Can't believe I'm saying this, LOL, but I agree: I rather have Stahl back.
Hate to be that guy, but - "Told you so!"
The same day after the change on the helm was announced I told people that we'll be asking for Stahl soon enough.
Can't believe I'm saying this, LOL, but I agree: I rather have Stahl back.
Say what you will, but I always felt Stahl wasn't half bad. He at the very least communicated somewhat frequently to acknowledge some player's feedback and provided more clarity(at least more than what we see now) as to what he had planned or what he wanted to do or see happen in the game.
Retired. I'm now in search for that perfect space anomaly.
I'm actually pretty sad about the state of the game. When mundane content like patrols become more rewarding than the featured or endgame content, something is wrong.
To make matters worse, Cryptic sees the queues are empty and everyone is in Tau Dewa and, instead of addressing the endgame content, they shutdown the patrols.
Say what you will, but I always felt Stahl wasn't half bad. He at the very least communicated somewhat frequently to acknowledge some player's feedback and provided more clarity(at least more than what we see now) as to what he had planned or what he wanted to do or see happen in the game.
I actually agree. I think his heart was in the right place. I liked his relative transparency and honesty, even if I disagreed with some of his decisions.
Sure, there were times I rolled my eyes. "Sometimes bad things happen for no good reason." was one of them.
But over all I think most of the problem was the playerbase not understanding or not wanting to understand how game development works.
But I don't think this has anything to do with Dan Stahl or even Stephen D'Angelo.
I'm pretty sure a lot of this is from PWE putting pressure on Cryptic. The fact they are muddying the waters when it comes to dividing Cryptic as an entity from PWE as an entity is really just proof of that.
Our GMs work for Cryptic, but if you get an e-mail from them, it'll be from Perfect World. Just for example.
It's why I typically have to generalize Cryptic into PWE/Cryptic because PWE is purposefully tying themselves to Cryptic's practices so that they are both in the same boat. I think of it as a public relations 'dead hand', or mutually assured destruction.
It lets Cryptic say, "That's PWE's decision." and lets PWE say, "Well, that was a game design decision."
When you have that kind of business establishment, you just pass the buck back and forth when you do not want any accountability.
I actually agree. I think his heart was in the right place. I liked his relative transparency and honesty, even if I disagreed with some of his decisions.
Sure, there were times I rolled my eyes. "Sometimes bad things happen for no good reason." was one of them.
But over all I think most of the problem was the playerbase not understanding or not wanting to understand how game development works.
The community is becoming nostalgic about the Stahl era...oh dear things are really ****** up.
That is simply not true, the Germans buy 100x more Zen than probably the rest of the world, and they love Star Trek, this game could be stick figures running around with the name "Star Trek" and they would buy Zen.
The Germans will not care if they have to run the same dumb story mission 1000 times to gain a bubble of XP, they will still buy Zen, and be happy to play.
Cryptic would not shed a tear if the entire North American continent stopped playing.
..
Im german and i barely spend any money on it. Also i actualy dont care if i play a mission x times if its worth it. But if they remove it i adapt and move on :=) nothing to cry cause of it
You can either cry or adapt and lets face it the devs dont care if you cry here. They didnt with the T5-u and they wont care with this.
p.s. @Devs. i like what you did. Reading tau dewa chat wasnt as entertaining ever
The community is becoming nostalgic about the Stahl era...oh dear things are really ****** up.
I've always liked Dan Stahl. I've never been nostalgic, because he did make some decisions which he did have to own up to. And I have never forgotten them.
But in the end I think the culprit is STO's Publisher, not its Developer. I find it hard to believe the masterminds behind City of Heroes and City of Villains devised these things by themselves.
Especially when there are so many other game assets which are almost uniformly taken from other PW business models in terms of f2p games.
And PWE wants to keep that illusion going. They have reason to.
I actually agree. I think his heart was in the right place. I liked his relative transparency and honesty, even if I disagreed with some of his decisions.
Sure, there were times I rolled my eyes. "Sometimes bad things happen for no good reason." was one of them.
But over all I think most of the problem was the playerbase not understanding or not wanting to understand how game development works.
And I agree with you, in turn.
Seriously, I had some issues with Stahl too, but I always felt that he genuinely cared for the game, beyond it being a money-maker for them. With Geko I don't have that at all: he's monetized the game to the degree that he even begrudges people their small Tau Dewa rewards. And that is sad, on an epic [gold] level.
