While I wasn't one of the people affected or even in tau dewa for that matter, I appreciate your latest message. The admission of the whole episode being an error and taking action to correct the horrendous response by cryptic will go a long way to helping salve the hurt you inflicted.
Hopefully you've learned a few things like data doesn't lie but SQL queries can be very misleading if poorly written and will tell what you want to hear. Hopefully you've learned blaming your customers, collectively punishing them and all but calling them criminals is never a good public relations move. Finally investing resources in collectively punishing players when there are game-breaking bugs that cryptic acknowledges is not a wise use of resources.
Space the final frontier. These are the voyages of [your name here] on a five year mission to gain one level after the delta rising xp nerf.
From my interpretation there were 300 gross violators. Like beyond all doubt, those 300 people were doing something wrong and they knew it.
.....
Including his claims of those 300 people.
Were they guilty? Probably. But we can't say with absolute certainty.
Were they? I wasn't in tau dewa, but I have an entirely different perspective.
They found what they believed was an XP problem on Tribble during testing. They reported it to cryptic. Cryptic did nothing to change the situation, fostering the belief it was as intended. They played the game. Cryptic comes in like an avenging samurai swinging the nerf bat and ban hammer, calling the exploiters. They didn't alter code, they didn't hack clients, they just played the game. For playing the game as intended they were called cheaters, exploiters and treated like criminals, and some innocent people were also punished. From my point of view cryptic was 100% in the wrong dealing with the situation every step of the way until today. Now it's and 80/20 split.
Space the final frontier. These are the voyages of [your name here] on a five year mission to gain one level after the delta rising xp nerf.
Were they? I wasn't in tau dewa, but I have an entirely different perspective.
They found what they believed was an XP problem on Tribble during testing. They reported it to cryptic. Cryptic did nothing to change the situation, fostering the belief it was as intended. They played the game. Cryptic comes in like an avenging samurai swinging the nerf bat and ban hammer, calling the exploiters. They didn't alter code, they didn't hack clients, they just played the game. For playing the game as intended they were called cheaters, exploiters and treated like criminals, and some innocent people were also punished. From my point of view cryptic was 100% in the wrong dealing with the situation every step of the way until today. Now it's and 80/20 split.
While I appreciate what Cryptic is doing, I have noticed that the two points I received back is substantially less than the number I had taken away. I did not spend much time in tau dewa at all and made most of my points doing solo elites. I was by no means a whale who exploited to fill out the trees, but it did hurt when my handful of points went away.
I don't always feel like endlessly grinding for hours with little to gain from it. But when I do, I choose Star Trek Online
However, since this post we discover all of that data was flawed. And that he was wrong. That there were wrongly penalized accounts.
If just one bit of his previous post is either misinformation, a falsification, or an outright lie, then all of his post should be considered suspect.
Including his claims of those 300 people.
Personally, I am of the belief there was nothing wrong with their data, or their methodology, but rather with their interpretion of said data. I was at DS9, I did do the 'Shutdown' mission on Elite: I'm sure their logs reflect that properly. Where things went awry, though, is where they started making (harsh) assumptions about people's motives. Like assuming I knew NPCs 5x harder to kill, paying out 5x as much well, was an exploit.
I *was* really taken aback, though, when the EP went online, saying claims of people having complained didn't live up to a second round of scrutiny. In hindsight, I guess they were just being stubborn.
Taking advantage of something that you knew wasn't 'working as intended' is the very definition of an exploit. And the only thing this decision does is further stratify the game into those who use exploits (and are rewarded for it they throw enough of a tantrum) and those who don't. Terrible decision setting terrible precedent.
People didnt know it was not working as intended. That is the mission I always do for the Rom marks with my fleet and we all were surprised it was giving that much exp but How the heck is anyone suposed to know unless you wrote the code ? it always gave that much exp it just never mattered before the lvl cap increase because you could only be lvl 50 in there Now the people who did know and played it non stop then yeah they exploited something that Cryptic was to lazy to fix.
