PWE / Cryptic is a business, not a charity. They are not obligated to throw away money literally for your amusement.
Actually, if they want to keep my business, they are obligated to entertain/amuse me. That is how a 'business' works: not by fleecing people, but by providing a service that they can use and wish to use. Derp derp.
They can't afford to keep your business - supporting OS X is losing them money.
If it costs them (say) $60,000 a month* in developer salaries and benefits to develop and maintain the client but OS X players only spend $40,000 then they lose $240,000 every year that they keep offering the OS X client.
So again: PWE / Cryptic is a business, not a charity. They are not obligated to throw away money literally for your amusement. They gave OS X a try, the numbers don't work for them. To continue offering OS X at a loss would be charitable work not good business.
PWE / Cryptic is a business, not a charity. They are not obligated to throw away money literally for your amusement.
Actually, if they want to keep my business, they are obligated to entertain/amuse me. That is how a 'business' works: not by fleecing people, but by providing a service that they can use and wish to use. Derp derp.
They can't afford to keep your business - supporting OS X is losing them money.
If it costs them (say) $60,000 a month* in developer salaries and benefits to develop and maintain the client but OS X players only spend $40,000 then they lose $240,000 every year that they keep offering the OS X client.
So again: PWE / Cryptic is a business, not a charity. They are not obligated to throw away money literally for your amusement. They gave OS X a try, the numbers don't work for them. To continue offering OS X at a loss would be charitable work not good business.
* numbers purely speculative
If Cryptic cant make money, its THEIR problem, not mine! Don't try to spin it in the way that it is a costumer fault! When I downloaded game client and spent money, we enter LAW BINDING CONTRACT AGREEMENT, and Cryptic failed to deliver its prat. So, if they loosing money its because how their run their business.
PWE / Cryptic is a business, not a charity. They are not obligated to throw away money literally for your amusement.
Actually, if they want to keep my business, they are obligated to entertain/amuse me. That is how a 'business' works: not by fleecing people, but by providing a service that they can use and wish to use. Derp derp.
They can't afford to keep your business - supporting OS X is losing them money.
If it costs them (say) $60,000 a month* in developer salaries and benefits to develop and maintain the client but OS X players only spend $40,000 then they lose $240,000 every year that they keep offering the OS X client.
So again: PWE / Cryptic is a business, not a charity. They are not obligated to throw away money literally for your amusement. They gave OS X a try, the numbers don't work for them. To continue offering OS X at a loss would be charitable work not good business.
* numbers purely speculative
Dude the OS X client never worked properly. In two years it never did. That's the worst part: saying it's grown to be too much of a struggle to keep it updated when they never really cared about it.
I need to get to him. I can't just leave him out there alone. - Sometimes you've got to makes sacrifices, Lara. You can't save everyone. - I know about sacrifices. - No, you know about loss. Sacrifice is a choice you make. Loss is a choice made for you. - I can't choose to let him die, Roth.
So again: PWE / Cryptic is a business, not a charity. They are not obligated to throw away money literally for your amusement. They gave OS X a try, the numbers don't work for them. To continue offering OS X at a loss would be charitable work not good business.
Yes, shame on the customer for being upset when the company pulls a product because of poor financial planning and operations. Shame on the customer! After all, customers should be THANKING the company for suddenly cutting access to the product for which they have had a reasonable expectation of use!
Are you so wedded to your apologist stance that you cannot see how risible are the implications of your position? Who is arguing that this is not a 'smart business move' on purely financial lines (although along customer goodwill lines it may prove to be otherwise)? This is a straw man argument against which you are sallying forth to little logical effect.
In any case, making a 'smart business move' does not excuse the company of the additional results of that decision, such as customer dissatisfaction. Perhaps it does save them money (although you have offered only speculation; and their avowed position is one of quality not money). Employing people as wage-slaves would also save money--and yet there would be reasonable disatisfaction with that as well. A company does not get a free pass for every action by saying, "Ah, but it makes us more money this way."
In short, waving your hand and saying, "It's smart business!" does not somehow magically invalidate customer dissatisfaction with that 'smart business' manoeuvre.
Back in the day, some person created a starter "STO-Wine" package that Mac users could download and start the process of logging in and downloading the game. Has anyone got a good, stable Wine version that we can download and start using?
In short, waving your hand and saying, "It's smart business!" does not somehow magically invalidate customer dissatisfaction with that 'smart business' manoeuvre.
True, but those customers should understand that this action was not done out of laziness, anti-Mac bias or malice. Or incompetence, except in the sense that with 20-20 hindsight they should never have developed the OS X client at all.
