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9.5 Report Card
rinkster
Member Posts: 3,549 Arc User
New Doff UI: A good try but really needs to do better.
The layout is not that intuitive, but it has to be said it does the simple things well.
If you don't want to pay attention to doffing, it just got a lot easier.
Sadly, it got a bit more difficult to do anything interesting.
Overall, it remains to be seen what, if any, benefit we get from these changes.
Their reason for existence has been badly explained and the lack of response to feedback from tribble is deeply saddening.
Crafting: Better than what we had before, but not by a whole lot.
It's...alright.
Placements of tabs and buttons appears to have been done haphazardly, but it does work.
New Uniforms: er......ok.
Nice to see NPCs look a bit more modern, and the giveaway of thebasic uniform is welcome.
A good, if largely irrelevant, move.
Xindi Lockbox: At least its not the Undine lockbox.
Some nice stuff, but its a shame the idea of non-faction consoles has been dropped.
Feds getting aceton assimilators just feels wrong.
A bit of a step backwards in some respect, but solid progress from a low.
Presentation and Attendence: Woefully bad.
The PR and CR side of 9.5 should be a huge wake up call to the staff involved.
You need to do better, a lot better, because this was amateur hour.
Overall: D-
The layout is not that intuitive, but it has to be said it does the simple things well.
If you don't want to pay attention to doffing, it just got a lot easier.
Sadly, it got a bit more difficult to do anything interesting.
Overall, it remains to be seen what, if any, benefit we get from these changes.
Their reason for existence has been badly explained and the lack of response to feedback from tribble is deeply saddening.
Crafting: Better than what we had before, but not by a whole lot.
It's...alright.
Placements of tabs and buttons appears to have been done haphazardly, but it does work.
New Uniforms: er......ok.
Nice to see NPCs look a bit more modern, and the giveaway of thebasic uniform is welcome.
A good, if largely irrelevant, move.
Xindi Lockbox: At least its not the Undine lockbox.
Some nice stuff, but its a shame the idea of non-faction consoles has been dropped.
Feds getting aceton assimilators just feels wrong.
A bit of a step backwards in some respect, but solid progress from a low.
Presentation and Attendence: Woefully bad.
The PR and CR side of 9.5 should be a huge wake up call to the staff involved.
You need to do better, a lot better, because this was amateur hour.
Overall: D-
Post edited by rinkster on
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Comments
There is no option to filter on anything at all. I tend to make my own selections for Doff missions. The new UI makes things much more difficult since I have 400 Doffs. I was thinking about increasing that to 500 Doffs for the past couple of weeks, but now that will make selecting Doffs for Doff missions even more difficult.
R&D=F It's a Rep crafting system that is a hole of time, Doff's, resources, Dilith, and computer space. That's our new Rep system this season for sure.
DOFF UI=F The one thing we didn't ask them to fix and they take it up on them selfs to rework it.
Uniforms=C honestly I don't care either way.
Lock Boxes=F If you look at it really closely its pretty much the same stuff but in a different skin
Listening to people on Tribble=F We told them it was all wrong but TADA here it is any way.
So I think over all Season 9.5 should have been a short turm patch not a season. They don't have to push content out quickly if it is good content. But changing things that people liked and taking out content because they think we are to stupid to exit the map is mind blowing.
So over all FF-
In other words, just wait for the next 5 patches. :P
Too generous! F--!
Nah, same old same old is at least a C-.
Everything else, I agree.
Odyssey uniforms: A+. Really nothing wrong with all of this at all.
Foundry assets: Again, A+, for the same reasons.
Xindi lockbox: A+ as lockboxes go. VERY excited for this, and I covet that Xindi carrier a LOT.
Dil rewards for Nukara, Mol'Rihan, and Defera: A+. Really nothing wrong with this at all.
DOFF UI: F-. There is literally nothing good about the new DOFF UI at ALL. The entire thing just needs to die and be forgotten.
Agreed on all parts.
Yeah. I can't honestly say this is too particularly inspired. It's a loose copy and paste job from Neverwinter. I'm not opposed to dept.'s at Cryptic sharing technology and whatnot, but this seems far less original.
