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How do you want it Cryptic?
stoneloki
Member Posts: 304 Arc User
First let me ask that this stay clean, as a lot of threads have been closed recently for MANY reasons. http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1162461
Now on to the problem here, how do you expect Customers and Free to play members of this game to discuss whats wrong here? We post problems we see, we try and talk about it, of course there will be some that have major issues, some minor, but I have seen a lot of threads closed, locked, subjected to Moderation when the community has been discussing serious problems.
I have been here since launch, I am what by very definition you call a "whale" I spend hundreds on this game every month, I enjoy it, I have always been happy to do so because its been a fun experience. I pay for my fleets website, our voice comms, and I have always stated that we should look past any faults and just have fun.
The further we have gotten past DR's launch though the harder it has become to do this. I ask questions on the forums, I talk, I have never EVER posted a doom message or anything even close to it, yet more and more it feels as if we as a community playing this game have been met with more and more of what we are not allowed to discuss http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1162461
So how do you want it Cryptic, how do you Moderaters wish us to discuss it, are we supposed to talk about nothing but happy thoughts? Are we not to discuss when we feel something is very, VERY, wrong with a system we as gamers are supposed to enjoy? Before anyone comes out swinging to the defense understand I am including people that have a problem with the current end game of things, not anyone that only see's rainbows and sunshine here at PWE.
So please let us know, be straight and tell us just how we are supposed to communicate the problems we see without threads being locked, erased, moved, or buried so no one ever has to see them.
I think you will find many members that use these forums to be adult, even if some are not, and will get with whatever it is that you expect of us, just tell us how you want it and we will get to it, because MOST of us are here to play and enjoy the game, and many don't see that working under the current conditions set forth by the powers that be.
Stone_Loki
SSO Founder and Fleet Leader
One of the few left from launch
Now on to the problem here, how do you expect Customers and Free to play members of this game to discuss whats wrong here? We post problems we see, we try and talk about it, of course there will be some that have major issues, some minor, but I have seen a lot of threads closed, locked, subjected to Moderation when the community has been discussing serious problems.
I have been here since launch, I am what by very definition you call a "whale" I spend hundreds on this game every month, I enjoy it, I have always been happy to do so because its been a fun experience. I pay for my fleets website, our voice comms, and I have always stated that we should look past any faults and just have fun.
The further we have gotten past DR's launch though the harder it has become to do this. I ask questions on the forums, I talk, I have never EVER posted a doom message or anything even close to it, yet more and more it feels as if we as a community playing this game have been met with more and more of what we are not allowed to discuss http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1162461
So how do you want it Cryptic, how do you Moderaters wish us to discuss it, are we supposed to talk about nothing but happy thoughts? Are we not to discuss when we feel something is very, VERY, wrong with a system we as gamers are supposed to enjoy? Before anyone comes out swinging to the defense understand I am including people that have a problem with the current end game of things, not anyone that only see's rainbows and sunshine here at PWE.
So please let us know, be straight and tell us just how we are supposed to communicate the problems we see without threads being locked, erased, moved, or buried so no one ever has to see them.
I think you will find many members that use these forums to be adult, even if some are not, and will get with whatever it is that you expect of us, just tell us how you want it and we will get to it, because MOST of us are here to play and enjoy the game, and many don't see that working under the current conditions set forth by the powers that be.
Stone_Loki
SSO Founder and Fleet Leader
One of the few left from launch
Post edited by stoneloki on
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Comments
Please don't conflate the moderators with developers. They operate under a different set of rules; the mods are doing their very best to keep the lid on here. And you have to admit the temperature here was higher than usual.
Speaking for myself, I try to offer the case of what's wrong, and offer a solution that might solve or mitigate it. I use humour when and wherever possible, mostly due to frustration.
Cryptic does listen, although until the past 3 weeks we were beginning to wonder. I've been here for all of the major launches of the past 4 years. In each and every case, there were issues. DR IMO broke the record for the largest clusterfrak in the games history. Almost all of the problems impacted a players quality of life in the game, and either by intentional design or ineptitude Cryptic has lost a significant number of players. The devs have admitted that some of the results of their labours did not have the intended effect they were looking for.
But then again, Tribble isn't true QA. Not for an MMO. Holodeck is the real QA environment, and I'm ok with that.
But they're slowly working to resolve this. Slowly. Or at the very least the smallest changes possible to shut the community up.
If you need to remind others of things that the devs will ignore, there's a much larger commentary going on over at reddit. Or on Facebook. Or on Twitter. #STO You would be surprised how much more effective arguments are once they spill into the public domain.
Any dissent will be immediately silenced as soon as a couple of hot heads come in with enough vitriol to justify the harassment defense, but instead of just deleting the inflammatory posts, they close the entire thread. It's burning down the house to kill the termites.
What they don't seem to realise is that the more they tighten their grip, the more people will slip through their fingers.
I do see that, and sine the Tau incident I have been slowly seeing improvement, its not really a loss of faith on my part, although I will admit in the past I have had serious doubts of the games longevity.
