Well I think that's how just about every developer views their forum and for one very simple reason: its true. Constructive feedback tries to integrate multiple points of view together into a practical truth that can build a better game. It's an objective exercise. Ex. "I see the need for a crafting revamp and the constraints under which it was developed, but here's how we can make it better for everyone including cryptic."
What we get here is simply exaggeration, "Cryptic is ruining the game." "Cryptic is ruining the franchise." "Cryptic is making another dash for cash." or more simply "Dooooooooooooom."
While these may be attached to itemized points these aren't reasonable statements. They're what you would expect from someone smearing an opponent while running for political office. I don't make that reference lightly because I do believe there's the same psychological component at work. You take a thing that has happened and position yourself about it in the best way possible to take advantage of it through social pressure.
Instead of, say, a few whiners overreacting to a basic overhaul (which doesn't exactly strike out into virgin MMO territory) you have a united force standing up to a purely awful update. That's simply cheap emotionalism, something to make you feel good and possibly make cryptic feel bad. Its not how you get them to listen, let alone improve the game, because ultimately you aren't saying anything other than "I want more control."
Well definitely in this case there is lots of "Ranting" as Al would say, however, his comments in that podcast were mostly related to the Doffing UI and other updates on tribble in which there were dozens and dozens of pages of "constructive" feedback from some very dedicated players who spent countless hours of their time testing it. Those dedicated players feedback and time was essentially ignored by his comments.
Is isn't even friendly to levelling players since it will take around ten times longer to max out one school than it does to get a character to max level.
I don't consider myself a hardcore player. I may play more than I should, but I don't go for efficiency or min/max or try and cap out my Dilithium count for the day. I play for fun. I tend to get to 50 and make another character. Recently though, I've been taking my characters through the rep system and have enjoyed doing that.
That said, I can usually get a character leveled from lvl 1-50 in less than 2 weeks. It takes me twice that to get them to t5 in all 5 (current) reps, with how *I* play. I know it could be done faster but this is how I do it. Anyway, I don't do this for the powers, though having them isn't a bad thing. I do it because it's fun for me and gives me more of a sense of progress.
I saw the new crafting system as another thing to keep me busy while seeing at least some benefit. I was looking forward to crafting new stuff for new alts and just having fun. Well, that was my plan anyway...
After looking things over on the new crafting system, I guess I just don't get it. With the old crafting system, you knew what you were getting. You got the materials together, you clicked on the very thing you wanted and you got it. Sure, the stuff was less that stellar, but there was no randomness to it, you KNEW what you'd get.
Now though with the new system, you gather your resources, craft that stuff into components to turn those into the final product. And even then, you might not get exactly what you wanted because the RNG decided that you shouldn't get what you want. Ummm, thanks?
And even getting the new salvage isn't exactly 'easy'. You need to farm the Elite queues like an addict in the hopes that you get VR salvage, it's not a guarantee. And on top of that, you need to do specific ones to get certain salvage. You can't just run ones you're comfortable with and hope to get a drop you need.
You're not good with ground combat? Sucks to be you since you'll now never get that VR salvage you need to craft the thing that can be turned into the thing that the RNG decided to hose you on anyway.
Oh, unless you buy one of the zen boxes that contain the new R&D salvage. And get lucky that the salvage you need is in the box. Which when the time comes to craft your new toy, the RNG decides to TRIBBLE on you anyway. (see a pattern here?)
Even with all that, I was actually still interested in doing some crafting before reading today's patch notes. The way the system is now, or will be once the servers come back up, I may as well not even bother getting into crafting. A YEAR to max out one school, can only have 5 projects running at once so if I were to try and max out all 7 schools on one character, I'd be looking at close to 2 YEARS to do that?
Nope, not gonna happen. If I'm spending my Dilithium on something, I want to get EXACTLY what I need, not some random junk. And if you think I'm spending my real money to gamble at almost every stage of this crapping, err, crafting system, you're kidding yourself.
Remove the randomness, and keep the Dil cost. Or remove the Dil cost and keep the randomness.
Change the way the VR's drop in the queues. Allow ANY Elite queue to drop random VR's. I believe they currently have a chance to drop 3(?), change it that they'll drop 2 completely random pieces, guaranteed. Or even one. Just stop trying to force players into doing something they may not want to do.
I want to like the new crafting system, but as it stands right now, that isn't going to happen.
Make a man a fire and keep him warm for the day.
Set a man on fire and keep him warm for the rest of his life.
I realize that I'm coming ito this very late, but after getting through just the first couple of pages, I had to reply.
