The change sucks, but once the people in charge make a decision that seems to be it. Anyone who thinks these "talks" will accomplish anything whatsoever hasn't been following the game for very long.
The game will never be the wonderful casual friendly game it once was. I expect to see continued movement towards player unfriendliness in the future.
My initial step is to understand more of what is in the pipeline so that I can figure out what it can mean for the situation. For instance, in X weeks or months, is there going to be a Y that affects XP? It also gives me the perspective on where development is focused and if I need to move forward with things, how and when.
The X and Y are undefined because that's the current step that I'm on with talking to them and learning about the pipeline of development.
Step 1: Ban everyone
Step 2: Ban their mule accounts
Step 3: Everyone is happy because they cannot communicate in the forums.
Step 3: Everyone is happy because they cannot communicate in the forums.
I see where this is going.
Prophet makes good on prophecy by making it fulfilled personally?
* The very fact that someone is even talking about it with people on the forums is a good start. If it turns out for nothing, then by all means, get upset and let them know with your wallet or rage or what have you. However, making up conspiracy theories about moderator action that's only going to inevitably lead to moderator action against you which will then confirm your conspiracy theories actually just ends up as a lose lose situation. You lose your voice. PW risks losing a customer.
I am a player since Beta, when Perpetual designed the game.
But my low post count here is because, well, I didnt know the forum existed until last year and I never bothered because I know everything by myself.
Anyway, I liked the Boff System since Season 1 and enjoyed all the possibilities it brought into the game.
But now, now that you nerf all those Boff missions that are essential to the game, I lost all the fun.
Please, Branflakes stop nerfing the game.
Yours sincerly,
Rainer Salesch
Germany, Berlin-Marzahn
Are you trolling?
There are Doff missions, not Boff missions and they weren't in the game until much later than season 1. Even when this game was in beta, it wasn't developed by Perpetual. Perpetual lost their developing license to this game specifically because they didn't get anything done.
My initial step is to understand more of what is in the pipeline so that I can figure out what it can mean for the situation. For instance, in X weeks or months, is there going to be a Y that affects XP?
If there are changes coming in X weeks or months to balance this out (which, by the way, are already months overdue since the high level XP scaling change which was NOT "supposed" to be a nerf according to the dev team, already hit DOffing hard and no additions to offset that have ever been released) how about for once waiting to nerf what's there until the buffs are ready to be released beside those nerfs?
Really, it's not too much to ask. All I'm requesting is for Geko and friends to not release something unfinished as often tends to seem to happen due to deadlines. Don't start the "revamp" until it's all ready to release, and certainly don't start with the bad and promise the good later (which seems to always be the case, frequently with "later" meaning months, years or never) and not expect everyone to be ticked off... like has happened so many times over the years. Maybe it's time to learn from past mistakes?
It seems like the problem is Gecko, the way that he treats STO as his own personal sandbox and his ego and attitude to those who disagree with his plans and decisions for the game.
Just look at all the sneers and snide comments on his twitter and the reports of people being blocked by him.
Its not a very professional attitude to take.
This game has hundreds of bugs that go unfixed. Just look at the bug reports forum. These 12hr doff missions grant a reward of XP that make it look like the player is making a small amount of progress (given the recent XP nerfs... sorry, changes) and now all of a sudden, Gecko decides to "fix" this "bug", out of the blue, at random... when there are so many other "bugs" to be fixed and things that merit dev time...
Seems like he's purposely focussed on this one, to punish the players, to make them grind for XP by playing the content that he wants us to play and nothing else.
As it is, you either grind the same patrols over and over, try to play the empty queues if that's your thing... and it feels if you are barely making any progress towards the next SP. At least Doffing provides an alternative. Or it did until this nerf.. sorry fix, comes into effect.
Thanks for your efforts Trendy. They are appreciated. Sometimes it feels as if you are one of the few devs on our side. However, until Gecko leaves STO or is "promoted" to somewhere else, STO seems destined to be slowly turned into one of these far eastern grindathon MMOs.
