And the above few comments show another key issue with what appears to be Cryptic's approach to problems and disputes:
The rule seems to be, "Keeping silent unless the problem becomes a firestorm makes it fail to spread, so we can then ignore it"
Problem with this, is that it practically encourages the sort of week-long firestorm we've just seen. Look at what's come out over the week and it has built into it a series of grudges dating back years:
Issue A > Fails to ignite
Issue B > Fails to ignite
Issue C > Fails to ignite
Issue D > Ignites, spreads, reignites A, B, C
Of course as can be seen, issues A, B, and C never went away, and now are there once again. Fix D? Yeah, still got A, B, and C smouldering away.
Cryptic's approach of "ignore it and it'll go away" does not work. Great, they've reversed their silly retro-nerf decision, (to which I can only say, "About time, and passed time"). Yet all the other issues are still there, waiting to be reignited in their next major "ignore it and wait" blunder... unless they fundamentally change their attitude.
Add issue E - they stealth nerfed DOff skill points.
I doubt very many here monitor the forums like I do, so you may or may not have noticed that for a long while the fires have been getting worse. Just look at this recent mess. The forums were ablaze nonstop for a whole week. It has to do with the ABCD thing janus mentioned. Every time the forums ignite, all the issues are lit up. Now the problem is that instead of being put out, the fires are allowed to die out on their own. That is an issue because nothing is resolved in the end, a scab simply forms over an ugly wound.
The communication, or lack thereof, and the management decisions create the wounds. Every time the scab is ripped off when an issue D sets a fire, all the ugliness underneath the scab is dredged back up. It's what were seeing here, the unresolved scars piling up with new ones. Only now, a few monumentally bad decisions from Cryptic/PWE have completely torn the scab off and ignited the already huge stack of explosives.
What they need to do is what they did today, and start disarming the explosives. These can't be removed, because the past is the past and nothing will change it, however they can be resolved. The entire reason forum fires get so massive is because the explosives left behind are never addressed. I have some hope that the third coming of D'Angelo today is the start on a path of recovery.
So my message to the management ultimately comes down to this: You put the explosives there, you failed disarm them, and you lit the match. But now from the wreckage you can start anew and rebuild the destroyed relationship between the company and the customers - us.
However, in addition to silence (which is funny in particular in testing), I see a lot of what I consider to be unprofessional animosity, such as implying that forum negativity is hurting Cryptic's ability to work with a children's charity, insisting that features such as the customizable BOff were "obviously" bugged, and, in general, what I see as an immature inability to accept responsibility, blame deflection, and unjustified hostility.
I'd like to open up the floor to discuss how we work through this as a community.
The issue with communication on the forums is not a problem that can be solved with a silver bullet. There are multiple problems which sometimes overlap each other and together create a very obvious problem needing to be solved.
I will start with problems which must be addressed on Cryptic's side.
1: More clarity and clarification in communications. Using vague and misleading terms in official communications may be a great way to cover your aft when players call you out on things, but it breeds distrust from the playerbase.
2: Draw clearer lines between PWE and Cryptic. Be willing to be accountable for mistakes made. When I see GM responses from PWE when I know they work for Cryptic, it does not show a clear chain of command of who is in charge of what. By making clear who does what through actions (not just words), you show you are willing to be open and transparent with your day-to-day operations in both Redwood City and Los Gatos.
3: Bite the bullet and engage with your players, no matter how unlovable some of them are. Be willing to call them out on unproductive language and behavior. If a player takes what you say out of context, correct the hell out of them.
4: Have more than 1 community manager. I know Smirk and Trendy work hard at what they do, and despite some occasional heckling of them, I appreciate what they do. However, PWE produces an environment of negligence by having them tackle multiple games at once. Without that personal touch, you show PWE is out of touch with its individual games.
5: Fix the damn forums. This is a damn shame what we have to work with. No report button. No 24/7 forum or customer service support. A broken dev tracker, and 'Invalid Thread' pages now whenever we edit what we post!? And web code that I could do better in 1998. This is 2014, and the STO forums are a disgrace to modern web design.
I should not have to put in a ticket for forum support. I know that is what Bluegeek suggests we do, but I am sorry. It is PWE's responsibility to make it convenient for forumites to report posts that violate the TOS. It is not my responsibility to police the forums for you, unless I'm volunteering to be a forum mod.