Seriously, I had some issues with Stahl too, but I always felt that he genuinely cared for the game, beyond it being a money-maker for them. With Geko I don't have that at all: he's monetized the game to the degree that he even begrudges people their small Tau Dewa rewards. And that is sad, on an epic [gold] level.
Agree with this so much.
Its great refreshing the forums atm, its like watching a crash in slow motion... :rolleyes:
Seriously, I had some issues with Stahl too, but I always felt that he genuinely cared for the game, beyond it being a money-maker for them. With Geko I don't have that at all: he's monetized the game to the degree that he even begrudges people their small Tau Dewa rewards. And that is sad, on an epic [gold] level.
Geko has been here the entire time. I like Al Rivera too. I don't care what other people say about him, I like that he's willing to give uncomfortable truths instead of comforting lies. He has no problems admitting faults or past mistakes, but keeps an eye to the future.
My emphasis is still on PWE. They're the ones who tell Cryptic what to do, and give 'advice' on how to do it. They intervene when they want to because they are the ones giving money to Cryptic.
Cryptic has no reason to agree with me or confirm any of my suspicions. You don't bite the hand that feeds you.
But when I see a lot of these gated things in STO which had never existed in a Cryptic game before PWE bought them, and these are the same things I see in other Perfect World games?
Namely the things that TRIBBLE a lot of players off? I have a hard time honestly convincing myself the buck stops with D'Angelo.
It's the people who put the pressure on him to do it.
And if that truth be that, from here on in, they no longer allow real choices, then at least I know where I am at.
But some clarification seems due, methinks.
That's definitely the long term goal no doubt about it. But it takes time to nerf and delete everything, so far 2 years and counting.
They getting close now they almost entirely stripped the game from fun right down to being pitiful enough to nerf vendor trash.
Ideally, they want all the battery hens on the assembly line to be 100% controlled and quantifiable.
So that they decide how much you play, when you do it, what you spend, what you buy etc.
When everyone fits into their little metrics and the projection of profits more or less fits the bill then the game is where they want it to be.
One certified way to make sure you control what people play is deleting all our forms of gameplay which is exactly what we've seen and exactly what is going on right now.
Don't want people getting free materials inside clusters? Delete
The Skill Points and Expertise rewarded for defeating NPCs below the players current level have been updated.
They now correctly scale starting at one level below the player.
After earning all 60 Captain Specialization points, Dilithium is no longer rewarded when filling the Skill Points bar.
All Patrols and Deep Space Encounters in the Tau Dewa Sector now spawn NPCs at the correct level.
Map loading screens have been updated.
Resolved an issue that caused some female Human and Caitian captains to have invisible legs while wearing skirts.
The Small XP Boost in the C-Store has been reverted to its previous value of 1,000 Bonus Skill Points.
Gonna get next to nothing xp from now on!
Anything that happens, happens. Anything that in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen. Anything that in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again.
It doesn't necessarily do it in chronological order though.
Not when the content is working as it is supposed to and as it always has.
Yes actually, exploiting covers that as well. If game devs don't want players doing something, it's an exploit, regardless if the game developers didn't mind before.
the ONLY thing that has changed is how Cryptic applied the changes. They saw that people were doing what they should - team together for xp grinds - and were gaining too much too quickly in their mind, so they acted. There was not a single genuine exploit to be had.
You're invoking the "No True Scotsman" fallacy here. It was an exploit, plain and simple.
So from the patch notes, it looks like it was both dilithium and exp too fast but not the drops of upgrade kits. No doubt related to the ships spawning below squad leader level but I'd think that would have hurt xp.
On the other hand, they reduced exp needed for ship mastery and even are giving mastery buffs for exp already earned. So clearly is was the captain exp that they thought was too fast.
The Skill Points and Expertise rewarded for defeating NPCs below the players current level have been updated.
They now correctly scale starting at one level below the player.
After earning all 60 Captain Specialization points, Dilithium is no longer rewarded when filling the Skill Points bar.
All Patrols and Deep Space Encounters in the Tau Dewa Sector now spawn NPCs at the correct level.
Map loading screens have been updated.
Resolved an issue that caused some female Human and Caitian captains to have invisible legs while wearing skirts.
The Small XP Boost in the C-Store has been reverted to its previous value of 1,000 Bonus Skill Points.
Gonna get next to nothing xp from now on!
Where are they? I'd like to read the whole thing but don't see them in the patch notes forum.
Yes actually, exploiting covers that as well. If game devs don't want players doing something, it's an exploit, regardless if the game developers didn't mind before.
