If they had a dry period to fix bugs and clean things up I wouldn't mind honestly. It'd encourage me to play more instead of wondering if my next STF run will end in the client program freezing up and losing the reward of completing the STF but get the lockout timer.
Now, after reading. It's unfortunate that it doesn't matter what color you paint the walls if the roof is still leaking on them.
That's how it is with the creative staff. THEY are the ones doing it RIGHT. The content for Delta Rising was very well done from a creative standpoint. From the ship designs to the story and location designs. This is all great, unfortunately it's the walls. The issue is with the coders and the balance guys are letting the rain in and ruining the pretty paint job.
The only thing to be afraid of with such a proposal. It has the potential to punish the guys doing the good work for the incompetence of the ones doing the crappy work.
It's like coders and balance guys don't actually get into the ships they've created. Or even more, they don't understand the huge gap in performance between ships. Unwilling to release certain mechanics changes because they will 'break the game' when the simple fact is that a few mechanics have already done so.
Or, given the current bugs with Dyson ships, it's almost guaranteed they don't quality test. I mean who makes a major Boff overhaul, and then doesn't take a look at the ONE type of ship in the game that has Unique Boff mechanics?
I agree that much more emphasis needs to be put into fixing the leak rather than polishing the pipes, metaphorically speaking. But if we extend that metaphor out. The people with the "polishing the pipes" skill set may simply not have the skillset to "fix the leaks" And even further, the time investment in the two may be imbalanced.
What I think is far and away more likely is that the leadership staff has an unrealistic expectation of what the coders can do in a given time frame. Coders do their best to meet expectations, and leadership is content to release content that is simply not ready yet. So what happens on the forums is coders get called incompetent when it's actually leadership that's stupid.
Conclusion? Major Overhaul to systems needs done. And content changes, and new content need to be FINISHED when they are released. Rather than done so piecemeal.
I WOULD PAY FOR BUG FIXES!! And it's not just a few annoying ones here & there; I've failed missions because the skill tray I just rebalanced is once again empty as I warp into an STF! Cryptic can make changes to things like sector space, base skins, costumes and I won't care, but game mechanics should work properly. How about having immediate response on the skill tray buttons again, instead of 2 second or longer lag? How about CD timers working correctly, etc., etc., etc.???
As if the mechanics weren't already bad enough, Cryptic insists on releasing new content with bugs that not only break the new content, but also make existing gameplay worse. Stop the madness; build from a solid, functional code base... :rolleyes:
Expendables Fleet: Andrew - Bajoran Fed Engineer Ken'taura - Rom/Fed Scientist Gwyllim - Human Fed Delta Tac Savik - Vulcan Fed Temporal Sci Dahar Masters Fleet: Alphal'Fa - Alien KDF Engineer Qun'pau - Rom/KDF Engineer D'nesh - Orion KDF Scientist Ghen'khan - Liberated KDF Tac Welcome to StarBug Online - to boldly Bug where no bug has been before!
STO player since November 2013
Halt all new game content in favor of fixing the game's severe problems.
This is called "maintenance mode" and it's usually the death knell of an MMO. New new content means nothing to bring in new cash flow. No new cash flow means the game suffers, things get cut back, and when they finish this so-called bug fix season, their resources with which to crank out new shiny content are low. Not to mention with nothing new coming out, players will get bored and leave. New content afterwards doesn't guarantee those players will ever come back.
This is a stupid idea proposed by well-meaning people who have no idea what they're talking about.
So question to the people who are pro maintenance mode. How long should it last? Long enough to fix everything or just long enough to fix what you want?
This is called "maintenance mode" and it's usually the death knell of an MMO. New new content means nothing to bring in new cash flow. No new cash flow means the game suffers, things get cut back, and when they finish this so-called bug fix season, their resources with which to crank out new shiny content are low. Not to mention with nothing new coming out, players will get bored and leave. New content afterwards doesn't guarantee those players will ever come back.
This is a stupid idea proposed by well-meaning people who have no idea what they're talking about.