I don't consider myself a hardcore player. I may play more than I should, but I don't go for efficiency or min/max or try and cap out my Dilithium count for the day. I play for fun. I tend to get to 50 and make another character. Recently though, I've been taking my characters through the rep system and have enjoyed doing that.
That said, I can usually get a character leveled from lvl 1-50 in less than 2 weeks. It takes me twice that to get them to t5 in all 5 (current) reps, with how *I* play. I know it could be done faster but this is how I do it. Anyway, I don't do this for the powers, though having them isn't a bad thing. I do it because it's fun for me and gives me more of a sense of progress.
I saw the new crafting system as another thing to keep me busy while seeing at least some benefit. I was looking forward to crafting new stuff for new alts and just having fun. Well, that was my plan anyway...
After looking things over on the new crafting system, I guess I just don't get it. With the old crafting system, you knew what you were getting. You got the materials together, you clicked on the very thing you wanted and you got it. Sure, the stuff was less that stellar, but there was no randomness to it, you KNEW what you'd get.
Now though with the new system, you gather your resources, craft that stuff into components to turn those into the final product. And even then, you might not get exactly what you wanted because the RNG decided that you shouldn't get what you want. Ummm, thanks?
And even getting the new salvage isn't exactly 'easy'. You need to farm the Elite queues like an addict in the hopes that you get VR salvage, it's not a guarantee. And on top of that, you need to do specific ones to get certain salvage. You can't just run ones you're comfortable with and hope to get a drop you need.
You're not good with ground combat? Sucks to be you since you'll now never get that VR salvage you need to craft the thing that can be turned into the thing that the RNG decided to hose you on anyway.
Oh, unless you buy one of the zen boxes that contain the new R&D salvage. And get lucky that the salvage you need is in the box. Which when the time comes to craft your new toy, the RNG decides to TRIBBLE on you anyway. (see a pattern here?)
Even with all that, I was actually still interested in doing some crafting before reading today's patch notes. The way the system is now, or will be once the servers come back up, I may as well not even bother getting into crafting. A YEAR to max out one school, can only have 5 projects running at once so if I were to try and max out all 7 schools on one character, I'd be looking at close to 2 YEARS to do that?
Nope, not gonna happen. If I'm spending my Dilithium on something, I want to get EXACTLY what I need, not some random junk. And if you think I'm spending my real money to gamble at almost every stage of this crapping, err, crafting system, you're kidding yourself.
Remove the randomness, and keep the Dil cost. Or remove the Dil cost and keep the randomness.
Change the way the VR's drop in the queues. Allow ANY Elite queue to drop random VR's. I believe they currently have a chance to drop 3(?), change it that they'll drop 2 completely random pieces, guaranteed. Or even one. Just stop trying to force players into doing something they may not want to do.
I want to like the new crafting system, but as it stands right now, that isn't going to happen.
The way I see it this is just another attempt to rework the system since we balked at 20K per project so now they'll make you grind harder at all of them in order to make you want to use the finish now Dilithium button...
But the person above brings up a good point... bating Cryptic/Perfect World is not going to resolve/fix the issue.
But I do agree that it seems like Mr. Rivera has a very interesting choice in his words.. either a he truly does not care what the forum users think... or he's indicating as the above person stated that any useful feedback gets buried in all of the vitriol and angst...
Honestly if we truly don't like this change there is an easy way to bring about change in this instance... don't use it... The second part is don't give them any money... If there revenue stream dries up they will make changes... But that requires the majority to take a stand... and that is unlikely.
I however will not be spending any money (Dil or Zen) on this system just as I refused to spend money/dil on the Dyson Science Destroyer as I disagree with their pricing model.
Yeah that is just way too long. Maybe back in EQ that would have been acceptable but 2 years to max all crafting skills? 1 year to 15 in one school. That's just silly.
I would think the high end should be 6 months to 15 and a year to master crafting...
I am happy they added the doff sort...
Joined: June 12, 1972
"The more complex the mind, the greater the need for the simplicity of play." - James T. Kirk
While we are all ranting a little - I have to step back and say - is the stuff from all this crafting effort really worth it?
Will spending a year grinding away make any meaningful improvement in our gameplay?
Will we even notice a significant difference by using this crafter gear then from the gear we can get already from the lock-boxes/Rep system/fleet system?
I think the answer to all these is: NO
So I have decided not to care any more. When I look at the benefits of the crafing system, compared to the costs - it just not worth it.
No meaningful change in my in game performance. No real advantage in PvE as the content is not any "harder", and no significant(over invested time) return on a "in-game" financial investment.
So really- we are all getting upset over a system - when you really look closely at it - is mostly useless.
