For those of you who have asked, yes, they plan on making ARC mandatory for all their games at some point. And, yes, it will be required to run in the background while you are playing your game. These have been stated in the news stories regarding ARC.
Dezstravus and the rest of the devs, for some reason, have refused to answer the question of why it needs to keep running during game play.
I for one do not like the idea of making ARC mandatory. I only play STO. In fact, STO is the ONLY mmo that I play. I am not a fan of them, but this is Star Trek. Also, the browser I use works quite well for me, thank you very much, so I don't need another one. And the chat/social media aspects don't appeal to me. If I want to yap and talk and "socialize" I'll join facebook or twitter or one of those other TRIBBLE "social media" sites. I just want to log in and play my game. Nothing more.
I'm not saying they shouldn't develop ARC, although I do agree that the time and resources could have gone into the game instead. What I'm asking is please don't make it mandatory.
I don't care what the header says, I am not now, nor have I ever been, nor will I ever be, an "ARC user".
Love the "Guides" button from the STO news page. A lot of those were kind of buried on the old site and not easy to get to, so this is welcome.
Not fond of the 'infinite scroll' of articles on the news page from a PC browser, but I can live with it. I imagine it works okay on a phone or tablet, will try it out later. The news page feels busy and cluttered.
I'm not too thrilled with the large side-scrolling tiles on the main Games page, especially for games I'm not interested in. My wife will not be thrilled with the depictions of breasty, scantily clad women on some of those panels and with no way to hide them you're creating a disincentive for me to want to use the site.
I would rather see favored games being more prominent when I log in and the site knows who I am and what my preferences are. And smaller tiles.
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
Heh, after seeing most of the other PWE game banners on that webpage, I'd love to have my memory wiped. Are you serious all of those games are downloaded by 100s of thousands?! It's always the same girl in a different costume!
More to the point (and based of the previous couple sentences), I have no need nor do I want to know about and even less play any other PWE games than STO. Therefore any shared platform is completely pointless for me. Given Arc is (no matter how much you try to lighten it) much more bloated than the current simple launcher, it's clearly a disadvantage for me to get Arc.
Therefore, as I have repeated several times: I do not want Arc. Leave me in peace with the current launcher, thank you very much.
TOIVA, Toi Vaxx, Toia Vix, Toveg, T'vritha, To Vrax: Bring in the Allegiance class. Toi'Va, Ti'vath, Toivia, Ty'Vris, Tia Vex, Toi'Virth: Add Tier 6 KDF Carrier and Raider. Tae'Va, T'Vaya, To'Var, Tevra, T'Vira, To'Vrak: Give us Asylums for Romulans.
For those of you who have asked, yes, they plan on making ARC mandatory for all their games at some point. And, yes, it will be required to run in the background while you are playing your game. These have been stated in the news stories regarding ARC.
Dezstravus and the rest of the devs, for some reason, have refused to answer the question of why it needs to keep running during game play.
Yeah, this is the second-biggest sticking point for me. Not all of us have ?berleet gaming laptops. And this software is a giant mass of memory space that I need elsewhere.
I for one do not like the idea of making ARC mandatory. I only play STO. In fact, STO is the ONLY mmo that I play. I am not a fan of them, but this is Star Trek. Also, the browser I use works quite well for me, thank you very much, so I don't need another one. And the chat/social media aspects don't appeal to me. If I want to yap and talk and "socialize" I'll join facebook or twitter or one of those other TRIBBLE "social media" sites. I just want to log in and play my game. Nothing more.
Precisely. This game is already a little too chatty IMHO. There are already areas of the game that are dumber than Twitbook (EG Earth Spacedock, and the winter wonderland). I don't need more socializing rammed in my face; I just don't have the time for it.
I'm not saying they shouldn't develop ARC, although I do agree that the time and resources could have gone into the game instead. What I'm asking is please don't make it mandatory.
And this is the BIG issue. I'm actually sort of ambivalent about ARC...ONLY as long as it is optional. The second it becomes mandatory? I LANCB until it's gone. And I bet a lot of other people are with me.
so assuming sto can be launched from steam, then i already have an account there, still active even though i dont have much use for it being a pack rat with boxes of games discs. but yeah assuming its launched from there instead of needing arc, thats where i will be.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
What we are not getting with ARC is answers
1. What the hell does it actually do?
2. Will it's use become mandatory at some point in the future?
Nobodies giving clear answers but considering how they are pushing this thing through it doesn't take a rocket scientist to add things up.
