steam or how long that will take is anyone's guess. Hoping for a few more years of play before that happens. Players would "enjoy" not having to use ARC at all. It cannot provide me easier access than I already have.
As soon as we can fabricate a good reason to avoid the massive public backlash of players who don't wish to use Arc when it is made mandatory?
Everything I read about this says, we're making it look as good as possible, despite the opinion to the contrary.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
the part in red will never happen tbh as they will not want to spend the cash on staff to keep it secure , it will not be an easy task and more than "PWE" will want to spend as it will reduce it's profits .
look at Microsoft they have spent millions on more than 9 versions of IE and it still is not 100% secure , do you think PWE will want to spend that much money/time on this ?
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Which is *precisely* why PWE should never embark on such a foolish endeavor. For crying out-loud, Dstahl recently admitted they don't even have the resources to do proper quality control for STO itself. How will they expect to maintain a secure, own browser?! Let alone that a browser has abso-frakkin'-lutely nothing to do with STO to begin with.
but they still keep adding stuff to the game without fixing it , at the rate this game is going it will not make season 10 due to the bugs breaking the game more than it is now . don't get me wrong I love the game but come on cryptic fix more of the game before adding more bugs
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-There is a check mark box to not have this thing launch automatic when windows starts up.
-You can navigate to the directory you installed STO in and run the launcher from there. No Arc needed (for now). Haven't tried uninstalling Arc to see if STO still usable though.
-Rule of Acquisition #113: Always have sex with the boss.
-I am one of the many victims from the hijacked Caspian Division.
I will not let the childish acts of a criminal ruin this game for me.
-The actions of Cryptic, on the other hand......
That launcher was forced upon us so they could advertise their other games (the worthless ones they didn't want to spend money advertising for).
Like the SOE Launcher, this one will keep people from being able to login to ANY PWE/Cryptic game when the Arc Launcher is bugged. No playing customers = no paying customers, when this happens.
It basically forces you to add more bloatware onto your PC, thereby reducing gaming performance.
You'll get those "cheesy" advertisements on your Arc interface for their other games... You know, the ones that you won't be playing anyway.
This is just another method of "herding" the customer base and bombarding us with spam about their in-house games.
In all fairness, however, there are other gaming companies out there doing the same thing. PWE/Cryptic is just jumping on the band-wagon as it were.
Join Date: Tuesday, February 2, 2010
It is said that it is best to be polite when expressing concerns on the forums. Catching more flies with honey, and all that. Many people have been. Just to be insulted by this farce of a FAQ.
You are only making things worse. Stop it.
Honestly, my opinion of PWE (there is no Cryptic-Just watch the latest "On Screen" and observe the shirts they are wearing) is so low that I now believe that Arc will be stealth implemented. Just one more little forgotten line in the patch notes.
It's not a big deal, really. Nature abhors a vacuum and once you've successfully killed Star Trek Online Something else will come along to fill that void. That something else will have the benefit of a model not to follow.
PWE's actions tell us how little we are valued every day. The truth of the matter is PWE's time is running out.
I downloaded and installed Arc a while ago and found this out.
If you start a game through Arc, you cannot close the program while that game is running.
Personally, I do not like having to run Arc in the background just to play a game. I play CO and STO, and have multiple accounts for both games. This seems to be yet another hurdle to jump just to play an online game. This, I feel, is ridiculous. I find it much easier to switch accounts from the current launcher of each game.
Yes, the whole centralization thing sounds nice, and I would love to see our Accolades and stuff for our characters posted publicly. However, those things are available only for games such as Forsaken World, War of the Immortals, etc. FW and WotI are games I have dabbled with in the past and have "Achievements" posted there through Core Connect, which is supposedly what Arc is supposed to incorporate and improve upon based upon the FAQ. Maybe I would be more open to this if there was some actual benefit for us using Arc... maybe rewards similar to what we get for using programs such as Raptr, for example. If Arc was worth my while, I would probably even drop Raptr in favor of it. As it stands for now, If we get the option to not be required to run every PWE game through Arc, I'll just keep my setup as it is now and load each game manually.
IMO, it will be a while before they alter the actual game launcher coding to actually "force" us to use Arc to load their games. Until that day comes, if that day comes, I plan to keep things as they are on my PC until I see a real reason to add another program running in the background and using up my resources.
Join Date: Tuesday, February 2, 2010
All I will say is this: If the above quoted is accurate, that is an automatic non-starter for me even trying ARC. I will no longer play STO ever when ARC becomes mandatory for all players.
Brandon, I implore you, either confirm or deny this ASAP!
Thank you for the time...
Cryptic, would you actulaly like me to spend actual Money? It's Simple:
...But it did lead me to another question - where do they get these questions from?
Do they just pull them out of the air and say they are player questions?......
It wouldn't surprise me, but there's probably some method to their madness
I hazzard a guess the "Generic FAQ Questions for Dummies" book where the real questions would be too hard to answer or show the "wonderful" feature in a bad light.
Cryptic/PWE does not listen or care about the opinons of their player base they are doing what they want when they want to regardless if the players want it or not.
I for one will not be downloading this ARC bs once its implemented i will be leaving the game simple as that.
I was about to sink a some cash into the game to buy some stuff from the c-store but....no chance of that now.
I may start looking elswhere for something to play cryptic really screwed the pooch with this ARC crapola.
Cryptic/PWE better think about if they push players to hard they will have a massive die off of players and that gamers will warn one another about crappy games or games that force stuff on you that you dont want.
You will not rage quit. I have seen this near-exact posts in regarding almost every new feature in STO, like ftp and linking our accounts to the pwe main site.
I do agree with one poster that ARC does not need to be running while I play, that just wasting computer resources.
So we had to change our forum username?
Irrevalent.
F2Players? More players=good.
But Arc is not even remotely on the level of those changes.
This is a major change that does not offer Cryptic players any benefit whatsoever.
I had a little look at PWE's game profile integration feature a long time back, before Arc was even concieved of.
It has lots of options for publicly sharing info about stuff you did in every game except Star Trek Online and Champions Online.
Now tell me, why should I care about sharing info about games I don't play or characters that I will not create?
And that's the impression I'm getting about PWE here, they claim integration, but really, Cryptic is still completely seperate from PWE.
We will always be second best to PWE and they won't really care what we say, since we aren't playing the games they want us to.
That is the sole reason PWE acquired Cryptic, to try and increase their playerbase (and profit margin) in their other games.
I'm assuming that didn't work, so they said, okay, let's find a way to make them notice our other games and Arc was created.
By the way, NCSoft tried a similar thing on a smaller scale with Tabula Rasa and all it achieved was to lose a significant portion of their North American and European playerbase.
There's a lesson to be learned there, don't push the wrong game at a target demographic who has no interest in it whatsoever.
If we were interested in their games, we wouldn't need Arc to get us to play them.
Bees like honey, they don't like vinegar.
Everytime someone makes a character that is an copy of an existing superhuman, Creativity is sad
Origin... UPlay... That Thing SINS used/is using... now this... why? I don't need any of those, especially when they are not working properly...
I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born!
Forever a STO Veteran-Minion