I do have to agree with this one. I'm surprised PW haven't gotten on that guy for some of his comments. Particularly where he does interview and either blatantly lies or deliberately omits things to skew the argument. It's like the whole KDF sci ship. The only two available outside of a lockbox (which should not count at all) are the DSD which everyone complains about in regards to all the variants and which you are practically locked out of a full set if you didn't do the event or the Gorn sci ship that's kind of a TRIBBLE ship.
The guy just says **** like it's okay to disrespect the very people who pay the bills to justify his income. I don't care about how he gives to charity or TRIBBLE, however it was that I saw him justify his behavior once on twitter, he's a jerk to the community.
I don't know if he's burnt out, maybe he is and needs to be put in some other position for a time. But regardless, it's bad for this game. Most companies get rid of people for that kind of behavior.
I do have to agree with this one. I'm surprised PW haven't gotten on that guy for some of his comments. Particularly where he does interview and either blatantly lies or deliberately omits things to skew the argument. It's like the whole KDF sci ship. The only two available outside of a lockbox (which should not count at all) are the DSD which everyone complains about in regards to all the variants and which you are practically locked out of a full set if you didn't do the event or the Gorn sci ship that's kind of a TRIBBLE ship.
The guy just says **** like it's okay to disrespect the very people who pay the bills to justify his income. I don't care about how he gives to charity or TRIBBLE, however it was that I saw him justify his behavior once on twitter, he's a jerk to the community.
I don't know if he's burnt out, maybe he is and needs to be put in some other position for a time. But regardless, it's bad for this game. Most companies get rid of people for that kind of behavior.
You mean, on his private twitter? The one that he's under no obligation to be a company worker on?
(In a side note, there are two ships available, by your own definition, so that isn't a lie. Spin? Probably.)
Well he did spend quite a bit of time discussing these topics on his last Priority One interview. Not this change specifically, but he mentioned that a lot of doff changes were incoming.
Yes they did... And it kinda speaks volumes of why a State of the Game blog could be useful as it would be an official heads up on incoming changes, as opposed to tid-bits here and there on Twitter, Reddit and such...
A blog, outlining upcoming plans and changes to STO, would clearly not go astray given the game's development is already pretty well defined for the next 6-12 months (at least) and Cryptic apparently have rough plans already stretching out for the next couple of years...
I see no harm in giving players a heads up on what's coming down the pipeline in an official capacity and it could in fact work in Cryptics' favour, by avoiding massive player backlash when they make what are perceived as sudden, and often drastic changes, without any prior discussion with players...
I realise Cryptic are under no obligation to do so, but there's no harm if they were to do so...
You mean, on his private twitter? The one that he's under no obligation to be a company worker on?
(In a side note, there are two ships available, by your own definition, so that isn't a lie. Spin? Probably.)
A). I'm fairly certain if I went on twitter in a way that both identified me and the company I work for and made publicly snide comments about the company's customers, there would be a problem. Twitter also is not a private thing anymore than Facebook is.
. That's why I mentioned omits. Even if he didn't directly lie in that case the message was clearly manipulative and misinformative.
A). I'm fairly certain if I went on twitter in a way that both identified me and the company I work for and made publicly snide comments about the company's customers, there would be a problem. Twitter also is not a private thing anymore than Facebook is.
. That's why I mentioned omits. Even if he didn't directly lie in that case the message was clearly manipulative and misinformative.
(Hah, upon checking something, I've been blocked too. Ah, well. It's just twitter)
Uhm.. well, since his only point is that they exist, I don't know how that's misinformative.. maybe I just misheard it.
ETA: Removing A. On reflection, that isn't the point I want to make, and it's wrong.
A) Sure, if your company is a massive jerk. (Hah, upon checking something, I've been blocked too. Ah, well. It's just twitter.)
Uhm.. well, since his only point is that they exist, I don't know how that's misinformative.. maybe I just misheard it.