We are only told of what the surface convenience features are, the friends list, the chat client the mini browser, but there is more to this than that. I suspect that a big part of what ARC is is a Peer file sharing program, where everyone's computer that's running ARC is torrenting game files for the company whether they are patching their individual games or not, this is very convenient and cost effective for the company, not so much for the end user.
In any case I don't run mystery software on my computer and I won't run 2 programs to play one game.
An analogy here is getting a "free" music cd but before you can play the disc some guy wants to pop the hood of your car and install a black box without giving you a clear answer of what it's for, not many people would play along with that scenario.
If something is not broken, don't fix it, if it is broken, don't leave it broken.
What we are not getting with ARC is answers
1. What the hell does it actually do?
2. Will it's use become mandatory at some point in the future?
Nobodies giving clear answers but considering how they are pushing this thing through it doesn't take a rocket scientist to add things up.
We are only told of what the surface convenience features are, the friends list, the chat client the mini browser, but there is more to this than that. I suspect that a big part of what ARC is is a Peer file sharing program, where everyone's computer that's running ARC is torrenting game files for the company whether they are patching their individual games or not, this is very convenient and cost effective for the company, not so much for the end user.
In any case I don't run mystery software on my computer and I won't run 2 programs to play one game.
An analogy here is getting a "free" music cd but before you can play the disc some guy wants to pop the hood of your car and install a black box without giving you a clear answer of what it's for, not many people would play along with that scenario.
I'm just a single person playing but I'm on the verge of just writing STO off for some of the other games I have available. Now I do play STO 99% of the time compared to these others but if they don't allow me to play without having to keep using arc since I had to re-install... I'm just going to uninstall arc and never return.
when arc does become the problem and sto can not be launched from steam (assuming) then that would be the end of my sto journey for good. im sure i will keep an eye on star citizen for any potential beta testing if possible.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
If it's a choice between Arc or Steam, I will choose Steam. And if it still requires Arc, then I will be demanding a refund on my Lifetime subscription purchase.
Time is a funny thing; There is always too much of it. Except when you need it the most, then there is never enough.
okay trying arc, will give you guys the benifit of the doubt, but I am not really hoping for much, nor am I looking at it like the end of gaming. So for now it is working and not giving me any greater headaches than I normally have with the game.
Space is vast, it's wonderful and maddening. Yet in that madness is some of the greatest beauty I have ever seen.
If it's a choice between Arc or Steam, I will choose Steam. And if it still requires Arc, then I will be demanding a refund on my Lifetime subscription purchase.
demand all you like, cryptic rarely considers this position from their customer base. im sure you could try pulling that money but you would end up banned anyways and what happens one day when cryptic finally reconsiders that position on steam?
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
I only play STO and have the client installed. If wanted to play any other PWE game I would go and install the game client. Since I don't want to play any other one, I don't need another client.
Therefore, I am not slightly interested in installing something I don't need. Simple as that.
And just like in the last feedback thread about this topic, only getting responses from devs to anything that may be seen as supporting this. Completely ignoring any and all negative feedback. I will say this, just like I said in the last feedback thread, not acknowledging 100% of the feedback and only responding to what you deem to be positive, supporting feedback does not make this an accepted application.
-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......
Well, since it seems to be difficult to answer this simple question about Arc running in the background or not,
I have actually downloaded the Arc client to see for myself. Here is some initial feedback.
The system requirements for Arc claims that it needs 8MB of hard drive space. After installing, my Arc folder
is sitting at about 75MB. What's up with that?
After the intial login, I am logged in automatically when starting this program, which is fine. The start screen is
my games library, so it's basically just "Star Trek Online" with the logo and a Play button. No advertisements
here, so that's good.
The Play button launches the current launcher, which I believe is not how it's intended to work out in the end?
Right now it's just very inconvenient.
And now for the question I have wanted to know the answer to:
Can you close Arc after launching the game?
The answer is: Sort of.
Yes, you can manually close the client (at this time, anyway). However this does not end all the processes
connected to Arc.
When Arc launches, it starts two processes: Arc.exe and ArcOSBrowser.exe.
When the STO game client starts up, another process launches: ArcOSOverlay.exe.
These three processes together seem to use about 3% CPU and 0.20 GB of memory.
(I have an i7-3770 @ 3.40GHz processor and 16GB of RAM, for reference).