You're invoking the "No True Scotsman" fallacy here. It was an exploit, plain and simple.
Sorry, but I call it like it is.
Cryptic: Hey everyone! We know that there can be a level gap slowing the story down so we encourage you to go out and play patrols to gain that xp! Go go gi gi!
Players: Wheeeee!
Cryptic: Wait, you're going too fast... no that not what we meant... wait! You know what, we're calling that an exploit now. Yeah, you did EXACTLY what we told you to do but we didn't know you'd ALL do it so... NERF! There, done. that's what you get for not playing the way we want you to, even if you're following the rules we set.
So from the patch notes, it looks like it was both dilithium and exp too fast but not the drops of upgrade kits. No doubt related to the ships spawning below squad leader level but I'd think that would have hurt xp.
On the other hand, they reduced exp needed for ship mastery and even are giving mastery buffs for exp already earned. So clearly is was the captain exp that they thought was too fast.
Oh, so they fixed it? Well, they forgot to turn the maps back on.
Tau Dewa was locked down becuase some people were running the patrol mission on Elite after teaming with a low level player, making them team leader, and then side kicking down to their level, and then killing all the now weaker NPCs which are also more numerous from the teaming up with likely very little effort and a decent amount of XP.
Okay, how is this not an exploit? Because I don't think they actually intended the sidekick system to level down players, just level them up in case they bumped into a high ranking instance so they down get steam rolled by NPCs 20-40 levels higher than them.
And no I don't think using basically the same defense for the old one click foundry missions people used to use to farm the foundry daily is a good one.
so wait, this was an exploit? but how does instance jumping to tagging a dino just once and run to the next and then the next one to get all three, get credit for all three, and then instance switch to the next zone that has the dinos ready and get a mass of dili and mark not an exploit?
"Frankly, not sure why you're on a one man nerf campaign. "
oh man, I loved stahl, only because out of all the devs, he was the one who " cared" for the game and the ip more than anyone else in the studio.
as far all this about gecko, well its no secret that im not a fan of him. but, without sounding petty or anything, the big difference between stahl and gecko (not that they held different positions at cryptic lol). was stahl always wanted a good all around star trek game.. he got excited about what other people thought star trek online should be..
gecko wants to make his game, with all the thngs "he" wants. it is very apparent by his interviews.. and that is not a good person to be leading a game. (even though Deangelo runs it, it seems that gecko has had more than a foot in the door since stahl left. )
as a musician, when my band plays a wedding, we don't play all the songs we want to play, we play what our customer wants played.
the community has been (for the most part) trying to tell cryptic what they want on the forums, in chat, in other forums, on twitter, whatever.. some people give good indepth feedback that others get behind (example: we wanted harder content... what we said pretty much as a whole was that we wanted more challenging mechanics, more challenging boss fights, we even said that we didn't want just npc buffs and mobs increased. what did we get, exactly what most people said they didn't want.. and then cryptic had the gaul to say, "well, more difficulty is what you asked for" lol... )
lately, the actions of cryptic employees, cryptic itself, and pwe, shows me that they are disconnecting from the players. I have played a lot of games,(and I mean a lot for a long time). I have never felt so ignored, or unhappy about a gaming company and how it runs its game ever. as a player, each content release, sure, we get some cool things, but we pay a price everytime, (weather in real money, or in something we didn't want to lose).
like I have said in other threads over the last year, I have a friend who does 3d rendering for a few gaming companies, and when he brought up cryptic, he got a chuckle out of most of the emplyees from other gaming companies.
it is what it is, but cryptic/pwe as a whole needs to shape up....
Okay, how is this not an exploit? Because I don't think they actually intended the sidekick system to level down players, just level them up in case they bumped into a high ranking instance so they down get steam rolled by NPCs 20-40 levels higher than them.
That existed since the game launch, if it is an exploit, is the exploit with the longest duration in gamming history lol
A feature to reward dedicated players turns out to be too good to be true. Not surprising really.
The least they could have done was just reduce it to 1000 Dil or so, but I guess Cryptic really, really doesn't want people to gain enough Dil to upgrade things and to convert into Zen.
Comments
Can't believe I'm saying this, LOL, but I agree: I rather have Stahl back.
Hate to be that guy, but - "Told you so!"
The same day after the change on the helm was announced I told people that we'll be asking for Stahl soon enough.
Say what you will, but I always felt Stahl wasn't half bad. He at the very least communicated somewhat frequently to acknowledge some player's feedback and provided more clarity(at least more than what we see now) as to what he had planned or what he wanted to do or see happen in the game.
