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things mentioned over the last year and a half

KDF player costume revamps:

In progress, hopefully well see the remainder of the changes soon. We certainly seen a few, I'm certainly pleased and happy with whats been done so far... but... it's not quite "parr" yet.. soom, I belive soon though.
Looking forward to my KDF toons packing a dagger at the waist. And maybe some new sash designs...especially because sashes are not rank markings.. they show house affiliation, and a player ship assignments and special awards if any.

Revision to the Captains Table vet player social zone:

Got mentioned months to possibly over a year back, and absolutely nothing has happened since then, not a whisper, hint, clue, nothing. Very disappointing. Many player requests and idea's offered and submitted for possible changes or improvements to the utility of the space, but nothing concrete. In the mean time...nobody uses the place for anything really. it's inconvenient to get to, has very limited services. Hey Cryptic, if your not going to actually make it a useful place for players why don't you just remove it. It's sad. the CT could have been a great social zone.. But I have noticed several MMO titles that have created "special" zones for premium type accounts, an very few have managed to turn them into something actually useful to the player they are directed at. I wonder if such is simply doomed to be a an idea that really never gets implemented and refined?

(I list these to because, they're the ones I know best about. There are other items which players could add to the list, the the objective is not to create a new list *sigh*)

While I realize that these are "cometic/look and feel" issues, to players that they effect, its fairly high up at the top of many players "Yo! Make it happen list". .... And have been for a long time.

Everyone approaches STO differently. I'm not a ship collector type, and I have yet to see in the KDF line up the type of ship I've felt the KDF should have had since game launch.

I've personally just dropped back into the "casual play" category of player.

Over the years I've seen Cryptic studio's do its damndest to maintain a high volumestream of releases on ships, missions etc. And seen them fail rather spectacularly at this goal. The lessons have sunk in it looks like for the most part, and the studio has been trying very hard to improve the quality mainly because quality came back and bit all of us right on the butt this year.

You've all noticed by now that the studio has also slowed down the rate of new content release. They may simply have not had a choice due to system and code issues. The beloved code monkeys have been dealing with system issue, after system issue.. including the recent one with the Kremin rep consoles... Part of it is older code, part of its unforeseen interactions, part of it is "um wait thats supposed to work and do X.. but it doesn't seem to be doing anything."
(usually rather embarrassing to all involved)

And I can tell there quite a bit a bit more under the hood work needs to be done yet.. Most of the changes are server side, but there's still plenty of client stuff side waiting buried away to likely interact badly with server side code and cause problems yet.

It's been a rough ride. And significantly rougher if you have been playing KDF from early on. So I'm gonna go mostly chill for awhile. There are other MMO's out there that are a great deal of fun that are also F2P. I'm even doing a a closed beta and an open right now. And I've even seen a couple suggestion implemented that were mine and mine alone.. or at least I suggested them first. One didn't do so well, and the other rocked everyone socks and is being expanded upon further. one of those things where you get to go "Yay I scored!" I can't tell anyone what the closed beta title is. I respect NDA's. I'm sure my name will be deeply buried in the credits that hardly anyone looks at *grin* no matter how good the music is...

But back to STO. It feels to me that the studio is digging in and seriously going after long standing bugs and issues in the code. They've certainly said they have been doing so. Its been very negatively impacting game play something that clearly demands attention before it get any worse, which it was pretty seriously looking to do. Apparently things hit a critical mass..

I've also noticed that we still don't have a dev tracker... And I'm going to stick with something I stated weeks ago now.

Dev tracker may not come back.

Its far simpler for the dev team to drop hints and sneek peeks via social media such as face book, twitter, and the on occasion Reddit posting. The Dev tracker not being available on the current forums has certainly quieted things down significantly and reduced the amount of drama in the forums. This also effects the face the studio presents to the public.

It also gives the impression of less talking, more doing... and impressions and perceptions count when it comes to PR!

Things have changed in the past year fairly significantly. Cryptic has moved on from its previous more open communication with the fans, and interaction (perceived, they may still be doing so, but its no where near as visible as its been in the past) to just not really saying a lot over the last few months since the new forums went in. Is this a policy change? The evidence at hand says yes, it is. Is it permanent? You got me, but its starting to feel like it. On the other hand, we have seen a improvement on communication issues with the came technical problems..but that could simply be because the tech issues reached up and clawed the TRIBBLE out of everybody about 4 months back now.

I've watched the changes in pod casts. Once apon a time someone could ask the Dev's now and again the "Hot Button" questions and maybe get some insight into what was really happening, or even bring a very nasty bug/feature to the dev attention. Not any more. If you insist on asking questions about what the studio is doing that are not "pre approved", you don't get to interviews devs any more. You will be cut off. I've seen and heard the results. It's not a very nice way to treat fans. And I do believe the studio has taken a few hits from it, and decided they can live with it. That is the studio's choice to make. They are a business entity after all, and not a democratic institution.

Creating minorities:

What I do clearly observe is that in the KDF sub forums posting there have pretty much dropped off to nearly nothing. And, I know why. And I'd like to think the studio does also. It's a failure on the part of the studio. It may have been an unavoidable one. But its still a failure. The damage now is long done. Players have either adjusted, or found some place else to spend money.

It may turn around eventually but it won't be any time soon. I'm done getting worked up about it. And pretty obviously, there are a few hundred folks who semi regularly posted in the KDF forums who feel close to the same. They don't post any more. They gave up. And whats worse, the studio gave up on them, and did it first. I'm glad that more is being done for KDF side play then has previously been the case. I just feel that there has been both a lack of honesty, and a lack of candor, and no small amount of confused direction.

Just thoughts on the state of the game, the state of the studio, and where we in our community of players are at. I'm done, go back to having fun!

Khemaraa Iron Hand sends.

*with a friendly wave from Kui*













"I aim to misbehave" - Malcolm Reynolds

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