We've talked a lot internally about ways to deal with getting mods that you want, re-rolling mods, item deconstruction, and so on. Implementing it will take a lot of additional programming time, so we would like to do a new feature (when we settle on what exactly we are going to do), but it will have to be scheduled and will be a fairly major addition. Since our choice was to get R&D into play immediately and add that later, or not add R&D without it and potentially delay the R&D system by months or even a year, we wanted to get R&D live -- especially so that you can make Tech Upgrades! -- and work out the best solution for customizing or changing mods as an additional feature.
Then you should have held off on the R&D devamp. This kind of unfinished stuff is what has led to me not caring if I get anything done in STO or not. R&D is not fun. Grinding between levels was so unfun I went ahead and deleted a couple of characters just so I won't have to keep shooting myself in the same foot. Also got a couple of others I won't bother rolling to level 60.
R&D and DR both should have been held off on until the bugs had been hammered out. I heard you say you play as a regular player would. I've heard the same from other team members. if that is the case, then a whole lot of the problems the community has with the game should never have made it to general release. Some shouldn't have even made it as far as Tribble.
There is no reason this expansion should be so excruciating. I already knew I wouldn't care a great deal for it because I always hoped somewhere along the line Voyager would blow up and get rid of the most odious group of characters to ever man a Star Trek program. What I did NOT expect was that this would be an excruciating climb through 10 levels, a story mission--and I use the term story very loosely--then grind out several patrols just to get to the next bit of story... and all of it long drawn out battles because OBVIOUSLY the Vaadwar have ships with hulls made of neutronium and shields powered by a binary star system.
You hit it in the interview: This is not fun. Painful is an understatement. Painful is plantar fasciitis. Excruciating is the cortisone injection that makes you scream so loud the lady in the next exam room is scared.. true story bro. So guess which one DR and R&D are.
Seriously, you coulda tossed Mind Games (and Tuvok) out the airlock if it meant getting R&D right. As is, we have a hideous R&D grindy half-baked thing, and (sigh) a Voyager centric episode.
Since our choice was to get R&D into play immediately and add that later, or not add R&D without it and potentially delay the R&D system by months or even a year
This is the kind of uncomfortable truth I dislike hearing, but respect the fact it's honest.
It still rubs me the wrong way for no other reason, but the fact that Cryptic literally had years to get this worked out. So to hypothesize we'd have to wait another year (at worst) after waiting years already for a more robust and meaningful crafting system... it just kind of rings hollow.
Am I supposed to be disappointed that was a possibility? Because I already waited 3 years for a Romulan faction. Another year for crafting to get its due is not that big of a deal when it was ignored for so long.
Particularly when the reputation system was a short-term fix for crafting.
and work out the best solution for customizing or changing mods as an additional feature.
I thought this was the entire point of not addressing crafting for a very long time. When we were all asking about what part crafting has to play in STO. I remember those times. I am sure at least a few others do as well.
The entire point of providing minor 'updates' such as the dilithium cost on nonreplicatable materials, and otherwise just leaving it as is... is to provide Cryptic a very long period of time to work all of this out so crafting does not take the half-finished result it had before.
It is just like any other time-gated content in an MMO. You create time-gated content so you have extra time to put finishing touches and polish on future content without being hamstrung by 'content locusts' who burn through your work as quickly as possible.
A bunch of us were waiting patiently for crafting to finally be done 'right', and on a long-term scale. I know I was.
So to see our patience in seeing crafting enter a new iteration, only to see it half-completed is... a little disappointing.
What we have right now? Is actually pretty solid. It is a lot better than the crafting system we had before. I mean that honestly.
But it really feels like an entirely different kind of pain now. It's like putting Icy-Hot on your sore back. Sure, it's there because it's supposed to feel better than your back pain, but in reality all it does is introduce an entirely new painful sensation to make you forget about the previous painful sensation.
We've talked a lot internally about ways to deal with getting mods that you want, re-rolling mods, item deconstruction, and so on. Implementing it will take a lot of additional programming time, so we would like to do a new feature (when we settle on what exactly we are going to do), but it will have to be scheduled and will be a fairly major addition. Since our choice was to get R&D into play immediately and add that later, or not add R&D without it and potentially delay the R&D system by months or even a year, we wanted to get R&D live -- especially so that you can make Tech Upgrades! -- and work out the best solution for customizing or changing mods as an additional feature.
