5:00 - Realize that I don't have time to login to STO send out my doffs like I usually do before work, because I don't yet know how long the commute will take and have to leave way early to deal with Day 1 setup
5:45 - Arrive at work, realize that I don't yet have a badge, send email from my phone to the person who's supposedly my lead and ask them to come let me in
5:50 - Realize that my AD and Exchange Server credentials have still not been provisioned by IT; spend time eating breakfast and getting to know coworkers
6:00 to 7:00 - Roll chair over to coworker's desk while they show me the volume of email I'd be dealing with if my email was actually set up
7:00 to 8:00 - Corp login and email credentials provisioned; login to company laptop and receive an email from my manager with twenty links to applications I need to install, set up, and familiarize myself with in order to do my job - and do so while being constantly randomized by people coming over to say hi to the new person
8:05 - Laptop still not completely set up, no access to P4 or whatever code repo is being used; missed the morning standup because no one forwarded me the meeting request
8:30 - New employee orientation! Spend half an hour filling out hardcopy forms that duplicate information I've already provided, because HR and reasons
9:00 to 9:10 - Mandatory self-study HR materials on sexual harassment in the workplace, which involve a video that no one watches and questions everyone already knows how to answer
9:10 to 9:30 - Now that everyone's in the office except career developers who don't get out of bed before 10am (kidding! I love all you guys, even when you resolve my bugs as Won't Fix), endure the obligatory tour where I'm taken around the office and introduced to fifty people whose names I won't remember until I've heard them repeatedly
9:30 to 11:30 - Excruciatingly long meeting with the project managers and QA team where I largely sit there in silence and look derpy while everyone uses impenetrable internal jargon that I'm not expected to understand because it's my first day
11:30 - Still no access to repository, but that's okay because I really shouldn't be checking in anything on my first day anyway; spend time continuing to install required software on my laptop and set up rules to filter the deluge of email
11:40 - Shown where to find the beer in the walk-in cooler; day improves significantly
12:00 - 1:45 - "Working" lunch with the team that almost invariably involves Indian food and a lot more beer; I learn more during this lunch than in all of the training materials thus far combined
2:00 - Return to desk and learn that I missed several important emails and a meeting invite because they were buried amongst the other 2,000 emails with which I'm not yet familiar enough to write effective rules
2:10 - Trendy puts up a blog post announcing the change in leadership; manager strongly "suggests" that I jump in the forums and introduce myself in order to get to know the players in my new role
2:35 - After twelve pages of disparaging commentary about my ancestry, hobbies, habits, politics, criminal record, sexual orientation, hostility to PvP, past forum posts, involvement in every unpopular decision made since the game's launch, as well as my preferred operating system and game console, I manage to completely lose my **** at some idiot a valued customer and go on a 4,000-word rant about how the dev team could design a Tribble that ate latency and crapped Zen, and the forums would still explode with complaints that the cooldown was too long
3:05- Handed a cardboard box and escorted out of the building
Any resemblance to actual persons or events may or may not be the product of personal experience.
Alright.
I'm calling it right here. You won the thread.