What we have is better than what we had before, but not because the current crafting system is so awesome, it just looks good in comparison.
I'll try to remain optimistic that this is (like so much else) just going to leave room for expansion and improvement later on.
The only part of 9.5 I was actually looking forward to. The silver lining to 9.5 I was expecting, but not the silver lining I received.
I guess that's what I get for praising Thomas Marrone and throwing the other dev blogs under the bus.
Because the only part I was looking forward to not only ended up crashing my client when going to the tailor... the real insulting part?
That Cryptic knew about it from Tribble. Thanks for giving me more reason to not waste my time testing your new content.
AND THEY WONDER WHY NOBODY WANTS TO PLAYTEST ON THEIR PREVIEW SERVER!
I have no strong opinions over lockboxes. They're here to stay. I've always been morally and ethically opposed to them, but I've gotten over it and accepted that they aren't going anywhere.
Would be nice if they added the percentage value of just how much the Xindi-Reptile boff reduced tac abilities. It's 5%. The fact they don't disclose that could be construed as an underhanded sales tactic -- because maybe people wouldn't spend 300 Lobi or whatever amount of EC at one if they knew it was only a 5% cooldown reduction.
I hope so. My patience for taking Cryptic/PWE seriously is certainly coming to a middle.
I'll be a little more generous and give it a straight D.
Here's why:
Crypticfrost, Borticus, Coldsnapped, and efforts from Smirk today have shown that despite the fact 9.5 is little more than 'meh', that they have been communicating and responding to bug reports throughout their working day.
And I think that deserves some praise.
But the biggest reason?
The Boatswain's Whistle on the pop-up queue.
That is my silver lining for 9.5 now that the new tailor options fell flat on its face on launch day with a horrific crashing bug.
The whistle when a queue pops up (and it being the Boatswain's Whistle, no less!) is ridiculously helpful to me in so many ways since I'm often lost in doff or fleet UI windows while waiting for queues to pop, and I've missed them quite often in the past as a result. The whistle is actually loud enough (I have hearing issues) as to be instantly recognizable and noticable.
That warrants that extra bit of generosity from me.
Other than that... I could have slept through 9.5 without any issue.
EDIT:
Here are my feelings about Season 9.5 in a useful gif format.
LOL
I was actually talking about this with some fleeties earlier.
We can't decide whether it's the most inspired thing ever or whether it's going to get old real fast.
Either way, you are right. I'd forgotten about it.
Give her a D then. It's only fair.
Honestly, there should have been a dev blog about the Boatswain's Whistle. I'd have praised that just as much as I did the Odyssey uniform blog.
Of course, now that I've said something positive about one particular aspect of Season 9.5, I fully expect the whistle to be removed entirely and replaced with an alert that consists of my client crashing after deleting 500 dilithium each time a queue pops up.
What was deeply saddening for me was that the new Oddessey uniforms seem to have come at the expense of the Doff UI , as Thomas did those .
I'm all for artistically branching out ... , but not at the expense of your day job and your costumers .
This , coupled with ignoring the feedback on the Ui just made me loose some respect to one of the few ppl at Cryptic toward whom I still bad some .
If this UI passed his "acceptable" ... then some things are more rotten @ Cryptic then I thought .
... when taking into context that there will be no vast UI rework in X2 , as there was with LoR ... , so he's not exactly killing g himself on his day job ...
The reason is that the crafting is a lot better than what we had but is a 2 step process so it takes longer but is, in theory, closer to reality
I dislike the new DOFF / R&D UI (at least the one I saw on tribble, have not been on holodeck yet as I write this they are putting on an emergency patch) it seems that the UI is missing something but I cannot put my finger on what tho.
The uniforms, the only thing that I like about that is that the KDF gets a skirt that does not come from the lobi store.
That grade is far too generous.
Overall: F+
+ I give CrypticCat props/kudos for implementing some fantastic FED and KDF uniform updates.
+ Kudos to Borticus for exceptionally well-written blog posts on the lockboxes, plus the new Xindi involvement within STO.
+ Kudos to Tacofangs for community engagement, supporting foundry efforts and being accessible (as his role permits) on the forum.
