The F.C.T. (Frequently Created Threads) List 2.0

baddmoonrizin

Hi all!

Welcome to the new F.C.T. (Frequently Created Threads) List. The original F.C.T. post can be found here for archival reference. This new thread was created in an attempt to better organize topics, make them (hopefully) easier to find, and make it easier for Moderators to add to/edit it when needed.

The Community Moderation Team constantly sees questions that are asked over and over again, even after developers have provided answers. As such, those questions that we see most frequently and their respective answers are now located here, in the Frequently Created Threads list.

Please understand that the answers provided in this thread are from Developers, Community Managers, or Management of Cryptic Studios, so consider them 100% official.

This list also contains some topics which are no longer allowed for new discussion, because they lead to major moderation issues: flaming, trolling, warnings, thread closures, bans, etc.

Any threads created about the topics in this list will be closed with a reference to this F.C.T. list. We will continue to keep the list updated as needed.

If you think something should be added to this list or have questions about it, please send a PM to any Moderator or the Community Manager. Additionally, if significant changes in game development effect one of these topics that could re-open discussion of them, please let us know.

The community forums are for the use and enjoyment of the entire player community, and you are urged to comply with all Terms of Service and Community Rules and Policies when using said community forums.

Thank you for your cooperation.

BaddMoonRizin
Community Moderator

baddmoonrizin

F.C.T. Topics Listing

1) The Star Trek Online License
2) Star Trek Online 2.0
3) Scheduled Maintenance Downtimes
4) ARC is Full of Bloat/Spyware
5) Will We See My X Transfer Over to Console/PC?
6) Steam Usage Stats Prove the Game is Dying!
7) T5U vs T6 is Wrong and Here Is My Solution to Upgrade to T6
8) Tovan Khev Needs to be Dismissable
9) Dev's Don't Read Our Bug Reports/Don't Come on the Forums!
10) Full Custom Starship Interiors
11) Flying Your Ship from the Bridge
12) Kickstarter Threads
13) Day/Night Cycles and Lighting 2.0
14) Why No Vortas or Female Jem'Hadar in the Dominion Faction?
15) Inclusion of Fan-Designed Ships or Ships from Other Star Trek Licensees
16) Disco Balls (Party Amplifer) Threads
17) Doom Threads
18) General Rage Threads
19) General Demand Threads
20) Rank/Level/Title Change Threads
21) Threads with Vague or Incomplete Thread Titles
22) Gatekeeping
23) Account-wide Unlock of Lockbox, Lobi, and/or R&D Promotion Ships
24) The Foundry
25) Dilithium Refinement Cap Increase
26) Why Can't We Customize Weapons Color?
27) PVP Development, Balancing, and Promotion
28) Adding New Reputation Tracks


NOTE: Topic Listings below in YELLOW are topics/questions where an official response/answer has been provided. Topic Listings below in RED are topics that are no longer allowed due to causing forum moderation issues: flaming, trolling, harassment, etc.

baddmoonrizin

Reserved for Future Use

baddmoonrizin

Reserved for Future Use

baddmoonrizin

1) The Star Trek Online License

People keep thinking/claiming that the license is going to expire.

Official Answer from Brandon (former Community Manager) -

pwebranflakes wrote: »

STO's license does not end in 2015. Our exclusive contract extends for years beyond that and we have the option to renew.

Cheers,

Brandon =/\=

baddmoonrizin

2) Star Trek Online 2.0

Since the license isn't due to expire for some time, "nothing has been announced," regarding a STO 2.0 either.

baddmoonrizin

3) Scheduled Maintenance Downtimes

This comes up quite often with people asking why downtime is always at the same time and why can't it be done at some other time of day. The reason is very simple - the server population is at a low point during those hours, and it is close to the time that Developers come in to the office.

Do realize, though, that Unscheduled Maintenance (example - crashes) and Emergency Maintenance windows are unpredictable and can happen at ANYTIME.