Well i got windows all installed on Virtualbox. However it doesn't recognise my graphics card. Says i only have a standard VGA Graphics adapter.
Tried updating drivers says drivers all up to date.
Downloaded Nvidia Geforce Experience to see if drivers could be installed. However this software won't install as it doesn't recognise my GPU.
So right now i'm further than i am with bootcamp whereas i have windows 7 working with a keyboard and mouse. But cannot run STO as i get Fatal Error. Unable to create Directx Render device. yada yada yada.
This is due to graphics card not being detected and i'm not PC savvy enough to figure it out.
Right now i'm starting think is Star Trek Online really worth the hassle of trying to install an emulator be it Virtualbox/Wine or Windows via bootcamp. Why as a customer i'm i having to jump through hoops because Cryptic decided they didn't want to support my OS anymore. Why am i going to all these lengths to play a video game that I'VE SUPPORTED over the years despite a list of things they have done, that if they were my phone provider, internet provider or bank i'd have changed providers.
Maybe the few hours of joy i get a day from this game could better be used on a new hobby, One that supports me as much as i support it.
Seriously considering once the MAC launcher is closed so is my time with this game. I shouldn't have to be fooling around with various softwares to play this game.
That's why it won't use your real graphics card drivers. VMWare and Parallels offer better fake graphics cards (still faked), but only Boot Camp runs on the native hardware and uses your native graphics card drivers.
It's perfectly reasonable to not want to jump through ten hoops just to play STO. Maybe someone will post a good, up-to-date guide on using WINE wtih the current STO. WINE does talk to your real graphics card.
That's why it won't use your real graphics card drivers. VMWare and Parallels offer better fake graphics cards (still faked), but only Boot Camp runs on the native hardware and uses your native graphics card drivers.
It's perfectly reasonable to not want to jump through ten hoops just to play STO. Maybe someone will post a good, up-to-date guide on using WINE wtih the current STO. WINE does talk to your real graphics card.
I have a working Wine version of the game downloaded off these forums when season 11 hit. But it tends to have key bind issues. Mainly with the left mouse button. Only way to fix them back is to shut the game but it maybe as quick as every 10 mins or an hour before the key binds go wonky
targeting/untargeting stops working
Holstering/Unholstering or changing weapon stops working.
Using mouse buttons to drag the camera.
A couple of small things i can't remember right now
It's petty/little things but the camera one is the biggest pain as using the mouse to adjust the camera angle is easier than binding it to a keyboard key. esp as my main key functions are the arrow keys and space bar for piloting and shooting. Played that way for 5 years so hard to adjust. It'd be like being left handed and trying to learn to write with you're right hand. It just wouldn't feel nature
I would've used Boot Camp, but my thing is, I don't want to pay for Windows [aside from other means of acquiring it]. Yet, I haven't paid for an OS for several years now. Besides, I already have my SSD partitioned off to two OSes. So, to have to partition it off into three, just to run Windows just to run STO. Not going to happen. Too much work. So, yeah, a Wine version would be suitable to run, get our ZEN REFUNDS, and be done with it. In fact, I think as a courtesy, they should've had someone make a downloadable, up-to-date, Wine version, that was ready to use. So, when they close it off, we'll already have the means to migrate. Otherwise, they'll just assume lose all that business. Yet, part of the reason I came back for Season 11, after a long, two year hiatus, was because they had a Mac version. Yet, the reason why they actually created a "sudo-mac" version that ran on Cider was because there were enough people running the Wine version to warrant the attempt to cash in. But, Transgaming's Cider, sucks, and it getting dropped by other developers as well. I think they should've never gotten into the making a Mac version, especially a Cider one, and we'd still be, happily, running our Wine versions.
In fact, I think as a courtesy, they should've had someone make a downloadable, up-to-date, Wine version, that was ready to use.
Yes, they dropped the ball on that one. They should have been the ones to prepare up-to-date WINE instructions, and offer them at the same time as they announced this.
Yes, they dropped the ball on that one. They should have been the ones to prepare up-to-date WINE instructions, and offer them at the same time as they announced this.
The problem is that then it'll look like Wine is supported, and when it breaks, there'll be a lot of complaints.
Well for those Mac users looking to figure out some sort of emulation, it sucks that we miss out on the current store deals and content. I was hoping to take advantage of the 20% off services deal before all this nonsense happened, and by the time I sort out some way to emulate (assuming I do), it will almost certainly be too late.
welp it was fun while it lasted. I knew this was coming when S11 had all the mac issues. This was inevitable. Sucks that I sunk as much money in this game as I did. but entertinment has never been free. But I'm actually not that sad, because keeping up with this game has felt like more of a chore than actual fun.