His point was that sci kdf ships don't sell. But when there are only two and the two that are suck, then it's fairly disingenuous to imply that people don't want a good kdf sci ship as much as that the ones there are subpar.
Prophet makes good on prophecy by making it fulfilled personally?
* The very fact that someone is even talking about it with people on the forums is a good start. If it turns out for nothing, then by all means, get upset and let them know with your wallet or rage or what have you. However, making up conspiracy theories about moderator action that's only going to inevitably lead to moderator action against you which will then confirm your conspiracy theories actually just ends up as a lose lose situation. You lose your voice. PW risks losing a customer.
Replies like that one are the very core of what this is all about lol. They plan on archiving all the threads/posts so they can be swept under the cyber rug. See the thing is they made it personal because they took over a year working on DR and then everyone was expecting something out of this world to play that would take so long and tight lipped about it just to find out it was not even as good as old content they had made. It just looked like an old rehash of the old federation missions they got rid of before the game changed to f2p.
As for moderators yeah they took it too far and crossed the line and their metrics are showing that some of the players with signifigant weight have abandoned the game and they are trying to see how gullible they are to draw them back in. Of course for me I've gone back to the gaming roots where you play to have fun and not play to grind.
I think this is working as intended. To get the real Voyager experience, they want us to get trapped leveling up in the Delta Quadrant for the in-game equivalent of 7 years.
If it's a private twitter account, then he is doing a terrible job separating his private and public life. Not only does he explicitly label himself the "Lead Designer of STO," he regularly communicates with players (albeit in a less-that-desirable fashion if said players offer any criticism of the game) and other staff, including Trendy.
He has opened himself up as a public figure, and, sorry, but them's the breaks.
Interestingly, people often talk about work using twitter. It's how social media is... I'm not really going to consider his twitter proof of anything. (Not the least surprising, I can't actually access it anyway.)
They used to. Then people began to complain when things didn't go out as planned. (A fairly common occurrence for any studio with deadlines.)
When you identify as "Star Trek Online Lead Designer" on your PRIVATE Twitter account, then I don't consider it particularly private anymore.
What you say in public (podcasts, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit etc) should absolutely matter just as much to the company, as what you say in private within the company, or at home, or to your friends. Geko has been utterly disrespectful towards the playerbase on more than one occasion. Apparently this is okay with the higher-ups, since they allow him to continue working, and representing the company.
If you can't access it -- even view it, at that -- then I don't know why you're even jumping in here. If it were a personal twitter, it probably wouldn't be "@captaingecko."
"Star Trek Online Lead Designer. Fun sneak Tweets about STO. No trolls please. Have fun and play nice."
I watched a fascinating documentary on the last Tsar of Russia.
Locked himself in his castle, listened to all the wrong kind of people, made no concessions. Insisted his way was the only way and the right way. Underestimated the discontent.
It ended badly.
I want Dev's to take the KDF seriously. We love the KDF. We want to see it viable. We don't want to see ships made on the apparent sole premise of whether that specific ship will make money - we want to see efforts injected into the game across the board, whether a specific ship makes money is immaterial to whether it actually benefits the game as a whole.
Not everything fits into neat little programming lines. Part of the fun is discovering and enjoying the differences across the game, those neat little special things that you can do. If everything is the same, then there is kind of no point for anything. It doesn't seem to matter what you do any more, it's all kind of the same.
We love this game. I love this game. Give it the respect it deserves and give some love to the KDF - not just with this relatively minor issue, but making the faction a viable, living, breathing world.
The idea of only doing things if they are financially suitable is ignoring the big picture. To make the KDF alive yo need to create great content for the KDF and create incentives for it. Where is that exactly? Build it and they will come. And when you build it - MEAN IT.
I watched a fascinating documentary on the last Tsar of Russia.
Locked himself in his castle, listened to all the wrong kind of people, made no concessions. Insisted his way was the only way and the right way. Underestimated the discontent.
It ended badly.