NOTE: The Cryptic Studios offices are in California, so they operate during standard business hours in the Pacific Time Zone. PST: Pacific Standard Time (early November to mid-March) is UTC-8 / PDT: Pacific Daylight Time (mid-March to early November) is UTC-7

baddmoonrizin

4) ARC is Full of Bloat/Spyware

This has come up a lot since ARC was launched, and while the ARC team, along with other players, have said that it doesn't contain bloat/spyware, and it really doesn't.

Official quote from Adam -

pweadamanteus wrote: »

<snip>
Arc is not spyware or bloatware for those making that accusation. There are even other players who have checked out the Arc coding themselves and there is no spyware or bloatware associated with Arc.
<snip>

baddmoonrizin

5) Will We See My X Transfer Over to Console/PC?

People ask about transfer of accounts, items, purchases, linking accounts between PC and console, etc. The PC version and console versions of the game are on separate servers. Currently, there are no plans for cross-platform activity.

baddmoonrizin

6) Steam Usage Stats Prove the Game is Dying!

No, it doesn't:

pweadamanteus wrote: »

Ok, let's say a few things here...

First, only a very small portion of STO's playerbase comes from Steam...this has always been the case. So, using the steam charts that many seem to be quoting and using every couple weeks really is not giving you a good picture.

Second, Steam users have had to deal with some Zen purchasing errors over the past couple of months as Steam is switching from using a universal currency to the currencies of individual countries/regions. I.E. Steam enables new currencies without a heads up to developers, users start to have purchasing errors in games/companies that have their own currency, and then the developers have to figure out what happened and make adjustments to their billing systems and coding in the game so the new currencies are supported. This has driven some users to abandon STO on Steam and go through Arc or directly through the launcher.

Third, as we do have the Arc platform, it is easier to run contests, post news, etc. on Arc so more users are using Arc since you get the most up to date news and contests by using it. And Arc is not spyware or bloatware for those making that accusation. There are even other players who have checked out the Arc coding themselves and there is no spyware or bloatware associated with Arc.

Basically, what I'm saying, is that all you get for STO from looking at the steam charts site is that less people are using STO through Steam. That doesn't reflect on any other statistic. While I can't release our total numbers, I can say that the Steam charts do not follow the pattern of the total numbers and the steam charts cause us no worries at all.

baddmoonrizin

7) T5U vs T6 is Wrong and Here Is My Solution to Upgrade to T6

While we appreciate the feedback and suggestions from our Community, the T5U vs T6 topic has been fast tracked to the F.C.T., and any threads concerning this topic will be closed.

We understand that the Community is very concerned with this topic, however, the myriad of solutions and demands posted so far have not lead to a change in this system, and leaving these threads to fester will neither improve community morale, nor have the entire system changed.

baddmoonrizin

8) Tovan Khev Needs to be Dismissable

Official quote from AdjudicatorHawk -

adjudicatorhawk wrote: »

I've answered this many times. When we made LoR, we had an underlying assumption throughout all the missions that Tovan would be one of your boffs. You would not be able to dismiss him, no matter what - and consequently, all of the content was written and structured with that in mind. We will never be able to allow you to dismiss Tovan, since changing an assumption that fundamental to the construction of many parts of our game is an extremely risky change to make.

K'Gan and Elisa were the 2nd rev of the same concept. We saw that, while many players loved Tovan, many others also wanted to be able to marginalize him - and we allowed that with the K'Gan and Elisa.

I think every time I've answered this question, it's been phrased as "PLEASE DEVS FINALLY GIVE US AN ANSWER". It's been answered, it's just not the answer you wanted. :P

baddmoonrizin

9) Dev's Don't Read Our Bug Reports/Don't Come on the Forums!

NOTE: These are Taco's replies to various players, relevant to the topic.

tacofangs wrote: »

lucho80 wrote: »

Would be nice to at least get a "bug acknowledged, on the list of things to fix" once in a while . . . *snip*

What purpose does this serve? Going by previous experience, when we acknowledge a bug, or say it's on our list, if that bug is not then fixed immediately, we get yelled at about never fixing bugs. If we say nothing, we get yelled at about never fixing bugs. So to us, the output is the same. Why would we expend energy doing something that offers no different result?
As it is, it's better to just fix things as we can, and let the patch notes be the informant.

f2pdrakron wrote: »

I cannot say I agree with that, Josh Sawyer posted a lot during New Vegas development without that happening, it depends on the tone.