Was useing the old mirror to level JUST as fast as Japori was doing EXPLOITING too? NO because that was the way THEY made the mission and Im sure they didnt like it because it isnt around anymore. THEY made Tau Dewa give out that much exp so it is their fault PERIOD it should never have went live if they didnt want it to work that way, they should have never made it give out that much IF they never wanted it to work that way. The whole foundry prob 2 years ago THAT was an exploit NOT this
See, I never get posts like this. The man restored our points, what more do you want?! And so what if he did it because of the backlash? it still takes a big man, especially when you're the EP, to come out in public and admit your actions caused more harm than good.
"(...) but what you don't say is that if no one had complained you wouldn't have done ANYTHING about it."
That's pretty much a null-statement: if there hadn't been a backlash, there wouldn't have been an issue in the first place (no effect, no cause). It's like saying "If I hadn't gone back to the store to try and get a refund, you guys wouldn't have done anything!"
It does, however, show that resistance is NOT futile! And that's a good thing, to be heard.
N.B. It's also commonly considered not cool to beat someone when they're down: one might think you're 'eploiting' the situation. :P
Kira out.
It still takes a big man, especially when you're the EP, to come out in public and admit your actions caused more harm than good.
I fully agree with you, it takes a person with guts to admit when theyre wrong; but if he said oops we screwed up there, were; I wouldnt have said anything!
Your right they wouldnt have done ANYTHING because they DONT care about the community, all they care about is money, I grant you the fact that its F2P and they need new shinnies to get in real world cash but they do it AT the expense of the community;
It is possible to do and F2P game get all the cash you need but not TRIBBLE over the people that are paying your bills, look at TOR, theyre F2P matrix is more restrictive than STOs but they give a player a reason to shell out $20 a month and they give benefits to the subscribers, this new expansion thats out in December if you pre-order it more than a week in advanced you get 12X the XP on class missions (subscribers only) , a statue of Raven for your stronghold, a week of early access PLUS the first expansion pack as well.
AND they havent ever not once have they screwed the community over in favour of just one more dollar!
How have they screwed us over just two examples for the sake of reading time, all the lifetime sub rewards are just VETRAN rewards that people were given (until they (cryptic) seen an opportunity for MONEY) for sticking with the game Hows that for a Tier 5 -FU.?
Whats worse we were told we wouldnt get Tier 6 ship so we spend our money to get Tier 5 +1 ships that cost $25 possibly upgrade to fleet which would be what $5 and how an extra $7 to upgrade to Tier 5 U and what more we have Tier 6 ships so those ships we invested our time and money into tuning, playing with and taking care of is now Worthless!
It does, however, show that resistance is NOT futile! And that's a good thing, to be heard.
You are most correct that it is a good thing to be heard, but when its about an exploit that was not expletive of the game in any way to the point of its what was intended to happen for doing those patrol missions it just means they were FORCED into doing it, not because the community was in an uproar but because ANY brain dead idiot could see that penalising players for doing what they want them to do as in playing the game it is so dumb and stupid that Monkeys are questioning it!
By that token Cryptic is becoming the laughing stock!
N.B. It's also commonly considered not cool to beat someone when they're down: one might think you're 'exploiting' the situation. :P
And you know something you right its not nice to kick a dog when its dead in a gutter but Im just telling everyone how it is and how and how EVERY (if not most) subscribers that have been here since LUANCH four years ago sees it: CRYPTIC studios prefers to put MONEY before those that are supplying it and when they do something that they know will upset the long term players they do one of three things,
1. Ask you not to rage,
2. Install a 5 minute timer on the forums to allow cooler heads to prevail aka we dont want to hear you lot b$^& about us for all the s£&^ we do to you
3. Bury their heads in the sand and;
4. Continue to actively alienate your player base epically those that have been here for four years hoping that wed be treated fairly and that one day this came will become something worthy of the name STAR TREK!
CVN-65 U.S.S. Enterprise - A ship so badass it survived John McCain.
People didnt know it was not working as intended. That is the mission I always do for the Rom marks with my fleet and we all were surprised it was giving that much exp but How the heck is anyone suposed to know unless you wrote the code ? it always gave that much exp it just never mattered before the lvl cap increase because you could only be lvl 50 in there Now the people who did know and played it non stop then yeah they exploited something that Cryptic was to lazy to fix.