Once I'm in the game, I can close the program manually. This kills the two intial processes,
Arc.exe and ArcOSBrowser.exe. However, ArcOSOverlay.exe is still left running, and I have so far been unable to end this process as long as the game is still running.
On my computer, this process seems to use about 1% CPU and 0.10 GB of memory.
There is no option in the Arc client to automatically close the client after launching the game, either.
So I guess that's the answer to my initial question whether or not Arc insists on running in the background: yes, it does.
I know that you are going to make Arc mandatory at some point no matter how much negative feedback
you get, so I am simply going to request that we get the option to completely shut down the Arc client and
associated processes after launching the game. Preferably with an option to do this automatically every time
a game is launched.
Do that, and I will happily be using the Arc client in the same way as I am using the current launcher.
Joined in March, 2011. Lifer since December, 2011.
While I'm not a fan of the ARC client, I do like the site. It's neat and tidy. That being said I have one request/issue, it is said this is a move to streamline things and make it easier for site/game management, okay, so it's not a sales push, then move the but LoR Legacy pack and Starter pack where the news feed is and move the news feed where you have the failed sales pitch! News should be front and center, sales off to the side.
Edit: Worried about one thing, will this kill the Gateway, if so you fail, if not I'm fine.
When I got my new laptop, I made a conscious decision that I would eat the dogfood and try Arc out. Since I had an original DVD, I could always just install the regular launcher if I wanted to.
Other than accidentally hitting Shift + Tab a couple of times, Arc has stayed out of my way. I don't use the built-in browser, except when I'm buying Zen "in-game".
I do play the other two Cryptic games in the portfolio and don't mind the idea of those being in a unified launcher as long as I don't have to look at the rest of the games that I haven't installed.
If it's hogging resources, I haven't noticed it. No impact on gameplay for me. But I will admit that the older laptop my kids are using to play STO does not have Arc installed and I will hold off on that as long as I can. My opinion of Arc might change then.
I do occasionally have to relaunch the launcher the first time after an update, but it's a minor annoyance that I'm used to now. Arc does not start automatically because I turned that off as soon as I installed it.
PWE has repeatedly said that Arc does NOT have P2P functionality or spyware installed in it. Unless somebody has proof to back up their claim, they should stop contradicting the Devs on this point.
You don't want to use it, don't use it. But stop frightening everybody else into thinking Arc is the end of STO.
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
PWE has repeatedly said that Arc does NOT have P2P functionality or spyware installed in it. Unless somebody has proof to back up their claim, they should stop contradicting the Devs on this point.
You don't want to use it, don't use it. But stop frightening everybody else into thinking Arc is the end of STO.
I got a few points for you on that matter. If it does not have these things you state on there why is it trying to install various plugins into chrome on my machine. (Edit: I basically had to manually remove it from the startup programs and then go in grab the sto client built into arc and make a short cut to desktop under admin mode just to get around the constant requests to install plugins)
As well did they inform you if you try to go and download the launcher that it now forces you to install arc or not to play at all?
PWE has repeatedly said that Arc does NOT have P2P functionality or spyware installed in it. Unless somebody has proof to back up their claim, they should stop contradicting the Devs on this point.
You don't want to use it, don't use it. But stop frightening everybody else into thinking Arc is the end of STO.
I will say this: My malware and virus scanners HATE ARC. They give me a warning every one minute and thirteen seconds, on average. My free Avira and Malwarebytes packages consider ARC to be malware.
What software are you using? I heard a rumor that Norton doesn't have an issue with ARC.
Why does it require a reboot after you instal it?
I don't remember the last time i rebooted my system (other than OS updates).
I saw this thing the other day that does the same thing that the new arc launcher does (except launch applications). It called itself Firefox. Why reinvent the wheel?
I really do not see any benefits to using this.
Does it look better than the old version? Sure. Is it more functional? Sure.
Is it better than using firefox? No.
Is it better than using Safari? Yes. But i cannot instal Arc on my Iphone.
I just am not sure what I am looking at. How does this benefit me?
[...]
Other than accidentally hitting Shift + Tab a couple of times, Arc has stayed out of my way. I don't use the built-in browser, except when I'm buying Zen "in-game".
[...]
in the client settings you chan change this part, TRIBBLE a support craft I use **** tab to target allies for heals so I set mine out of the way with F2
name these things otherwise i do not believe you sir
I really don't care if you do not believe me lol.
Although I find it ironic several people using completely different systems and programs are coming across various different problems that seem to be linked to arc itself.