I'll miss the pew pew, and the awesome space ships. But I've already moved onto greener pastures, like Marvel Heroes 2016. As well as far better games and gaming companies.
All the best. Thanks for the fun.
@pwlaughingtrendy who do I speak to about having my arc/crytpic account deleted?
For those with macs, don't start with wine. Download 'Play On Mac', once loaded download internet explorer 8 and steam. Steam will run as Windows, continue to play and still get into the c store!!!
Well, this sucks. I've been a huge booster of the game, dragged several friends kicking and screaming long enough to get used to the system and get hooked... And now I won't have a good way to play with them.
I suppose I should thank Cryptic/PWI though - I have hundreds of games installed and waiting for my attention that STO had distracted me from. Won't be a problem anymore.
PWE / Cryptic is a business, not a charity. They are not obligated to throw away money literally for your amusement.
Actually, if they want to keep my business, they are obligated to entertain/amuse me. That is how a 'business' works: not by fleecing people, but by providing a service that they can use and wish to use. Derp derp.
They can't afford to keep your business - supporting OS X is losing them money.
If it costs them (say) $60,000 a month* in developer salaries and benefits to develop and maintain the client but OS X players only spend $40,000 then they lose $240,000 every year that they keep offering the OS X client.
So again: PWE / Cryptic is a business, not a charity. They are not obligated to throw away money literally for your amusement. They gave OS X a try, the numbers don't work for them. To continue offering OS X at a loss would be charitable work not good business.
* numbers purely speculative
If Cryptic cant make money, its THEIR problem, not mine! Don't try to spin it in the way that it is a costumer fault! When I downloaded game client and spent money, we enter LAW BINDING CONTRACT AGREEMENT, and Cryptic failed to deliver its prat. So, if they loosing money its because how their run their business.
Exactly. They are LOSING money with the Mac client, thus they are dropping support for it and issuing refunds of any Subs or LTS memberships paid by those who used said Mac client retroactively back to 10/1/15. No, it's not 'your fault' for using said client, but they ARE informing and reimbursing Mac customers to a point.
That's the decision they made to improve the game's bottom line profitability, which is what most business would do if a version of the product/service they provide is not seen as profitable. It IS their problem, and they are correcting what they see AS the problem.
Formerly known as Armsman from June 2008 to June 20, 2012 PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
PWE / Cryptic is a business, not a charity. They are not obligated to throw away money literally for your amusement.
Actually, if they want to keep my business, they are obligated to entertain/amuse me. That is how a 'business' works: not by fleecing people, but by providing a service that they can use and wish to use. Derp derp.
They can't afford to keep your business - supporting OS X is losing them money.
If it costs them (say) $60,000 a month* in developer salaries and benefits to develop and maintain the client but OS X players only spend $40,000 then they lose $240,000 every year that they keep offering the OS X client.
So again: PWE / Cryptic is a business, not a charity. They are not obligated to throw away money literally for your amusement. They gave OS X a try, the numbers don't work for them. To continue offering OS X at a loss would be charitable work not good business.
* numbers purely speculative
If Cryptic cant make money, its THEIR problem, not mine! Don't try to spin it in the way that it is a costumer fault! When I downloaded game client and spent money, we enter LAW BINDING CONTRACT AGREEMENT, and Cryptic failed to deliver its prat. So, if they loosing money its because how their run their business.
Your statement about entering a "LAW BINDING CONTRACT AGREEMENT" is wrong on so many levels that I can't begin to understand how you have not read the ToS. I suggest you read it and say where they are breaking the law! They reserve the right to make changes and alter/cancel the service as THEY SEE FIT! The very fact they have given reasonable notice of the termination of support for the MAC client negates any argument that you could ever possibly present for them breaking the law and that's despite them offering a generous refund of Subs/LTS, by which they are under no obligation to give! Also, at no point have Cryptic or any player claimed this was the 'players' fault. Simple fact is the service is not sustainable due to whatever reasoning that Cryptic applies. Whether that be the overheads to maintain the MAC client and program are too high, or new systems coming in that might not be easily supported on the MAC client.
"You don't want to patrol!? You don't want to escort!? You don't want to defend the Federation's Starbases!? Then why are you flying my Starships!? If you were a Klingon you'd be killed on the spot, but lucky for you.....you WERE in Starfleet. Let's see how New Zealand Penal Colony suits you." Adm A. Necheyev.
Also PC prices have gone down considerably. You don't need a gaming laptop or PC to run STO.