As others have stated too, I kinda wish you has waited with the introduction of R&D. While I understand the rationale behind your decision-making process, I nonetheless feel the rushing out of new features is problem that keeps repeating itself, over and over again.
There's basically an unwritten rule that goes 'Once Cryptic has released something, that is how it will stay, broken or not.' The loadout system is a good example. I am not questioning the intentions of anyone, as I'm sure you all genuinely meant to address the issues with it at a later date. Yet when 'later' arrives, you're already up to your neck in yet another new set of features. And so, effectively, (close to) nothing gets the true attention it deserves, or simply stays broken for ever.
Same with R&D. Extrapolating a time-index from your words -- and feel free to correct me when I'm wrong -- it would seem fixes to the R&D system may still take 'months or even a year.' That is a long time. Time which could have been reduced to 0, had you introduced R&D a year from now (okay, that was maybe a bit too simplistic, but I'm sure you get my drift).
As a customer, I rather Cryptic just sat on their hands, as it were, and waited releasing stuff until it's truly done. In fact, if all y'all did nothng but an entire Season of bug-fixing, I would be delighted! Because constantly introducing new stuff only leads to an accrual of issues. As I'm fond of saying: "Seasons may come and go, but bugs accumulate."
On a more petty note, 318k xp for a *single* upgrade-round of a Mk XIV Shield is simply too much. That's 27 Superior Tech upgrades! (roughly 20 million EC). Say, times 5 rounds, is like 100 Mil EC. Now, I understand you guys want to make money. But parts of the upgrade system are, for lack of a better term, simply insane. So, I hope Cryptic will soon be able to make true on their word in the podcast, and see fit to attenuate the cost a bit.
Yeah... Season 11: Grate Bug Hunt would be amazing since we (players) already killed bugs in Vadwuarr, no it's time Devs kill bugs in game. Whole season dedicated to fix bugs in the game without any new content? I'm more then OK with that.
New thought: Jesse mentions during the podcast that it isn't even necessary to do gear upgrades, much less quality upgrades, in order to participate in any content, short of Elite queues. While this is true, and I can attest to it being true seeing as how I'm still running Mk XII gear and doing advanced queues, for a lot of players, due to the difficulty bump that came with DR, the perceived 'truth' is that "gear upgrades and quality upgrades are required if I want to stay competitive in this content" which is why calculating the full costs can be so daunting. I.E. something that Cryptic has intended to be a stretch goal is perceived as being needed sooner, rather than later, or else content "can't be completed."
Nitpicking is a time-honored tradition of science fiction. Asking your readers not to worry about the "little things" is like asking a dog not to sniff at people's crotches. If there's something that appears to violate natural laws, then you can expect someone's going to point it out. That's just the way things are.
There is nothing complicated about adding mods. They already have everything in place thats needed for it, namely specialized components that buff certain things, IE supplemental targeting component that boosts CrtH or supplemental tracking system that boosts Acc, etc.
The reason they didnt do it is because they make more dilithium sales from lottery. PERIOD
Everything with these people is cashgrab-over-gameplay. PERIOD
for a lot of players, due to the difficulty bump that came with DR, the perceived 'truth' is that "gear upgrades and quality upgrades are required if I want to stay competitive in this content"
Your argument might have held water had the non-optional timers had not been introduced , along with the crazy HP some ships have had at the beginning of DR -- and even then you'd have had ppl argue with you about the old Elite not being the new Advanced in most if not all cases .
The seemingly calculated fact that you needed teams of 15K DPS -- not to beat the high HP , but to beat the high HP in the time allotted with the non-optional timer -- THAT not only gave the players the "perceived 'truth' " that they needed gear upgrade , it gave them the only truth that was available .
I guess that was not a problem for those who did 15K before DR , so it was not a problem for them after it ... -- but they are not the majority in STO .
... and considering that Jessie seemed so keen on stressing the word "fun" , you might ask yourself -- what is "fun" about the constant rat race against a timer ? It's no more fun in PVP then it is in PVE . Most of the playerbase are semi-adults who come home from work and want to pew a little .
This artificial pressure and it's negative results can't be dong good things to the playerbase ...
... and considering that Jessie seemed so keen on stressing the word "fun" , you might ask yourself -- what is "fun" about the constant rat race against a timer ? It's no more fun in PVP then it is in PVE . Most of the playerbase are semi-adults who come home from work and want to pew a little .