And I am not going to waste my time filling out a customer support ticket on the official website when other forums have a simple damn 'Report Post' button.
Why don't we?
6: Be more transparent despite player outrage. Players will be outraged no matter what you do or don't do. So you might as well do the right thing, even if it isn't the popular thing.
7: Stop using Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter to release important information. Your company pays to have these forums maintained (badly), use them for their intended purpose or get rid of them altogether.
For the players side of things:
1: Be reasonable. STO will not take dramatic steps toward what you want out of the game, more than likely. STO will be STO. It will never be your vision of what STO will be. So take things on a case-by-case basis and judge them accordingly. Understand these are artists and as artists they take artistic freedoms and liberties. Criticise them if you want, but criticise what decisions are made on creation rather than the creation itself.
2: Be constructive. The people who know how to be constructive already know this. So I am not sure why I have to explain what should be a very obvious guideline to improving dev/player relations via the forum.
3: Stop being crazy. You know who you are. Insanity and delusion are not talking points that produce improved game design. They simply make you look like the crazy person you are. This isn't your mental health clinic. We aren't your therapists.
4: Suggest. Do not demand. It is respectful to suggest creators do something. Demanding they do something is childish.
5: Be willing to see things in shades of grey, rather than black and white. Everything is a spectrum of grey in this world. There are no absolutes, and things are usually never as cut-and-dry as they seem.
6: Stop saying you've been here at the beginning as some kind of entitlement talking point. If you've been here since the beginning, you should know it isn't going to get you anywhere.
7: Be willing to accept the possibility that bad decisions will happen, and there is nothing you can do about it. Pick your battles carefully on what to oppose. Dredging up sour grapes from 2-4 years ago will not help your position. It just makes you look whiney.
Sometimes you can make your feelings known which will result in a change in the game and you should always do so when given the chance. But sometimes you have to shrug your shoulders and get over it.
Again, pick your battles wisely. If you make EVERY. SINGLE. ISSUE. a life long crusade until your fingers bleed, you will just come off as unreasonable and not someone to listen to.
talking down to me doesnt help, and just because people choose to ignore me doesnt make my problems go away or my game playable. i was almost talked into patching so Luna could give me a cat pet, but my cryptic launcher is down and no longer works....they made arc mandatory i see, they might as well have banned me....but i guess banning me or making me go away is easier then fixing anything. ..or at least at some point all these years said at least, "whats the issue Cat, how can we help u?"...but that isnt how they work, and for it ive lost everything now!
so good work everyone that chipped in, gofasternow, jonsills and the rest, it looks like im gone for good now, maybe sto will have a party in honor of finally being rid of me. the only regret i have at this point is spending any money on the game let alone all that i did, everyone has thier limit on how far they can be pushed before they loose theri patience and while im at my boiling point with em right now i know it was the trolls that kindled bulk of my flames.
Smirk can trace back our every post, i ask that he erase every one i ever made ...let me be forgotten by the players like cryptic did to me!
The easiest solution for everyone is to leave and not support korean grinders.
Most western publishers have games like this on a "red" list. As in, warning this game is designed to milk you. There are TONS of F2P games that do it right, where each purchase is FUN and REWARDING, not NECESARY and endless.
The community has become even more divided by Cryptics handling of recent changes, to the point where everyone is attacking each other. Basically this game is on its way out.
WHICH WE SHOULD BE REJOICING. It makes way for a competant game company (of which there are many) to get a hold of this IP and do it RIGHT.
As long the playerbase here keeps accepting the conversion to korean grinder, and even paying for it, the worse it will get until its finally shut down, wasting months or even years that a good version could have been in development.
Sometimes you just gotta know when the horse has been broken, and need to be put down.
Shifting blame to the players, for mistakes that you (as a company) have done, is never a good thing. For this reason alone, Stephen D'Angelo must be removed as Executive Producer for Star Trek Online. This, coupled with the overall silence from most developers (gone are the days of regular State of the Game posts, or "Engineering Reports"), replaced with virtually 100% silence.
Testing on Tribble is largely ignored, as patches are most often pushed live only a day after they've been to Tribble (leaving very little time for actual testing), which results in an overall buggy game, that has become ever more bugged since Delta Rising launched.
