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Give Cryptic Employees Higher Pay
iconians
Member Posts: 6,987 Arc User
I was mulling this over for a long while, while thinking about where Cryptic's budget goes. We know that voice talent is expensive, and that Cryptic drops large amounts of money on Star Trek alumni to reprise their roles for the game -- which, while incredibly awesome, and enriching the Star Trek Online experience, is still considerably expensive.
STO doesn't seem to be winding down or anything, and by all accounts continues to seek new growth (with the PS4 and Xbone), and with that, comes new forms of revenue. AoY is launching next month, which is the 3rd expansion for STO, and we know that they have plans for the game beyond that.
Instead of taking the time to write about what I want out of the game for myself, I'm going to make a seldomly-requested feature for any video game developer to hear.
That's higher wages for Cryptic Studios employees. We know that in the Bay Area (which includes Los Gatos), demand for talent is high, and that competition for drawing in additional manpower with technical skills is fairly important. Furthermore, it's easy to forget that these employees are human beings, who have their own bills to pay and their own families to take care of, and who have their own problems to solve.
We can give Cryptic all the feedback we want, whether it be criticism or praise. But at the end of the day, money does more and says more than anonymous comments on the internet.
I'm sure some people will chime in and give their two cents over why Cryptic employees don't deserve better pay because of their own negative opinion on the game (and I have plenty of those negative opinions, too), but we should place the blame where it lies, at the top of the ladder, rather than the bottom rungs of the ladder where the majority of the development of the game takes place.
Like many of you, these are people who just come to do a job 8-12 hours a day (or more, depending on the development cycle), and many are on a fixed salary rather than an hourly wage. The majority have no real say in what goes on their plate, and so I find it hard to say they don't deserve better pay for something ultimately outside of their control, despite some of my criticisms of the game.
So, this is my official player feedback asking for PWE to consider granting all Cryptic employees (even the ones I may not agree with) higher pay. Your revenue appears healthy enough to increase the amount of money going into payroll, and by offering higher monetary incentives, you encourage more productive workflow, and appear more attractive in the job market, allowing you to compete with other companies for talented men and women with the skills STO needs to be a better game.
STO doesn't seem to be winding down or anything, and by all accounts continues to seek new growth (with the PS4 and Xbone), and with that, comes new forms of revenue. AoY is launching next month, which is the 3rd expansion for STO, and we know that they have plans for the game beyond that.
Instead of taking the time to write about what I want out of the game for myself, I'm going to make a seldomly-requested feature for any video game developer to hear.
That's higher wages for Cryptic Studios employees. We know that in the Bay Area (which includes Los Gatos), demand for talent is high, and that competition for drawing in additional manpower with technical skills is fairly important. Furthermore, it's easy to forget that these employees are human beings, who have their own bills to pay and their own families to take care of, and who have their own problems to solve.
We can give Cryptic all the feedback we want, whether it be criticism or praise. But at the end of the day, money does more and says more than anonymous comments on the internet.
I'm sure some people will chime in and give their two cents over why Cryptic employees don't deserve better pay because of their own negative opinion on the game (and I have plenty of those negative opinions, too), but we should place the blame where it lies, at the top of the ladder, rather than the bottom rungs of the ladder where the majority of the development of the game takes place.
Like many of you, these are people who just come to do a job 8-12 hours a day (or more, depending on the development cycle), and many are on a fixed salary rather than an hourly wage. The majority have no real say in what goes on their plate, and so I find it hard to say they don't deserve better pay for something ultimately outside of their control, despite some of my criticisms of the game.
So, this is my official player feedback asking for PWE to consider granting all Cryptic employees (even the ones I may not agree with) higher pay. Your revenue appears healthy enough to increase the amount of money going into payroll, and by offering higher monetary incentives, you encourage more productive workflow, and appear more attractive in the job market, allowing you to compete with other companies for talented men and women with the skills STO needs to be a better game.
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Oh, and they will get more money too or even hire more folks.
I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born!
Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
Well, they already have. Employees come and go. Some devs who used to work on STO now work for other companies. Likewise, there are devs at other game companies who leave to come work for Cryptic. It's just the nature of the game industry.
Higher pay helps with employee retention, and although it's not always the sole motivating factor, it's a pretty big one.
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What does matter is the quality of product that is put out, and quality is not always incentivized by money, especially in the professional world. Lets focus on the quality, and let Cryptics leadership make the decisions on what they have to do to offer the staff the tools they neesd to be successful.