What do you need? I mean, I know the minimum requirements, but never having bought a PC in my 35 years of owning computers*, I have very little familiarity with the hardware. When I look at the specs for a PC, I have no idea if its GPU is better or worse than what's listed in the requirements. I know conventional wisdom in gaming is that you want discrete graphics, not integrated, but I've been playing in emulation on a 2011 Mac Mini with integrated graphics, so maybe they're perfectly adequate when playing natively? I have no idea.
It might actually be really helpful (and I promise not to take it as a sales pitch) if you (or someone) were to link the cheapest prebuilt system at newegg or best buy on which one could reasonably expect to play the game at, say, medium settings and at full settings. Would give me, and maybe some other folks, an idea of the investment required to continue playing.
* Come to think of it, not entirely true. I built a PC about 15 years ago. But it was running FreeBSD as a headless server, so that's not particularly useful experience here.
Personally at the minimum I recommend a pc with atleast 4gb of ram, 1gb video card, 2ghz processor & windows 7. The game will generally run pretty well those specs. My hp has the specs except it runs at 3ghz.
I know a lot of Mac owners are not happy about the situation. Personally I love Macs and would love to have one. Problem is many game developers have difficulty writing code for both PC & Mac.
I'm sure it's just as upsetting that not all games are cross-platform between Personal Computers & Game consoles. It's not just for competitive reasons, it's being able to maintain service. Moreover, with gaming consoles at/going to Subscription based online connections, it becomes more expensive to the consumer.
Meaning x dollars for ISP + x dollars for xbox live/psn + online sub fee depending on the game & how it connects.
Macs aren't for gaming. Blame the OS or blame the gaming industry, that's just the way it is.
This times a thousand.
If you get a taste for gaming, and want to jump into it wholesale, one would be better off investing in a PC or console from the get go. I learned that a long time ago.
Leave the Macs to the workplace and business world, where they truly shine as a tool.
Has anything officially been stated by Cryptic about not being able to absorb the cost of keeping the MAC client open or are people making up their own conclusions ? as to why. All i've seen is
We wanted to come back to follow up on where we currently are with the Mac version of Star Trek Online. As some of you are aware, we had issues in the recent past that affected our players from launching the client and playing Star Trek Online. We were able to work with our partners to bring the game back up and deliver all the previously available promotions that were unattainable by those players.
Following these issues, we looked at our Mac support overall and determined that we cannot promise to deliver an experience on Mac that meets our expectations of quality. After heavy consideration, we have decided to end support for the Mac version of Star Trek Online on February 5th. No other version of Star Trek Online is impacted.
Here are some important notes as we shut down Mac support:
The Mac client will be unavailable for download starting on February 5th.
Anyone with an existing Mac client will be able to play, but the game will become permanently unavailable via our mac client by Spring of this year.
We will be shutting off C-Store for all Mac users to prevent players from continuing to make purchases before it permanently shuts down.
We will be processing reimbursements and refunds over the next few weeks.
We will be canceling and refunding any active recurring subscriptions purchased between October 1, 2015 and today, including Lifetime Subscriptions. If a payment was made other than a credit card or Paypal, the value of the subscription will be reimbursed to your Arc Account Balance.
We will be reimbursing any Zen that was purchased through Arc or Steam between October 1, 2015 and today to your Arc Account Balance.
We will be reimbursing the value of any Packs purchased through Arc or Steam between October 1, 2015 and today to your Arc Account Balance.
For those looking ton continue to play our game after we shut down the Mac client, we would recommend using any of the popular programs to simulate a windows environment on your Mac, including the free software Wine.
We appreciate all the Mac Captains who have flown through the galaxy with us since 2014.
Perfect World Entertainment
If you have any questions regarding your accounts or subscriptions, please contact our support team through https://support.arcgames.com/
Now other than the season 11 decibel that hit mac users personally after playing STO on both Mac OS and Windows the only real difference i experienced between the 2 was being able to have the graphics bar set a little higher on Windows. Now i don't know the behind scenes politics with having the 2 clients. But i can tell you from a playing perspective i lost very little in using Mac OS over Windows
Supporting Macs really isn't as hard as some people are making out. With very few exceptions due to Hackintoshes, the hardware and drivers being used are completely predictable; that's how programs like Cider can be used so simply. Also, the weird idea that using VMWare or Parallels means that the code is running on emulated processors... The whole reason there's such a proliferation of VM software is because the processors don't need to be emulated, because they're the same! And they're usually much higher spec than the average PC, because there's only two kinds of Apple - over-engineered, and seriously over-engineered. This is why system requirements lists usually include dozens of options for PC, but only a couple of lines for Macs.