Also like to make a shout-out to CaptainGeko, whom I also believe should be replaced. Calling your entire player base "morons" for providing the occasional negative feedback, should be grounds for dismissal from the company. He has also been personally responsible for some of the worst design decisions since Season 8, possibly even longer back.
Animosity becomes prevalent, when your developers continually make changes to the game that hinder, or slow down the progress of the players, and where little to no feedback is given regarding said changes. The term "stealth change" comes to mind here, as it is more frequent to change things without notification, than there is to say "We're planning on doing this, what do you think?" forum posts.
+1
/10characters
Looking for more info on Dilithium Rising? Click on the link below:
I'm speaking as an observer, now, who's spent a lot of time on the forums...
First off, another fine posts by your hands! As usual, a few comments.
Dan Stahl spent a lot of time communicating with players via the forums when he was EP. At first, we forumites were ecstatic that the Devs were spending so much time talking to us and letting us in on where they wanted to go.
Then it turned ugly. Words were twisted, misunderstood, blown out of proportion. I'm not saying that Cryptic didn't make mistakes. They forgot, again, that the forums are really social media and they need to treat it like a PR nightmare waiting to happen -- as many other companies using social media have discovered to their chagrin. They have to watch what they say because they now know that it can come back to bite them hard, even when their intentions are good.
I wasn't kidding, earlier, when I suggested Cryptic take a page from CCP, and institute a forum section in which people can make 'refined' proposals. The way it works over there, is that posts in that section need to be of a high standard: itemized, point by point, well thought-out proposals and/or outlinings of people's thoughts, else the proposal gets rejected on the spot.
That system is not without issues, either, but at least makes it easier for the Devs to deal with just a handful of coherent thoughts, and not just endless 'Craptic u sucz!' or 'New ship idea!' posts (all of which they probably now ignore).
Those nerd-rage disasters taken as a whole forever changed the nature of communications between Cryptic and us, and we as a community of players and devs have never fully recovered in my opinion. Until we can get past that, it's going to be hard to avoid more rage fests and bad communication.
All of the toxic influences have to go if things are going to improve. Either the attitudes need to change, or the people themselves need to not be on the forums at all.
I'd rather stay, if you don't mind. :P
Cause and effect, a complex duo. Does Cryptic no longer listen because people are so negative? Or are things so negative because people feel Cryptic isn't listening? Speaking strictly for myself, I know a great source of frustration is the latter: feeling Cryptic never cares. We can tell them a zillion times the loudout system is broken, and a zillion times it won't get fixed. Or I see only 2 or 3 'known issues' listed.
What often clouds the issue, on top of everything else, is that you can never really tell whether the Devs are just lazy, as people say, or whether PWE is pushing them to release yet more new content (they are, partly, pushed for this by the people themselves too). And then, in the heat of the argument, PWE & Cryptic become interchangeable somehow. And I think it's safe to say, overall, that people probably like Cryptic more than PWE.
Sad part is, I honestly think the Devs really *do* care. I recall playing the Vault Ensnared one day. And I saw two tiny ships, carrying a wee mesh in-between them. It was super-cute. Yeah, okay, maybe not the best example; but, at seemingly insignificant times like that, I tend to choke up a bit, and realize here are people at work who truly do care. For my part, I think I tend to forget to say this out-loud every once in a while.
Shifting blame to the players, for mistakes that you (as a company) have done, is never a good thing. For this reason alone, Stephen D'Angelo must be removed as Executive Producer for Star Trek Online. This, coupled with the overall silence from most developers (gone are the days of regular State of the Game posts, or "Engineering Reports"), replaced with virtually 100% silence.
Testing on Tribble is largely ignored, as patches are most often pushed live only a day after they've been to Tribble (leaving very little time for actual testing), which results in an overall buggy game, that has become ever more bugged since Delta Rising launched.
Also like to make a shout-out to CaptainGeko, whom I also believe should be replaced. Calling your entire player base "morons" for providing the occasional negative feedback, should be grounds for dismissal from the company. He has also been personally responsible for some of the worst design decisions since Season 8, possibly even longer back.
Animosity becomes prevalent, when your developers continually make changes to the game that hinder, or slow down the progress of the players, and where little to no feedback is given regarding said changes. The term "stealth change" comes to mind here, as it is more frequent to change things without notification, than there is to say "We're planning on doing this, what do you think?" forum posts.
^^ Solid post. Somewhat outspoken, maybe, but I agree with all of it.