5:00 - Realize that I don't have time to login to STO send out my doffs like I usually do before work, because I don't yet know how long the commute will take and have to leave way early to deal with Day 1 setup
5:45 - Arrive at work, realize that I don't yet have a badge, send email from my phone to the person who's supposedly my lead and ask them to come let me in
5:50 - Realize that my AD and Exchange Server credentials have still not been provisioned by IT; spend time eating breakfast and getting to know coworkers
6:00 to 7:00 - Roll chair over to coworker's desk while they show me the volume of email I'd be dealing with if my email was actually set up
7:00 to 8:00 - Corp login and email credentials provisioned; login to company laptop and receive an email from my manager with twenty links to applications I need to install, set up, and familiarize myself with in order to do my job - and do so while being constantly randomized by people coming over to say hi to the new person
8:05 - Laptop still not completely set up, no access to P4 or whatever code repo is being used; missed the morning standup because no one forwarded me the meeting request
8:30 - New employee orientation! Spend half an hour filling out hardcopy forms that duplicate information I've already provided, because HR and reasons
9:00 to 9:10 - Mandatory self-study HR materials on sexual harassment in the workplace, which involve a video that no one watches and questions everyone already knows how to answer
9:10 to 9:30 - Now that everyone's in the office except career developers who don't get out of bed before 10am (kidding! I love all you guys, even when you resolve my bugs as Won't Fix), endure the obligatory tour where I'm taken around the office and introduced to fifty people whose names I won't remember until I've heard them repeatedly
9:30 to 11:30 - Excruciatingly long meeting with the project managers and QA team where I largely sit there in silence and look derpy while everyone uses impenetrable internal jargon that I'm not expected to understand because it's my first day
11:30 - Still no access to repository, but that's okay because I really shouldn't be checking in anything on my first day anyway; spend time continuing to install required software on my laptop and set up rules to filter the deluge of email
11:40 - Shown where to find the beer in the walk-in cooler; day improves significantly
12:00 - 1:45 - "Working" lunch with the team that almost invariably involves Indian food and a lot more beer; I learn more during this lunch than in all of the training materials thus far combined
2:00 - Return to desk and learn that I missed several important emails and a meeting invite because they were buried amongst the other 2,000 emails with which I'm not yet familiar enough to write effective rules
2:10 - Trendy puts up a blog post announcing the change in leadership; manager strongly "suggests" that I jump in the forums and introduce myself in order to get to know the players in my new role
2:35 - After twelve pages of disparaging commentary about my ancestry, hobbies, habits, politics, criminal record, sexual orientation, hostility to PvP, past forum posts, involvement in every unpopular decision made since the game's launch, as well as my preferred operating system and game console, I manage to completely lose my **** at some idiot a valued customer and go on a 4,000-word rant about how the dev team could design a Tribble that ate latency and crapped Zen, and the forums would still explode with complaints that the cooldown was too long
3:05- Handed a cardboard box and escorted out of the building
Any resemblance to actual persons or events may or may not be the product of personal experience.
seaofsorrows & Trendy have already said this, but the thread is yours sir. Brilliant job!
If I were Dev for a day; I'd finish the development on the player Mek'leth & d'k tahg that were coming "soon" back in the summer of 2010. I can be a patient person, but unfortunately international law decrees that "Soon" can not surpass a time period lasting longer then 5 years, not even to game development teams!
2:35 - After twelve pages of disparaging commentary about my ancestry, hobbies, habits, politics, criminal record, sexual orientation, hostility to PvP, past forum posts, involvement in every unpopular decision made since the game's launch, as well as my preferred operating system and game console, I manage to completely lose my **** at some idiot a valued customer and go on a 4,000-word rant about how the dev team could design a Tribble that ate latency and crapped Zen, and the forums would still explode with complaints that the cooldown was too long
3:05- Handed a cardboard box and escorted out of the building
Any resemblance to actual persons or events may or may not be the product of personal experience.
I don't give a fig about the cooldown I'm just pissed it ate the 40 stacks of Romulan Ale I had stored for a special occasion. :mad:
Other than that, hilarious and 100% accurate, sounds like a few new-job-days I've had.
Other than that, hilarious and 100% accurate, sounds like a few new-job-days I've had.
Thank you. Donations in Zen or doffs accepted. XD
Fun fact: every. single. one. of those details is something I have experienced or observed starting an actual job; a few places managed to run nearly the whole list. One particular major e-commerce site that shall remain unnamed was particularly bad about the new-hire onboarding process; it was not unusual for new team members to go a week or more before getting a laptop or an AD/Exchange account.
Except for last bit with the blowing up at customers. That is a pleasure I reserve for off-hours.