I am sure that was a fascinating documentary, but... It has nothign to do with STO.
Just because someone does something you don't agree with doesn't mean he has no clue what is really going. He may actually know a bit more about the situation then you do.
If you're not working for Cryptic or PWE, you don't have access to server statistics or sales numbers. You only know what you would like to see. That's fine. There is no need to exaggerate the situation and claim that somehow Cryptic is completely ignorant of realities and only people on the forums have the wisdom to truely know what's going on - when they objectively definitely lack data Cryptic has access to.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
His point was that sci kdf ships don't sell. But when there are only two and the two that are suck, then it's fairly disingenuous to imply that people don't want a good kdf sci ship as much as that the ones there are subpar.
1.) You're also assuming that a majority of sales is based on the mechanical qualities of ships and how wel they compare to other ships across factions. Is that actually true? Remember, we have posts here on the forums where people wonder how people could deal so little DPS in Queued content.
Not everyone actually has a good idea what is good build or what makes a good ship.
2.) You ignore that if you want a Science Vessel at al on the KDF, you have no choice but to pick one of those that are there, or you can't play SV on KDF at all.
Remember back in the days? Klingon Battle Cruisers were objectively pretty much always superior to the Federaton Cruisers. More turn rate, the ability to use DHCs, and cloak.
Only now there are some "losses" for picking a Battle Cruiser - namekly the loss of Cruiser Commands. But even that is hardly relevant, since you can have only one command active on a time, and one could argue that Battlecruisers have access to one of the best commands anyway.
But that didn't stop Federation players from flying Cruisers in masses.
3.) You're assuming that Cryptic is comparing everything across the board, and cannot look into more detail - for example, looking into "weak" Fed Science Vessels and compare them to the KDF science Vessels.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
If it's a private twitter account, then he is doing a terrible job separating his private and public life. Not only does he explicitly label himself the "Lead Designer of STO," he regularly communicates with players (albeit in a less-that-desirable fashion if said players offer any criticism of the game) and other staff, including Trendy.
He has opened himself up as a public figure, and, sorry, but them's the breaks.
I agree with you on one hand.
On the other hand, game developers are entertainment personalities who seem to get a bit of leeway when it comes to talking religion/politics/gossip-y talk.
Actually, I think "designer" is the key word.
If Cryptic's accountant or someone who handled ad sales at PWE talked like that, they'd be fired. Designers tend to be mouthy. Not just in video games. They tend to get treated as members of the artistic class.
I seem to recall multiple theatrical and graphic designers I've worked with over the years doing things you couldn't do as a "rank and file" employee.
I suppose the theory behind it is similar to being a tenured faculty member, an entertainment comentator, or other kinds of artistic designers. It's work where you get paid for your opinions and you get paid to think about things. Which gives you more or less workplace-protected freedom of speech to say provocative things, as long as you don't cross the line into talking about the boss's wife/kids, the shareholders, or anything negative about racial/ethinic/gender minority groups.
You get paid to have opinions and shoot from the hip to some extent in that line of work. It is a kind of class privileged type job but I'm not sure how far out of line it is within his job class.
Designers as a class of people can generally swear, get arrested, make snide comments... And as long as it doesn't interfere with design work, people do look the other way a lot, I guess.
It's also generally more of an upper managerial perk. I always noted (to the discomfort of my classmates) that most of what we were taught as MBAs about who to respect and how to communicate doesn't seem to apply to CEOs, who are often very off-color compared to rank and file managers and their second-in-commands even more so.
If STO were a company of its own, Geko would be the Vice President. There's a history of "above the fray" chiefs while VPs take the "bulldog" stance. He's sort of the Joe Biden or **** Cheney of STO. Think about the kinds of stances he takes. Now think about the last couple of U.S. Vice Presidents.
These are all unattributed because I don't want this to turn into political wrangling. VPs from different presidencies, different political parties. Just focus on the style of communication.
"If we do everything right, if we do it with absolute certainty, there's still a 30% chance we're going to get it wrong."