Not sure if we're allowed to say that, but, yeah, I, too, rather see Stephen D'Angelo go. Primarily simply because I think his vision is running the game into the ground. We are not Korean (made a whole post about that, yesterday, why the Korean model doesn't work for Western societies; can't find it any more, though). And the entire model is grating heavily on my soul, causing more and more irritation by the day.
"Animosity becomes prevalent, when your developers continually make changes to the game that hinder, or slow down the progress of the players,"
This part rings particularly true. Cryptic would probably do well to think about that.
catstar, you can still use Steam, even though the stand-alone launcher is not readily available. I had to take that option recently with the demise of my old laptop a few months ago, and I did not know at the time to save the old launcher along with other critical files that I managed to back up. While I did not particularly want Steam, it also does not seem to have caused any trouble on my computer.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-) Proudly F2P.Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
Comments
Add issue E - they stealth nerfed DOff skill points.
The communication, or lack thereof, and the management decisions create the wounds. Every time the scab is ripped off when an issue D sets a fire, all the ugliness underneath the scab is dredged back up. It's what were seeing here, the unresolved scars piling up with new ones. Only now, a few monumentally bad decisions from Cryptic/PWE have completely torn the scab off and ignited the already huge stack of explosives.
What they need to do is what they did today, and start disarming the explosives. These can't be removed, because the past is the past and nothing will change it, however they can be resolved. The entire reason forum fires get so massive is because the explosives left behind are never addressed. I have some hope that the third coming of D'Angelo today is the start on a path of recovery.
So my message to the management ultimately comes down to this: You put the explosives there, you failed disarm them, and you lit the match. But now from the wreckage you can start anew and rebuild the destroyed relationship between the company and the customers - us.
The issue with communication on the forums is not a problem that can be solved with a silver bullet. There are multiple problems which sometimes overlap each other and together create a very obvious problem needing to be solved.
I will start with problems which must be addressed on Cryptic's side.
1: More clarity and clarification in communications. Using vague and misleading terms in official communications may be a great way to cover your aft when players call you out on things, but it breeds distrust from the playerbase.
2: Draw clearer lines between PWE and Cryptic. Be willing to be accountable for mistakes made. When I see GM responses from PWE when I know they work for Cryptic, it does not show a clear chain of command of who is in charge of what. By making clear who does what through actions (not just words), you show you are willing to be open and transparent with your day-to-day operations in both Redwood City and Los Gatos.
3: Bite the bullet and engage with your players, no matter how unlovable some of them are. Be willing to call them out on unproductive language and behavior. If a player takes what you say out of context, correct the hell out of them.
4: Have more than 1 community manager. I know Smirk and Trendy work hard at what they do, and despite some occasional heckling of them, I appreciate what they do. However, PWE produces an environment of negligence by having them tackle multiple games at once. Without that personal touch, you show PWE is out of touch with its individual games.
5: Fix the damn forums. This is a damn shame what we have to work with. No report button. No 24/7 forum or customer service support. A broken dev tracker, and 'Invalid Thread' pages now whenever we edit what we post!? And web code that I could do better in 1998. This is 2014, and the STO forums are a disgrace to modern web design.
I should not have to put in a ticket for forum support. I know that is what Bluegeek suggests we do, but I am sorry. It is PWE's responsibility to make it convenient for forumites to report posts that violate the TOS. It is not my responsibility to police the forums for you, unless I'm volunteering to be a forum mod.
And I am not going to waste my time filling out a customer support ticket on the official website when other forums have a simple damn 'Report Post' button.
Why don't we?
6: Be more transparent despite player outrage. Players will be outraged no matter what you do or don't do. So you might as well do the right thing, even if it isn't the popular thing.
7: Stop using Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter to release important information. Your company pays to have these forums maintained (badly), use them for their intended purpose or get rid of them altogether.
For the players side of things:
1: Be reasonable. STO will not take dramatic steps toward what you want out of the game, more than likely. STO will be STO. It will never be your vision of what STO will be. So take things on a case-by-case basis and judge them accordingly. Understand these are artists and as artists they take artistic freedoms and liberties. Criticise them if you want, but criticise what decisions are made on creation rather than the creation itself.
2: Be constructive. The people who know how to be constructive already know this. So I am not sure why I have to explain what should be a very obvious guideline to improving dev/player relations via the forum.