We have no problems pointing out what Cryptic's leadership could be doing better on a myriad of other topics related to the game. I see no reason why encouraging higher pay should be considered any different.
Yes, PWE/Crytpic should offer competitive wages to their developers, and perhaps even increase the size of the STO dev team somewhat. It is a fairly well-known fact that the STO team isn't terribly large, and considering how well STO is keeping pace with other, larger, MMOs we can only imagine how much better STO could be with a larger team.
Increasing the budget for STO could only be an investment into future profits for PWE, as there will always be Star Trek fans and continuing to develop STO as a high quality game will undoubtedly result in more fans playing STO, and buying STO items...
Don't misunderstand, I'm not a groupie or other kind of person suffering from 'blind faith' in STO, I am fully aware that there are parts of the game that are... less than perfect, but these things won't get fixed if Cryptic doesn't allocate the man-hours to doing so. So, increasing Cryptic's budget would only increase the likelihood of getting these things fixed.
Granted, it may not be as bad as Neverwinter -- I have no experience with that game -- but it's already bad enough that devs have said at various points (for the past couple years, at least) that almost nothing new gets created without it making money for PWE.
Now, you could argue that "keeping up with the Kard...er...MMOs" type stuff still happens, like the new skill revamp (which I still despise) and the streamlined (i.e., less story, BOO!) leveling progressing. But keeping up with other games could easily be seen as revenue-generating, since it's what keeps people coming back. (Well, in PWE's minds anyway...it's what keeps attracting the gamers back for a couple weeks/months until they get bored. But those are the people who spend money on the game to avoid grind too, so you do the math.)
I'm all in favor of Cryptic employees getting more money, both as a reward for fine work and as a retention incentive. But I fear that would end up wasted as the game gets simplified into ever more of an easy-mode grindy money-funneling mechanism.
the question is why should they be given a pay rise? a lot of their content is substandard despite their claims it is top quality. sure then its released there are bound to be issues, but the facts are those the game has a lot of bugs within it and cryptic has a tendency for laying a new surface over the substandard stuff underneath and eventually the cracks will show again. their customer service if they have any is lacking considerably and cryptic staff hardly communicate with the playerbase as much as the playerbase would like. some of their previous choices are also suspect.
if it is the leader of each department that is at fault or just the men on top of the whole thing does not matter, it is a team effort all round, if one is given cold shoulder, they all share that blame regardless. if you looked back over the years, i challenge you to find me a large content upload (not a specific small bit, but overall content upload) that was free of issues and didnt have players complaining about it.
i remember back when DR had its moment with the meme, i never took part in that but i remember a lot of players complaining how cryptic tended to gloss over details, omit facts for thin information that looked like propaganda in some ways. hell at one point one of the cryptic people apologized to the forum community over some of their content that it was so bad and they intended to fix it.
do they deserve a pay rise? when the quality of cryptic itself rises above the path of least resistance, perhaps, but as it is, sto is a mess, CO is a liability and NWO is just average. they got a very long way to go before in my opinion they could be considered for it.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
most players make 100 zen + 1mili ec per hour and maybe more .that is generous. so the game is not a cash grab. if you know how to play. my suggestion is the temporal pack for example it is now available but only for real money. when it hits z store it should cost at least 50% more. so the game and the team can make money ...
The reason why we shouldnt involve ourselves in the pay of Cryptic employees is because that is a truely private matter for them, and none of our business. Personally, its really in poor taste to even try to discuss things like this in a public forum, especially when one doesn't really know anything about the topic.
If you, or anyone else, wants to be involved in thier pay, buy a controlling share of the company.
I just got back into it from a VERY extended break(ie last I played Neverwinter was before feywild) and let me tell you bro, STO has NOTHING on it... this game is gloriously free compared to Neverwinter.
Most? I don't think so... would love to have that kinda income
First off, let's put the Customer Service problem squarely where it belongs... On PWE.
Cryptic employees no longer have anything to do with it, it's all taken care of by PWE.
For example, Trendy is not a Cryptic employee, she works for PWE.
So let's just put that bandwagon back in the garage.
And let us also get rid of the high and mighty notion that the Dev's have to communicate more than They already do in the forums.
They don't HAVE to talk to us at all, but a few are more than willing, at least until somebody goes off on Them in a rage/rant.