And totally forgets the last time STO was in "maintenance mode" during the change over from Atari to Perfect World.
For those who don't remember it, there is a reason its refereed to as the "Year of Hell"
You can't see bugs? lucky you.
Sou you don't encounter BOFF slots disappearing, trays clearing out, enormous latency on skill activation, loadouts not working?
-Daily disconnects
-omega game stopping in middle
-enormous UI resource hogging
-PvP scoreboard missing KDF players
-Viscous Cycle unresolvable Unstable Anomaly bug
- Korfez unresolvable Defend Benthans bug
-Overwhelming lag that pushes players into 500 minimum ping and upwards into thousands ms
That's just tip of the iceberg
You don't see any of that?
Or all of that doesn't stop you from enjoyment?
Let's be clear, I LIKE new missions since Season 8 and Season 9. Their quality has gone up tenfold compared to what was before, BUT game systems are crumbling and need to be fixed.
I'll go through these one at a time:
Boff slots disappearing? Do you mean Boffs not being seated? That's a loadout bug.
Trays clearing out: Load out bug, though there is some of this on the ground which irritates me.
Enormous latency on skill activation: No. I only see the "I clicked and nothing happened" bug which has been there since day one. This might be a latency issue but regardless, been there since beta.
Loadouts not working: see above. Also, the work around - while annoying - is really easy and takes less than 10 seconds (go to stations, act like you are about to assign a Boff to seat but don't, go back to main, click a loadout, done)
Daily disconnects: I rarely get disconnected, ever.
Omega game stopping in middle: Annoying but hardly game breaking since you still get the reward.
Enormous UI resource hogging: For me, this was fixed with the latest patch.
PvP scoreboard missing KDF players: I don't PvP, yes this needs to be fixed though.
Viscous Cycle unresolvable Unstable Anomaly bug: Never encountered this.
Korfez unresolvable Defend Benthans bug: Never encountered this.
Overwhelming lag that pushes players into 500 minimum ping and upwards into thousands ms: I encountered rubber banding on the first day of the anniversary but nothing since.
Yes, maybe I'm just lucky but my point is this: If they go through and spend a year to fix bugs that not everyone is seeing, this game will die quickly.
upgrading infrastructure and game engine alone is far beyond a 6 month to 1 year project. upgrading the game engine would essentially equate to recreating the game from the ground up and replacing servers is a lot more time intensive (and expensive) than it seems. Something of this magnitude in that short of a time frame would require immediate...and large...funds which is grounds for getting laughed out of the conference room before even finishing your presentation.
Also there just isn't enough content in the game now for older players where it would be fiscally responsible to skip new content for an entire year.
With that said there is merit to your proposal but something more reasonable would be to improve in parallel to new content creation and more importantly focus on the kind of content creation that can sustain longer than a single weekend.
Six to 12 months is not sustainable for a hiatus on new content, for the good reasons posted throughout this thread. That said, 3 months seems about right for the dev's to concentrate on the most irritating bugs directly affecting gameplay. Forget costumes, ship skins, base cosmetics and spelling errors, and focus on issues making the game more difficult for players.
Call it an update release (NOT a "season"), and I will pay money to see these things fixed (pick 4 or 5 already posted here)! I would love to renew my Gold subscription, even buy a LTS at the next sale, if only Cryptic could prove to me that they really care about the quality of their work...:rolleyes:
Expendables Fleet: Andrew - Bajoran Fed Engineer Ken'taura - Rom/Fed Scientist Gwyllim - Human Fed Delta Tac Savik - Vulcan Fed Temporal Sci Dahar Masters Fleet: Alphal'Fa - Alien KDF Engineer Qun'pau - Rom/KDF Engineer D'nesh - Orion KDF Scientist Ghen'khan - Liberated KDF Tac Welcome to StarBug Online - to boldly Bug where no bug has been before!
STO player since November 2013
I don't think that it needs to be that drastic. For the most part the people creating content (stories, places, ships) are different people from the ones working on systems, which is where most of the problems are. I would be happy with the developers continuing the DQ story arc (and giving the KDF/Rommies some new ships) with no new powers, and no new specializations for the next 6 months. They can even revisit old lockboxes, with a different lockbox every month.