3: Stop being crazy. You know who you are. Insanity and delusion are not talking points that produce improved game design. They simply make you look like the crazy person you are. This isn't your mental health clinic. We aren't your therapists.
4: Suggest. Do not demand. It is respectful to suggest creators do something. Demanding they do something is childish.
5: Be willing to see things in shades of grey, rather than black and white. Everything is a spectrum of grey in this world. There are no absolutes, and things are usually never as cut-and-dry as they seem.
6: Stop saying you've been here at the beginning as some kind of entitlement talking point. If you've been here since the beginning, you should know it isn't going to get you anywhere.
7: Be willing to accept the possibility that bad decisions will happen, and there is nothing you can do about it. Pick your battles carefully on what to oppose. Dredging up sour grapes from 2-4 years ago will not help your position. It just makes you look whiney.
Sometimes you can make your feelings known which will result in a change in the game and you should always do so when given the chance. But sometimes you have to shrug your shoulders and get over it.
Again, pick your battles wisely. If you make EVERY. SINGLE. ISSUE. a life long crusade until your fingers bleed, you will just come off as unreasonable and not someone to listen to.
8: Educate yourself. Or I will do it for you.
talking down to me doesnt help, and just because people choose to ignore me doesnt make my problems go away or my game playable. i was almost talked into patching so Luna could give me a cat pet, but my cryptic launcher is down and no longer works....they made arc mandatory i see, they might as well have banned me....but i guess banning me or making me go away is easier then fixing anything. ..or at least at some point all these years said at least, "whats the issue Cat, how can we help u?"...but that isnt how they work, and for it ive lost everything now!
so good work everyone that chipped in, gofasternow, jonsills and the rest, it looks like im gone for good now, maybe sto will have a party in honor of finally being rid of me. the only regret i have at this point is spending any money on the game let alone all that i did, everyone has thier limit on how far they can be pushed before they loose theri patience and while im at my boiling point with em right now i know it was the trolls that kindled bulk of my flames.
Smirk can trace back our every post, i ask that he erase every one i ever made ...let me be forgotten by the players like cryptic did to me!
http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view/1053979/gtfo-cat-o.gif
+1
+1
/10characters
[SIGPIC]Click here to visit my STO YouTube channel[/SIGPIC]
First off, another fine posts by your hands!
I wasn't kidding, earlier, when I suggested Cryptic take a page from CCP, and institute a forum section in which people can make 'refined' proposals. The way it works over there, is that posts in that section need to be of a high standard: itemized, point by point, well thought-out proposals and/or outlinings of people's thoughts, else the proposal gets rejected on the spot.
That system is not without issues, either, but at least makes it easier for the Devs to deal with just a handful of coherent thoughts, and not just endless 'Craptic u sucz!' or 'New ship idea!' posts (all of which they probably now ignore).
I'd rather stay, if you don't mind. :P
Cause and effect, a complex duo. Does Cryptic no longer listen because people are so negative? Or are things so negative because people feel Cryptic isn't listening? Speaking strictly for myself, I know a great source of frustration is the latter: feeling Cryptic never cares. We can tell them a zillion times the loudout system is broken, and a zillion times it won't get fixed. Or I see only 2 or 3 'known issues' listed.
What often clouds the issue, on top of everything else, is that you can never really tell whether the Devs are just lazy, as people say, or whether PWE is pushing them to release yet more new content (they are, partly, pushed for this by the people themselves too). And then, in the heat of the argument, PWE & Cryptic become interchangeable somehow. And I think it's safe to say, overall, that people probably like Cryptic more than PWE.
Sad part is, I honestly think the Devs really *do* care. I recall playing the Vault Ensnared one day. And I saw two tiny ships, carrying a wee mesh in-between them. It was super-cute.
^^ Solid post. Somewhat outspoken, maybe, but I agree with all of it.
Not sure if we're allowed to say that, but, yeah, I, too, rather see Stephen D'Angelo go. Primarily simply because I think his vision is running the game into the ground. We are not Korean (made a whole post about that, yesterday, why the Korean model doesn't work for Western societies; can't find it any more, though). And the entire model is grating heavily on my soul, causing more and more irritation by the day.
"Animosity becomes prevalent, when your developers continually make changes to the game that hinder, or slow down the progress of the players,"
This part rings particularly true. Cryptic would probably do well to think about that.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-)
Proudly F2P. Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.