So As Virusdancer would say - this whole thing is a big load of MEH:rolleyes:
I'll just forget about crafting entirely. Not doing that grind. This is becoming just like PW's other games. If you ever tried Forsaken World you will see it's free to play but has about 15 different types of currency...more added with each revision. Everything you do costs something...STO is slowly becoming exactly the same.
I don't post much, but I want to throw my hat into the ring and express my displeasure at the amount of RNG and grind in the new crafting system.
300 days for one school via research projects is far too long. Either let us slot multiple projects, vastly increase the amount of xp each project gives us, or cut the research project time down to around 4 hours.
VR material drops should be totally random, and from any elite queue. One of your big selling points changing drops from the old borg salvage model to marks and rep projects was not forcing people to do content they don't like.
Oh and by the way - for all those concerned about getting Mats - I believe having a boatload of Rare and Very Rare - Research Lab Scientist doffs - can really help you cut down hunt for them. I think the Research Lab doffs allow for Mats to be obtained via doffing.
Oh and by the way - for all those concerned about getting Mats - I believe having a boatload of Rare and Very Rare - Research Lab Scientist doffs - can really help you cut down hunt for them. I think the Research Lab doffs allow for Mats to be obtained via doffing.
It might help a bit.
crit only gives blue. the purple is the kicker.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
The best response to this is use metrics against them and just say no thanks. If people aren't using the crafting system this gives them the "numbers" they are so fond of to know that they need to make some changes and the system does have that flexibility.
I find some of the unprofessional comments from an interviewed dev highly disturbing. If the community is that frustrating that lashing out is happening it might be time for devs that feel that way to move on. It's time to find a new job with another company perhaps in the business world and not the gaming industry.
I find some of the unprofessional comments from an interviewed dev highly disturbing. If the community is that frustrating that lashing out is happening it might be time for devs that feel that way to move on. It's time to find a new job with another company perhaps in the business world and not the gaming industry.
People get upset partly because they don't feel heard. The gameplay bug reports forums for instance is a russian roulette where devs randomly pick 2 or 3 bugs to work on each week, and usually only ones belonging to the current season. Old bug? They may fix one each season just for the heck of it.
Exception:
Tacofangs does stay on top of things in his department. Kudos to him.
Meh, in a way I wish CBS would just pull the IP and get someone else to make a Trek MMO or games in general.
I've played off and on for a couple years and I had a blast in the beginning. It's nothing but grind now and this crafting system as it was released is nothing new, this change actually makes it worse.
I guess it's time to find something else to do.
i never thought i would ever agree with a comment like this, but you know what.. i am starting to think along these lines too. the game i used to love playing is now so far away from what it what once was. it used to be like star trek, now it just looks like it. i understand the need for them to make money, it is afterall a business, and i'm happy to spend money on things i like and want, but being held to ransom in order to progress within a sensible timeframe, thats just so wrong.
People get upset partly because they don't feel heard. The gameplay bug reports forums for instance is a russian roulette where devs randomly pick 2 or 3 bugs to work on each week, and usually only ones belonging to the current season. Old bug? They may fix one each season just for the heck of it.
Exception:
Tacofangs does stay on top of things in his department. Kudos to him.
We should replace all the other devs with clones of Tacofangs, Thomas, JamJamz, and Quack.
Hey peeps, remember that the daily can crit too, when you crit the daily you get 1k extra XP, for total of 7k, and the chance gets higher and higher after every level.
Wait, what? I'm defending this? TRIBBLE life!
Say the word, it saves the world. CUUCUUMBEER!"-With slight partigen with it." Proud member or DPS-800"-We kill dem mines with our scitter turrets."
This change has handed control of the price of high priced gear over to a select few and that, my friends is just flat unfair and stupid. I don't get annoyed much with Cryptics decisions but this 20 hour daily limitation has me as close to it as I can get.
Players in this game with millions in surplus refined Dilithium bought level 20 crafting in one or more schools in a day. I know this to be true because those persons are in my fleet, and good for them. The rest of us will take about 100 days to get there due to this change. During that time those who paid for it will be selling crafting items for whatever they decide to post at without competitors to keep inflation under control. The select few will profit.
Most of us do not have 15 hours a day to play a game. This crafting grind is too much. But some will still do it. I urge everyone to not participate in this mess. Kill crafting. Let cryptic learn a good lesson. Burn crafting with fire and giant death rays of death.:mad:
Player and forumite formerly known as FEELTHETHUNDER
This change has handed control of the price of high priced gear over to a select few and that, my friends is just flat unfair and stupid. I don't get annoyed much with Cryptics decisions but this 20 hour daily limitation has me as close to it as I can get.