Instead, the systems developers could focus on the existing systems. Can you really get all of the mods that you expect while crafting? Do they work as intended? Finish the work on training bridge officers. Get loadouts nailed down. Fix the stupid KDF tailor, so when it bugs out, you can at least reset a slot to a known good state.
I'm sure that they have a schedule already for the rest of the year. That schedule's the problem. They've been shipping code that wasn't ready for the past 9 months, and it's bitten them hard. They need to focus on paying off the technical debt they've accumulated.
The question has always been do we need new content? In S4 for sure, after S6? A little bit, but now? No. The queues are empty, the content isn't fun, we need fun old content made fun again.
We also desperately need bugs fixed, the two work well together
Cryptic needs wads of cash to bath themselves in, only 2 of the 3 work together.
Eh, using FedEx as an example doesn't boost my confidence. They lost 10 packages (some mailed by me others mailed by people I ordered from) whereas UPS has not lost any. And that's just during December of last year. Sure I got my refund or my items, but only after raising extreme hell about it (all of it with FedEx).
Anyway, it'd be more realistic if Cryptic could do incremental upgrades in alternating 3-month periods, rather than 6-month or 1 year periods. Then spend the first month after with a milestone celebration to bring back some players who left in the interim, then the next 2 generally to test stability of the new upgrades as well as release some minor content.
As to not entirely losing the artists and some other asset devs, they can spend time upgrading all old art assets with newer designs. Replace all the old NPC Breen ships with the newer playable version. Update the Typhoon and Jupiter designs to something modern and more or less a high quality asset that could be later used for a player version. Replace old First City in one of the Klingon missions with the new First City.
Heck, let them design a few more Faction-specific skins and release them in bundles by ship.
For example: Material Skins 9 and 10 + Mirror Skins for 4 chosen ships (per Faction); then a second bundle of the same skins but for another set of 4 chosen ships (per Faction). Let's say they released a Material 9 and 10 + Mirror skin for 4 ships. On the Fed side, those 4 of one bundle would be Sci ships. The bundle will supply the skins for all variants of the Dyson, all variants of the Intrepid, all variants of the Nebula, and all variants of the Nova. As the Romulans and KDF don't have as much variety, their ships are just chosen at random or in class order. Their first bundle would probably cover the BoP/Light Warbird, the Raptor/Dhelan, the Battle Cruiser/Mogai, and the Destroyer/Tactical Warbird.
As well, the assets teams can also do the same for character creation. Touch up any remaining clipping, update static, run, and emote poses (as well as sell a few new ones), update and expand hair options (as well as sell a few), and touch up and sell the attire still not fully available, such as the rest of the Romulan clothing (including the Tal Shiar parts), the missing KDF clothing, and alternate armor color schemes; such as allowing Fed players to color their MACO armor like that of the Photonic MACO Officer (they would still have to unlock the armor via normal gameplay).
This way, they're still working, and getting some money back off their work. And there's plenty of players willing to buy such cosmetic upgrades. It's frankly more amazing that Cryptic hasn't caught on to that when plenty of other MMOs do.
And last but not least as far as assets/art goes, those involved can also touch up some of the non-humanoid NPCs and give them a bit more dynamic movement, such as when attacking, for example. In the case of the New Romulus big cat; instead of the same angled claw swipe, there'd be 3 different variations of that common attack. And maybe an upgraded lunge attack or scripted run to flank then lunge attack. And even sell them as rare combat pets for a limited time, if some profit is necessary.
That would keep the art asset teams busy, while the game is otherwise placed on maintenance mode during those 3 months, and still secure some income.
Comments
Now, after reading. It's unfortunate that it doesn't matter what color you paint the walls if the roof is still leaking on them.
That's how it is with the creative staff. THEY are the ones doing it RIGHT. The content for Delta Rising was very well done from a creative standpoint. From the ship designs to the story and location designs. This is all great, unfortunately it's the walls. The issue is with the coders and the balance guys are letting the rain in and ruining the pretty paint job.