Different Game, Different Forum, Different Audience.
Apples and Broccoli.

f2pdrakron wrote: »

And thats why I said unfortunately, you are pretty the only one as everyone else pretty much only posts as a decree or down to the point, I dont mind the to the point but I dont like the tone used in decrees that are very much "this is how WE decided, there is NO ROOM for discussion".

That's because we no longer include the forums, or players in general (outside of more controlled interview settings) to see the process, talk about what we're planning on doing, or what's up coming. Instead, by time we are ready to talk about a thing, it pretty much is set in stone. That's not saying there isn't some wiggle room. We'll take feedback on how something was put in, and tweak some stuff, but the process has likely already been going long enough that we can't just dump it all and start over again.

I know it's hard to swallow, but we ARE the ones to decide how something is going to be. We are the one's being paid to do so. You are welcome to disagree with us, and we will gladly listen to your opinion on the matter, and may even change something because of it, but at the end of the day, we are the developers of the game. We're always hiring, if you'd like to sit on this side of the fence, PLEASE APPLY!

f2pdrakron wrote: »

The problem I have is a Internet Forum is "an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages", at least is what I use it for but thats not really he problem I have, its the "feedback".

Feedback right now is just divided in 2 camps ... positive and negative, if feedback is negative it seems to be simply disregarded regardless of its constructive or not, I got The Secret World last year and I no longer play ... you know why? because the Forums were overrun with "game is perfect, you are a troll/suck" type of comments despite the game having serious issues, even the game own chat was filled with people that if I had a problem then it was me, not the game (I had a lot of problems beating a boss on the abandoned playground).

If the only feedback allowed to be given is praise then its nothing but poisoned, granted this doesnt happen in STO but when was the last time Al Rivera posted? or Daniel Stahl?

I am sure its comfortable just answering pre-selected questions, I also noticed when people bring up uncomfortable questions the answer is silence, even if forums offer feedback I really dont think its going to change per-determined notions or what the metrics say.

Yes, you interact with the players yet what I feel is that I am a data point ... I dont like ARC, I am ignored because if I leave its assumed someone else will take my place, I dont like being ignored when I say reputation is a endless grind when having more that one character, when someone even bothers to address the issues I raise, is to downright dismiss them.

Who's stopping you from posting anything negative? I see negative posts on this forum CONSTANTLY. No one here is deleting posts, or regulating what emotions you can have about the game. Yes, editing happens when something violates the TOS, but there is nothing in the TOS about not posting negative opinions.

Now, when will a Dev choose to reply to something? That's not so easy. You're right, that we likely don't respond as often to negative posts as we do to positive posts. There are a couple of reasons for that.

1) Positive posts make us feel good about ourselves. It turns out devs are humans, and as humans, we like to feel good. This includes people talking well of something we have done. Negative posts generally make us feel bad about ourselves. And as valid as it might be, we don't like feeling bad about ourselves.

2) In general, we want to keep a positive and uplifting tone to our forums, and want people to feel positive about our game. This encourages more people to play it. When we post, we draw attention to a thread. If that thread is negative in nature, the people who read it will tend to feel worse about the game. Since we draw attention when we post, we potentially draw more people into that thread than would go to it naturally, and thus, more people end up feeling bad about the game than might have otherwise. The inverse is true for positive posts.

Why don't Geko or Stahl post more? They're CRAZY busy. They are the LEADS of the project. They're in meetings something like 27 hours a day. And when they have down time, they likely don't want to even think about the game, let alone open themselves up to the forums. (note my previous post).

You are clearly not being ignored, you are having a conversation, right now, DIRECTLY with a Developer who works on this game. That's pretty much the opposite of being ignored.