Players in this game with millions in surplus refined Dilithium bought level 20 crafting in one or more schools in a day. I know this to be true because those persons are in my fleet, and good for them. The rest of us will take about 100 days to get there due to this change. During that time those who paid for it will be selling crafting items for whatever they decide to post at without competitors to keep inflation under control. The select few will profit.
Most of us do not have 15 hours a day to play a game. This crafting grind is too much. But some will still do it. I urge everyone to not participate in this mess. Kill crafting. Let cryptic learn a good lesson. Burn crafting with fire and giant death rays of death.:mad:
You're my kinda guy/girl. The last sentence is so full of win
I'm not going to do crafting now. I put all of my R&D materials into my fleet bank for my fleet members to have. I'm not going to waste my time with the crafting system. GG cryptic
Well this really nice to see - players pretty much united in their disgust of this change.
However, as Al Rivera(the lead Dev) said in the last podcast several times - he considers all this forum stuff just lots of "Ranting" with no constructive feedback - so it's not worth his time.
So I think these changes are a done deal and not going back.
Show me the Money!
WHen people use words like "Disgusted by the change"... I think he may be right.
There is a way to communicate that the crafting system isn't great in a manner that isn't so overly emotional and potentially insulting.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
At least I'm going to save time now. With crafting being completely pointless now, there's no need to farm mats.
Thanks Cryptic. :rolleyes:
Are you certain- there are people that sell Crafted gear stuff on the exchange. Some Ferengi sitting on a boat-load of dilithium just got rid of it so he could craft. And now he needs crafting mats. Sell it to him on the exchange.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Comments
Well definitely in this case there is lots of "Ranting" as Al would say, however, his comments in that podcast were mostly related to the Doffing UI and other updates on tribble in which there were dozens and dozens of pages of "constructive" feedback from some very dedicated players who spent countless hours of their time testing it. Those dedicated players feedback and time was essentially ignored by his comments.
I don't consider myself a hardcore player. I may play more than I should, but I don't go for efficiency or min/max or try and cap out my Dilithium count for the day. I play for fun. I tend to get to 50 and make another character. Recently though, I've been taking my characters through the rep system and have enjoyed doing that.
That said, I can usually get a character leveled from lvl 1-50 in less than 2 weeks. It takes me twice that to get them to t5 in all 5 (current) reps, with how *I* play. I know it could be done faster but this is how I do it. Anyway, I don't do this for the powers, though having them isn't a bad thing. I do it because it's fun for me and gives me more of a sense of progress.
I saw the new crafting system as another thing to keep me busy while seeing at least some benefit. I was looking forward to crafting new stuff for new alts and just having fun. Well, that was my plan anyway...
After looking things over on the new crafting system, I guess I just don't get it. With the old crafting system, you knew what you were getting. You got the materials together, you clicked on the very thing you wanted and you got it. Sure, the stuff was less that stellar, but there was no randomness to it, you KNEW what you'd get.
Now though with the new system, you gather your resources, craft that stuff into components to turn those into the final product. And even then, you might not get exactly what you wanted because the RNG decided that you shouldn't get what you want. Ummm, thanks?
And even getting the new salvage isn't exactly 'easy'. You need to farm the Elite queues like an addict in the hopes that you get VR salvage, it's not a guarantee. And on top of that, you need to do specific ones to get certain salvage. You can't just run ones you're comfortable with and hope to get a drop you need.
You're not good with ground combat? Sucks to be you since you'll now never get that VR salvage you need to craft the thing that can be turned into the thing that the RNG decided to hose you on anyway.
Oh, unless you buy one of the zen boxes that contain the new R&D salvage. And get lucky that the salvage you need is in the box. Which when the time comes to craft your new toy, the RNG decides to TRIBBLE on you anyway. (see a pattern here?)
Even with all that, I was actually still interested in doing some crafting before reading today's patch notes. The way the system is now, or will be once the servers come back up, I may as well not even bother getting into crafting. A YEAR to max out one school, can only have 5 projects running at once so if I were to try and max out all 7 schools on one character, I'd be looking at close to 2 YEARS to do that?
Nope, not gonna happen. If I'm spending my Dilithium on something, I want to get EXACTLY what I need, not some random junk. And if you think I'm spending my real money to gamble at almost every stage of this crapping, err, crafting system, you're kidding yourself.
Remove the randomness, and keep the Dil cost. Or remove the Dil cost and keep the randomness.
Change the way the VR's drop in the queues. Allow ANY Elite queue to drop random VR's. I believe they currently have a chance to drop 3(?), change it that they'll drop 2 completely random pieces, guaranteed. Or even one. Just stop trying to force players into doing something they may not want to do.