The only thing to be afraid of with such a proposal. It has the potential to punish the guys doing the good work for the incompetence of the ones doing the crappy work.
It's like coders and balance guys don't actually get into the ships they've created. Or even more, they don't understand the huge gap in performance between ships. Unwilling to release certain mechanics changes because they will 'break the game' when the simple fact is that a few mechanics have already done so.
Or, given the current bugs with Dyson ships, it's almost guaranteed they don't quality test. I mean who makes a major Boff overhaul, and then doesn't take a look at the ONE type of ship in the game that has Unique Boff mechanics?
I agree that much more emphasis needs to be put into fixing the leak rather than polishing the pipes, metaphorically speaking. But if we extend that metaphor out. The people with the "polishing the pipes" skill set may simply not have the skillset to "fix the leaks" And even further, the time investment in the two may be imbalanced.
What I think is far and away more likely is that the leadership staff has an unrealistic expectation of what the coders can do in a given time frame. Coders do their best to meet expectations, and leadership is content to release content that is simply not ready yet. So what happens on the forums is coders get called incompetent when it's actually leadership that's stupid.
Conclusion? Major Overhaul to systems needs done. And content changes, and new content need to be FINISHED when they are released. Rather than done so piecemeal.
As if the mechanics weren't already bad enough, Cryptic insists on releasing new content with bugs that not only break the new content, but also make existing gameplay worse. Stop the madness; build from a solid, functional code base... :rolleyes:
Savik - Vulcan Fed Temporal Sci
Dahar Masters Fleet: Alphal'Fa - Alien KDF Engineer Qun'pau - Rom/KDF Engineer D'nesh - Orion KDF Scientist Ghen'khan - Liberated KDF Tac
Welcome to StarBug Online - to boldly Bug where no bug has been before!
STO player since November 2013
This is called "maintenance mode" and it's usually the death knell of an MMO. New new content means nothing to bring in new cash flow. No new cash flow means the game suffers, things get cut back, and when they finish this so-called bug fix season, their resources with which to crank out new shiny content are low. Not to mention with nothing new coming out, players will get bored and leave. New content afterwards doesn't guarantee those players will ever come back.
This is a stupid idea proposed by well-meaning people who have no idea what they're talking about.
I Support Disco | Disco is Love | Disco is Life
And totally forgets the last time STO was in "maintenance mode" during the change over from Atari to Perfect World.
For those who don't remember it, there is a reason its refereed to as the "Year of Hell"
I'll go through these one at a time:
Boff slots disappearing? Do you mean Boffs not being seated? That's a loadout bug.
Trays clearing out: Load out bug, though there is some of this on the ground which irritates me.
Enormous latency on skill activation: No. I only see the "I clicked and nothing happened" bug which has been there since day one. This might be a latency issue but regardless, been there since beta.
Loadouts not working: see above. Also, the work around - while annoying - is really easy and takes less than 10 seconds (go to stations, act like you are about to assign a Boff to seat but don't, go back to main, click a loadout, done)
Daily disconnects: I rarely get disconnected, ever.
Omega game stopping in middle: Annoying but hardly game breaking since you still get the reward.
Enormous UI resource hogging: For me, this was fixed with the latest patch.
PvP scoreboard missing KDF players: I don't PvP, yes this needs to be fixed though.
Viscous Cycle unresolvable Unstable Anomaly bug: Never encountered this.
Korfez unresolvable Defend Benthans bug: Never encountered this.
Overwhelming lag that pushes players into 500 minimum ping and upwards into thousands ms: I encountered rubber banding on the first day of the anniversary but nothing since.
Yes, maybe I'm just lucky but my point is this: If they go through and spend a year to fix bugs that not everyone is seeing, this game will die quickly.
Also there just isn't enough content in the game now for older players where it would be fiscally responsible to skip new content for an entire year.