I have Parallels installed with the last legal copy of Windows I ever purchased - XP, upgraded from SP2 to SP3. I set this up when made the jump from PC & got my first Intel Mac, because I was so sure I'd need access to all my old tinkering toys... And you know what, I never did. I don't trust any of the newer versions of Windows, and it's almost impossible to run anything but 10 without it forcing you to upgrade, opening you up to who knows how many different kinds of virus or trojan etc. so there's no way I'm spending enough to keep using this game non-natively - if cost is indeed a factor, I'd have thought that spending this money on in-game purchases would be a much better show of support! Hell, I could afford a lifetime membership for less that it'll take to be able to run a more modern copy of Windows.
Still no word on how this refund is supposed to work... If it comes to it, I don't care if my account gets banned so I'll just do a chargeback through my credit card for "failure to provide services as advertised."
Supporting Macs really isn't as hard as some people are making out.
Supporting the hardware is easy. Supporting the software, that's where it gets a little harder. Heck, there are games out there with Linux support (Linux is a bit closer to OS X, after all) that don't support OS X!
It's not at all unusual for a game to be developed using some OS-specific library or another for easier development - in fact, that seems to be the norm. I've even seen games that are developed for multiple OSes, and work pretty much the same on all of them, but the underlying code still relies on various libraries that are fundamentally incompatible with each other. (Shogun 2, I'm looking at you and your inability to handle mixed-OS multiplayer.)
Short of rebuilding the entire client from scratch, for both Windows and OS X, and continuing simultaneous development on both versions of the client, I don't expect they can do anything they haven't already done to solve the issue. Whatever they already have done obviously wasn't enough or couldn't be sustained over a prolonged period without unwanted expense, so they pulled the plug.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Has anything officially been stated by Cryptic about not being able to absorb the cost of keeping the MAC client open or are people making up their own conclusions ? as to why. All i've seen is
It is speculation, but it seems a reasonable one? It might be a bit more complicated, of course, but it boils down to it not being financially sensible. Maybe it's not even entirely unprofitable - just not as profitable as spending the resources elsewhere.
The step of deliberately making your game inaccessible to customers and offering them refunds for subscriptions - is very rare, and usually implies strong economical reasons.
They probably had the choice of investing a lot more money to improve the Mac support - or not doing that and letting players constantly suffer through outages and serious bugs. IT could be the cost changed - maybe a contract ended, or whoever did the port stopped offering it and they would need to shop around for a new one, and there isn't anyone available soon enough and/or affordable enough for it.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Has anything officially been stated by Cryptic about not being able to absorb the cost of keeping the MAC client open or are people making up their own conclusions ? as to why. All i've seen is
It is speculation, but it seems a reasonable one? It might be a bit more complicated, of course, but it boils down to it not being financially sensible. Maybe it's not even entirely unprofitable - just not as profitable as spending the resources elsewhere.
The step of deliberately making your game inaccessible to customers and offering them refunds for subscriptions - is very rare, and usually implies strong economical reasons.
They probably had the choice of investing a lot more money to improve the Mac support - or not doing that and letting players constantly suffer through outages and serious bugs. IT could be the cost changed - maybe a contract ended, or whoever did the port stopped offering it and they would need to shop around for a new one, and there isn't anyone available soon enough and/or affordable enough for it.
It's far simpler than that....
Cryptic used Transgaming to port the game so it would run on a mac (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TransGaming). Transgaming sold the cider part of the company to Nvidia shortly after, and therefore there was no further development. Cryptic never actually improved the client, and didn't really need to divide resources in order for it to keep running. What has probably now happened is that several updates in the launcher have caused the cider wrapper to fall over, and seeing as there's no one in Cryptic to fix such a problem, they have to outsource it... which is expensive.
So all the people thinking because there's no mac client, all the bugs into the windows version will now get fixed are going to get a big disappointment. As far as Cryptic are concerned, they're one and the same.
PWE / Cryptic is a business, not a charity. They are not obligated to throw away money literally for your amusement.
Actually, if they want to keep my business, they are obligated to entertain/amuse me. That is how a 'business' works: not by fleecing people, but by providing a service that they can use and wish to use. Derp derp.
They can't afford to keep your business - supporting OS X is losing them money.
If it costs them (say) $60,000 a month* in developer salaries and benefits to develop and maintain the client but OS X players only spend $40,000 then they lose $240,000 every year that they keep offering the OS X client.
So again: PWE / Cryptic is a business, not a charity. They are not obligated to throw away money literally for your amusement. They gave OS X a try, the numbers don't work for them. To continue offering OS X at a loss would be charitable work not good business.