+ Kudos to crypticfrost for endeavoring to capture bugs, as posted to the forum.
But...
- The revamped DOff UI implementation.
I would gladly say all of this face-to-face with Cryptic/PWE management. There is a supreme arrogance in implementing someone's personal vision of revamplng a large segment of the game, then soliciting for feedback from players (aka customers!), ignoring, then proceeding to implement regardless.
Why do you REALLY think Microsoft is laying off "up to" 18,000 workers this year? (As announced today.) From friends and former colleagues who are with the company (and unable to sleep right now over CEO Satya Natella's announcement), IT WAS POOR PRODUCT PLANNING AND EXECUTION.
From Cryptic/PWE, the execution at the product design level on STO Season 9.5 was atrocious. Who wrote the PRD for this? Who conducted the UAT? Hell, based on forum feedback alone, this "alpha" product was NOT a beta candidate. It was rejected by the MAJORITY of the players (aka customers) who tested/provided feedback!
Someone at Cryptic (or PWE) is brushing these criticisms aside. Monies were budgeted; the dev work wasn't going to be wasted. Mind you, we're not talking about a corporate company with billions to burn in slipped/wasted dev cycles.
This isn't about a handful of vocal forum participants ranting. This isn't a cry from a small few who take the time to give feedback.
THE MAIN PROBLEM?
Cryptic/PWE does NOT have a solid go-to-market plan, org structure or business infrastructure.
Cryptic/PWE LACKS effective product management.
Cryptic/PWE LACKS effective product marketing.
Cryptic/PWE LACKS effective leadership.
And I'm not going to get started about my perceptions about QA and UAT practices/test cases.
All of that hurts to say, as I know I'm criticizing someone's job/career.
So, will this post matter in a week? A month? A year?
YES. If I choose not to buy any Zen (or spend any monies on Cryptic/PWE products). If I choose not to play as often, or at all.
This truly sucks. I drive home past Cryptic almost every day. I've played STO since the beta days, signed up as a lifetime subscriber -- and since before I knew they were in my hometown. I was proud to see this local company succeed through thick and thin in a rough industry. Some of the staff have worked at the same Silicon Valley corporations as I have over the past 20 years.
But what the HELL happened to this product?!
This is one of many customer voices saying: FIX THE PRODUCT. LISTEN TO YOUR CUSTOMERS CLEARLY before making more of these boneheaded decisions. CHANGE YOUR OPERATIONS to address your product development issues! There are so many ways to do this without overwhelming an already burdened, overworked staff/organization.
Btw, as a last thought on the DOff UI:
I think the main reason for the horrible design: Someone on Cryptic's staff has poor eyesight -- and these big icons/buttons are selfishly added as a result.
Think about it.
Signing off for tonight...
Why? Quite simple: It only tells you how good you were on that one day, in the eyes of that one person...
Grades and reports are useless, because they are always biased by the one grading.
Thats also why most companies here don't give a rats butt about your school papers.
I saw it more as an initial impression, but you are correct that a proper 'school report card' would be done right before Season 10 launched, and would grade Cryptic on 9.5 up until that launch day.
I think I would be nice if there was a sub form for features and ideas discussion. If there is one already I apologize I missed it. Also if there was a way to see if a Dev has replied to a thread and jump to their response that would be awesome.
My biggest issues with this new release is the doff system. I saw that it was a known issue that there is no way to sort officers when selecting for the missions. This is a huge issue for me. I use different officers for different missions so over all I get better rewards. Though I must say the auto selection seems to be a lot better.
Another problem is if I have several doffs which are identical there is no way to tell which one has already been added. For instance I have 5 officers I got from the dillithium mine holdings which I use for the missions given there. Today 4 of them where assigned but another was used in the fifth spot. I was never able to get number 5 filled. Every time I selected one from the roster it just moved one which had already been assigned. Very annoying. It would help if that part went back to the way if was. So if I select a Doff from the roster for an assignment that doff is removed from the roster list. Also the doffs in the roster list when selecting for a mission isn't divided into departments. I actually wasn't able to determine any kind of organization to that list.