Fleet Admiral L'Yern - Screenshot and doffing addict
Eclipse Class Intel Cruiser U.S.S. Dioscuria NX-91121-A - Interactive Crew Roster
5:00 - Realize that I don't have time to login to STO send out my doffs like I usually do before work, because I don't yet know how long the commute will take and have to leave way early to deal with Day 1 setup
5:45 - Arrive at work, realize that I don't yet have a badge, send email from my phone to the person who's supposedly my lead and ask them to come let me in
5:50 - Realize that my AD and Exchange Server credentials have still not been provisioned by IT; spend time eating breakfast and getting to know coworkers
6:00 to 7:00 - Roll chair over to coworker's desk while they show me the volume of email I'd be dealing with if my email was actually set up
7:00 to 8:00 - Corp login and email credentials provisioned; login to company laptop and receive an email from my manager with twenty links to applications I need to install, set up, and familiarize myself with in order to do my job - and do so while being constantly randomized by people coming over to say hi to the new person
8:05 - Laptop still not completely set up, no access to P4 or whatever code repo is being used; missed the morning standup because no one forwarded me the meeting request
8:30 - New employee orientation! Spend half an hour filling out hardcopy forms that duplicate information I've already provided, because HR and reasons
9:00 to 9:10 - Mandatory self-study HR materials on sexual harassment in the workplace, which involve a video that no one watches and questions everyone already knows how to answer
9:10 to 9:30 - Now that everyone's in the office except career developers who don't get out of bed before 10am (kidding! I love all you guys, even when you resolve my bugs as Won't Fix), endure the obligatory tour where I'm taken around the office and introduced to fifty people whose names I won't remember until I've heard them repeatedly
9:30 to 11:30 - Excruciatingly long meeting with the project managers and QA team where I largely sit there in silence and look derpy while everyone uses impenetrable internal jargon that I'm not expected to understand because it's my first day
11:30 - Still no access to repository, but that's okay because I really shouldn't be checking in anything on my first day anyway; spend time continuing to install required software on my laptop and set up rules to filter the deluge of email
11:40 - Shown where to find the beer in the walk-in cooler; day improves significantly
12:00 - 1:45 - "Working" lunch with the team that almost invariably involves Indian food and a lot more beer; I learn more during this lunch than in all of the training materials thus far combined
2:00 - Return to desk and learn that I missed several important emails and a meeting invite because they were buried amongst the other 2,000 emails with which I'm not yet familiar enough to write effective rules
2:10 - Trendy puts up a blog post announcing the change in leadership; manager strongly "suggests" that I jump in the forums and introduce myself in order to get to know the players in my new role
2:35 - After twelve pages of disparaging commentary about my ancestry, hobbies, habits, politics, criminal record, sexual orientation, hostility to PvP, past forum posts, involvement in every unpopular decision made since the game's launch, as well as my preferred operating system and game console, I manage to completely lose my **** at some idiot a valued customer and go on a 4,000-word rant about how the dev team could design a Tribble that ate latency and crapped Zen, and the forums would still explode with complaints that the cooldown was too long
3:05- Handed a cardboard box and escorted out of the building
Any resemblance to actual persons or events may or may not be the product of personal experience.
- Shut down the servers for twenty four hours. To overhaul both the hardware and the playerbase.
- Take the game back to a subscription model, effective immediately.
- Cut the costs of Fleet Holdings and Fleet gear in half.
- Cut the timers for Fleet Holdings in half.
- Even though I don't care for PvP, I'd begin emergency procedures to revive and improve this aspect of STO. PvPers are STO players, too. Long past time they were viewed as such by the rest of the playerbase.
- Devote more development time to improving map and format choices for PvP. With such developments being implemented ASAP.
NOTE: How will I know my team has done enough for PvP? When these forums are flooded with threads which complain about how much STO is like EVE now. I'll back everything off a quarter turn and we should be good to go. At least for awhile.
- Rewrite ALL of the NPC AI. To make it perform more closely to what good players do with similar resources.
- Begin developing a true endgame which does not rely wholly upon DPS. In fact, I'd probably arrange things to take maximum advantage of the inherent weaknesses in a High DPS build.
Oh yeah, almost forgot. I'd appoint Iconians, virusdancer, and worffan101 as Lord High Executioners.
With carte blanche to do or say anything they wanted here on the forums.
A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
- Rewrite ALL of the NPC AI. To make it perform more closely to what good players do with similar resources.
Anything but that.
My main priority would be to get the teams back on a more stable code path. Enough with the re-introduction of previously "fixed" bugs.