NOTE: It is preferable, if you have a bug to report, to attempt to find a thread that's already been started for your particular bug in the Bug Subforum and report it there. Necro-posting rules DO NOT apply to bug threads, which will never be closed. Reporting in an established bug thread helps developers track the bug's history.

baddmoonrizin

10) Full Custom Starship Interiors

Official quote from TacoFangs -

tacofangs wrote: »

Bridges/Interiors take far longer to make than ships. As such, if there is sufficient reason to make a full ship interior (such as the newish Romulan Ship interior, being used all over LoR) we'll make one. If there isn't, we won't. Making a custom bridge, let alone a full interior for the Corvette (while cool) would be a significant investment of time/resources. So, we could have skimped on Risa more, and built an interior, or done what was done, and skipped the interior which would have served little purpose anyway, and went with beefing up Risa.

Building custom bridges takes longer than a couple of days. Something like the Suliban/Andorian/Tholian Bridges, were each 5 days of Environment work from me. Then it needs design time to hook up any interactables, doors, etc.

Doing a full interior is significantly longer (i.e. 3 weeks to a month)

baddmoonrizin

11) Flying Your Ship from the Bridge

Official quote from TacoFangs -

tacofangs wrote: »

I've definitely gone over this plenty of times in the past, but my search-fu seems to be weak today.

Note that I don't think I've ever used the word 'impossible.' It's all code, nothing is impossible given enough time, money, and manpower.

However, what I have said in the past, and will repeat now, is that our game, as it stands today, is not set up for this at all. It's not an engine limitation per se, and it's not because our engine is old. It's because it's not how the game was designed. Again, possible, but not probable.

The problem, as stated by others, is that your "character" is both a ship, and a captain, simultaneously. When you are in space, you are drawn as a ship. When you are on the ground, you are drawn as a person. So, when you are in sector space (as a ship) and go to your bridge (as a person), your ship ceases to exist in sector space. You are no longer there. You are ONLY on your bridge. When you leave your bridge, and go back to sector space, you become a ship again, and your captain (and the bridge) cease to exist.

So, there is no easy way to track you through sector space while you are actually on another map. Again, this is likely possible, but is not set up, and would require significant coding.

To my (non-programmer) mind, the best alternative is the count-down method others have mentioned. Instead of "flying" your ship from the bridge, you go to your helm officer, tell him which system to go to, and a timer counts down however long it takes to get there. During the countdown you can meander around your interior, doing whatever captainy things captains do. When the timer is up, your helm officer informs you that you have arrived, and you can load that map.

The problem with the above is what happens when you leave your bridge part way through the count down. If you leave at the start, you go back to where ever you left to get to your bridge. If you leave at the end, you go to your destination. If you leave in the middle, where do you go? Remember, there is nothing tracking you through sector space, so we have no functional idea where your "ship" is right now. Instead, we just know that you're 50% done with the countdown. So, we can't drop you in the right spot in sector space, do we dump you back at the start? We can't let you cheat by going to the end point. . .

Another issue is how to determine the timing. I guess we could manually fly from every planet to every other planet to get a baseline, but that's annoying. IMO I think this idea best works with a unified sector space, so that there is no map loading between sectors. Timing things in that mode would be a much simpler task, as we could just determine distances between them. A unified sector space would also make it easier to drop you in an appropriate spot if you were to leave your bridge part way through your journey. It's something that has been tossed about, but I haven't heard anything concrete about that in a while.

In addition, I wouldn't really want to do this unless we did some major bridge refresh as well. I think we have a lot of terrible bridges in the game. I also think it would be cool if your viewscreen could reflect the system you are at, but that would be more tech, and wouldn't really work until the above bits happened. They're all nice ideas, and I think everyone on the team would love to see it, but there is a LOT of work involved, and a lot of edge cases that can break things horribly. It's not a trivial undertaking.

Keep in mind, the above suggestion would only be for travel, not fighting anything. That would be an even bigger can of worms to wrestle with.