Was useing the old mirror to level JUST as fast as Japori was doing EXPLOITING too? NO because that was the way THEY made the mission and Im sure they didnt like it because it isnt around anymore. THEY made Tau Dewa give out that much exp so it is their fault PERIOD it should never have went live if they didnt want it to work that way, they should have never made it give out that much IF they never wanted it to work that way. The whole foundry prob 2 years ago THAT was an exploit NOT this
Gaining a level in 10 minutes, when EVERYTHING else about the expansion is designed to deliberately slow you down. They took the old Mirror out a long time ago. The game informs you after you finish the first 'do 5 patrols' DR mission that they deliberately took away the 'one level per mission' thing. They did everything but put up a giant neon sign of 'XP will now be gained at a crawl; sucks to be you.' Except that by using this one tactic where you could level every 10 minutes. How could that be anything other than an oversight?
Should they have fixed it on tribble? They certainly should have. Hell they shouldn't have nerfed XP in the first place, but they did. Whether they left it in though by mistake was beside the point. If I leave my car unlocked by mistake and someone takes my stuff, they're still a thief even though I did something stupid. Cryptic did something stupid; some people abused the everliving hell out of it, while others had the integrity to recognize it was a mistake and play fair anyways. All this rollback-rollback shows is that ultimately exploiters DO prosper.
Slightly off topic, but does anybody else get in their head when they see 300 get the feeling of.
"300 people stood at the Hog Gats of Tau Dewa and fought the horde of Crypic and won the battle?! THIS IS TAU DEWA!!!"
Sorry had to throw that in there.
But kudos to cryptic for making a good call.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
While that general restoration of spec points doesn't let me clean my name, I'm still happy I got my 3 spec points back (confirmed). Particularly now when getting xp is such a long time endeavor, every one spec point counts. So, thank you.
Guess that writing CS about the issue wasn't in vain.
Now I hope (you might say naively) that you'll learn from this, Cryptic and PWE, and that you might make the game even more pleasant soon (as in, boosting some rewards, decreasing grinds, ...).
TOIVA, Toi Vaxx, Toia Vix, Toveg, T'vritha, To Vrax: Bring in the Allegiance class. Toi'Va, Ti'vath, Toivia, Ty'Vris, Tia Vex, Toi'Virth: Add Tier 6 KDF Carrier and Raider. Tae'Va, T'Vaya, To'Var, Tevra, T'Vira, To'Vrak: Give us Asylums for Romulans.
While I was not one of the people affected. I did watch as people disappeared and STO threw out all the free things and events it could to keep them though it did not work. Later some power players in my fleet threw a fit explained the situation and left to play other MMORPG's and have not been back since.
What I can tell you is this. I love Star Trek. But Star Trek Online dosnt do a lot of things as well as it should and has built a reputation for its self as one that dosnt care what players think or feel or want.
Siriously if things are going to change in the game. And it think its starting to become apparent in the form of numbers and dollars that they needs to. We would need to see a complete turn over of both direction and leadership in the game.
Let us be clear. Nepotism has gotten us to where we are now.
Gaining a level in 10 minutes, when EVERYTHING else about the expansion is designed to deliberately slow you down. They took the old Mirror out a long time ago. The game informs you after you finish the first 'do 5 patrols' DR mission that they deliberately took away the 'one level per mission' thing.
All sounds reasonable... when seen from s solo-ing perspective. And I certainly did not gain 1 level in 10 mins, LOL. But with people teaming up, you're forgetting the multiplication factor. So, if it took me, say, 1 hour for 1 level, then suddenly 10 minutes for an entire team doesn't sound so unreasonable any more, does it?! Especially when that team consists of 50k+ players.
I would like to thank the players who took the time to report problems with the Specialization Point removal last Thursday through the Customer Service ticket system. It really helped in being able to track and take care of everyone.
In the process of reviewing each person’s ticket, we did indeed find that there were a few customers who did not take advantage of the power-leveling bug and yet had Specialization Points removed. There were also a few who managed to use the bug and were not penalized.
After considering the situation, we have decided that rather than doing another round of corrections a week after the problem event, that we will restore the points to all characters that had them removed. As of the time of this posting, all characters should have had their missing points restored.
I sincerely apologize on behalf of the Star Trek Online team for both the original bugs and the error of penalizing some customers incorrectly.