This artificial pressure and it's negative results can't be dong good things to the playerbase ...
I did give the guy credit for addressing issues the interviewer tried to gloss over, but you pointing this out has made me think about something else here entirely.
The whole basic point of a game is for it to be fun. If Jessie does seriously think the game right now, considering everything, if fun then he's missed the mark widely. I mean, I tend to be of the impression that when people say something is a grind, they mean it isn't fun to play through as opposed to time, though I do realise at times it could be both, especially the R&D and Upgrade systems, I think those would fit both the terms.
Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head. - Euripides
I no longer do any Bug Hunting work for Cryptic. I may resume if a serious attempt to fix the game is made.
The seemingly calculated fact that you needed teams of 15K DPS -- not to beat the high HP , but to beat the high HP in the time allotted with the non-optional timer -- THAT not only gave the players the "perceived 'truth' " that they needed gear upgrade , it gave them the only truth that was available .
I guess that was not a problem for those who did 15K before DR , so it was not a problem for them after it ... -- but they are not the majority in STO .
10k is enought. And you can easily get 6-7k with random green/blue mkX/XI.
Honestly if someone is stupid enough to believe that upgrade to Mk XIV will change his 2-3k ship (and I really don't know what you have to do to get such low value) to 10-11k and must have it now, then well I do not regret his wallet.
Maybe an impatient person. And I'm convinced that a saner person would conserve resources in favor of just waiting it out.
They created a choice with that button, you can WAIT and forgo the gameplay while the gear is being upgraded, or you can pay up to get back in the game. They created a choice between cashgrab and gameplay, and the default is to defer the gameplay. They favor the dilithium sink over having people playing the game.
They created a choice with that button, you can WAIT and forgo the gameplay while the gear is being upgraded, or you can pay up to get back in the game. They created a choice between cashgrab and gameplay, and the default is to defer the gameplay. They favor the dilithium sink over having people playing the game.
Cashgrab over gameplay. Obvious
You're ignoring what Jesse stated in the interview. It was meant to be a wait through the night so you could wake up in the morning with newly-upgraded gear. Why ignore that fact unless you're cherry picking to suit your own agenda?
You're ignoring what Jesse stated in the interview. It was meant to be a wait through the night so you could wake up in the morning with newly-upgraded gear. Why ignore that fact unless you're cherry picking to suit your own agenda?
LOL you're the one ignoring it.
They put in a mechanic that PREVENTS YOU FROM PLAYING THE GAME if you dont pay up
You seem to think it means something other than the obvious
ps 15-minute project to create upgrade items isnt an overnight timegate
Your argument might have held water had the non-optional timers had not been introduced , along with the crazy HP some ships have had at the beginning of DR -- and even then you'd have had ppl argue with you about the old Elite not being the new Advanced in most if not all cases .
The seemingly calculated fact that you needed teams of 15K DPS -- not to beat the high HP , but to beat the high HP in the time allotted with the non-optional timer -- THAT not only gave the players the "perceived 'truth' " that they needed gear upgrade , it gave them the only truth that was available .
I guess that was not a problem for those who did 15K before DR , so it was not a problem for them after it ... -- but they are not the majority in STO .
... and considering that Jessie seemed so keen on stressing the word "fun" , you might ask yourself -- what is "fun" about the constant rat race against a timer ? It's no more fun in PVP then it is in PVE . Most of the playerbase are semi-adults who come home from work and want to pew a little .
This artificial pressure and it's negative results can't be dong good things to the playerbase ...
Nitpicking is a time-honored tradition of science fiction. Asking your readers not to worry about the "little things" is like asking a dog not to sniff at people's crotches. If there's something that appears to violate natural laws, then you can expect someone's going to point it out. That's just the way things are.
They put in a mechanic that PREVENTS YOU FROM PLAYING THE GAME if you dont pay up
You seem to think it means something other than the obvious
ps 15-minute project to create upgrade items isnt an overnight timegate
It doesn't prevent you from playing the game at all. There's nothing to stop you from either buying a replacement from the exchange or an NPC, using a replacement from your own bank/other ships, or even flying your ship without that slot filled.
What is obvious to one may not be obvious to another. Never assume that what's obvious to you is automatically obvious to anyone else.
It doesn't prevent you from playing the game at all. There's nothing to stop you from either buying a replacement from the exchange or an NPC, using a replacement from your own bank/other ships, or even flying your ship without that slot filled.