To make matters worse, Cryptic sees the queues are empty and everyone is in Tau Dewa and, instead of addressing the endgame content, they shutdown the patrols.
Just can't believe it.
I actually agree. I think his heart was in the right place. I liked his relative transparency and honesty, even if I disagreed with some of his decisions.
Sure, there were times I rolled my eyes. "Sometimes bad things happen for no good reason." was one of them.
But over all I think most of the problem was the playerbase not understanding or not wanting to understand how game development works.
But I don't think this has anything to do with Dan Stahl or even Stephen D'Angelo.
I'm pretty sure a lot of this is from PWE putting pressure on Cryptic. The fact they are muddying the waters when it comes to dividing Cryptic as an entity from PWE as an entity is really just proof of that.
Our GMs work for Cryptic, but if you get an e-mail from them, it'll be from Perfect World. Just for example.
It's why I typically have to generalize Cryptic into PWE/Cryptic because PWE is purposefully tying themselves to Cryptic's practices so that they are both in the same boat. I think of it as a public relations 'dead hand', or mutually assured destruction.
It lets Cryptic say, "That's PWE's decision." and lets PWE say, "Well, that was a game design decision."
When you have that kind of business establishment, you just pass the buck back and forth when you do not want any accountability.
The community is becoming nostalgic about the Stahl era...oh dear things are really ****** up.
Im german and i barely spend any money on it. Also i actualy dont care if i play a mission x times if its worth it. But if they remove it i adapt and move on :=) nothing to cry cause of it
You can either cry or adapt and lets face it the devs dont care if you cry here. They didnt with the T5-u and they wont care with this.
p.s. @Devs. i like what you did. Reading tau dewa chat wasnt as entertaining ever
I'm shocked. Shocked I say!
/sarcasm
Mine Trap Supporter
I've always liked Dan Stahl. I've never been nostalgic, because he did make some decisions which he did have to own up to. And I have never forgotten them.
But in the end I think the culprit is STO's Publisher, not its Developer. I find it hard to believe the masterminds behind City of Heroes and City of Villains devised these things by themselves.
Especially when there are so many other game assets which are almost uniformly taken from other PW business models in terms of f2p games.
And PWE wants to keep that illusion going. They have reason to.
And I agree with you, in turn.
Seriously, I had some issues with Stahl too, but I always felt that he genuinely cared for the game, beyond it being a money-maker for them. With Geko I don't have that at all: he's monetized the game to the degree that he even begrudges people their small Tau Dewa rewards. And that is sad, on an epic [gold] level.
Agree with this so much.
Its great refreshing the forums atm, its like watching a crash in slow motion... :rolleyes:
Geko has been here the entire time. I like Al Rivera too. I don't care what other people say about him, I like that he's willing to give uncomfortable truths instead of comforting lies. He has no problems admitting faults or past mistakes, but keeps an eye to the future.
My emphasis is still on PWE. They're the ones who tell Cryptic what to do, and give 'advice' on how to do it. They intervene when they want to because they are the ones giving money to Cryptic.
Cryptic has no reason to agree with me or confirm any of my suspicions. You don't bite the hand that feeds you.
But when I see a lot of these gated things in STO which had never existed in a Cryptic game before PWE bought them, and these are the same things I see in other Perfect World games?
Namely the things that TRIBBLE a lot of players off? I have a hard time honestly convincing myself the buck stops with D'Angelo.
It's the people who put the pressure on him to do it.
That's definitely the long term goal no doubt about it. But it takes time to nerf and delete everything, so far 2 years and counting.
They getting close now they almost entirely stripped the game from fun right down to being pitiful enough to nerf vendor trash.
Ideally, they want all the battery hens on the assembly line to be 100% controlled and quantifiable.
So that they decide how much you play, when you do it, what you spend, what you buy etc.
When everyone fits into their little metrics and the projection of profits more or less fits the bill then the game is where they want it to be.
One certified way to make sure you control what people play is deleting all our forms of gameplay which is exactly what we've seen and exactly what is going on right now.
Don't want people getting free materials inside clusters? Delete
Don't want people earning EC for the tour? Delete
It insults me royally on general principle alone
The Skill Points and Expertise rewarded for defeating NPCs below the players current level have been updated.
They now correctly scale starting at one level below the player.
After earning all 60 Captain Specialization points, Dilithium is no longer rewarded when filling the Skill Points bar.