* numbers purely speculative
If Cryptic cant make money, its THEIR problem, not mine! Don't try to spin it in the way that it is a costumer fault! When I downloaded game client and spent money, we enter LAW BINDING CONTRACT AGREEMENT, and Cryptic failed to deliver its prat. So, if they loosing money its because how their run their business.
Exactly. They are LOSING money with the Mac client, thus they are dropping support for it and issuing refunds of any Subs or LTS memberships paid by those who used said Mac client retroactively back to 10/1/15. No, it's not 'your fault' for using said client, but they ARE informing and reimbursing Mac customers to a point.
That's the decision they made to improve the game's bottom line profitability, which is what most business would do if a version of the product/service they provide is not seen as profitable. It IS their problem, and they are correcting what they see AS the problem.
Not the way they did it. I played this game not to get reimbursement with GTFO latter. Restarting client 3 times per hour was frustrating enough, but after last few events which I couldn't finish BECAUSE CRYPTIC FAULT, I wrote to costumer serves, the told me to wait. FOR THIS??? loosing money with mac client (or for whatever other reason) and wanted to fix it is understandable, but its not only about that. You think about choices you need to give to the costumers if your service or product are faulty, not just what you need to recall. Its not about game client, its HOW they run whole operation. If somebody still consider "Lifetime Subscriptions", well, with that approach that "lifetime" more likely would be short.
PWE / Cryptic is a business, not a charity. They are not obligated to throw away money literally for your amusement.
Actually, if they want to keep my business, they are obligated to entertain/amuse me. That is how a 'business' works: not by fleecing people, but by providing a service that they can use and wish to use. Derp derp.
They can't afford to keep your business - supporting OS X is losing them money.
If it costs them (say) $60,000 a month* in developer salaries and benefits to develop and maintain the client but OS X players only spend $40,000 then they lose $240,000 every year that they keep offering the OS X client.
So again: PWE / Cryptic is a business, not a charity. They are not obligated to throw away money literally for your amusement. They gave OS X a try, the numbers don't work for them. To continue offering OS X at a loss would be charitable work not good business.
* numbers purely speculative
If Cryptic cant make money, its THEIR problem, not mine! Don't try to spin it in the way that it is a costumer fault! When I downloaded game client and spent money, we enter LAW BINDING CONTRACT AGREEMENT, and Cryptic failed to deliver its prat. So, if they loosing money its because how their run their business.
Your statement about entering a "LAW BINDING CONTRACT AGREEMENT" is wrong on so many levels that I can't begin to understand how you have not read the ToS. I suggest you read it and say where they are breaking the law! They reserve the right to make changes and alter/cancel the service as THEY SEE FIT! The very fact they have given reasonable notice of the termination of support for the MAC client negates any argument that you could ever possibly present for them breaking the law and that's despite them offering a generous refund of Subs/LTS, by which they are under no obligation to give! Also, at no point have Cryptic or any player claimed this was the 'players' fault. Simple fact is the service is not sustainable due to whatever reasoning that Cryptic applies. Whether that be the overheads to maintain the MAC client and program are too high, or new systems coming in that might not be easily supported on the MAC client.
You have no idea what are you talking about, I never said they breaking the law, and its not about changes. Its about seller- buyer relationships. RTFM
Comments
They can't afford to keep your business - supporting OS X is losing them money.
If it costs them (say) $60,000 a month* in developer salaries and benefits to develop and maintain the client but OS X players only spend $40,000 then they lose $240,000 every year that they keep offering the OS X client.
So again: PWE / Cryptic is a business, not a charity. They are not obligated to throw away money literally for your amusement. They gave OS X a try, the numbers don't work for them. To continue offering OS X at a loss would be charitable work not good business.
* numbers purely speculative
If Cryptic cant make money, its THEIR problem, not mine! Don't try to spin it in the way that it is a costumer fault! When I downloaded game client and spent money, we enter LAW BINDING CONTRACT AGREEMENT, and Cryptic failed to deliver its prat. So, if they loosing money its because how their run their business.
Dude the OS X client never worked properly. In two years it never did. That's the worst part: saying it's grown to be too much of a struggle to keep it updated when they never really cared about it.
Yes, shame on the customer for being upset when the company pulls a product because of poor financial planning and operations. Shame on the customer! After all, customers should be THANKING the company for suddenly cutting access to the product for which they have had a reasonable expectation of use!
Are you so wedded to your apologist stance that you cannot see how risible are the implications of your position? Who is arguing that this is not a 'smart business move' on purely financial lines (although along customer goodwill lines it may prove to be otherwise)? This is a straw man argument against which you are sallying forth to little logical effect.