I would improve the NPCs to exhibit variety, not to simulate min-maxed players. No more EPtE or TB on every sphere, for example. 10% get GW, 10% get TB, 10% get TSS, 10% get A2ID, etc.
Next I'd work on eliminating the fuzzy maths; you shouldn't need to be a statistician, or a researcher, or the friend of a dev, to uncover the mechanics the game operates based upon.
Then, despite not being an RPer, I'd spend the next year implementing a variety of RP-friendly measures, because that's a more contented, more mature, and in general well monied and underserved segment of the playerbase.
And throughout all that, I'd do what I could to listen and respond to player feedback. For what it's worth, the new EP seems to be doing this, or at least understands that it is important.
Wait, only a day; I'd use it to uncover the unofficial reasoning behind several design decisions, before spending the rest of the day chewing people out.
"Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society." - Aristotle
It's not that the Lead Designer doesn't call some of the shots. It's that if you were Lead Designer for a day, you would have no idea what you were doing, and would probably just follow along with whatever other people were already doing.
1 day is not enough time to come up to speed, and make a significant change.
Many of the things people in this thread are saying they'd do on their 1 day as Lead Designer, are things that would take weeks or months to happen. Ok, maybe you could dictate that they start doing something. But generally, you're involved in the entire process, and shape it as it goes. There is almost nothing that can be accomplished in a single day, especially if you're new.
Eh, we can do that whenever. Doesn't have to be a Friday.
(But I'm glad to see someone has some realistic expectations for their single day as Lead Dev )
Trying to imagine what I'd do in a day almost becomes a weird creative exercise more than a wishlist of things I'd like to see, honestly.
Upon further reflection, if I were EP for a day, the one thing I could do that might have lasting impact is some kind of guided play session, suspending normal tasks.
Like, "Okay. Everybody take the day off from standard tasks. Your job is to get one skillpoint, play at least one queued mission, play at least one PvP match, and create one ground or space costume for an office costume contest. Then break into your groups whether or not you're done and come up with a feedback list for leads, who I'll put together an end of day summit with."
That might be doable for a day but I bet the downside would be that some people would finish before lunch and some people would take all day because their skill might not be playing games.
But if I had ONE DAY as an EP, that might at least spark interesting discussion. And that's about all that's realistic for one day.
- Shut down the servers for twenty four hours. To overhaul both the hardware and the playerbase.
- Take the game back to a subscription model, effective immediately.
- Cut the costs of Fleet Holdings and Fleet gear in half.
- Cut the timers for Fleet Holdings in half.
- Even though I don't care for PvP, I'd begin emergency procedures to revive and improve this aspect of STO. PvPers are STO players, too. Long past time they were viewed as such by the rest of the playerbase.
- Devote more development time to improving map and format choices for PvP. With such developments being implemented ASAP.
NOTE: How will I know my team has done enough for PvP? When these forums are flooded with threads which complain about how much STO is like EVE now. I'll back everything off a quarter turn and we should be good to go. At least for awhile.
- Rewrite ALL of the NPC AI. To make it perform more closely to what good players do with similar resources.
- Begin developing a true endgame which does not rely wholly upon DPS. In fact, I'd probably arrange things to take maximum advantage of the inherent weaknesses in a High DPS build.
Oh yeah, almost forgot. I'd appoint Iconians, virusdancer, and worffan101 as Lord High Executioners.
With carte blanche to do or say anything they wanted here on the forums.
Subscription based model would kill the game.
The reason it draws new players is the free 2 play model.
Like, "Okay. Everybody take the day off from standard tasks. Your job is to get one skillpoint, play at least one queued mission, play at least one PvP match, and create one ground or space costume for an office costume contest. Then break into your groups whether or not you're done and come up with a feedback list for leads, who I'll put together an end of day summit with."