Stephen D’Angelo
Executive Producer
Star Trek Online
Bravo. I wasn't affected either way, but I DO applaud the ultimate decision to not penalize anyone who took advantage of what was clearly a failure on Cryptic's part to:
- Properly test what they're putting out (IE - THEY should have caught the fact that someone put in the 5X exp multiplier for 'Elite' MOBs when they meant it to be a 2X modifier.)
- Their failure to address the situation with the Tau Dewa sector patrol map reward mechanics (which had been in place since LoR - but which were STILL reported on Tribble prior to DR's launch; but to with no official reply was given at that time nor any action taken by Cryptic one way or another.)
The last point really underscore how ridiculous it was for Mr. D'Angelo to effectively blame the STO playerbase in his previous post where he 'Spoke Out' about Cryptic's initial response:
It's the absolute responsibility of the STO Devs to test/check that ANY reward metric is within what they consider acceptable bounds, BEFORE said content is released to the Holodeck server ; NOT THE PLAYERBASE OF STO AFTER THE CONTENT IS RELEASED ON THE HOLODECK SERVER.
Now, IF Cryptic had come forward on a specific date and said - "We consider <X> an exploit and anyone doing <X> after this announcement will be subject to action against their account including a rollback..." - anyone who continued to engage in <X> behaviour would have had a roll.back of said character justified -- but Cryptic didn't do that.
^^^
Thus again, I applaud the STO EP, the STO Dev team, and Cryptic/PWE for undoing what was in fact a ridiculous and unfair punishment for a mistake made BY the STO Dev team. in the end, I hope this will cause Cryptic/PWE to improve their internal testing procedures for future content AND maybe improve their handling and use of player reports from the Tribble test - as well as one the official STO forums themselves.
Time will tell (But honestly, I'll be VERY surprised if ANY of Cryptic/PWE's internal and Tribble testing procedures are modified - but one can hope.)
Kudos again for ultimately doing the right thing and effectively taking the blame for the whole debacle unto yourselves by undoing the rollbacks.:eek:
Formerly known as Armsman from June 2008 to June 20, 2012 PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
D'angelo i would like to thank you for this post and hope that this kind of communication continues.
this is what we want and need ive been seeing Borticus around more and frankly i aprove.
keep this up and keep working with us its best for STO you and us alike.
i know that people may have progressed faster then you like and that there was an issue with tau dewa but this shows that you guys are trying to now be the bigger people admitting that your solution didnt work.
yes i know some that may have used this bug to their benefit now keep those points and frankly i didn't care one way or the other i cared about the way it was handled rather then anything else.
again please keep this type of communication going and maybe you could bring back state of the game reports run by Borticus cryptic?
Does it look like I care about level 60? I care about the quality of the game and management more than I care about slogging to level 60. And what has happened was mistake after mistake after mistake. Starting with Tribble and ending here. For now.
FYI... just so you know, All I got is a level 50, a level 51, and a level 52.
The problem with this is that now the cheaters have been allowed to prosper and the 'exploit' shut down you now have a huge chasm between the player base. Nothing has been done to appease the majority who have been right royally ...... with this debacle due to the ridiculously low xp gain rates.
Since dilithium has been removed from the completion of the spec trees why can we not have normal xp rates restored so the rest of us can actually have a chance of being able to get to the point where we can join others in more challenging content?
YEEEESSSS! We have won! Now we show them how it is really done, who holds se power!
a lot of players are Devs, PR Managers and Moderaters already, so let's do it:
Worffan: Chief Executor Producer and Ship Artist
Markhawkman: Chief Script Writer and PR
Virusdancer: Chief Game Mechanic Calculator
TheCosmic: Chief Revela.. Erec... Landscape and Character Artist
Regina and Olivia: Chief Chefs and something for the eyes
All sounds reasonable... when seen from s solo-ing perspective. And I certainly did not gain 1 level in 10 mins, LOL. But with people teaming up, you're forgetting the multiplication factor. So, if it took me, say, 1 hour for 1 level, then suddenly 10 minutes for an entire team doesn't sound so unreasonable any more, does it?! Especially when that team consists of 50k+ players.