"If I blindfolded someone and took them at 2 o'clock in the morning into the airport in Hong Kong and said 'where do you think you are?' They would say, 'this must be America. This is a modern airport.' If I took them blindfolded and took them to LaGuardia Airport in New York, he would, like, 'I must be in some Third World country.' I'm not joking."
"I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators."
"I think of myself as a recovering politician. I'm on about step 9 ... recovering, boozing it up of course."
"I believe that I've made good judgments in the past, and I think I've made good judgments in the future."
"The President has only 190 million bosses. The Vice President has 190 million and one."
"I don't want to spend the next two years in Holiday Inns."
"I apologize for lying to you. I promise I won't deceive you except in matters of this sort."
I'm sharing this to point out that the communication style might seem familiar. Quotes from different people. But they're all sort of blunt and gaffe prone and cocky.
I submit that Lead Designer on STO is a LOT like the profile of a Vice President and I'd venture that it calls for a similar personality. I think there's some truth in the idea that there's a "stock type" for a number two in an organization.
Yes they did... And it kinda speaks volumes of why a State of the Game blog could be useful as it would be an official heads up on incoming changes, as opposed to tid-bits here and there on Twitter, Reddit and such...
A blog, outlining upcoming plans and changes to STO, would clearly not go astray given the game's development is already pretty well defined for the next 6-12 months (at least) and Cryptic apparently have rough plans already stretching out for the next couple of years...
I see no harm in giving players a heads up on what's coming down the pipeline in an official capacity and it could in fact work in Cryptics' favour, by avoiding massive player backlash when they make what are perceived as sudden, and often drastic changes, without any prior discussion with players...
I realise Cryptic are under no obligation to do so, but there's no harm if they were to do so...
Like the other guy said, they used to... and got flamed for not doing everything they listed as soemthign they *might* do....
2.) You ignore that if you want a Science Vessel at al on the KDF, you have no choice but to pick one of those that are there, or you can't play SV on KDF at all.
Huh? That is false. My KDF Science character is in a Timeship. In fact, the Timeship, the various Voth vessesl and even the Orb Weaver (with it's broken Sensor Analysis) are all options for KDF. Lockbox/Lobi ships are hands down a better science vessel than anything you could get from the C-store as a KDF character. Most Lockbox/Lobi ships don't hold a candle to the Vesta-pack options though.
For an interesting metric, I wonder what the ratio of KDF sci players in lockbox/lobi ships is to the ratio of Starfleet sci players in lockbox/lobi ships. I think that right there could prove there are KDF players that want a C-store sci ship that matches lockbox/lobi ones.
Just because someone does something you don't agree with doesn't mean he has no clue what is really going. He may actually know a bit more about the situation then you do.
Oh I should hope so. He calls all the shots. ALL of them. Thus the Tsar, you see.
If you're not working for Cryptic or PWE, you don't have access to server statistics or sales numbers.
Actually it's not me making this up - he said it himself on P1 Productions Podcast - He stated that he won't make Sci ships because of sales figures and that this was a key consideration in making more.
I'm sure your very passionate about defending Cryptics decisions, and they have made some great ones, such as planning to redo the doffing system as a whole - but along the way they make some stinker decisions. This is one of them.
Comments
The game will never be the wonderful casual friendly game it once was. I expect to see continued movement towards player unfriendliness in the future.
Step 1: Ban everyone
Step 2: Ban their mule accounts
Step 3: Everyone is happy because they cannot communicate in the forums.
I see where this is going.
Prophet makes good on prophecy by making it fulfilled personally?
* The very fact that someone is even talking about it with people on the forums is a good start. If it turns out for nothing, then by all means, get upset and let them know with your wallet or rage or what have you. However, making up conspiracy theories about moderator action that's only going to inevitably lead to moderator action against you which will then confirm your conspiracy theories actually just ends up as a lose lose situation. You lose your voice. PW risks losing a customer.