In any case, making a 'smart business move' does not excuse the company of the additional results of that decision, such as customer dissatisfaction. Perhaps it does save them money (although you have offered only speculation; and their avowed position is one of quality not money). Employing people as wage-slaves would also save money--and yet there would be reasonable disatisfaction with that as well. A company does not get a free pass for every action by saying, "Ah, but it makes us more money this way."
In short, waving your hand and saying, "It's smart business!" does not somehow magically invalidate customer dissatisfaction with that 'smart business' manoeuvre.
True, but those customers should understand that this action was not done out of laziness, anti-Mac bias or malice. Or incompetence, except in the sense that with 20-20 hindsight they should never have developed the OS X client at all.
Tried updating drivers says drivers all up to date.
Downloaded Nvidia Geforce Experience to see if drivers could be installed. However this software won't install as it doesn't recognise my GPU.
So right now i'm further than i am with bootcamp whereas i have windows 7 working with a keyboard and mouse. But cannot run STO as i get Fatal Error. Unable to create Directx Render device. yada yada yada.
This is due to graphics card not being detected and i'm not PC savvy enough to figure it out.
Right now i'm starting think is Star Trek Online really worth the hassle of trying to install an emulator be it Virtualbox/Wine or Windows via bootcamp. Why as a customer i'm i having to jump through hoops because Cryptic decided they didn't want to support my OS anymore. Why am i going to all these lengths to play a video game that I'VE SUPPORTED over the years despite a list of things they have done, that if they were my phone provider, internet provider or bank i'd have changed providers.
Maybe the few hours of joy i get a day from this game could better be used on a new hobby, One that supports me as much as i support it.
Seriously considering once the MAC launcher is closed so is my time with this game. I shouldn't have to be fooling around with various softwares to play this game.
That's why it won't use your real graphics card drivers. VMWare and Parallels offer better fake graphics cards (still faked), but only Boot Camp runs on the native hardware and uses your native graphics card drivers.
It's perfectly reasonable to not want to jump through ten hoops just to play STO. Maybe someone will post a good, up-to-date guide on using WINE wtih the current STO. WINE does talk to your real graphics card.
I have a working Wine version of the game downloaded off these forums when season 11 hit. But it tends to have key bind issues. Mainly with the left mouse button. Only way to fix them back is to shut the game but it maybe as quick as every 10 mins or an hour before the key binds go wonky
targeting/untargeting stops working
Holstering/Unholstering or changing weapon stops working.
Using mouse buttons to drag the camera.
A couple of small things i can't remember right now
It's petty/little things but the camera one is the biggest pain as using the mouse to adjust the camera angle is easier than binding it to a keyboard key. esp as my main key functions are the arrow keys and space bar for piloting and shooting. Played that way for 5 years so hard to adjust. It'd be like being left handed and trying to learn to write with you're right hand. It just wouldn't feel nature
Yes, they dropped the ball on that one. They should have been the ones to prepare up-to-date WINE instructions, and offer them at the same time as they announced this.
The problem is that then it'll look like Wine is supported, and when it breaks, there'll be a lot of complaints.
I'll miss the pew pew, and the awesome space ships. But I've already moved onto greener pastures, like Marvel Heroes 2016. As well as far better games and gaming companies.
All the best. Thanks for the fun.
@pwlaughingtrendy who do I speak to about having my arc/crytpic account deleted?
well played, Cryptic, well played. The Nagus would be proud.
I suppose I should thank Cryptic/PWI though - I have hundreds of games installed and waiting for my attention that STO had distracted me from. Won't be a problem anymore.
Exactly. They are LOSING money with the Mac client, thus they are dropping support for it and issuing refunds of any Subs or LTS memberships paid by those who used said Mac client retroactively back to 10/1/15. No, it's not 'your fault' for using said client, but they ARE informing and reimbursing Mac customers to a point.
That's the decision they made to improve the game's bottom line profitability, which is what most business would do if a version of the product/service they provide is not seen as profitable. It IS their problem, and they are correcting what they see AS the problem.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
Your statement about entering a "LAW BINDING CONTRACT AGREEMENT" is wrong on so many levels that I can't begin to understand how you have not read the ToS. I suggest you read it and say where they are breaking the law! They reserve the right to make changes and alter/cancel the service as THEY SEE FIT! The very fact they have given reasonable notice of the termination of support for the MAC client negates any argument that you could ever possibly present for them breaking the law and that's despite them offering a generous refund of Subs/LTS, by which they are under no obligation to give! Also, at no point have Cryptic or any player claimed this was the 'players' fault. Simple fact is the service is not sustainable due to whatever reasoning that Cryptic applies. Whether that be the overheads to maintain the MAC client and program are too high, or new systems coming in that might not be easily supported on the MAC client.