The monitor overlay idea has been raised a number of times before, but imo it would just feel chintzy. We couldn't do a full 3d bridge overlay, it would just be a texture. Basically cutting a viewscreen out of cardboard and pasting it onto your monitor. I don't think anyone would be satisfied by that.

baddmoonrizin

12) Kickstarter Threads

Official quote from AmbassadorKael -

ambassadorkael#6946 wrote: »

This is not something we would likely ever do, for a multitude of reasons both legal and practical. While I can't speak to the legal reasons, I can speak to the practical to a certain extent:

1) Have you ever seen one of those lists floating around the internet about all the gaming projects that fail on Kickstarter? Or are massively funded and still come up with something that isn't what the fans believed they were getting? That's because game development is a weird, wonderful, difficult and expensive world that you can't simply solve by throwing money at a problem. For example: Say we get X amount of money, which is enough to hire 2 designers to work on a New Thing. When that money runs out, those people are out of a job. It's unlikely that we'll attract any talent who only want to come and work on a game temporarily when there are so many opportunities in this area for full time work.

2) What would we make? Even in this thread, there's at least ten different ideas of what people would want us to do with their money. We'd have to pick one idea to throw into this hypothetical kickstarter, and it wouldn't please everybody, or possibly anybody. Even the ideas that regularly come up on these forums that seem to be the most popular have their massive detractors.

3) I, personally, am deeply uncomfortable with the idea of a game that already has a revenue stream coming to the players and asking for an additional revenue stream. Players already have a way to support our game and allow us to fund projects within it, and that's buying things within the game. To turn around and say, "Well, hey, give us even more money to make a thing" seems...not right.

The team is constantly working on new content for you guys, and I'm really excited for you to see what's coming down the pipe. There's some really cool stuff in the future. They also take as much time as they can to provide bug fixes and quality of life improvements that you request, because everybody here deeply cares about making sure this game is great. While we appreciate the enthusiasm, we're not likely to ever do crowdfunding.

baddmoonrizin

13) Day/Night Cycles and Lighting 2.0

Per Tacofangs (tumerboy) on Reddit -

The lighting model of the game, is OF THE GAME. It is not, nor can it be, dependent on the map you are on. We have a hybrid model simply due to our being a pre-existing game with a significant playerbase that run on older hardware.

That said, 2.0 has numerous other benefits, not just the light adaptation (which actually existed in 1.0, but was so bad we barely used it). Reflections are drastically improved, ambient lighting is better, performance on higher end cards is better, etc. etc.

I understand that you want the day/night cycle back. I do too. But if we were to get it back, it would be by moving forward and finding a solution to update the probe data, not by going backwards and kludging things to force people's preferences on a specific map. And since none of that tech exists, I wouldn't want to speculate on it being "easier."

There is no tech to store multiple sets of probe data, and switch them out. That's what would be needed to get day/night cycles functional again. But it doesn't exist, and we'd need a way to make it exist and not drastically bloat the amount of data needed to load a map.

Day/Night Cycles don't work with our current lighting model, which is across the game. New maps are not an exception. Making a new map would have no impact on the functionality of day/night cycles.

Shadows aren't the issue. We can move individual lights around a bit, we just can't do really drastic changes to the lighting of a map, like say, go from Noon, to Sunset, to Midnight.

The direct lighting can all change easily, the light from a torch, or from the sun. The shadows can move. The issue is the ambient light, the light that bounces around a scene and makes the shadows something other than pure black. That ambient light is now much, much more accurate to the scene. It used to be that we just set a single color for the ambient of a map. So something like Risa would be bluish in the ambient. Now the objects and lights in the world affect the ambient of objects around them. If we have a big, bright red ball, with the sun shining on it, a white wall right next to it will get some red bounced light off of that ball, just as it would in real life, rather than the white wall just appearing kind of bluish.

That ambient light is what's baked in, and can't change on the fly.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/sto/comments/66keim/risa_lighting_20_and_discussion_on_what_to_do/

baddmoonrizin

14) Why No Vortas or Female Jem'Hadar in the Dominion Faction?