But my low post count here is because, well, I didnt know the forum existed until last year and I never bothered because I know everything by myself.
Anyway, I liked the Boff System since Season 1 and enjoyed all the possibilities it brought into the game.
But now, now that you nerf all those Boff missions that are essential to the game, I lost all the fun.
Please, Branflakes stop nerfing the game.
Yours sincerly,
Rainer Salesch
Germany, Berlin-Marzahn
Are you trolling?
There are Doff missions, not Boff missions and they weren't in the game until much later than season 1. Even when this game was in beta, it wasn't developed by Perpetual. Perpetual lost their developing license to this game specifically because they didn't get anything done.
If there are changes coming in X weeks or months to balance this out (which, by the way, are already months overdue since the high level XP scaling change which was NOT "supposed" to be a nerf according to the dev team, already hit DOffing hard and no additions to offset that have ever been released) how about for once waiting to nerf what's there until the buffs are ready to be released beside those nerfs?
Really, it's not too much to ask. All I'm requesting is for Geko and friends to not release something unfinished as often tends to seem to happen due to deadlines. Don't start the "revamp" until it's all ready to release, and certainly don't start with the bad and promise the good later (which seems to always be the case, frequently with "later" meaning months, years or never) and not expect everyone to be ticked off... like has happened so many times over the years. Maybe it's time to learn from past mistakes?
Just look at all the sneers and snide comments on his twitter and the reports of people being blocked by him.
Its not a very professional attitude to take.
This game has hundreds of bugs that go unfixed. Just look at the bug reports forum. These 12hr doff missions grant a reward of XP that make it look like the player is making a small amount of progress (given the recent XP nerfs... sorry, changes) and now all of a sudden, Gecko decides to "fix" this "bug", out of the blue, at random... when there are so many other "bugs" to be fixed and things that merit dev time...
Seems like he's purposely focussed on this one, to punish the players, to make them grind for XP by playing the content that he wants us to play and nothing else.
As it is, you either grind the same patrols over and over, try to play the empty queues if that's your thing... and it feels if you are barely making any progress towards the next SP. At least Doffing provides an alternative. Or it did until this nerf.. sorry fix, comes into effect.
Thanks for your efforts Trendy. They are appreciated. Sometimes it feels as if you are one of the few devs on our side. However, until Gecko leaves STO or is "promoted" to somewhere else, STO seems destined to be slowly turned into one of these far eastern grindathon MMOs.
I do have to agree with this one. I'm surprised PW haven't gotten on that guy for some of his comments. Particularly where he does interview and either blatantly lies or deliberately omits things to skew the argument. It's like the whole KDF sci ship. The only two available outside of a lockbox (which should not count at all) are the DSD which everyone complains about in regards to all the variants and which you are practically locked out of a full set if you didn't do the event or the Gorn sci ship that's kind of a TRIBBLE ship.
The guy just says **** like it's okay to disrespect the very people who pay the bills to justify his income. I don't care about how he gives to charity or TRIBBLE, however it was that I saw him justify his behavior once on twitter, he's a jerk to the community.
I don't know if he's burnt out, maybe he is and needs to be put in some other position for a time. But regardless, it's bad for this game. Most companies get rid of people for that kind of behavior.
You mean, on his private twitter? The one that he's under no obligation to be a company worker on?
(In a side note, there are two ships available, by your own definition, so that isn't a lie. Spin? Probably.)
Yes they did... And it kinda speaks volumes of why a State of the Game blog could be useful as it would be an official heads up on incoming changes, as opposed to tid-bits here and there on Twitter, Reddit and such...
A blog, outlining upcoming plans and changes to STO, would clearly not go astray given the game's development is already pretty well defined for the next 6-12 months (at least) and Cryptic apparently have rough plans already stretching out for the next couple of years...
I see no harm in giving players a heads up on what's coming down the pipeline in an official capacity and it could in fact work in Cryptics' favour, by avoiding massive player backlash when they make what are perceived as sudden, and often drastic changes, without any prior discussion with players...