I want to like the new crafting system, but as it stands right now, that isn't going to happen.
Set a man on fire and keep him warm for the rest of his life.
Well said.
But the person above brings up a good point... bating Cryptic/Perfect World is not going to resolve/fix the issue.
But I do agree that it seems like Mr. Rivera has a very interesting choice in his words.. either a he truly does not care what the forum users think... or he's indicating as the above person stated that any useful feedback gets buried in all of the vitriol and angst...
Honestly if we truly don't like this change there is an easy way to bring about change in this instance... don't use it... The second part is don't give them any money... If there revenue stream dries up they will make changes... But that requires the majority to take a stand... and that is unlikely.
I however will not be spending any money (Dil or Zen) on this system just as I refused to spend money/dil on the Dyson Science Destroyer as I disagree with their pricing model.
My new sig till Cryptic fixes it....
I would think the high end should be 6 months to 15 and a year to master crafting...
I am happy they added the doff sort...
"The more complex the mind, the greater the need for the simplicity of play." - James T. Kirk
I am displeased.
Will spending a year grinding away make any meaningful improvement in our gameplay?
Will we even notice a significant difference by using this crafter gear then from the gear we can get already from the lock-boxes/Rep system/fleet system?
I think the answer to all these is: NO
So I have decided not to care any more. When I look at the benefits of the crafing system, compared to the costs - it just not worth it.
No meaningful change in my in game performance. No real advantage in PvE as the content is not any "harder", and no significant(over invested time) return on a "in-game" financial investment.
So really- we are all getting upset over a system - when you really look closely at it - is mostly useless.
So As Virusdancer would say - this whole thing is a big load of MEH:rolleyes:
300 days for one school via research projects is far too long. Either let us slot multiple projects, vastly increase the amount of xp each project gives us, or cut the research project time down to around 4 hours.
VR material drops should be totally random, and from any elite queue. One of your big selling points changing drops from the old borg salvage model to marks and rep projects was not forcing people to do content they don't like.
It might help a bit.
crit only gives blue. the purple is the kicker.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
trying to butter us up???
I find some of the unprofessional comments from an interviewed dev highly disturbing. If the community is that frustrating that lashing out is happening it might be time for devs that feel that way to move on. It's time to find a new job with another company perhaps in the business world and not the gaming industry.
People get upset partly because they don't feel heard. The gameplay bug reports forums for instance is a russian roulette where devs randomly pick 2 or 3 bugs to work on each week, and usually only ones belonging to the current season. Old bug? They may fix one each season just for the heck of it.
Exception:
Tacofangs does stay on top of things in his department. Kudos to him.
i never thought i would ever agree with a comment like this, but you know what.. i am starting to think along these lines too. the game i used to love playing is now so far away from what it what once was. it used to be like star trek, now it just looks like it. i understand the need for them to make money, it is afterall a business, and i'm happy to spend money on things i like and want, but being held to ransom in order to progress within a sensible timeframe, thats just so wrong.
We should replace all the other devs with clones of Tacofangs, Thomas, JamJamz, and Quack.
Wait, what? I'm defending this? TRIBBLE life!
CUUCUUMBEER! "-With slight partigen with it."
Proud member or DPS-800 "-We kill dem mines with our scitter turrets."
Players in this game with millions in surplus refined Dilithium bought level 20 crafting in one or more schools in a day. I know this to be true because those persons are in my fleet, and good for them. The rest of us will take about 100 days to get there due to this change. During that time those who paid for it will be selling crafting items for whatever they decide to post at without competitors to keep inflation under control. The select few will profit.
Most of us do not have 15 hours a day to play a game. This crafting grind is too much. But some will still do it. I urge everyone to not participate in this mess. Kill crafting. Let cryptic learn a good lesson. Burn crafting with fire and giant death rays of death.:mad:
Player and forumite formerly known as FEELTHETHUNDER
Expatriot Might Characters in EXILE
You're my kinda guy/girl. The last sentence is so full of win
I've seen this pattern for a while now.
"We've screwed things up. No worries! Throw a Bonus <Whatever> Weekend!"
STO Screenshot Archive
Thanks Cryptic. :rolleyes:
There's always a silver lining to every dark cloud:)
WHen people use words like "Disgusted by the change"... I think he may be right.
There is a way to communicate that the crafting system isn't great in a manner that isn't so overly emotional and potentially insulting.
Are you certain- there are people that sell Crafted gear stuff on the exchange. Some Ferengi sitting on a boat-load of dilithium just got rid of it so he could craft. And now he needs crafting mats. Sell it to him on the exchange.
... and Zeronius Rex, she never gets enough credit, and she rules !