We do something similar where I work--we call it a "hack-a-thon". Participation is 100% voluntary, and the idea is to--obviously dependent on workload--devote a portion of your time to designing and executing some kind of proof-of-concept. For example, someone on a UX team might have an idea for how to make a part of the user interface a more seamless experience by automating some task that users consider tedious, and would use their hack-a-thon time to design a functional mock-up. Or a developer might pick a long-requested feature set that keeps getting punted because it's very low on the priority list--one that they have a particular interest in and solid idea of how to execute--and use their personal project time for that. Then everyone presents what they've come up with, and it's a cool teambuilding thing that often produces brilliant innovations.
It's usually not about squashing bugs. It's supposed to be fun, and what you work on is entirely up to you.
Fleet Admiral L'Yern - Screenshot and doffing addict
Eclipse Class Intel Cruiser U.S.S. Dioscuria NX-91121-A - Interactive Crew Roster
Hit Fire at Will with the nerfbat to bring it in line with scatter volley.
Rebalance all the existing abilities to make every single one appealing and not useless (Aceton Beam much?).
Increase the XP gain by x2.
Remove the T5U thing and straight make a ship upgradable to T6 capabilities (minus the trait), making their Lieutenant seats hybrid universal.
Hit AtB with the nerfbat by allowing to slot only one of those doffs.
Hit Romulan Boffs with the nerfbat to bring them in line with other factions. (It's not possible that my Scimitar has 1/3 crit chance, 33% and unspeakable CrtD).
Give innate resistance to energy damage on hull to give torpedoes a reason to exist.
Give some basic matchmaking to PvP matches and make them more rewarding by increasing the awarded XP and adding an Advanced R&D Pack Reward.
-If you would remove a2b from escorts and nerf weapons then you would have to remove 75% (+their R&D trait) of partgens as already there are almost no ships capable to challange SCI partgen builds in PVP (as thats the main reason pvp went from very bad to dead with DR release... to much troll 1-2 console sci insta kill ships).
-Reduce heal powers and make ships tanking based on hulls HP and resists buffings.
-Balance out FBP's dmg and tbr's (and alpha buffing them) - and some other abilities that need fix like OSS, BO (torps should do its job), RSP healing more then the description says.
-But i would add.. weaken abilitie like iso cannon.
-Remove all dmg immunity traits and nerf fed heal traits by 50%.
-Give more ships to romulans and klinks.
-And if the names are correct on iconian rep - remove it from game (as if thoes are category 2 buffs then they add more then 3x omega 3 dmg buffs).
-About the a2b i would let it have 3 doffs but it would have only 50% of their effectivenes on non eng slots so no more super constant dmg ect.
-If you would nerf romulan boffs, then you would have to buff power status and ship turn rates on ROMULAN WARBIRDS as thats one of the prices they pay for the boffs and battlecloak - or just leave them alone and make a max of 1-2 possible to use on non warbird ships (easier).
-Delete the last story arc... YOU SERIOUSLY WANT TO TELL ME A 200000 year older race that makes their own dyson spehers and jumps from galaxy to galaxy with milions of ships in the shperes cant take few tousand primitive ships ? Realy? REALLLLLYYYY ??
-Would make romulans a separate faction (or at least the fleet could be made either klingon or romulan and analoge fed or romulan)
-WOULD ORDER THAT AFTER THE NEXT DAY NO ONE CAN CHANGE THESE ORDERS TILL THEY ARE FINISHED !!!
If i was lead dev for a day, I'd make a series of decisions that would push the game towards what i think Trek is. Unfortunately, this would likely lead the game to bankruptcy, as such decisions would be those of a fan and would not make actual business sense.
1. Write rule that barring "exceptional circumstances", my changes aren't reverted as soon as my day ends.
2. Start "stealing" top end builds, and assigning them to NPC mobs, who are put into "much more player ship statted ships". Granted, their "AI" will either be "spacebar macro" or "wait for all skills to come off CD, then spacebar macro them", or even "use when opponent has X many buffs", but when the playerbase "regularly fights" against certain skill sets, the metrics generated would help identify ability issues for balance passes.
3. Find at least an intern to start slapping spawn points & flag points for PvP-ization of many maps. Recycle many maps (both discontinued ones like Memory Alpha and event ones like Utopia) at first, Environment artists with spare time can generate new maps.