Having the Red triangles appear when all doff assignment slots were filled was nice. Just incase there was a doff in sickbay.
The in progress assignment list are not sorted by ending soonest. Takes extra time to look through them all.
The time to complete text listed on the available assignments seems disproportionately small. Would be nice if it was bigger… by at least several font sizes.
The R and D assignments are not cancelable. I started one today thinking I would still be able to craft after the fact and found out I can't. Major bummer.
Having different colors for the doff missions that reward more than 5 dillithium would be nice as well.
Honestly the pie chart was a better representation of success/failure chances.
Finally, for me when it comes to things like the Doff system, I think its best to ask yourself how much useful information can be gleaned at a glance. IMO this new UI doesn't offer as much effective information as the old one. I know this may be just because its new and I haven't become use to it.
That’s all I can think of for now thanks for reading
Honestly the one area i felt strong and felt the game was on par with they change and turn it into this TRIBBLE fest. It shouldn't even been released. I ranted on tribble on other accounts and did nothing.
-f
that's right a negative -f
Two negatives make a positive.
And so you've actually given them an honours degree.
My thoughts remain just as they were when this hit Tribble.
Uniforms: Fed - A, KDF - A*. Needs no explanation.
Xindi Lockbox: Content - A, better than I was expecting. OPness - A*, ground PvP is now completely broken by Motivation. Please correct the decimal points... Once that is sorted, B. Potent but not game ruining.
Crafting: Feel - B. I like the progression of making stuff, then making that stuff into other shiny stuff. Rest is an F, especially time and Dil costs - 5 months per school is not acceptable.
Doff UI: UI itself - F. Please restore it to the old UI, or at least put Doff Sorting options in, and restore the pie chart graphic for chances of Crit, Success, Failure and Disaster. A bar chart is the wrong graphic. Feel - D. This is too clicky, doesn't feel like you are actually sending people on missions anymore...
Vendor fodder, Fleet and Rep items cost alterations: Vendor fodder - A. This is how it should have been from the start. Fleet - A. Rep - C. You still need to finish this bit...
Overall - C. Some utterly fantastic parts, others are mediocre to outright game breaking, and others still will actively drive players away...
is that even a grade?
/10characters
-Fleet costume revamp. Ok that's good. I like them and all. But where are my Romulan fleet uniform ? You know, the 3rd faction (according to Cryptic), or the fraction (according to everyone else).
Other than that, I love them, so I'm not complaining.
-Crafting revamp. The crafting was useless, and it was turned into a giant grindfest which makes a reputation grinds appear like an innovative content. I can't say it's worse, because between useless and giant grindfest, I honestly can't say what I prefer.
-Gamblebox. Like Iconians, I'm no fan of them, but they are here to stay. I really want the aquatic carrier, so I'm totally biased anyway.
Romulan's got squat but I really couldn't care less because that is the half a faction I have no interest in what so ever until I can play as a Tal'Shiar officer in service to Empress Sela and go around killing Republic scum.
Over all, I would give this disaster they call season 9.5, an F for miserable failure. Maybe next time, the team will listen to the testers instead of ignoring all of the feedback people took the time to provide after hours of testing.
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on all fronts
FLEET uniforms, no one took into account the Romulans who are part of said fleets (at least there was no mention as why they weren't considered so far)
200 day vet reward was updated for feds and kdf. not romulans
New Doff UI...it is bad, I cant agree with the decision on this one bit.
Crafting, would be nice if it was crafting but its not, Far cry better than what we had? I dunno I refuse to do it because of the DOFF UI and I already mastered it twice with no love so why bother a 3rd time with no love.
Removal of certain things....whatever im sure people have voiced enough for and against this now
lack of development talking, yes theres blogs, not nearly as many as we use to have, and arriving at the point where its to late to receive feedback on it, its rolled out already (9.5 was up before the official statement on the website...ug)
It just seems we are in reverse atm, and the 2nd expansion better be the most epic thing ever or I fear the cash cow that trek has devolved to will stop breathing (probably take another year but this is a very competitive market and there is new stuff on the horizon)
Am I missing something?
Anyone?