How does that change anything? Its still 'everything in the game was changed to be ridiculously slow, except this one particular thing.' Its still a crazy outlier compared to everything else, including the very focus of the expansion itself. I'd like to think that my fellow gamers have the intelligence to see that when something is that one-off and that much better than everything else, its a bug or a mistake of some kind, regardless of Tribble 'testing.' A new torpedo gets released that oneshots people in Kerrat, or when Tric Bombing was a thing and blowing up CSE cubes without killing the probes, everyone knows just by comparison that something is wrong and anyone using it is exploiting. The made patrol farming any different, other than people not just winning but hugely profiting off of it?
YEEEESSSS! We have won! Now we show them how it is really done, who holds se power!
a lot of players are Devs, PR Managers and Moderaters already, so let's do it:
Worffan: Chief Executor Producer and Ship Artist
Markhawkman: Chief Script Writer and PR
Virusdancer: Chief Game Mechanic Calculator
TheCosmic: Chief Revela.. Erec... Landscape and Character Artist
Regina and Olivia: Chief Chefs and something for the eyes
Players Unite!
You know, not sure if it still exists, but EvE Online used to have a Player Council, a body consisting of trustworthy players, to mediate between the playerbase and CCP. Came with its own set of issues, but still.
YEEEESSSS! We have won! Now we show them how it is really done, who holds se power!
a lot of players are Devs, PR Managers and Moderaters already, so let's do it:
Worffan: Chief Executor Producer and Ship Artist
Markhawkman: Chief Script Writer and PR
Virusdancer: Chief Game Mechanic Calculator
TheCosmic: Chief Revela.. Erec... Landscape and Character Artist
Regina and Olivia: Chief Chefs and something for the eyes
Players Unite!
Pfffffffffft, ship artist? Nah, I'd stink at that, and I'd rage at the nitwits in the game and on the forums too much as EP.
I'd LOVE to share the scriptwriter job, and I could do PR.
Let Ryansto and Porchsong calculate the game mechanics and then YOU, as EP, could tell them to provide FOUR difficulty settings: Normal, Advanced, and Elite as we have them, plus Unnerfable, which is eighteen times as hard as elite and instantly rewards 10 dil, but if you die even once the mission fails and you're locked out of ALL queued content for 3 hours.
Porchsong and Ryansto would LOVE it.
Put Minimax in charge of PVP, and make Gulberat CM and head of PR with Nabreeki as his assistant to be the stick side of carrot and stick.
You know, not sure if it still exists, but EvE Online used to have a Player Council, a body consisting of trustworthy players, to mediate between the playerbase and CCP. Came with its own set of issues, but still.
How does that change anything? Its still 'everything in the game was changed to be ridiculously slow, except this one particular thing.' Its still a crazy outlier compared to everything else, including the very focus of the expansion itself. I'd like to think that my fellow gamers have the intelligence to see that when something is that one-off and that much better than everything else, its a bug or a mistake of some kind, regardless of Tribble 'testing.' A new torpedo gets released that oneshots people in Kerrat, or when Tric Bombing was a thing and blowing up CSE cubes without killing the probes, everyone knows just by comparison that something is wrong and anyone using it is exploiting. The made patrol farming any different, other than people not just winning but hugely profiting off of it?
Well, the multiplication factor is simply inherent to any MMO in which people are allowed to team up. Unless you're prepared to outlaw teams, going much faster as a team is simply a given, and should NEVER be considered 'exploitative behavior.' Like ever.
Entirely not comparable to individual items on Tribble that may, or may not, need some tweaking.
Don't be too quick to congratulate yourselves, this probably had nothing to do with the stink in the forums but more likely they needed to pull some kind of PR stunt in an attempt to boost declining population and purchase metrics they're seeing on the server.
If something is not broken, don't fix it, if it is broken, don't leave it broken.
Comments
While I wasn't one of the people affected or even in tau dewa for that matter, I appreciate your latest message. The admission of the whole episode being an error and taking action to correct the horrendous response by cryptic will go a long way to helping salve the hurt you inflicted.
Hopefully you've learned a few things like data doesn't lie but SQL queries can be very misleading if poorly written and will tell what you want to hear. Hopefully you've learned blaming your customers, collectively punishing them and all but calling them criminals is never a good public relations move. Finally investing resources in collectively punishing players when there are game-breaking bugs that cryptic acknowledges is not a wise use of resources.