4. Redundancy - West Coast servers mirroring the East Coast ones. Maintenance will be "shut East Coast down, patch, shut down West Coast to clear playerbase, bring up East Coast, patch West"
After discussion of database issues...
5. Own Devs in PvP match then enjoy a free round on them... :P
Detecting big-time "anti-old-school" bias here. NX? Lobi. TOS/TMP Connie? Super-promotion-box. (aka the two hardest ways to get ships) Excelsior & all 3 TNG "big hero" ships? C-Store. Please Equalize...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
Ok, I have to ask. A walk in beer cooler? Seriously? If I could have that at my work they'd need to forcibly remove me from my job.
Many many moons ago when I was a STE, the next floor down had a rum & coke slurpee dispenser. And at the e-com site I mentioned previously, it was not the least bit uncommon for people to have a bottle of Jack at their desk for Fridays, or for there to be kegs for major releases.
We're a little more reserved where I am now--although people do keep their beer in the walk-in cooler.
Fleet Admiral L'Yern - Screenshot and doffing addict
Eclipse Class Intel Cruiser U.S.S. Dioscuria NX-91121-A - Interactive Crew Roster
2- Create an Offline mode to play a Modded Star Trek (Lan is still supported)
3- Every ship will have 12 total console slots that can be arrange in any order you like
4- Every ship's device slots can now support universal consoles. Every ship will have 4 device slots
5- Unlocked Bridge Officer slots. Arrange them how you like. You'll have 12 Bridge Officer abilities to adjust to your liking.
For example:
2-Commanders (8 abilities in total) & 2-Lieutenants (4 abilities in total) =12 abilities
1-Commander (4 abilities) + 1-Lt.Commander (3 abilities)+2 Lieutenants (4 abilities)+1 Ensign
6- Every NPC will have 20% more hull than the highest ship on your team. If you are playing solo, they will have 20% more hull than you (Now it's a fight).
7- Introduce a Cover system for ground combat
8- Destructible stage for ground combat (sort of like Rainbow Six Siege). Literally shoot the place up.
9-Fleet Management system. Where you can assign ships and their crew to do things. Like a real admiral.
And that's it for now.
One day Cryptic will be free from their Perfect World overlord. Until that day comes, they will continue to pamper the whales of this game, and ignore everyone that isn't a whale.
While all these suggestions have merit they are all useless until:
YOU FIX THE LAG!!
As such my first act upon entering the building will be to find and pull the plug on the NW server. I know this may require a mass deletion rather than a physical plug, but I'd get it done.
(You don't need to be playing fantasy games when you could be playing STO)
How do you expect Cryptic to fix a problem caused by another corporation?
Neverwinter is not causing this problem. Both it and STO have co-existed side by side for quite a while. What has changed has to do with Cogentco, a company PWE has no control over. If your trace route to Cryptic's server goes through Cogentco's infrastructure, which as I understand is pretty extensive in that region, you are going to experience the lag that has been plaguing a significant percentage of players for months now.
IF the problem was indeed the server, then we would ALL be experiencing it. But we aren't, so it's not.
People need to actually read what has been said about the root of this issue and quit just assuming that it is all Cryptic.
1 - If other people are able to play with no problems, even if you cannot, it's not Cryptic
2 - If you can play other MMOs with no problems, then it isn't your system
What does logic suggest:
Logic: If it isn't Crypric, and it isn't my system, then there is an infrastructure problem somewhere along the path between my system and Cryptic. Does my ISP have any control over that? no. Does Cryptic/PWE have any control over that? No.
After applying logic, does it make sense to blame Cryptic for it? Only on the STO forums, it seems.
Strangely the worst lag occurred right after the last major NW update..... Go figure :rolleyes:
I would arrange for a personal visit to cogentco... with a whiffle bat.
Then I would command a change to a reliable service, Cryptic did sign the contract with bargain basement cogentco, they should try to be less cheap. God knows we are paying enough.
Comments
I'm calling it right here. You won the thread.
I don't give a fig about the cooldown I'm just pissed it ate the 40 stacks of Romulan Ale I had stored for a special occasion. :mad:
Other than that, hilarious and 100% accurate, sounds like a few new-job-days I've had.