Comments
Dezstravus and the rest of the devs, for some reason, have refused to answer the question of why it needs to keep running during game play.
I for one do not like the idea of making ARC mandatory. I only play STO. In fact, STO is the ONLY mmo that I play. I am not a fan of them, but this is Star Trek. Also, the browser I use works quite well for me, thank you very much, so I don't need another one. And the chat/social media aspects don't appeal to me. If I want to yap and talk and "socialize" I'll join facebook or twitter or one of those other TRIBBLE "social media" sites. I just want to log in and play my game. Nothing more.
I'm not saying they shouldn't develop ARC, although I do agree that the time and resources could have gone into the game instead. What I'm asking is please don't make it mandatory.
I didn't need it till now to launch STO, nor did I need it to buy ZEN nor... it seems just to be another spyware and icon clogging up the tray.
P.S. what "feedback" is wanted, this thing is coming, regardless what we say!
Love the "Guides" button from the STO news page. A lot of those were kind of buried on the old site and not easy to get to, so this is welcome.
Not fond of the 'infinite scroll' of articles on the news page from a PC browser, but I can live with it. I imagine it works okay on a phone or tablet, will try it out later. The news page feels busy and cluttered.
I'm not too thrilled with the large side-scrolling tiles on the main Games page, especially for games I'm not interested in. My wife will not be thrilled with the depictions of breasty, scantily clad women on some of those panels and with no way to hide them you're creating a disincentive for me to want to use the site.
I would rather see favored games being more prominent when I log in and the site knows who I am and what my preferences are. And smaller tiles.
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
* "All the players look like ants from up here."
* "They ARE ants, Bill!"
More to the point (and based of the previous couple sentences), I have no need nor do I want to know about and even less play any other PWE games than STO. Therefore any shared platform is completely pointless for me. Given Arc is (no matter how much you try to lighten it) much more bloated than the current simple launcher, it's clearly a disadvantage for me to get Arc.
Therefore, as I have repeated several times: I do not want Arc. Leave me in peace with the current launcher, thank you very much.
Toi'Va, Ti'vath, Toivia, Ty'Vris, Tia Vex, Toi'Virth: Add Tier 6 KDF Carrier and Raider.
Tae'Va, T'Vaya, To'Var, Tevra, T'Vira, To'Vrak: Give us Asylums for Romulans.
Don't make ARC mandatory! Keep it optional only!
Yeah, this is the second-biggest sticking point for me. Not all of us have ?berleet gaming laptops. And this software is a giant mass of memory space that I need elsewhere.
Precisely. This game is already a little too chatty IMHO. There are already areas of the game that are dumber than Twitbook (EG Earth Spacedock, and the winter wonderland). I don't need more socializing rammed in my face; I just don't have the time for it.
And this is the BIG issue. I'm actually sort of ambivalent about ARC...ONLY as long as it is optional. The second it becomes mandatory? I LANCB until it's gone. And I bet a lot of other people are with me.
Cheers,
Brandon =/\=
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
1. What the hell does it actually do?
2. Will it's use become mandatory at some point in the future?
Nobodies giving clear answers but considering how they are pushing this thing through it doesn't take a rocket scientist to add things up.
We are only told of what the surface convenience features are, the friends list, the chat client the mini browser, but there is more to this than that. I suspect that a big part of what ARC is is a Peer file sharing program, where everyone's computer that's running ARC is torrenting game files for the company whether they are patching their individual games or not, this is very convenient and cost effective for the company, not so much for the end user.
In any case I don't run mystery software on my computer and I won't run 2 programs to play one game.
An analogy here is getting a "free" music cd but before you can play the disc some guy wants to pop the hood of your car and install a black box without giving you a clear answer of what it's for, not many people would play along with that scenario.
I'm just a single person playing but I'm on the verge of just writing STO off for some of the other games I have available. Now I do play STO 99% of the time compared to these others but if they don't allow me to play without having to keep using arc since I had to re-install... I'm just going to uninstall arc and never return.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
demand all you like, cryptic rarely considers this position from their customer base. im sure you could try pulling that money but you would end up banned anyways and what happens one day when cryptic finally reconsiders that position on steam?
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Therefore, I am not slightly interested in installing something I don't need. Simple as that.
-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......
I have actually downloaded the Arc client to see for myself. Here is some initial feedback.
The system requirements for Arc claims that it needs 8MB of hard drive space. After installing, my Arc folder
is sitting at about 75MB. What's up with that?
