Which makes me reiterate a previous point. There is nobody out there familiar enough with Cryptic's game engine, technical capabilities and limitations, and first-hand experience (by a factor of at least 4 years), than the previous Chief Tech Officer and EP (D'Angelo), or Al Rivera.
People say they want the higher-ups at Cryptic sacked or to resign, but it's the equivelant of replacing the most qualified personnel there currently is for a magical elf who controls computer systems with fairy dust to fix things.
When you remove people like Al Rivera and Stephen D'Angelo entirely from the development of STO, you remove two human beings who know more about game than any of us, even if they may not necessarily make the most awesome decisions regarding it.
It's counter-productive at best, and petty at worst. Anyone who replaces them simply will not have the technical expertise they do, and that will show in whatever development comes next.
And we have no idea what colossal blunders some newcomer would foist upon the community with their "vision" of the game, so better the devil you know.
If something is not broken, don't fix it, if it is broken, don't leave it broken.
Why is the game as it is and what is going to happen moving forward?
Simple, whales.
For the record, I would classify all lifers as whales. All people who have a lockbox ship (even paid for with EC) are on some level. Anybody who bought one of these $100+ expansion bundles is.
Every ship collector probably is as well.
In a game like this, 95% of people spend NOTHING. Zero. Nada.
I don't think I was ever a big whale but I did more than once blow $100 and decide to blow it on STO, figuring it was money just as well spent as a little trip, a few nights at a bar.
I know there are people who spent many, many multiples of that. It was never ever month or every weekend but I spent more on STO than I ever spent on sub MMOs.
WoW without bulk gametime is $180 a year. I think if somebody spends that on a free game, particularly in addition to a lifer stipend, that's whale spending. Baby whale but whale. And at the same time, it's not outrageous if the alternative is $15 a month on a sub game. As long as the value felt even remotely comparable, it was worth it. The big exceptional splurges for me included free surveys, stipends, playing the market, and cash to get a complete Temporal everything set and again to upgrade gear.
I'd say I routinely spent $15 a month average and then more around tax refund time or holidays or when I'd get gig work. It's not dramatically more than the people who have continued to sub and may be less than many of them.
But what I do know about these types of games is that almost nobody spends.
Any kind of routine spending puts you in a very small club and it's a very small subset of those who spend dramatically more.
I have said for some time and especially after taking in the Extra Credits video that Cryptic has the wrong approach on conversions and I think they've doubled down on it. Again, I'm not sure how people who spend more grind less. Gear scaling doesn't really benefit spenders so much as build min-maxers. It really just seems to me like trying to trap people in game and hope they'll buy something, anything.
And I've always thought they really needed a gateway purchase just to get people to keep a credit card on file. Like a $1 purchase with something legitimately awesome that has to be paid for. Or actually making gold worthwhile. Seriously, if someone gets a gold sub, I don't see the point in risking driving them off.
Just triple delta mission XP and all spec point gains for golds. You know they've spent at least once and spent personally so you don't have to give them the high pressure real estate sales pitch. If a casino will put a big spender up in a hotel room and $15 a month is almost certainly a statistically big spender (I bet $15 a month average is seriously 98th percentile spending; it's just that people in the tiptop of the 99th percentile may be spending 20 times that) then why the nickel and diming?
I can get that the House gets anxious if people are coming just for the free drinks but somebody dropping even $100-200 a year is a baby whale.
All of this teeth gnashing is about a learning curve. Nothing more.
Your dismissal of many of the reasons provided in the last month does not make you right .
Neither is your continued attempts to force those conclusions on other ppl by dismissing their points .
You do not inspire anyone to rise to any challenge by talking at them . That's just poor debate tactics.
It's funny. I said the same thing about Dan Stahl. But people wanted him out of the picture, too.
Now we have Stephen D'Angelo. Now people want him out of the picture...
He's not going to be "out of the picture" totally since he is a chief level exec. He could be, at most, out of the chain of command for monetization and communications.
And, again, I really think the thing for Cryptic to keep in mind if they see this feedback is that a customer calling for a manager's resignation is a customer who wants to spend money with you and who doesn't think you can effectively serve them any other way except by giving them a new manager to deal with.
I really think that's not something to take personally. It's an unrealized profit opportunity. Prove that customer wrong by responding with the existing managers or improving communications and you can win their money.
Somebody who walks out the door can't be satisfied. Somebody screaming at you wants to be satisfied.
And there's some real 101 management you can apply to that situation.