See, this is good and valid criticism. Rinkster knows that yelling CRYPTIC IS KILLING THIS GAME AND ALL THEY WANT IS YOUR MONEY WAAAAA isn't the way to get Cryptic to take your feedback seriously. /End of rant
Anyways I'm not a huge of the new DOFF UI I miss the old one
But I can get by
Xindi lockbox: cool weapons and very beautiful ships/Fish tank.
Aceton Assimilator for feds... meh not a big fan.... but I'll still get it. :P
Crafting:
Good part a lot of interesting stuff like the TR116B and that Plasma torpedo...
Bad part Pretty big grind but that's not so bad for me, nip away at it when I'm on, take a break when I'm bored with it, the chance of low quality is what bugs me the most but at least they gave us ways to better the chances.
New uniforms:
err don't really care but I'm happy for the people who wanted it.
Removal of Exploration: ..... a shame but I'm 99.99% sure it will return so not too upset.
Presentation and Attendance: .......
Overall: C+
The + ONLY comes from the Xindi Fat Batmobile Carrier..... they did a really good job on it...
I'm sorry to people who I, in the past, insulted, annoyed, etc.
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R&D: C
Unintuitive and an epic grind, especially if one has multiple toons. While this new one is light years better than the old, as many have said, that doesn't really say much given how utterly hopelessly useless the old one was.
That said, it could improve. The idea is basically sound and for once I am hopeful.
Oddy uniforms: C+
I hate the oddy outfit. I always have and I probably always will. However, the tac variant is nothing short of miraculous. It takes something that is (imo) ugly, ungainly and odd-looking and makes it into something that looks good. As I said, miraculous.
The Dress outfit is also miraculous in that it takes the standard oddy outfit and makes it worse by simply slapping on the piping and shoulder strap from the TWOK outfit. It's a frankenstein that should be put down.
The tac variant alone rescues these.
Foundry. Meh. No changes on the user side, so no rating at all on this one. If however the foundry was linked into the old exploration clusters, diplo missions (first contact etc) and sector space patrols, then that would be awesome. Otherwise, it's just going to take that much more work to promote it.
TL;DR, foundry is the same, unless you're an author. Which I am not.
Xindi Lockbox; A
It's a change. The boats look lovely mind you and the reptar boat is very tempting indeed. Those weapons though..."biomatter" weapons just makes me think that instead of beam arrays there are monkeys lined up on the outer hull flinging their own sh*t at the enemy, though that may be because I have the mind of a 12 year old. Yes, that's what I'll call those beams, "Sh*t flingers"!
Defera dil rewards; C
Meh. 320 dil per mission just isn't worth it. It's a supplement to the existing rewards and a welcome one at that. However, it isn't worth doing defera just for the dil.
Doff UI; U
By "U" I mean "Ungraded", I think it is that bad. From an end user usability stand point I recommend that the doff UI be reverted to what it was pre 9.5. It might be possible to make it usable, but I think it would be a hell of a lot of work and it would end up being pretty similar to the old one anyway.
The new UI makes me think of the same problems that plagued the UI of Fallout 3, new vegas, Oblivion and Skyrim. UI elements were just too huge, information was scattered around and nothing was really intuitive. You ended up only being able to have 3 or 4 items in your inventory visible at once, leading to an insane amount of scrolling. This is partly what is wrong with the new doff UI. That, and the loss of filtering as well as moving info from the window and into other panes really does make for a poor replacement UI. It is about as big a step backwards for STO as the new Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers are for the royal navy. I.e a big one.
Please make the bright spark who came up with the concept for the new doff UI buy a beer for every single Cryptic employee.
The value on all deflector/drive/shields and the like got cut by 75%. Since this was a major way of earning EC, and will be once the exchange is flooded by the R&D system, earning EC is going to become a monstrous chore.
The Doff system looks nice, but it's implementation is horrible. No sorting - you get what it selects or you spend an hour finding the *proper* crew with the proper traits for the mission.
More lock boxes... that should be flat out illegal. It's gambling, pure and simple.
Fleet gear still trumps R&D stuff hands down. Especially since the best stuff the R&D system can create is 'can only use one of this item' - rendering such items useful only for Shuttles which are never used.