First, it's specifically a Jem'Hadar Faction not a Dominion Faction due to the nature of its storyline (I specifically asked for clarification on this). Second, Jem'Hadar themselves are genderless, so the notion of gender doesn't apply to them. The only way to get as close as possible to depicting a genderless character model is with the male model for obvious reasons. In the livestream it was even stated that they would love to remove the gender buttons from the Tailor for Jem'Hadar, but cannot because it would cause things to break. But you're encouraged to roleplay your Jem'Hadar as female if you so choose. (Time code: 43:00:00 - 48:05:00)

Additionally, it was also stated that the VIL storyline is very Jem'Hadar-centric, so playing as any other race wouldn't make sense from that perspective. Adding Vorta wasn't stated as something "they want to do", but rather something that they weren't entirely ruling out, because there's "always a chance" that they might. Someday. (Time code: 1:10:15 - 1:11:25)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krUrwQwxn6g&amp;t=4249s

More information regarding playable Vorta or other playable species for the Dominion/Jem'Hadar: It was originally thought that there would be other playable Dominion species. However, as the story began to take shape, it made less sense, as the story became very Jem'Hadar-centric. Even having a Vorta BOFF made no sense, as a Vorta would never report to a Jem'Hadar. So, it was decided that for VIL, it would be playable Jem'Hadar only for story reasons. (Time code: 1:26:50 - 1:29:41)

But, without promising anything, it was stated that making other playable species available for the Dominion/Jem'Hadar through an unlock by playing through the entire VIL storyline might be considered. (Time code: 41:05 - 43:20)

As of this writing, 2018 06 15, the entire story arc for VIL has yet to be revealed, so in time it should make sense.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNES7unUXM8&amp;t=4689s

baddmoonrizin

15) Inclusion of Fan-Designed Ships or Ships from Other Star Trek Licensees

Short answer: No, this is not likely to happen.

For ships from other Star Trek licensed properties, for example Star Trek: Starfleet Command, the tabletop RPGs by FASA or Last Unicorn Games, or any original ships Pocket Books' novel writers may invent in the future, Cryptic has to negotiate for the rights to each design individually with the other license-holder, as they did pre-launch with the Luna-class reconnaissance science vessel (Pocket Books' Star Trek: Titan) and Vesta-class multi-mission explorer (Pocket Books' Star Trek: Destiny). It's simply faster and cheaper for them to create their own original ships.

There are several fan-designed or fan-named ships already in the game, but the fracas that ensued over the "Design the Next Enterprise" contest has led the development team to decide against soliciting any further designs. There was one other competition since then to design what became the Jupiter-class carrier, but it involved variations of developer-made designs.

Any ship that appeared in a Star Trek TV show or film is still potentially fair game, though.

UPDATE: When asked if there was a way to bring ships from other old Star Trek games into STO, Associate Art Director, Thomas Marrone, during the Ten Forward Weekly livestream on 9/6/22 stated, "Well, actually, I will, I will, I will say this, 'cause I actually looked into this where something's coming up soon. Umm, I asked, uh, I asked Paramount, you know, if there is a ship from an old game, umm, can we use the design as long as we rebuild the asset ourselves, and they said yes. So, that unlocks certain doors." (Time Code 30:50 - 31:12)

baddmoonrizin

16) Disco Balls (Party Amplifer) Threads

The items were obviously added to the game and aren't going anywhere. However, every time people make threads about them, they tend to turn into threads of flaming, trolling and harassment. As such, these threads aren't going to to be allowed anymore, unless something changes with them.

baddmoonrizin

17) Doom Threads

Cryptic Studios, Star Trek Online, and so fourth are not in any financial trouble, aren't "dying," playerbase is not getting so low that they're going to shut down, etc. Since these threads just turn into flaming and troll fests, these threads will be closed.

baddmoonrizin

18) General Rage Threads

"I hate this so everyone else should hate this too"
"I hate this bug & I hate the devs for not fixing it NOW!"

Not liking something in-game is fine. Hating something in-game is fine. Starting a rage thread that insults staff members, products, or the companies who work very diligently to bring you STO is a violation of our ToS and Community Rules and Policies, and will be acted upon as such.

baddmoonrizin

19) General Demand Threads

"As a player with experience in X field, I demand X immediately. If I don't get it (insert threat here)."
"I have made an app/website so therefore everyone at PWE/Cryptic is lazy for not doing what I say."