You identify the problem upsetting them. You say, "I understand how you feel." (Or even "I understand THAT you feel upset.") You issue an invitation of some kind, with or without freebies or an offer to fix things. But you identify, acknowledge, invite.
You can walk into any Applebee's (or any casual dining chain shy of [Redacted]'s Last Resort) tomorrow and unless they have a psycho running the place, you'll get those three steps. You can call Apple tomorrow and you'll get those three things.
You can call Blizzard tech support tomorrow and you'll get those three things.
It's just basic stuff. I don't get what world you have where you don't do that.
As to the OP... , D'Angelo keeps reminding me of a local manager who keeps getting hired by big local companies , where he basically hack's and slashes employee benefits and bonuses and rewrites contracts for the next generation of employees (to have much poorer benefits) and then takes a nice bonus and moves on to the next company .
So far he has been the top manager of a local supermarket chain, a local cellphone company and now he's in the same job at a land line phone & internet company .
And companies keep hiring him because they see him as streamlining their companies .
Meanwhile for employees , his name has become synenimous with the grim reaper .
And this is whom D'Angelo reminds me of as the person who makes the unpopular decisions, because "someone has to" .
Then we have Geko, who tries to explain that the reason we get mega nerfs and uber HP upgrades is because they don't want to Nerf things once you have them so they rather you not have anything and then slowly they increase the award to a point they figure you can live with it .
.... I'm sure that between those two , the word "fun" gets mentioned once a month ...
It's funny. I said the same thing about Dan Stahl. But people wanted him out of the picture, too.
Now we have Stephen D'Angelo. Now people want him out of the picture...
DStahl partially redeemed himself with the not often talked about KDF additions to LoR that have essentially finally finished the faction .
Will a bunch of tech and cats have the same legacy ?
Will the 12 missions and 6 patrols of DR have the same legacy as nearly 50 ROM/Kdf missions of LoR ?
Will players forget that DR and the Year of Hell had one thing in common -- not wanting to log in?
It's also just as probable there were separate teams consisting for 2 or 3 players simultaneously queued, but since the queue does not pop unless the exact amount of individuals joins, it will stagnate. I have had the issue before with 6-7 people queued but the mission refusing to launch.
Watched list, didnt happen there.
Queue lists are deserted no matter how u twist it. In the described case, totally. I use em for 2,5 years flat.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
And if this game was run by the people on the forums, it would be bankrupt in a day. Something to think about. It's easy to complain and say "omg new management." But it's entirely different to RUN it.
Defending The Galaxy By Breaking One Starfleet Regulation After The Next.
And if this game was run by the people on the forums, it would be bankrupt in a day. Something to think about. It's easy to complain and say "omg new management." But it's entirely different to RUN it.
That's the lamest excuse used on these boards. While it has some merit to a degree, one does not always need to be a surgeon to know that a suregon messed up something.
There's nothing wrong with profiting from your art, as long as the pursuit of profit does not become the art itself.
We've gone too far down that road, and if the game (artistically speaking) means anything to the devs, and they want to profit off of it enduringly; they need to shift at least a little more toward an artistic focus. If it's just a pure profit machine, go ahead and run it full stream ahead into the ground, and start anew with something else when it all falls down.
Anyone that took over would face the same crowd all crying for it to be thier way. There is no way to please everyone. As soon as another course was plotted, a crowd with different opinions would be here to scream.
Let them and us get our bearings in the new reality before we cry havoc. Rise to the challenge.
Please come back when you learn how to actually participate in an intelligent discussion instead of parroting the same words over and over again.
Thank you.
Anyone that took over would face the same crowd all crying for it to be thier way. There is no way to please everyone. As soon as another course was plotted, a crowd with different opinions would be here to scream.
Let them and us get our bearings in the new reality before we cry havoc. Rise to the challenge.
Anyone that took over would face the same crowd all crying for it to be thier way. There is no way to please everyone. As soon as another course was plotted, a crowd with different opinions would be here to scream.
True, and? I mean, anybody coming in to the game, whether it be an individual Dev or a new EP or a new Parent Company that buys Cryptic, is going to face the expectations of legions of Star Trek Fans and rabid MMO gamers, and get the same white knighting from those who currently white knight for those same folks now.
That's not an argument against change, that's acknowledgement of how things work.
Please come back when you learn how to actually participate in an intelligent discussion instead of parroting the same words over and over again.
Thank you.
