[PODCAST] Tribbles in Ecstasy Take 236: "An Enterprising History"

midniteshadow7

Tribbles in Ecstasy Take 236: "An Enterprising History" has warped on to Holosuite Media, you can download and stream it from:

http://bit.ly/tie236

The crew of the USS Tribbles return to discuss this week’s news from Star Trek Online, Star Trek Timelines (0:41:19), Destination Star Trek Europe (0:46:15), Foundry Review (1:02:50), and Listener Feedback (1:29:20) plus a load more!


Our community question this week is:
What are your thoughts on the new K13 fleet holding in Star Trek Online?


LLAP

alex1ger

Hello, tribbles.

I'm not entirely sure where this feedback is going to go, so buckle up, you're in for a ride.

Okay, I travelled back in time (not really...) and I can tell you that for my next feedback I intend to talk about CaptainGeko, why that particular phrase on that particular interview was actually extremely worthy of praise (Yes, you read that right.) and yet so soul-crushingly bad at the same time.
And why TOS feds are nowhere near as much a faction as the romulans. It's not even close.


Community question:

More TOS stuff. Oh well, different folks, different strokes. It's just so annoying when they talk about "immersion" and then these relics are supposed to be on par with time-appropriate technology. And before you mention all the inconsistencies caused by... oh so many ships that should not be available to us, I know, I dislike them just as much.
This is more about using "immersion" as a buzzword while showing that they either don't understand the meaning of that word or they simply don't care.

Just because you can doesn't mean you should, unless you're Aperture Science.



"Agents of Yesterday: Artifacts" announcement:

So, you're really committed to bringing up "exploration", eh? I remember the last time you tried that. Season 11.5 "New Dawn". All that talk about going back to being explorers and diplomats. You even put it into the "story blurb" in the mission journal header. And what did we get? I guess what I'm trying to say is: I'll believe it, when I see it. And it's gonna take a lot more than one episode to convince me, because I do remember "Sunrise" and how quickly you abandoned that premise.



Feedback:

I am somewhat torn when it comes to this week's feedback.
MidNite, you make a lot of good points and I'd like to thank you for playing devil's advocate, the issue is just...
Where do I even begin... I really appreciate the devs showing up on podcasts. I have nothing but respect for the fact that they take time out of their busy friday afternoons/evenings (or whenever the other podcasts do their interviews) to answer questions that in some cases have been asked a billion times before. They deserve at least a round of applause for that. And praise. Don't forget the praise.

The problems start when they give out non-answers. I understand that they can't answer all questions, because some questions might be outside their area of expertise or above their pay grades or about things that have not been announced. I get that. And yes, MidNite, a lot of companies (and politicians) like to give out non-answers to cover their bases. But that doesn't change the fact that these non-answers are essentially a waste of everybody's time. If you have to give a non-answer, I'd vastly prefer it if you just got to the point. But maybe I'm weird. Who knows. No, I'm definitely weird.

You mentioned DanStahl as a "bad example". I disagree with you. I thoroughly enjoyed that level of communication. Same thing with Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street when he was still the lead systems designer for World of Warcraft. I enjoy picking a dev's brain (figuratively of course...). I enjoy it when a company like Blizzard explains why they are changing something. DanStahl was the one who wanted (and talked about!) "One sector block to rule them all." and later down the road he told us that it turned out to be too difficult/too much work to implement. And then Stephen D'Angelo took over and since he's a software engineer (or something like that, I don't quite remember) himself, he got the team to do it. That makes me wonder whether STO's software engineers misinformed DanStahl or whether Mr. D'Angelo is just so much better at his job compared to them. *shrugs*

You say "We looked into doing x and unfortunately we can't do it." is a negative thing to say. That's technically correct, but companies have done that before and while some players might look down on them, it did not hurt them in the long run. Well, unless they made that announcement AFTER the fact...
It made them appear (at least to me, and I'm probably not the only one...) more "human", more sympathetic. I, for one, miss the days of DanStahl. I miss the days of Ghostcrawler (although even without him Blizzard is more transparent than a lot of other companies out there...)

Oh, I almost forgot, you were mentioning bad publicity and Stoodogg made a good point concerning that.
Tell me, what do you think is worse publicity?
A game developer who admits to making a mistake and then takes full responsibility for it or a game developer getting blasted with average/bad reviews for releasing a game that desperately needed a few more weeks of polish? Go to metacritic and look at the four entries for Star Trek Online (PC launch, Legacy of Romulus, XBox One and PS4). We could talk about rating systems and metacritic and all that, but those scores, those reviews are out there and they stay out there, if you catch my drift.

Back to topic, before you say that Blizzard is a bad example, because they are somewhat unique... The last time Star Wars: The Old Republic rebalanced their classes, they tried to explain what they were trying to accomplish and they reacted to feedback. Now, I don't claim to know how much of that feedback was incorporated... But there was communication. Now tell me, do the Bioware Austin devs not answer to Electronic Arts and by extension EA's shareholders?

What about Lord of the Rings Online? Same thing with their class revamps. Do the Turbine devs not answer to Warner Brothers and by extension WB's shareholders?
And before you say that's not the same thing as talking about features that end up being discarded, a while ago there was a producer's letter from... whoever was in charge of LotRO at that time, talking about looking into possible improvements for the housing system. Some time later another producer's letter explained that they couldn't find a satisfactory way to revamp housing. Yes, players were disappointed, but LotRO is still around and they just announced their next update. Including "premium housing". I still need to read up on what that actually means, but they mentioned they would still support regular housing, so it's some kind of new system.

Other game companies DO engage with their communities. Livestreams exist. "State of the game" blogs/"Producer's letters" exist. The STO dev team does the "Meet the devs" at STLV. The SWTOR team does something similar, called the "Community Cantina tour". The devs show up at a convention, these meetups happen at a bar near the convention, players show up to talk to the devs, there's usually some sort of Q&A and podcasters and bloggers take notes and talk about that stuff on their podcasts/blogs. I might have missed it, but were there any news that came out of the "Meet the devs" at STLV? If so, please point me in that direction. I'd like to know.
That reminds me, having all these interviews and podcasts and blogs just flying around all over the internet... Remember CaptainSmirk and his "Operations Report"? Yeah, that was a nice idea that died quickly and then Smirk was laid off and that was the end of it. But the "Operations Report" could have been used to gather all the links to recent interviews in a central "official" place. If Perfect World was interested in engaging with the community. But then again, I still can't seem to find a devtracker on these forums, so... uhm... yeah.

Oh and yes, MidNite, people (especially on the internet) will complain about everything. You cannot win, no matter what you do. So there are two solutions... You can change jobs or you can face the internet with dignity and determination. I'm sure DanStahl and Ghostcrawler acted as "lightning rods" for a lot of players, but some of us really appreciate what they've done. People like them make me feel like a valued customer instead of a walking wallet.