I realise Cryptic are under no obligation to do so, but there's no harm if they were to do so...
A). I'm fairly certain if I went on twitter in a way that both identified me and the company I work for and made publicly snide comments about the company's customers, there would be a problem. Twitter also is not a private thing anymore than Facebook is.
(Hah, upon checking something, I've been blocked too. Ah, well. It's just twitter)
ETA: Removing A. On reflection, that isn't the point I want to make, and it's wrong.
His point was that sci kdf ships don't sell. But when there are only two and the two that are suck, then it's fairly disingenuous to imply that people don't want a good kdf sci ship as much as that the ones there are subpar.
Replies like that one are the very core of what this is all about lol. They plan on archiving all the threads/posts so they can be swept under the cyber rug. See the thing is they made it personal because they took over a year working on DR and then everyone was expecting something out of this world to play that would take so long and tight lipped about it just to find out it was not even as good as old content they had made. It just looked like an old rehash of the old federation missions they got rid of before the game changed to f2p.
As for moderators yeah they took it too far and crossed the line and their metrics are showing that some of the players with signifigant weight have abandoned the game and they are trying to see how gullible they are to draw them back in. Of course for me I've gone back to the gaming roots where you play to have fun and not play to grind.
good one
Interestingly, people often talk about work using twitter. It's how social media is... I'm not really going to consider his twitter proof of anything. (Not the least surprising, I can't actually access it anyway.)
When you identify as "Star Trek Online Lead Designer" on your PRIVATE Twitter account, then I don't consider it particularly private anymore.
What you say in public (podcasts, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit etc) should absolutely matter just as much to the company, as what you say in private within the company, or at home, or to your friends. Geko has been utterly disrespectful towards the playerbase on more than one occasion. Apparently this is okay with the higher-ups, since they allow him to continue working, and representing the company.
I can't because lol blocked.
Locked himself in his castle, listened to all the wrong kind of people, made no concessions. Insisted his way was the only way and the right way. Underestimated the discontent.
It ended badly.
I want Dev's to take the KDF seriously. We love the KDF. We want to see it viable. We don't want to see ships made on the apparent sole premise of whether that specific ship will make money - we want to see efforts injected into the game across the board, whether a specific ship makes money is immaterial to whether it actually benefits the game as a whole.
Not everything fits into neat little programming lines. Part of the fun is discovering and enjoying the differences across the game, those neat little special things that you can do. If everything is the same, then there is kind of no point for anything. It doesn't seem to matter what you do any more, it's all kind of the same.
We love this game. I love this game. Give it the respect it deserves and give some love to the KDF - not just with this relatively minor issue, but making the faction a viable, living, breathing world.
The idea of only doing things if they are financially suitable is ignoring the big picture. To make the KDF alive yo need to create great content for the KDF and create incentives for it. Where is that exactly? Build it and they will come. And when you build it - MEAN IT.
Just because someone does something you don't agree with doesn't mean he has no clue what is really going. He may actually know a bit more about the situation then you do.
If you're not working for Cryptic or PWE, you don't have access to server statistics or sales numbers. You only know what you would like to see. That's fine. There is no need to exaggerate the situation and claim that somehow Cryptic is completely ignorant of realities and only people on the forums have the wisdom to truely know what's going on - when they objectively definitely lack data Cryptic has access to.
Not everyone actually has a good idea what is good build or what makes a good ship.
2.) You ignore that if you want a Science Vessel at al on the KDF, you have no choice but to pick one of those that are there, or you can't play SV on KDF at all.
Remember back in the days? Klingon Battle Cruisers were objectively pretty much always superior to the Federaton Cruisers. More turn rate, the ability to use DHCs, and cloak.
Only now there are some "losses" for picking a Battle Cruiser - namekly the loss of Cruiser Commands. But even that is hardly relevant, since you can have only one command active on a time, and one could argue that Battlecruisers have access to one of the best commands anyway.
