[PODCAST] Tribbles in Ecstasy Take 239: "Everything's Broken!"

midniteshadow7

Tribbles in Ecstasy Take 239: "Everything's Broken!" has warped on to Holosuite Media, you can download and stream it from: http://bit.ly/tie239

Despite DDOS attacks taking out many parts of the internet and problems streaming, the Tribbles in Ecstasy crew still do a show and go through this week’s Star Trek news from Star Trek Online (0:04:50), Star Trek Timelines (0:56:49), Star Trek News (1:01:40), Star Trek Beyond (1:18:54), Listener Feedback (1:35:38) and more!


Our community questions this week are:
1. What do you think about the Sphere Builder lockbox announcement?
2. Are you looking forward to the Artifacts release and if so, What most are you looking forward to?
3. Did you get an expanded edition of beyond and if so, which special edition extras did you get?

alex1ger

Hello, tribbles.

So much to talk about, so little time...



Community questions:

1.) Well, I think I called it a few feedbacks ago. Sphere builder lockbox. Because all the enemy ships end up in lockboxes since... uhm... Legacy of Romulus? Apart from that, I guess a 4/2 science vessel with a hangar bay and (if you get the "consolation prize"-ship) access to frigate pets is something I don't remember seeing before.

2.) No, I wasn't. We heard this whole "there's gonna be exploration!" before and what did we get? Another half-baked war story. *yawn* Yes, I know. It was "exciting" because of time travel. *roll eyes*
I will admit that I enjoyed the new episode "Echoes of light", but I also kinda enjoyed "Sunrise" and then we got a few episodes that made me (figuratively) pull my hair out. So I'm still skeptical. And just to be clear, I can enjoy an episode even if it has issues/flaws. Like "Butterfly" or "Midnight" or the already mentioned "Sunrise". But I will not talk about any of those issues/"headscratchers", yet.
Uhm... what else... K-13 fleet holding? Whatever.
Lighting changes? Well, I'm still on the DirectX 9 version, because my PC doesn't play nice with STO's DirectX 11, so no new lighting for me. But I was rather unhappy that you let a bug slip through that changed my renderscale to something below 1. I do not appreciate it when games mess with my settings.

3.) Nope.



Feedback:


Communication, Community and you 102:


Do I really have to? Again? *sobs*


Where do I even begin? Let's talk about the console infographic.

First, 1.1 million captains (we know from the PC infographics that captains != accounts/players) across both consoles sounds somewhat impressive, but I first read about the infographic on MassivelyOP and someone in the comments made a good point: How do 1.1 million characters and 2.7 million bridge officers go together? That means each of those characters has on average 2.45 bridge officers. Just getting through the tutorial brings you up to at least 4 bridge officers.
Let that thought sink in for a moment.

Second, remember how we didn't get an infographic this year? Well, no company EVER can shut up about their achievements/accolades. Warhammer Online (or rather Warhammer: Age of Reckoning) put out press releases about how it was the fastest growing MMO ever. And when they stopped growing, their press releases slowed down at first and then stopped. Same thing with Star Wars: The Old Republic.
Or look at EVE Online. They kept publishing their subscriber numbers as long as they were still growing (slowly, but steadily). When the numbers stopped increasing, CCP stopped talking about them.
World of Warcraft was probably the only MMO that kept publishing numbers even when they started declining. Until Warlords of Draenor happened and they just lost subscribers left and right.
I, for one, will be watching STO's upcoming seventh anniversary very intently.


Now let's look at this week's release:
There was a launch blog by our EP, Stephen Ricossa, and I will not nitpick it. Because I got bigger fish to fry. There is no mention of the kit revamp in the blog. And there is especially no mention of the 12 inventory slots everybody received for free.
There was mention of a reward code after the blog, but then that code was edited out. Just pretending it never happened. But people started asking around. Apparently some people got that code via e-mail. And then MidNite showed up in one of the threads asking about that code and promised to investigate. And the answer he got was: The code could be exploited and there is no plan to come up with something else.

See, those 12 inventory slots and that "reward code" COULD have been turned into good PR. A gesture of generosity. (If we ignore the fact that you skipped the annual "end of summer" giveaway. *cough cough*) To build some good will. And then everything blew up and people got unhappy.
How would I have handled this? Well, mention the 12 inventory slots for starters. You gave those out for free, but nobody ever mentioned them in any official capacity (and no, that one dev (was it spartan?) on the forums doesn't count because... NO DEVTRACKER!).
And the person who edited Ricossa's blog post to pull the reward code? Edit in a sentence or two that explain that there was "something" there, but you ran into an unfortunate and unforeseen issue and you're investigating if/how you can rectify the situation. And then thank the readers for their patience and understanding.
But no, SOMEONE thought it would be better to just edit it out and pretend it never happened. That NEVER works. (Especially when you send out e-mails containing that particular code...) All you do is make people even more upset.

Last week I mentioned how telling us "Next stop: Delta Quadrant" before the announcement of Delta Rising was bad. See, I do not want to know everything. I want data miners out there, because I want to catch glimpses of what might be coming up. I want to speculate. Tell me about this one amazing feature you're working on. Hint at something else. Do NOT tell me about next expansion's content before you announce it. Do NOT put it where data miners can find it!
If you talk about a feature, do NOT tell me that it is in the next expansion until after the expansion announcement. Do NOT even hint at it.
If it is part of the next season? Tell me all about it.
But expansions SHOULD be shrouded in mystery, speculation, excitement!

And now let's talk about timing. This week's release notes contained a lot of stuff. You just keep fixing the leveling content and adding to it. That is great! And just on time for the upcoming release of AoY!
What? AoY is not upcoming? It has been released already? Oh well, it's only been a week, so there's probably plenty of people that haven't played through it, yet!
What? It has been a few months? Uhm... Surely they fixed stuff for the upcoming temporal recruit event!
What? The event, that is supposed to get people to level a new character, happened with the release of the expansion? But that does not make any sense. I mean, there is a new faction and that should be incentive enough to...
What do you mean? The connotations of the word "faction" made marketing feel uncomfortable? But... isn't it usually marketing that tends to over-hype... Oh...
At this point in time I have neither enough faces nor enough palms to properly express my feelings.

You know, you really need to work on...
*walks away, prepares some food, eats it, decides to play some Hearthstone and then returns*
... your timing.

Unless the temporal recruit event is about to return. That would be the only halfway satisfying explanation. But even then, first impressions, Cryptic/Perfect World, first impressions...