With that said there is merit to your proposal but something more reasonable would be to improve in parallel to new content creation and more importantly focus on the kind of content creation that can sustain longer than a single weekend.
Call it an update release (NOT a "season"), and I will pay money to see these things fixed (pick 4 or 5 already posted here)! I would love to renew my Gold subscription, even buy a LTS at the next sale, if only Cryptic could prove to me that they really care about the quality of their work...:rolleyes:
Savik - Vulcan Fed Temporal Sci
Dahar Masters Fleet: Alphal'Fa - Alien KDF Engineer Qun'pau - Rom/KDF Engineer D'nesh - Orion KDF Scientist Ghen'khan - Liberated KDF Tac
Welcome to StarBug Online - to boldly Bug where no bug has been before!
STO player since November 2013
Instead, the systems developers could focus on the existing systems. Can you really get all of the mods that you expect while crafting? Do they work as intended? Finish the work on training bridge officers. Get loadouts nailed down. Fix the stupid KDF tailor, so when it bugs out, you can at least reset a slot to a known good state.
I'm sure that they have a schedule already for the rest of the year. That schedule's the problem. They've been shipping code that wasn't ready for the past 9 months, and it's bitten them hard. They need to focus on paying off the technical debt they've accumulated.
We also desperately need bugs fixed, the two work well together
Cryptic needs wads of cash to bath themselves in, only 2 of the 3 work together.
Completed Starbase, Embassy, Mine, Spire and No Win Scenario
Nothing to do anymore.
http://dtfleet.com/
Visit our Youtube channel
Anyway, it'd be more realistic if Cryptic could do incremental upgrades in alternating 3-month periods, rather than 6-month or 1 year periods. Then spend the first month after with a milestone celebration to bring back some players who left in the interim, then the next 2 generally to test stability of the new upgrades as well as release some minor content.
As to not entirely losing the artists and some other asset devs, they can spend time upgrading all old art assets with newer designs. Replace all the old NPC Breen ships with the newer playable version. Update the Typhoon and Jupiter designs to something modern and more or less a high quality asset that could be later used for a player version. Replace old First City in one of the Klingon missions with the new First City.
Heck, let them design a few more Faction-specific skins and release them in bundles by ship.
For example: Material Skins 9 and 10 + Mirror Skins for 4 chosen ships (per Faction); then a second bundle of the same skins but for another set of 4 chosen ships (per Faction). Let's say they released a Material 9 and 10 + Mirror skin for 4 ships. On the Fed side, those 4 of one bundle would be Sci ships. The bundle will supply the skins for all variants of the Dyson, all variants of the Intrepid, all variants of the Nebula, and all variants of the Nova. As the Romulans and KDF don't have as much variety, their ships are just chosen at random or in class order. Their first bundle would probably cover the BoP/Light Warbird, the Raptor/Dhelan, the Battle Cruiser/Mogai, and the Destroyer/Tactical Warbird.
As well, the assets teams can also do the same for character creation. Touch up any remaining clipping, update static, run, and emote poses (as well as sell a few new ones), update and expand hair options (as well as sell a few), and touch up and sell the attire still not fully available, such as the rest of the Romulan clothing (including the Tal Shiar parts), the missing KDF clothing, and alternate armor color schemes; such as allowing Fed players to color their MACO armor like that of the Photonic MACO Officer (they would still have to unlock the armor via normal gameplay).
This way, they're still working, and getting some money back off their work. And there's plenty of players willing to buy such cosmetic upgrades. It's frankly more amazing that Cryptic hasn't caught on to that when plenty of other MMOs do.
And last but not least as far as assets/art goes, those involved can also touch up some of the non-humanoid NPCs and give them a bit more dynamic movement, such as when attacking, for example. In the case of the New Romulus big cat; instead of the same angled claw swipe, there'd be 3 different variations of that common attack. And maybe an upgraded lunge attack or scripted run to flank then lunge attack. And even sell them as rare combat pets for a limited time, if some profit is necessary.
That would keep the art asset teams busy, while the game is otherwise placed on maintenance mode during those 3 months, and still secure some income.