Shpoks, your not yourself when you're hungry, eat a Snickers. You're starting to sound like me in a Carrier thread.
Original Join Date: January 2010. Ragequit Date: January 7th 2012. Return Date: October 23rd 2014.
Shpoks, your not yourself when you're hungry, eat a Snickers. You're starting to sound like me in a Carrier thread.
You're right, I'm sorry. Unfortunately I don't have a 'snickers' atm, but I do have enough common sense to just ignore the guy from now on. Something I should've done in the first place, but I tend to give people the befenit of the doubt. Aparently something that rarely works here.
You're right, I'm sorry. Unfortunately I don't have a 'snickers' atm, but I do have enough common sense to just ignore the guy from now on. Something I should've done in the first place, but I tend to give people the befenit of the doubt. Aparently something that rarely works here.
Well I hope you learned a valuable lesson. Don't give people the benefit of the doubt and always, ALYWAYS have a snickers near by.
Retired. I'm now in search for that perfect space anomaly.
Change is not easy for some people to deal with. Some players need the familiar to feel comfortable. In time the players will conquer thier fears and the new shape of things will feel normal. Give them time.
"An on-going challenge" is what most people "Say" they want, but really what they want is access, and in STO's case easy access, to the games' best gear/items. Complacency and a long established dominance over the PvE content in STO have made this player-base expect to gain everything right away, and with no adaptation to the current status of the game.
I believe the Dev's should stay the course. This expansion has been active for something like 2 months? Why does everyone expect to dominate already? If they revert to the way it was, the same people calling for the changes will be hollering for more content.
Rise to the Challenge.
Stay the course?
Players are leaving the game, the queues are becoming deader by the day, public reviews are degrading Star Trek Online especially Delta Rising, Perfectworld blaming US division for money lost and their stock is plumenting and Cryptic is trying to force to play Delta Rising content.
How is this any good? Obviously the course is not working out well.
In the famous words of Geko, The is the best expansion ever!
Comments
It's funny. I said the same thing about Dan Stahl. But people wanted him out of the picture, too.
Now we have Stephen D'Angelo. Now people want him out of the picture...
For the record, I would classify all lifers as whales. All people who have a lockbox ship (even paid for with EC) are on some level. Anybody who bought one of these $100+ expansion bundles is.
Every ship collector probably is as well.
In a game like this, 95% of people spend NOTHING. Zero. Nada.
I don't think I was ever a big whale but I did more than once blow $100 and decide to blow it on STO, figuring it was money just as well spent as a little trip, a few nights at a bar.
I know there are people who spent many, many multiples of that. It was never ever month or every weekend but I spent more on STO than I ever spent on sub MMOs.
WoW without bulk gametime is $180 a year. I think if somebody spends that on a free game, particularly in addition to a lifer stipend, that's whale spending. Baby whale but whale. And at the same time, it's not outrageous if the alternative is $15 a month on a sub game. As long as the value felt even remotely comparable, it was worth it. The big exceptional splurges for me included free surveys, stipends, playing the market, and cash to get a complete Temporal everything set and again to upgrade gear.
I'd say I routinely spent $15 a month average and then more around tax refund time or holidays or when I'd get gig work. It's not dramatically more than the people who have continued to sub and may be less than many of them.
But what I do know about these types of games is that almost nobody spends.
Any kind of routine spending puts you in a very small club and it's a very small subset of those who spend dramatically more.
I have said for some time and especially after taking in the Extra Credits video that Cryptic has the wrong approach on conversions and I think they've doubled down on it. Again, I'm not sure how people who spend more grind less. Gear scaling doesn't really benefit spenders so much as build min-maxers. It really just seems to me like trying to trap people in game and hope they'll buy something, anything.
And I've always thought they really needed a gateway purchase just to get people to keep a credit card on file. Like a $1 purchase with something legitimately awesome that has to be paid for. Or actually making gold worthwhile. Seriously, if someone gets a gold sub, I don't see the point in risking driving them off.
Just triple delta mission XP and all spec point gains for golds. You know they've spent at least once and spent personally so you don't have to give them the high pressure real estate sales pitch. If a casino will put a big spender up in a hotel room and $15 a month is almost certainly a statistically big spender (I bet $15 a month average is seriously 98th percentile spending; it's just that people in the tiptop of the 99th percentile may be spending 20 times that) then why the nickel and diming?
I can get that the House gets anxious if people are coming just for the free drinks but somebody dropping even $100-200 a year is a baby whale.