Personally at the minimum I recommend a pc with atleast 4gb of ram, 1gb video card, 2ghz processor & windows 7. The game will generally run pretty well those specs. My hp has the specs except it runs at 3ghz.
I'm sure it's just as upsetting that not all games are cross-platform between Personal Computers & Game consoles. It's not just for competitive reasons, it's being able to maintain service. Moreover, with gaming consoles at/going to Subscription based online connections, it becomes more expensive to the consumer.
Meaning x dollars for ISP + x dollars for xbox live/psn + online sub fee depending on the game & how it connects.
This times a thousand.
If you get a taste for gaming, and want to jump into it wholesale, one would be better off investing in a PC or console from the get go. I learned that a long time ago.
Leave the Macs to the workplace and business world, where they truly shine as a tool.
Now other than the season 11 decibel that hit mac users personally after playing STO on both Mac OS and Windows the only real difference i experienced between the 2 was being able to have the graphics bar set a little higher on Windows. Now i don't know the behind scenes politics with having the 2 clients. But i can tell you from a playing perspective i lost very little in using Mac OS over Windows
I have Parallels installed with the last legal copy of Windows I ever purchased - XP, upgraded from SP2 to SP3. I set this up when made the jump from PC & got my first Intel Mac, because I was so sure I'd need access to all my old tinkering toys... And you know what, I never did. I don't trust any of the newer versions of Windows, and it's almost impossible to run anything but 10 without it forcing you to upgrade, opening you up to who knows how many different kinds of virus or trojan etc. so there's no way I'm spending enough to keep using this game non-natively - if cost is indeed a factor, I'd have thought that spending this money on in-game purchases would be a much better show of support! Hell, I could afford a lifetime membership for less that it'll take to be able to run a more modern copy of Windows.
Still no word on how this refund is supposed to work... If it comes to it, I don't care if my account gets banned so I'll just do a chargeback through my credit card for "failure to provide services as advertised."
Supporting the hardware is easy. Supporting the software, that's where it gets a little harder. Heck, there are games out there with Linux support (Linux is a bit closer to OS X, after all) that don't support OS X!
It's not at all unusual for a game to be developed using some OS-specific library or another for easier development - in fact, that seems to be the norm. I've even seen games that are developed for multiple OSes, and work pretty much the same on all of them, but the underlying code still relies on various libraries that are fundamentally incompatible with each other. (Shogun 2, I'm looking at you and your inability to handle mixed-OS multiplayer.)
Short of rebuilding the entire client from scratch, for both Windows and OS X, and continuing simultaneous development on both versions of the client, I don't expect they can do anything they haven't already done to solve the issue. Whatever they already have done obviously wasn't enough or couldn't be sustained over a prolonged period without unwanted expense, so they pulled the plug.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
The step of deliberately making your game inaccessible to customers and offering them refunds for subscriptions - is very rare, and usually implies strong economical reasons.
They probably had the choice of investing a lot more money to improve the Mac support - or not doing that and letting players constantly suffer through outages and serious bugs. IT could be the cost changed - maybe a contract ended, or whoever did the port stopped offering it and they would need to shop around for a new one, and there isn't anyone available soon enough and/or affordable enough for it.
It's far simpler than that....
Cryptic used Transgaming to port the game so it would run on a mac (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TransGaming). Transgaming sold the cider part of the company to Nvidia shortly after, and therefore there was no further development. Cryptic never actually improved the client, and didn't really need to divide resources in order for it to keep running. What has probably now happened is that several updates in the launcher have caused the cider wrapper to fall over, and seeing as there's no one in Cryptic to fix such a problem, they have to outsource it... which is expensive.
So all the people thinking because there's no mac client, all the bugs into the windows version will now get fixed are going to get a big disappointment. As far as Cryptic are concerned, they're one and the same.
Not the way they did it. I played this game not to get reimbursement with GTFO latter. Restarting client 3 times per hour was frustrating enough, but after last few events which I couldn't finish BECAUSE CRYPTIC FAULT, I wrote to costumer serves, the told me to wait. FOR THIS??? loosing money with mac client (or for whatever other reason) and wanted to fix it is understandable, but its not only about that. You think about choices you need to give to the costumers if your service or product are faulty, not just what you need to recall. Its not about game client, its HOW they run whole operation. If somebody still consider "Lifetime Subscriptions", well, with that approach that "lifetime" more likely would be short.
You have no idea what are you talking about, I never said they breaking the law, and its not about changes. Its about seller- buyer relationships. RTFM