One last thing, please point out a large addition to ANY MMO game that DIDN'T have some problems in it.
The rest you can have.
I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born!
Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
That retention means that Cryptic must treat it's employees fairly well, monetarily and/or otherwise. The employees seem incredibly dedicated to the games their working on. We know that several are passionate enough about the Star Trek IP that they work on projects for the game in their off hours. That's dedication. It also displays a sense that things must be well enough behind the scenes, because no matter how much you care about your work, a horrible work environment can suck the life right out of that and make you just count the minutes until you can punch the clock and go home.
Retention is great for the playerbase as well. It provides continuity and projects the air of stability behind the scenes. It's always great to see that same faces commenting on various elements of STO year after year.
I've got no idea what goes on behind the scenes at Cryptic, but whatever they're doing, it appears to be working. I'll leave it up to them how they handle their payroll, bonuses and the like. It's their budget, and they seem to know how to distribute it fine.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
I think it's our business as customers to see to it that the companies we do business with reward their employees well for hard work. Some people find themselves more agreeable to doing business with companies that have shown that they treat their employees well.
It's our business as human beings that we treat each other fairly. I don't think there is anything "private" about sharing a general sense of compensation with people you routinely deal with. I don't go into the specifics of payroll, because that is where I think the "private" line is drawn. But, I just don't see anything in "poor taste" about encouraging increased pay across the board.
I'm also not trying to insinuate that Cryptic doesn't compensate their employees well, or fairly. I just recognize that the company is doing well financially, and maybe there's some room to share a bit more with the employees who make it happen, for the benefit of the company, and for the benefit of the game (and all games under Cryptic Studios).
We may not always agree with some of the changes that have happened in STO, but one thing that cannot be denied... is the dev's commitment and passion for the game.
Personally, I'd like to see more hires and less hours put through on employees. I'm not against giving more funds to developers of course. They certainly earn it.
You have most certainly mistepped your role in you relationship with Cryptic and its employees. Just because you have what you considered to "routinely deal with" doesnt mean its your business, or are in the position to tell Cryptic that is "general" compensation if "unfair" and that they need to raise it, its the business of the employer and employees.
The employees are fully capable of making thier own decisions when they enter employment, and when reviews are made, leading to increases in thier own pay, or determining where to be employed, they can and will act on thier own behalf, and Cryptic will or will not make a decision to stay with whatever pay structure that either does or does not keep them competitive in thier market, and be successful in keeping employees or not. Its not your business.
If speculation on where they are in competitive compensation compells you to "act", the. Dont do business with them.
And I do believe that @jodarkrider or someone else will be putting an end to this thread, once they see it.
this is our way to appreciate the teams work
If you, or anyone else, want to dictate what others should think, how they should act. buy a controlling share of their thoughts.
With respect, I think you're reading into something that isn't there. My feedback is based from a position of appreciation for the game, and all the hard work and genuine passion put into it.
The only thing that compelled me to act was little more than dev appreciation, and appreciation for the game itself, and an understanding that people in general should be thanked for hard work.
I'm sorry that you feel this thread is breaking some kind of forum rule, as I and others in this thread have attempted to be constructive in our feedback, and for the most part I think this thread has been fairly civil, even if not everybody agrees. PWE has always been fair with developer praise as well as criticism, and they've shown a genuine interest in what players would like to see.
This may not be the usual feedback one sees about a video game, but I don't think it makes it any less valid, because gratitude is still gratitude, in any form. People are people regardless of roles or socioeconomic status.
FTFY. "Knowing how to play" and "willing to put hours and hours into endlessly repetitive grinding on a couple dozen alts" are not the same thing.
hours and hours?! i clearly stated per hour. how those hours are spent, on "grinding" or fun is up to you. for some players how to play the game is fun for others how to play the system.
and adwynyth changing what i wrote inside the quote is ...
At the end of each training cycle where I work, the customers get a critique sheet to tell us how they think we did our job. In nearly every case, one or more of them writes down we driver trainers deserve to get paid more than we do.
Like most people at work we driver trainers do not bring up nor participate in any public conversation about our pay package. When Corporate reads comments such as these from students, they get very huffy. I have been accused on more than one occasion by some useless desk pilot at Corporate of attempting to feather my own nest. To the point where whenever I hand out these critique sheets now, I specifically tell the students not to write such a thing down.
I can safely assume the people at Cryptic, after reading something like what Iconians posted, feel just as appreciated.