Fun fact: every. single. one. of those details is something I have experienced or observed starting an actual job; a few places managed to run nearly the whole list. One particular major e-commerce site that shall remain unnamed was particularly bad about the new-hire onboarding process; it was not unusual for new team members to go a week or more before getting a laptop or an AD/Exchange account.
Except for last bit with the blowing up at customers. That is a pleasure I reserve for off-hours.
Eclipse Class Intel Cruiser U.S.S. Dioscuria NX-91121-A - Interactive Crew Roster
Haha, that's great! :-D
- Shut down the servers for twenty four hours. To overhaul both the hardware and the playerbase.
- Take the game back to a subscription model, effective immediately.
- Cut the costs of Fleet Holdings and Fleet gear in half.
- Cut the timers for Fleet Holdings in half.
- Even though I don't care for PvP, I'd begin emergency procedures to revive and improve this aspect of STO. PvPers are STO players, too. Long past time they were viewed as such by the rest of the playerbase.
- Devote more development time to improving map and format choices for PvP. With such developments being implemented ASAP.
NOTE: How will I know my team has done enough for PvP? When these forums are flooded with threads which complain about how much STO is like EVE now. I'll back everything off a quarter turn and we should be good to go. At least for awhile.
- Rewrite ALL of the NPC AI. To make it perform more closely to what good players do with similar resources.
- Begin developing a true endgame which does not rely wholly upon DPS. In fact, I'd probably arrange things to take maximum advantage of the inherent weaknesses in a High DPS build.
Oh yeah, almost forgot. I'd appoint Iconians, virusdancer, and worffan101 as Lord High Executioners.
With carte blanche to do or say anything they wanted here on the forums.
My main priority would be to get the teams back on a more stable code path. Enough with the re-introduction of previously "fixed" bugs.
I would improve the NPCs to exhibit variety, not to simulate min-maxed players. No more EPtE or TB on every sphere, for example. 10% get GW, 10% get TB, 10% get TSS, 10% get A2ID, etc.
Next I'd work on eliminating the fuzzy maths; you shouldn't need to be a statistician, or a researcher, or the friend of a dev, to uncover the mechanics the game operates based upon.
Then, despite not being an RPer, I'd spend the next year implementing a variety of RP-friendly measures, because that's a more contented, more mature, and in general well monied and underserved segment of the playerbase.
And throughout all that, I'd do what I could to listen and respond to player feedback. For what it's worth, the new EP seems to be doing this, or at least understands that it is important.
Wait, only a day; I'd use it to uncover the unofficial reasoning behind several design decisions, before spending the rest of the day chewing people out.
Trying to imagine what I'd do in a day almost becomes a weird creative exercise more than a wishlist of things I'd like to see, honestly.
Upon further reflection, if I were EP for a day, the one thing I could do that might have lasting impact is some kind of guided play session, suspending normal tasks.
Like, "Okay. Everybody take the day off from standard tasks. Your job is to get one skillpoint, play at least one queued mission, play at least one PvP match, and create one ground or space costume for an office costume contest. Then break into your groups whether or not you're done and come up with a feedback list for leads, who I'll put together an end of day summit with."
That might be doable for a day but I bet the downside would be that some people would finish before lunch and some people would take all day because their skill might not be playing games.
But if I had ONE DAY as an EP, that might at least spark interesting discussion. And that's about all that's realistic for one day.
Subscription based model would kill the game.
The reason it draws new players is the free 2 play model.
It's usually not about squashing bugs. It's supposed to be fun, and what you work on is entirely up to you.
Eclipse Class Intel Cruiser U.S.S. Dioscuria NX-91121-A - Interactive Crew Roster
-If you would remove a2b from escorts and nerf weapons then you would have to remove 75% (+their R&D trait) of partgens as already there are almost no ships capable to challange SCI partgen builds in PVP (as thats the main reason pvp went from very bad to dead with DR release... to much troll 1-2 console sci insta kill ships).
-Reduce heal powers and make ships tanking based on hulls HP and resists buffings.