Were they? I wasn't in tau dewa, but I have an entirely different perspective.
They found what they believed was an XP problem on Tribble during testing. They reported it to cryptic. Cryptic did nothing to change the situation, fostering the belief it was as intended. They played the game. Cryptic comes in like an avenging samurai swinging the nerf bat and ban hammer, calling the exploiters. They didn't alter code, they didn't hack clients, they just played the game. For playing the game as intended they were called cheaters, exploiters and treated like criminals, and some innocent people were also punished. From my point of view cryptic was 100% in the wrong dealing with the situation every step of the way until today. Now it's and 80/20 split.
I think that is fair.
Personally, I am of the belief there was nothing wrong with their data, or their methodology, but rather with their interpretion of said data. I was at DS9, I did do the 'Shutdown' mission on Elite: I'm sure their logs reflect that properly. Where things went awry, though, is where they started making (harsh) assumptions about people's motives. Like assuming I knew NPCs 5x harder to kill, paying out 5x as much well, was an exploit.
I *was* really taken aback, though, when the EP went online, saying claims of people having complained didn't live up to a second round of scrutiny.
People didnt know it was not working as intended. That is the mission I always do for the Rom marks with my fleet and we all were surprised it was giving that much exp but How the heck is anyone suposed to know unless you wrote the code ? it always gave that much exp it just never mattered before the lvl cap increase because you could only be lvl 50 in there Now the people who did know and played it non stop then yeah they exploited something that Cryptic was to lazy to fix.
Was useing the old mirror to level JUST as fast as Japori was doing EXPLOITING too? NO because that was the way THEY made the mission and Im sure they didnt like it because it isnt around anymore. THEY made Tau Dewa give out that much exp so it is their fault PERIOD it should never have went live if they didnt want it to work that way, they should have never made it give out that much IF they never wanted it to work that way. The whole foundry prob 2 years ago THAT was an exploit NOT this
It still takes a big man, especially when you're the EP, to come out in public and admit your actions caused more harm than good.
I fully agree with you, it takes a person with guts to admit when theyre wrong; but if he said oops we screwed up there, were; I wouldnt have said anything!
Your right they wouldnt have done ANYTHING because they DONT care about the community, all they care about is money, I grant you the fact that its F2P and they need new shinnies to get in real world cash but they do it AT the expense of the community;
It is possible to do and F2P game get all the cash you need but not TRIBBLE over the people that are paying your bills, look at TOR, theyre F2P matrix is more restrictive than STOs but they give a player a reason to shell out $20 a month and they give benefits to the subscribers, this new expansion thats out in December if you pre-order it more than a week in advanced you get 12X the XP on class missions (subscribers only) , a statue of Raven for your stronghold, a week of early access PLUS the first expansion pack as well.
AND they havent ever not once have they screwed the community over in favour of just one more dollar!
How have they screwed us over just two examples for the sake of reading time, all the lifetime sub rewards are just VETRAN rewards that people were given (until they (cryptic) seen an opportunity for MONEY) for sticking with the game Hows that for a Tier 5 -FU.?
Whats worse we were told we wouldnt get Tier 6 ship so we spend our money to get Tier 5 +1 ships that cost $25 possibly upgrade to fleet which would be what $5 and how an extra $7 to upgrade to Tier 5 U and what more we have Tier 6 ships so those ships we invested our time and money into tuning, playing with and taking care of is now Worthless!
It does, however, show that resistance is NOT futile! And that's a good thing, to be heard.
You are most correct that it is a good thing to be heard, but when its about an exploit that was not expletive of the game in any way to the point of its what was intended to happen for doing those patrol missions it just means they were FORCED into doing it, not because the community was in an uproar but because ANY brain dead idiot could see that penalising players for doing what they want them to do as in playing the game it is so dumb and stupid that Monkeys are questioning it!
By that token Cryptic is becoming the laughing stock!