I do also understand that the Mods on the forums have their jobs to do, as I do the same on our fleets forums. I also understand the flaming issue, which I have no problem seeing someones post removed or moved because of this, but entire threads when the OP isn't doing this is another thing to me.
I simply wish to understand, and hopefully get some answers for others as well, on how exactly they wish us to talk about the problems we see here. Not everyone is going to see things the way others do, some may see no problem at all, and nothing will ever be done, but the ability to speak up and have someone listen should not be taken away when all of us are trying to do is understand why the game is in the state its in.
Reread my last paragraph. There's more than one way to express yourself.
As for blaming a culture... you've crossed a line.
You can offer dissent, you just don't need to impune 2.6 billion people in the process.
They clearly have NOT listened (they have never even bothered to listen to feedback from tribble - people using their own time to help clean the devs bugs up) and it is clear from the above post, that the developers do not see the players as the people who should decide how the game runs (you know... the people who pay their wages and keep the servers running...), they simply see the idea of creating a game that the players want, as some kind of foreign novel idea.
Kickstarter funding has shown that the biggest and best games are made when people are involved in the game making process, making a game for the people who pay for it, rather than to stroke the dev's own ego about what 'they' think would be best.
Its clear that what the devs want and what the players want are polar opposites (particularly of late). And they would do well to remember, that it is the players who pay for the game - no players - no game - no job.
It took a while for them to iron out the LoR bugs, we don't know what that looks like in there, but it stinks all the same
That's exactly what I am trying to understand here, entire threads closed, deleted, moved, because of one thing or the other.
All many of us are trying to do is get where they are wanting us to be here, is the year long grind to maxing out this or that really what they want, people doing Argala till they are old and grey, cause honestly I don't see how any sane person could expect that?
Many of us are still here, hoping that in some patch in the near future this will be fixed in some way, that there is something here that's not right. If you wanted us to spend all this time leveling why did you not give us strong enough content to actually do it?
You can't compare this to a kickstarter game, especially one that has yet to ship.
This is an intellectual property for which Cryptic (and it's various parents) has paid the rights to use. Those rights are good until 2018 if I read the blog post correctly.
If anything it's a benevolent dictatorship. They need to make the game profitable enough to maintain that arrangement. How that happens 'hopefully' will be in our favour. From the players perspective Delta Rising was a badly implemented experiment that's ongoing. From the accountants perspective, it was 'the most successful launch in STO history'.
You be the judge of which view counts more.
Leave out any judgement calls for one thing and relay information objectively and leave any personal emotion out of it.
so dont use words to label people or cryptic be civil and explain the actual problem. Its not really hard.
Its on both sides of the "argument" here and remember if you want to be treated with respect you need to also behave in a respectful manner.
For instance referring to the company according to your bias towards well their country of origin its not a good way to get your point across.
People calling others "whiners" and using words like "troll" , "apologist" to describe someone who does not agree with you is not good. Using phrases like "self entitled" these are all judgement calls and words to describe people based on some perception you have (like stereoytping according to country of origin).
Leave all that out along with any words that are more emotional responses then actually anything else you probably are gonna do okay. Threads get closed often because they start to devolve into name calling of some sort.
I really can't see this expansion being bigger than LOR, anyone who has stated that has been employed be Cryptic or PWE because I have yet to see any actual customer claim it.
I never expected this expansion to be bigger either, but what I did expect was better que's *which didn't happen* and the content to actually get you to 60 *which still isn't happening*
Is that too much to expect on anyones part? Is getting to 60 through the actual missions in DR too much to ask? I know I can't be the only person to find replaying old content 50 to 60 times for one level to be a huge drag on enjoyment, wether its Argala or old content its......old, it gets old fast, and its boring lol.
That's kind of like implying that by saying George Bush was a stupid president, you are by extension insulting every single american.
I am referring to the guys in the boardroom, which is based in china, who have the power to pull the plug on this game any time they want if they get even the slightest whiff of this game starting to go down the tubes. the people who are almost certainly responsible for the polar shift in the games playstyle towards the more 'eastern' style of mega-grind game progression, as opposed to the previous easy going endgame.
but i felt like that was too wordy, so the i went with the easily understandable shorthand.
If i had wanted to be insulting i wouldn;t have bothered trying to hide it. Why risk them not realising your problem?
But one of the funner parts was dungeoning/questing to lvl 90, once there, the fun started, then came the gears, not insane to get a whole pvp set even, was not that bad to swat away at stuff till you got a really fun item, than eventually, you where powerful enough to raid/arena. 1/2 games i pvped in and loved it, lol
In STO the fun WAS the same lvl wise for me just about, then came the rep gear, and the other stuff with it like fleet items and what not, that was all end game, and even after this, having these ALL done.
I still had a blast.
and i can say, i dunno what they did to DR but it was awful :S
Speaking of which, I've been watching a lof of 'House' of late, on Netflix. And, one thing I learned, LOL, is that fever is a symptom of an illness, not the illness itself. Yet we appear to have moderators that treat the fever, as if it were the illness.