-Balance out FBP's dmg and tbr's (and alpha buffing them) - and some other abilities that need fix like OSS, BO (torps should do its job), RSP healing more then the description says.
-But i would add.. weaken abilitie like iso cannon.
-Remove all dmg immunity traits and nerf fed heal traits by 50%.
-Give more ships to romulans and klinks.
-And if the names are correct on iconian rep - remove it from game (as if thoes are category 2 buffs then they add more then 3x omega 3 dmg buffs).
-About the a2b i would let it have 3 doffs but it would have only 50% of their effectivenes on non eng slots
-If you would nerf romulan boffs, then you would have to buff power status and ship turn rates on ROMULAN WARBIRDS as thats one of the prices they pay for the boffs and battlecloak - or just leave them alone and make a max of 1-2 possible to use on non warbird ships (easier).
-Delete the last story arc... YOU SERIOUSLY WANT TO TELL ME A 200000 year older race that makes their own dyson spehers and jumps from galaxy to galaxy with milions of ships in the shperes cant take few tousand primitive ships ? Realy? REALLLLLYYYY ??
-Would make romulans a separate faction (or at least the fleet could be made either klingon or romulan and analoge fed or romulan)
-WOULD ORDER THAT AFTER THE NEXT DAY NO ONE CAN CHANGE THESE ORDERS TILL THEY ARE FINISHED !!!
2. Start "stealing" top end builds, and assigning them to NPC mobs, who are put into "much more player ship statted ships". Granted, their "AI" will either be "spacebar macro" or "wait for all skills to come off CD, then spacebar macro them", or even "use when opponent has X many buffs", but when the playerbase "regularly fights" against certain skill sets, the metrics generated would help identify ability issues for balance passes.
3. Find at least an intern to start slapping spawn points & flag points for PvP-ization of many maps. Recycle many maps (both discontinued ones like Memory Alpha and event ones like Utopia) at first, Environment artists with spare time can generate new maps.
4. Redundancy - West Coast servers mirroring the East Coast ones. Maintenance will be "shut East Coast down, patch, shut down West Coast to clear playerbase, bring up East Coast, patch West"
After discussion of database issues...
5. Own Devs in PvP match then enjoy a free round on them... :P
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
We're a little more reserved where I am now--although people do keep their beer in the walk-in cooler.
Eclipse Class Intel Cruiser U.S.S. Dioscuria NX-91121-A - Interactive Crew Roster
2- Create an Offline mode to play a Modded Star Trek (Lan is still supported)
3- Every ship will have 12 total console slots that can be arrange in any order you like
4- Every ship's device slots can now support universal consoles. Every ship will have 4 device slots
5- Unlocked Bridge Officer slots. Arrange them how you like. You'll have 12 Bridge Officer abilities to adjust to your liking.
For example:
2-Commanders (8 abilities in total) & 2-Lieutenants (4 abilities in total) =12 abilities
1-Commander (4 abilities) + 1-Lt.Commander (3 abilities)+2 Lieutenants (4 abilities)+1 Ensign
6- Every NPC will have 20% more hull than the highest ship on your team. If you are playing solo, they will have 20% more hull than you (Now it's a fight).
7- Introduce a Cover system for ground combat
8- Destructible stage for ground combat (sort of like Rainbow Six Siege). Literally shoot the place up.
9-Fleet Management system. Where you can assign ships and their crew to do things. Like a real admiral.
And that's it for now.
YOU FIX THE LAG!!
As such my first act upon entering the building will be to find and pull the plug on the NW server. I know this may require a mass deletion rather than a physical plug, but I'd get it done.
(You don't need to be playing fantasy games when you could be playing STO)
Strangely the worst lag occurred right after the last major NW update..... Go figure :rolleyes:
I would arrange for a personal visit to cogentco... with a whiffle bat.
Then I would command a change to a reliable service, Cryptic did sign the contract with bargain basement cogentco, they should try to be less cheap. God knows we are paying enough.
Congratulations! On your day as Lead Dev, you've just managed to commit a criminal act. WTG.
It will all be handled legally.