And you know something you right its not nice to kick a dog when its dead in a gutter but Im just telling everyone how it is and how and how EVERY (if not most) subscribers that have been here since LUANCH four years ago sees it: CRYPTIC studios prefers to put MONEY before those that are supplying it and when they do something that they know will upset the long term players they do one of three things,
1. Ask you not to rage,
2. Install a 5 minute timer on the forums to allow cooler heads to prevail aka we dont want to hear you lot b$^& about us for all the s£&^ we do to you
3. Bury their heads in the sand and;
4. Continue to actively alienate your player base epically those that have been here for four years hoping that wed be treated fairly and that one day this came will become something worthy of the name STAR TREK!
Gaining a level in 10 minutes, when EVERYTHING else about the expansion is designed to deliberately slow you down. They took the old Mirror out a long time ago. The game informs you after you finish the first 'do 5 patrols' DR mission that they deliberately took away the 'one level per mission' thing. They did everything but put up a giant neon sign of 'XP will now be gained at a crawl; sucks to be you.' Except that by using this one tactic where you could level every 10 minutes. How could that be anything other than an oversight?
Should they have fixed it on tribble? They certainly should have. Hell they shouldn't have nerfed XP in the first place, but they did. Whether they left it in though by mistake was beside the point. If I leave my car unlocked by mistake and someone takes my stuff, they're still a thief even though I did something stupid. Cryptic did something stupid; some people abused the everliving hell out of it, while others had the integrity to recognize it was a mistake and play fair anyways. All this rollback-rollback shows is that ultimately exploiters DO prosper.
I'm more happy to see this getting sorted out.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
"300 people stood at the Hog Gats of Tau Dewa and fought the horde of Crypic and won the battle?! THIS IS TAU DEWA!!!"
Sorry had to throw that in there.
But kudos to cryptic for making a good call.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1
Guess that writing CS about the issue wasn't in vain.
Now I hope (you might say naively) that you'll learn from this, Cryptic and PWE, and that you might make the game even more pleasant soon (as in, boosting some rewards, decreasing grinds, ...).
Toi'Va, Ti'vath, Toivia, Ty'Vris, Tia Vex, Toi'Virth: Add Tier 6 KDF Carrier and Raider.
Tae'Va, T'Vaya, To'Var, Tevra, T'Vira, To'Vrak: Give us Asylums for Romulans.
Don't make ARC mandatory! Keep it optional only!
What I can tell you is this. I love Star Trek. But Star Trek Online dosnt do a lot of things as well as it should and has built a reputation for its self as one that dosnt care what players think or feel or want.
Siriously if things are going to change in the game. And it think its starting to become apparent in the form of numbers and dollars that they needs to. We would need to see a complete turn over of both direction and leadership in the game.
Let us be clear. Nepotism has gotten us to where we are now.
http://youtu.be/ptFhhz5Lrqk
I move for a vote of no confidence....
https://youtube.com/channel/UCJZ5FBJ9bFaZ6yAFiNpZiRQ/featured?view_as=subscriber
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/CaptainCidStorm
All sounds reasonable... when seen from s solo-ing perspective. And I certainly did not gain 1 level in 10 mins, LOL. But with people teaming up, you're forgetting the multiplication factor. So, if it took me, say, 1 hour for 1 level, then suddenly 10 minutes for an entire team doesn't sound so unreasonable any more, does it?! Especially when that team consists of 50k+ players.
Completed Starbase, Embassy, Mine, Spire and No Win Scenario
Nothing to do anymore.
http://dtfleet.com/
Visit our Youtube channel
More than likely people will forget as well as Cryptic. Big losers are the playerbase.
Bravo. I wasn't affected either way, but I DO applaud the ultimate decision to not penalize anyone who took advantage of what was clearly a failure on Cryptic's part to:
- Properly test what they're putting out (IE - THEY should have caught the fact that someone put in the 5X exp multiplier for 'Elite' MOBs when they meant it to be a 2X modifier.)
- Their failure to address the situation with the Tau Dewa sector patrol map reward mechanics (which had been in place since LoR - but which were STILL reported on Tribble prior to DR's launch; but to with no official reply was given at that time nor any action taken by Cryptic one way or another.)
The last point really underscore how ridiculous it was for Mr. D'Angelo to effectively blame the STO playerbase in his previous post where he 'Spoke Out' about Cryptic's initial response:
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?p=20188121#post20188121
It's the absolute responsibility of the STO Devs to test/check that ANY reward metric is within what they consider acceptable bounds, BEFORE said content is released to the Holodeck server ; NOT THE PLAYERBASE OF STO AFTER THE CONTENT IS RELEASED ON THE HOLODECK SERVER.