What's needed, really, is to remove the cause of the inflammation: the fever will then recede by itself.
that and its never lupus
It's an MMO, removing the cause of inflammation is just not possible, it can be moderated by actually responding to the community however. There are certain trigger words that we can't use anymore, even if they're innocuous when used properly, they're still a trigger but I'm pretty sure that this thread is dancing on a knife edge even without the responses.
Oh, and as far as going to Facebook or Twitter goes, they'll remove your ability to post rather than address any concerns or criticism (constructive or otherwise). Comments are pretty much here or nowhere now.
Cryptic doesn't have control of game direction and I would venture to say they probably have little creative control, they have to abide by decisions made elsewhere, making them scapegoats for much of the misdirected bile of this community. It doesn't take much research to see where the driving force for the nature of this games changes are coming from just by comparing it to other products coming from these companies.
As for the OP's question, emotion must be removed from the equation, issues need to be discussed rationally with as much factual information as possible, any kind of derogatory rhetoric on any level should be avoided at all costs.
Ultimately though, the safest discussion here is none at all, but rather reserve it for somewhere in a place that is outside of PWE's control.
The problem is, much like it's impossible to rally everyone around closing their wallets, it's equally impossible to get all posters to not call names or some such. Which means almost all heated threads get closed, eventually. And that is sad.
Were I a Community Manaager, for instance, I'd probably skim over all posts, not being too worried about individual words, but rather looking to get an overall feel of the general sentiment, so as to relay that back to PWE. The task of a moderator is different, though, I get that.
And how to handle medical text with ease.
-Leonard Nimoy, RIP
It's like herding cats.
I LOL-ed. Good one! :P
DS9 ...
*hides her glasses and tin foil hat*
lol
but seriously been watching the shows lately more then being on, and being here, i like the game just not from what it's becoming lately, let's hope they get well soon
Then does the exact opposite of the right thing.
Players - "Hey getting from 50-60 is to much of a grind."
Cryptic - "We got it! *slows the exp gain*"
Players - "WTF we said it was to much!"
Cryptic - "Ah ok we got it this time! *totally fubars exp levels again*"
Players - "Holy sh*t you trolling us bro?! We said its TO MUCH your going the wrong way!"
Cryptic - "Sorry we can't hear you over all this money we are counting. *drives off cliff counting wads of cash."
No, not every player gets on the forums, but a lot do.
The biggest problem most players all agree on at the moment is xp, no we don't want to level through it all in a day, or two, or even a month, but a lot of the math is showing years for a main and some alts.
I have three feds, a romulan, and 3 klinks I play, only one fed past 60, honestly at the moment I see a grind past 2018, and I probably won't even be done by then.
I don't really understand what you're asking for here ?!
'Cuz the first thing that springs to mind is that this is a request for a format of expression (at best) , or a muzzle (at worst) .
IMHO , neither will cause the Devs to come down from the mountain and engage or even listen more then they do already .
It will also not improve the quality of the moderation , as some folks clearly get away with stuff that others don't .
Once you recognize these basics , and file them under "life isn't always fair" tab , you can go on and not be bothered too much .
From these two quotes I surmise your primary problem is with the Repeatedly Asked Stupid Questions?
I'll be blunt.
There's not a single thing in that thread worth discussing, even for a second. If I've misapprehended your intent, and that your issue is with some other posts that are not referenced in said thread, then I sincerely apologize.
If, however, the argument is that "Cryptic is shutting threads and stifiling our voice", I suggest cutting off your computer and going outside.
It's a game.
It's not even a good game.
And it's run by people who, no matter how the Cryptic Defense Force wishes to paint it, are clearly more motivated by money and profit than any sort of artistic vision.
I do not hold this against them; society has become somewhat cheapened in these regards in more areas than this.
I disagree with almost every choice made in DR, but what I dislike most of all is the shock that people are giving off that this day has come.
People were told for literally YEARS that Cryptic couldn't be trusted, that they were not running this ship, that you would eventually get to a complete P2W system. And here we are.
And now, you want to bring up the most inane and pointless arguments and threads to demonstrate ... what? That they aren't listening?
They didn't listen to the beta test feedback before LAUNCH, before any of the seasons, before LOR or before DR. They didn't listen to outrage over many changes made and simplifications, only backpedaling when a mix of sheer forum forest fire and people cancelling subs made them.
Arguing about things of this nature, and expecting any kind of qualified answer from Cryptic, is pointless.
you can ask, but do you know of the saying "like squeezing blood from a stone"?
cryptic will tell you when they feel like it and thats the way it is, the rest of it the majority of this complaint is directed towards asking where moderation starts, thats not a good thing to ask i would of thought but that is not with cryptic but rather with the 3 voluntary mods who police the forum and uphold the rules.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Indeed. If you want to get treated like an adult, act like one.
Another nasty Internet communication habit is severe overuse of hyperbole and straw man arguments. A genuine argument, criticism or complaint can stand on it's own. Using such means does not add weight to an argument or press the point home, it just makes you look like a child.
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