But that didn't stop Federation players from flying Cruisers in masses.
3.) You're assuming that Cryptic is comparing everything across the board, and cannot look into more detail - for example, looking into "weak" Fed Science Vessels and compare them to the KDF science Vessels.
I agree with you on one hand.
On the other hand, game developers are entertainment personalities who seem to get a bit of leeway when it comes to talking religion/politics/gossip-y talk.
Actually, I think "designer" is the key word.
If Cryptic's accountant or someone who handled ad sales at PWE talked like that, they'd be fired. Designers tend to be mouthy. Not just in video games. They tend to get treated as members of the artistic class.
I seem to recall multiple theatrical and graphic designers I've worked with over the years doing things you couldn't do as a "rank and file" employee.
I suppose the theory behind it is similar to being a tenured faculty member, an entertainment comentator, or other kinds of artistic designers. It's work where you get paid for your opinions and you get paid to think about things. Which gives you more or less workplace-protected freedom of speech to say provocative things, as long as you don't cross the line into talking about the boss's wife/kids, the shareholders, or anything negative about racial/ethinic/gender minority groups.
You get paid to have opinions and shoot from the hip to some extent in that line of work. It is a kind of class privileged type job but I'm not sure how far out of line it is within his job class.
Designers as a class of people can generally swear, get arrested, make snide comments... And as long as it doesn't interfere with design work, people do look the other way a lot, I guess.
It's also generally more of an upper managerial perk. I always noted (to the discomfort of my classmates) that most of what we were taught as MBAs about who to respect and how to communicate doesn't seem to apply to CEOs, who are often very off-color compared to rank and file managers and their second-in-commands even more so.
If STO were a company of its own, Geko would be the Vice President. There's a history of "above the fray" chiefs while VPs take the "bulldog" stance. He's sort of the Joe Biden or **** Cheney of STO. Think about the kinds of stances he takes. Now think about the last couple of U.S. Vice Presidents.
These are all unattributed because I don't want this to turn into political wrangling. VPs from different presidencies, different political parties. Just focus on the style of communication.
"If we do everything right, if we do it with absolute certainty, there's still a 30% chance we're going to get it wrong."
"If I blindfolded someone and took them at 2 o'clock in the morning into the airport in Hong Kong and said 'where do you think you are?' They would say, 'this must be America. This is a modern airport.' If I took them blindfolded and took them to LaGuardia Airport in New York, he would, like, 'I must be in some Third World country.' I'm not joking."
"I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators."
"I think of myself as a recovering politician. I'm on about step 9 ... recovering, boozing it up of course."
"I believe that I've made good judgments in the past, and I think I've made good judgments in the future."
"The President has only 190 million bosses. The Vice President has 190 million and one."
"I don't want to spend the next two years in Holiday Inns."
"I apologize for lying to you. I promise I won't deceive you except in matters of this sort."
I'm sharing this to point out that the communication style might seem familiar. Quotes from different people. But they're all sort of blunt and gaffe prone and cocky.
I submit that Lead Designer on STO is a LOT like the profile of a Vice President and I'd venture that it calls for a similar personality. I think there's some truth in the idea that there's a "stock type" for a number two in an organization.
My character Tsin'xing
For an interesting metric, I wonder what the ratio of KDF sci players in lockbox/lobi ships is to the ratio of Starfleet sci players in lockbox/lobi ships. I think that right there could prove there are KDF players that want a C-store sci ship that matches lockbox/lobi ones.
The attitude does. The disconnect between him and much of the community when they express concern. His way is right.
Oh I should hope so. He calls all the shots. ALL of them. Thus the Tsar, you see.
Actually it's not me making this up - he said it himself on P1 Productions Podcast - He stated that he won't make Sci ships because of sales figures and that this was a key consideration in making more.
I'm sure your very passionate about defending Cryptics decisions, and they have made some great ones, such as planning to redo the doffing system as a whole - but along the way they make some stinker decisions. This is one of them.