Now, IF Cryptic had come forward on a specific date and said - "We consider <X> an exploit and anyone doing <X> after this announcement will be subject to action against their account including a rollback..." - anyone who continued to engage in <X> behaviour would have had a roll.back of said character justified -- but Cryptic didn't do that.
^^^
Thus again, I applaud the STO EP, the STO Dev team, and Cryptic/PWE for undoing what was in fact a ridiculous and unfair punishment for a mistake made BY the STO Dev team. in the end, I hope this will cause Cryptic/PWE to improve their internal testing procedures for future content AND maybe improve their handling and use of player reports from the Tribble test - as well as one the official STO forums themselves.
Time will tell (But honestly, I'll be VERY surprised if ANY of Cryptic/PWE's internal and Tribble testing procedures are modified - but one can hope.)
Kudos again for ultimately doing the right thing and effectively taking the blame for the whole debacle unto yourselves by undoing the rollbacks.:eek:
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
this is what we want and need ive been seeing Borticus around more and frankly i aprove.
keep this up and keep working with us its best for STO you and us alike.
i know that people may have progressed faster then you like and that there was an issue with tau dewa but this shows that you guys are trying to now be the bigger people admitting that your solution didnt work.
yes i know some that may have used this bug to their benefit now keep those points and frankly i didn't care one way or the other i cared about the way it was handled rather then anything else.
again please keep this type of communication going and maybe you could bring back state of the game reports run by Borticus cryptic?
FYI... just so you know, All I got is a level 50, a level 51, and a level 52.
Since dilithium has been removed from the completion of the spec trees why can we not have normal xp rates restored so the rest of us can actually have a chance of being able to get to the point where we can join others in more challenging content?
Still waiting to be able to use forum titles
a lot of players are Devs, PR Managers and Moderaters already, so let's do it:
Worffan: Chief Executor Producer and Ship Artist
Markhawkman: Chief Script Writer and PR
Virusdancer: Chief Game Mechanic Calculator
TheCosmic: Chief Revela.. Erec... Landscape and Character Artist
Regina and Olivia: Chief Chefs and something for the eyes
Players Unite!
How does that change anything? Its still 'everything in the game was changed to be ridiculously slow, except this one particular thing.' Its still a crazy outlier compared to everything else, including the very focus of the expansion itself. I'd like to think that my fellow gamers have the intelligence to see that when something is that one-off and that much better than everything else, its a bug or a mistake of some kind, regardless of Tribble 'testing.' A new torpedo gets released that oneshots people in Kerrat, or when Tric Bombing was a thing and blowing up CSE cubes without killing the probes, everyone knows just by comparison that something is wrong and anyone using it is exploiting. The made patrol farming any different, other than people not just winning but hugely profiting off of it?
You know, not sure if it still exists, but EvE Online used to have a Player Council, a body consisting of trustworthy players, to mediate between the playerbase and CCP. Came with its own set of issues, but still.
Pfffffffffft, ship artist? Nah, I'd stink at that, and I'd rage at the nitwits in the game and on the forums too much as EP.
I'd LOVE to share the scriptwriter job, and I could do PR.
Let Ryansto and Porchsong calculate the game mechanics and then YOU, as EP, could tell them to provide FOUR difficulty settings: Normal, Advanced, and Elite as we have them, plus Unnerfable, which is eighteen times as hard as elite and instantly rewards 10 dil, but if you die even once the mission fails and you're locked out of ALL queued content for 3 hours.
Porchsong and Ryansto would LOVE it.
Put Minimax in charge of PVP, and make Gulberat CM and head of PR with Nabreeki as his assistant to be the stick side of carrot and stick.
Give Tacofangs the position of Supreme
mhm... the problem with neutrality
Well, the multiplication factor is simply inherent to any MMO in which people are allowed to team up. Unless you're prepared to outlaw teams, going much faster as a team is simply a given, and should NEVER be considered 'exploitative behavior.' Like ever.
Entirely not comparable to individual items on Tribble that may, or may not, need some tweaking.