What is obvious to one may not be obvious to another. Never assume that what's obvious to you is automatically obvious to anyone else.
So you're argument is that they arent putting dilithium sink over gameplay because you can buy throway gear to play in around to circumvent the blocking
and that favoring the dil sink over gameplay isnt obvious
So you're argument is that they arent putting dilithium sink over gameplay because you can buy throway gear to play in around to circumvent the blocking
and that favoring the dil sink over gameplay isnt obvious
hokay
That is correct. The first is a perfectly reasonable option, and the second is a baseless assumption that accomplishes nothing.
You're welcome to disagree, but I'd be interested in understanding your position a bit more.
Comments
Then you should have held off on the R&D devamp. This kind of unfinished stuff is what has led to me not caring if I get anything done in STO or not. R&D is not fun. Grinding between levels was so unfun I went ahead and deleted a couple of characters just so I won't have to keep shooting myself in the same foot. Also got a couple of others I won't bother rolling to level 60.
R&D and DR both should have been held off on until the bugs had been hammered out. I heard you say you play as a regular player would. I've heard the same from other team members. if that is the case, then a whole lot of the problems the community has with the game should never have made it to general release. Some shouldn't have even made it as far as Tribble.
There is no reason this expansion should be so excruciating. I already knew I wouldn't care a great deal for it because I always hoped somewhere along the line Voyager would blow up and get rid of the most odious group of characters to ever man a Star Trek program. What I did NOT expect was that this would be an excruciating climb through 10 levels, a story mission--and I use the term story very loosely--then grind out several patrols just to get to the next bit of story... and all of it long drawn out battles because OBVIOUSLY the Vaadwar have ships with hulls made of neutronium and shields powered by a binary star system.
You hit it in the interview: This is not fun. Painful is an understatement. Painful is plantar fasciitis. Excruciating is the cortisone injection that makes you scream so loud the lady in the next exam room is scared.. true story bro. So guess which one DR and R&D are.
Seriously, you coulda tossed Mind Games (and Tuvok) out the airlock if it meant getting R&D right. As is, we have a hideous R&D grindy half-baked thing, and (sigh) a Voyager centric episode.
This is the kind of uncomfortable truth I dislike hearing, but respect the fact it's honest.
It still rubs me the wrong way for no other reason, but the fact that Cryptic literally had years to get this worked out. So to hypothesize we'd have to wait another year (at worst) after waiting years already for a more robust and meaningful crafting system... it just kind of rings hollow.
Am I supposed to be disappointed that was a possibility? Because I already waited 3 years for a Romulan faction. Another year for crafting to get its due is not that big of a deal when it was ignored for so long.
Particularly when the reputation system was a short-term fix for crafting.
I thought this was the entire point of not addressing crafting for a very long time. When we were all asking about what part crafting has to play in STO. I remember those times. I am sure at least a few others do as well.
The entire point of providing minor 'updates' such as the dilithium cost on nonreplicatable materials, and otherwise just leaving it as is... is to provide Cryptic a very long period of time to work all of this out so crafting does not take the half-finished result it had before.
It is just like any other time-gated content in an MMO. You create time-gated content so you have extra time to put finishing touches and polish on future content without being hamstrung by 'content locusts' who burn through your work as quickly as possible.
A bunch of us were waiting patiently for crafting to finally be done 'right', and on a long-term scale. I know I was.
So to see our patience in seeing crafting enter a new iteration, only to see it half-completed is... a little disappointing.
What we have right now? Is actually pretty solid. It is a lot better than the crafting system we had before. I mean that honestly.
But it really feels like an entirely different kind of pain now. It's like putting Icy-Hot on your sore back. Sure, it's there because it's supposed to feel better than your back pain, but in reality all it does is introduce an entirely new painful sensation to make you forget about the previous painful sensation.
As others have stated too, I kinda wish you has waited with the introduction of R&D. While I understand the rationale behind your decision-making process, I nonetheless feel the rushing out of new features is problem that keeps repeating itself, over and over again.
There's basically an unwritten rule that goes 'Once Cryptic has released something, that is how it will stay, broken or not.' The loadout system is a good example. I am not questioning the intentions of anyone, as I'm sure you all genuinely meant to address the issues with it at a later date. Yet when 'later' arrives, you're already up to your neck in yet another new set of features. And so, effectively, (close to) nothing gets the true attention it deserves, or simply stays broken for ever.