All Patrols and Deep Space Encounters in the Tau Dewa Sector now spawn NPCs at the correct level.
Map loading screens have been updated.
Resolved an issue that caused some female Human and Caitian captains to have invisible legs while wearing skirts.
The Small XP Boost in the C-Store has been reverted to its previous value of 1,000 Bonus Skill Points.
Gonna get next to nothing xp from now on!
You're invoking the "No True Scotsman" fallacy here. It was an exploit, plain and simple.
Sorry, but I call it like it is.
Helpful Tools: Dictionary.com - Logical fallacies - Random generator - Word generator - Color tool - Extra Credits - List of common English language errors - New T6 Big booty tutorial
On the other hand, they reduced exp needed for ship mastery and even are giving mastery buffs for exp already earned. So clearly is was the captain exp that they thought was too fast.
Where are they? I'd like to read the whole thing but don't see them in the patch notes forum.
Cryptic: Hey everyone! We know that there can be a level gap slowing the story down so we encourage you to go out and play patrols to gain that xp! Go go gi gi!
Players: Wheeeee!
Cryptic: Wait, you're going too fast... no that not what we meant... wait! You know what, we're calling that an exploit now. Yeah, you did EXACTLY what we told you to do but we didn't know you'd ALL do it so... NERF! There, done. that's what you get for not playing the way we want you to, even if you're following the rules we set.
Sorry, *I* call it like it is.
Oh, so they fixed it? Well, they forgot to turn the maps back on.
Sarah Knightly - Co-leader; Frontier Explorers - U.S.S. Witchblade
Rias Gremory - Leader; Frontier Marauders - I.K.S. B'ullwinkle
They'll turn them back on with the patch.
http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/9001443-release-notes%3A-october-23rd%2C-2014
Guess they use Arc more than their own forums.....
Here's the forum version.
Formatting mass patch notes takes a while.
Tau Dewa was locked down becuase some people were running the patrol mission on Elite after teaming with a low level player, making them team leader, and then side kicking down to their level, and then killing all the now weaker NPCs which are also more numerous from the teaming up with likely very little effort and a decent amount of XP.
Okay, how is this not an exploit? Because I don't think they actually intended the sidekick system to level down players, just level them up in case they bumped into a high ranking instance so they down get steam rolled by NPCs 20-40 levels higher than them.
And no I don't think using basically the same defense for the old one click foundry missions people used to use to farm the foundry daily is a good one.
as far all this about gecko, well its no secret that im not a fan of him. but, without sounding petty or anything, the big difference between stahl and gecko (not that they held different positions at cryptic lol). was stahl always wanted a good all around star trek game.. he got excited about what other people thought star trek online should be..
gecko wants to make his game, with all the thngs "he" wants. it is very apparent by his interviews.. and that is not a good person to be leading a game. (even though Deangelo runs it, it seems that gecko has had more than a foot in the door since stahl left. )
as a musician, when my band plays a wedding, we don't play all the songs we want to play, we play what our customer wants played.
the community has been (for the most part) trying to tell cryptic what they want on the forums, in chat, in other forums, on twitter, whatever.. some people give good indepth feedback that others get behind (example: we wanted harder content... what we said pretty much as a whole was that we wanted more challenging mechanics, more challenging boss fights, we even said that we didn't want just npc buffs and mobs increased. what did we get, exactly what most people said they didn't want.. and then cryptic had the gaul to say, "well, more difficulty is what you asked for" lol... )
lately, the actions of cryptic employees, cryptic itself, and pwe, shows me that they are disconnecting from the players. I have played a lot of games,(and I mean a lot for a long time). I have never felt so ignored, or unhappy about a gaming company and how it runs its game ever. as a player, each content release, sure, we get some cool things, but we pay a price everytime, (weather in real money, or in something we didn't want to lose).
like I have said in other threads over the last year, I have a friend who does 3d rendering for a few gaming companies, and when he brought up cryptic, he got a chuckle out of most of the emplyees from other gaming companies.
it is what it is, but cryptic/pwe as a whole needs to shape up....
and I want stahl back... lol
That existed since the game launch, if it is an exploit, is the exploit with the longest duration in gamming history lol
Vin Naftero@playhard88 - FED Sciencie
K'tan@playhard88 - KDF Tactical
Argento@playhard88 - RRF Tactical (FED)
The least they could have done was just reduce it to 1000 Dil or so, but I guess Cryptic really, really doesn't want people to gain enough Dil to upgrade things and to convert into Zen.