Your dismissal of many of the reasons provided in the last month does not make you right .
Neither is your continued attempts to force those conclusions on other ppl by dismissing their points .
You do not inspire anyone to rise to any challenge by talking at them . That's just poor debate tactics.
He's not going to be "out of the picture" totally since he is a chief level exec. He could be, at most, out of the chain of command for monetization and communications.
And, again, I really think the thing for Cryptic to keep in mind if they see this feedback is that a customer calling for a manager's resignation is a customer who wants to spend money with you and who doesn't think you can effectively serve them any other way except by giving them a new manager to deal with.
I really think that's not something to take personally. It's an unrealized profit opportunity. Prove that customer wrong by responding with the existing managers or improving communications and you can win their money.
Somebody who walks out the door can't be satisfied. Somebody screaming at you wants to be satisfied.
And there's some real 101 management you can apply to that situation.
You identify the problem upsetting them. You say, "I understand how you feel." (Or even "I understand THAT you feel upset.") You issue an invitation of some kind, with or without freebies or an offer to fix things. But you identify, acknowledge, invite.
You can walk into any Applebee's (or any casual dining chain shy of [Redacted]'s Last Resort) tomorrow and unless they have a psycho running the place, you'll get those three steps. You can call Apple tomorrow and you'll get those three things.
You can call Blizzard tech support tomorrow and you'll get those three things.
It's just basic stuff. I don't get what world you have where you don't do that.
So far he has been the top manager of a local supermarket chain, a local cellphone company and now he's in the same job at a land line phone & internet company .
And companies keep hiring him because they see him as streamlining their companies .
Meanwhile for employees , his name has become synenimous with the grim reaper .
And this is whom D'Angelo reminds me of as the person who makes the unpopular decisions, because "someone has to" .
Then we have Geko, who tries to explain that the reason we get mega nerfs and uber HP upgrades is because they don't want to Nerf things once you have them so they rather you not have anything and then slowly they increase the award to a point they figure you can live with it .
.... I'm sure that between those two , the word "fun" gets mentioned once a month ...
DStahl partially redeemed himself with the not often talked about KDF additions to LoR that have essentially finally finished the faction .
Will a bunch of tech and cats have the same legacy ?
Will the 12 missions and 6 patrols of DR have the same legacy as nearly 50 ROM/Kdf missions of LoR ?
Will players forget that DR and the Year of Hell had one thing in common -- not wanting to log in?
Watched list, didnt happen there.
Queue lists are deserted no matter how u twist it. In the described case, totally. I use em for 2,5 years flat.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
Defending The Galaxy By Breaking One Starfleet Regulation After The Next.
That's the lamest excuse used on these boards. While it has some merit to a degree, one does not always need to be a surgeon to know that a suregon messed up something.
We've gone too far down that road, and if the game (artistically speaking) means anything to the devs, and they want to profit off of it enduringly; they need to shift at least a little more toward an artistic focus. If it's just a pure profit machine, go ahead and run it full stream ahead into the ground, and start anew with something else when it all falls down.
Well, no one was proposing a random forumite to take over. In fact, the only proposal of someone concrete I've seen so far was Matt Miller.
Please come back when you learn how to actually participate in an intelligent discussion instead of parroting the same words over and over again.
Thank you.
It's like you're stuck in a loop!
Free Tibet!
True, and? I mean, anybody coming in to the game, whether it be an individual Dev or a new EP or a new Parent Company that buys Cryptic, is going to face the expectations of legions of Star Trek Fans and rabid MMO gamers, and get the same white knighting from those who currently white knight for those same folks now.
That's not an argument against change, that's acknowledgement of how things work.
Shpoks, your not yourself when you're hungry, eat a Snickers. You're starting to sound like me in a Carrier thread.
Almost called it.
You're right, I'm sorry. Unfortunately I don't have a 'snickers' atm, but I do have enough common sense to just ignore the guy from now on. Something I should've done in the first place, but I tend to give people the befenit of the doubt. Aparently something that rarely works here.
Well I hope you learned a valuable lesson. Don't give people the benefit of the doubt and always, ALYWAYS have a snickers near by.
Stay the course?
Players are leaving the game, the queues are becoming deader by the day, public reviews are degrading Star Trek Online especially Delta Rising, Perfectworld blaming US division for money lost and their stock is plumenting and Cryptic is trying to force to play Delta Rising content.
How is this any good? Obviously the course is not working out well.
In the famous words of Geko, The is the best expansion ever!