Same with R&D. Extrapolating a time-index from your words -- and feel free to correct me when I'm wrong -- it would seem fixes to the R&D system may still take 'months or even a year.' That is a long time. Time which could have been reduced to 0, had you introduced R&D a year from now (okay, that was maybe a bit too simplistic, but I'm sure you get my drift).
As a customer, I rather Cryptic just sat on their hands, as it were, and waited releasing stuff until it's truly done. In fact, if all y'all did nothng but an entire Season of bug-fixing, I would be delighted! Because constantly introducing new stuff only leads to an accrual of issues. As I'm fond of saying: "Seasons may come and go, but bugs accumulate."
On a more petty note, 318k xp for a *single* upgrade-round of a Mk XIV Shield is simply too much. That's 27 Superior Tech upgrades! (roughly 20 million EC). Say, times 5 rounds, is like 100 Mil EC. Now, I understand you guys want to make money. But parts of the upgrade system are, for lack of a better term, simply insane. So, I hope Cryptic will soon be able to make true on their word in the podcast, and see fit to attenuate the cost a bit.
Thank you for reading.
Joined January 2009
The reason they didnt do it is because they make more dilithium sales from lottery. PERIOD
Everything with these people is cashgrab-over-gameplay. PERIOD
Your argument might have held water had the non-optional timers had not been introduced , along with the crazy HP some ships have had at the beginning of DR -- and even then you'd have had ppl argue with you about the old Elite not being the new Advanced in most if not all cases .
The seemingly calculated fact that you needed teams of 15K DPS -- not to beat the high HP , but to beat the high HP in the time allotted with the non-optional timer -- THAT not only gave the players the "perceived 'truth' " that they needed gear upgrade , it gave them the only truth that was available .
I guess that was not a problem for those who did 15K before DR , so it was not a problem for them after it ... -- but they are not the majority in STO .
... and considering that Jessie seemed so keen on stressing the word "fun" , you might ask yourself -- what is "fun" about the constant rat race against a timer ? It's no more fun in PVP then it is in PVE . Most of the playerbase are semi-adults who come home from work and want to pew a little .
This artificial pressure and it's negative results can't be dong good things to the playerbase ...
I did give the guy credit for addressing issues the interviewer tried to gloss over, but you pointing this out has made me think about something else here entirely.
The whole basic point of a game is for it to be fun. If Jessie does seriously think the game right now, considering everything, if fun then he's missed the mark widely. I mean, I tend to be of the impression that when people say something is a grind, they mean it isn't fun to play through as opposed to time, though I do realise at times it could be both, especially the R&D and Upgrade systems, I think those would fit both the terms.
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All the convincing a sane person would need
10k is enought. And you can easily get 6-7k with random green/blue mkX/XI.
Honestly if someone is stupid enough to believe that upgrade to Mk XIV will change his 2-3k ship (and I really don't know what you have to do to get such low value) to 10-11k and must have it now, then well I do not regret his wallet.
You don't have to pay the price of 10 t6 ships for the cost of copy-pasted stats without animations or models, just numbers moved around in notepad
The developers did not add a pay2win button in crafting that was the second biggest dil sink to date and killed the game for all non-whales
Until they nerfed leveling, exp and dil from playing queues
None of that really took place, have faith in your local developer apologist!
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They created a choice with that button, you can WAIT and forgo the gameplay while the gear is being upgraded, or you can pay up to get back in the game. They created a choice between cashgrab and gameplay, and the default is to defer the gameplay. They favor the dilithium sink over having people playing the game.
Cashgrab over gameplay. Obvious
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LOL you're the one ignoring it.
They put in a mechanic that PREVENTS YOU FROM PLAYING THE GAME if you dont pay up
You seem to think it means something other than the obvious
ps 15-minute project to create upgrade items isnt an overnight timegate
Hi, thank you for proving my point.
Joined January 2009
What is obvious to one may not be obvious to another. Never assume that what's obvious to you is automatically obvious to anyone else.
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it is if your too impatient to wait the 15 minutes and do something else
I've upgraded plenty of gear since DR and never missed a second of gameplay as a result
So you're argument is that they arent putting dilithium sink over gameplay because you can buy throway gear to play in around to circumvent the blocking
and that favoring the dil sink over gameplay isnt obvious
hokay
You're welcome to disagree, but I'd be interested in understanding your position a bit more.
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