After the intial login, I am logged in automatically when starting this program, which is fine. The start screen is
my games library, so it's basically just "Star Trek Online" with the logo and a Play button. No advertisements
here, so that's good.
The Play button launches the current launcher, which I believe is not how it's intended to work out in the end?
Right now it's just very inconvenient.
And now for the question I have wanted to know the answer to:
Can you close Arc after launching the game?
The answer is: Sort of.
Yes, you can manually close the client (at this time, anyway). However this does not end all the processes
connected to Arc.
When Arc launches, it starts two processes: Arc.exe and ArcOSBrowser.exe.
When the STO game client starts up, another process launches: ArcOSOverlay.exe.
These three processes together seem to use about 3% CPU and 0.20 GB of memory.
(I have an i7-3770 @ 3.40GHz processor and 16GB of RAM, for reference).
Once I'm in the game, I can close the program manually. This kills the two intial processes,
Arc.exe and ArcOSBrowser.exe. However, ArcOSOverlay.exe is still left running, and I have so far been
unable to end this process as long as the game is still running.
On my computer, this process seems to use about 1% CPU and 0.10 GB of memory.
There is no option in the Arc client to automatically close the client after launching the game, either.
So I guess that's the answer to my initial question whether or not Arc insists on running in the background: yes, it does.
I know that you are going to make Arc mandatory at some point no matter how much negative feedback
you get, so I am simply going to request that we get the option to completely shut down the Arc client and
associated processes after launching the game. Preferably with an option to do this automatically every time
a game is launched.
Do that, and I will happily be using the Arc client in the same way as I am using the current launcher.
Joined in March, 2011. Lifer since December, 2011.
Edit: Worried about one thing, will this kill the Gateway, if so you fail, if not I'm fine.
You looked at/into Star Citizen, currently in development?
Other than accidentally hitting Shift + Tab a couple of times, Arc has stayed out of my way. I don't use the built-in browser, except when I'm buying Zen "in-game".
I do play the other two Cryptic games in the portfolio and don't mind the idea of those being in a unified launcher as long as I don't have to look at the rest of the games that I haven't installed.
If it's hogging resources, I haven't noticed it. No impact on gameplay for me. But I will admit that the older laptop my kids are using to play STO does not have Arc installed and I will hold off on that as long as I can. My opinion of Arc might change then.
I do occasionally have to relaunch the launcher the first time after an update, but it's a minor annoyance that I'm used to now. Arc does not start automatically because I turned that off as soon as I installed it.
PWE has repeatedly said that Arc does NOT have P2P functionality or spyware installed in it. Unless somebody has proof to back up their claim, they should stop contradicting the Devs on this point.
You don't want to use it, don't use it. But stop frightening everybody else into thinking Arc is the end of STO.
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
I got a few points for you on that matter. If it does not have these things you state on there why is it trying to install various plugins into chrome on my machine. (Edit: I basically had to manually remove it from the startup programs and then go in grab the sto client built into arc and make a short cut to desktop under admin mode just to get around the constant requests to install plugins)
As well did they inform you if you try to go and download the launcher that it now forces you to install arc or not to play at all?
name these things otherwise i do not believe you sir
I will say this: My malware and virus scanners HATE ARC. They give me a warning every one minute and thirteen seconds, on average. My free Avira and Malwarebytes packages consider ARC to be malware.
What software are you using? I heard a rumor that Norton doesn't have an issue with ARC.
I don't remember the last time i rebooted my system (other than OS updates).
I saw this thing the other day that does the same thing that the new arc launcher does (except launch applications). It called itself Firefox. Why reinvent the wheel?
I really do not see any benefits to using this.
Does it look better than the old version? Sure. Is it more functional? Sure.
Is it better than using firefox? No.
Is it better than using Safari? Yes. But i cannot instal Arc on my Iphone.
I just am not sure what I am looking at. How does this benefit me?
in the client settings you chan change this part, TRIBBLE a support craft I use **** tab to target allies for heals so I set mine out of the way with F2
Fed/Vulcan: T'jar Voltek Fleet: Section 31
Fed/Andorian: Lissan Ek'Noor sh'Aqabaa Fleet: Section 31
KDF/Cardi: K'Im Qah da Sian Fleet: Klingon Intelligence
KDF/Reman: R'Chras Jonzor Fleet: Klingon Intelligence
I really don't care if you do not believe me lol.
Although I find it ironic several people using completely different systems and programs are coming across various different problems that seem to be linked to arc itself.