It is understandable that players of any game may eventually get frustrated with the decisions that are out of their control for the focus or intent of the games that they love. Unfortunately, demanding resolutions and making threats cannot be tolerated, as it creates a hostile forum environment that is neither welcoming to new users, nor useful for fostering a sense of community.

baddmoonrizin

20) Rank/Level/Title Change Threads

These come up a lot and the answer has been, no, it's not happening. These also spark huge debates that eventually turn into flame wars.

baddmoonrizin

21) Threads with Vague or Incomplete Thread Titles

These are not helpful to forum users, as the title doesn't communicate clearly the thread topic for users to find it, serving only as "click bait" and possible forum spam. They also make moderating difficult for the same reasons and in trying to keep threads on topic, especially in cases where the original post itself is also vague.

Moderators do not have time to go through such threads, attempt to discern/decipher the OP's intent, and change the thread title to something more appropriate. They MAY do this, but they are under no obligation to do so. Original posters may be given a heads up and an opportunity to change their thread titles within a reasonable amount of time (usually 24 hours), but failure to do so may result in a thread closure.

baddmoonrizin

22) Gatekeeping

gatekeeping: the activity of controlling, and usually limiting, general access to something.

When someone takes it upon themselves to decide who does or does not have access or rights to a community or identity.

It is ok to dislike/hate something about Star Trek. It is ok to dislike/hate something about Star Trek Online. It is ok to express those things in the forum within the ToS and Community Rules and Policies. It is NOT ok to attack other forum users for liking/loving those same things for themselves.

Gatekeeping against other forum users will not be tolerated on the STO forum. It has been officially decided to be a form of trolling and, depending on language, flaming, and will be dealt with as such.

ADDENDUM: Use of the acronym/term S T D, and its variations and spellings in attempts to avoid the forum censor, will also fall under this ruling, as the general attitude behind its use is deemed to be an attempt to diminish and devalue that segment of the Star Trek franchise and its fan-base.

baddmoonrizin

23) Account-wide Unlock of Lockbox, Lobi, and/or R&D Promotion Ships

Short answer: No, this is not likely to happen.

Per Spartan during the Ten Forward Livestream on 12/05/18, "We have an established convention as to whether a ship is Account-wide or not, and at this point we haven't announced any plans to change it." (Time Code: 29:30 - 30:20)

http://www.twitch.tv/crypticstudios/v/345168689?sr=a&t=1770s

UPDATE: With the introduction of the yearly Event Campaign and Mudd's Market, this topic restriction is rescinded.

baddmoonrizin

24) The Foundry

Threads about the Foundry shutdown and/or other related subjects have been answered and are as follows:

http://www.twitch.tv/crypticstudios/v/390451312?sr=a&t=2383s

Highlights from the livestream:

1) Foundry was built over the course of a year (6-7 years ago) by programmers who are no longer with the company. They passed on their knowledge as best they could, but the game has moved on. Foundry has a tendency to break with each update and it can take a week searching the code for a fix.

2) As a company, it is no longer tenable to spend the resources anymore on fixing the Foundry, as it takes away those resources from developing new innovations and new technologies for the game. Every time the Foundry broke, the engineers had to spend time fixing it instead of working on updating systems and the tech underneath.

3) Developers have spent a year discussing whether they could keep the Foundry or not. EVERYONE has been fighting to find a way to make it tenable to keep the Foundry going: Julia, Vincent, QA, Thomas, Al, Jeremy, Andre have all been working on it, but none of the solutions have worked.

4) Can just the missions be kept online?

Yes, but that doesn't fix the problem, because when the Foundry breaks, the missions break. And then they still have to spend time fixing it.

5) Could a separate server be created that never updates to host the Foundry missions?

Yes, but extra resources would have to be spent on a server that's on a different build from the game and that causes tons of headaches, not to mention it splits the playerbase, which is something you try to avoid in MMO games.

6) Everyone loves the Foundry and what the players have contributed to it, and if there was a way to keep it going, they would have. They tried EVERYTHING. They do care deeply about what the players have done with the Foundry, but this was the best decision for the business as a whole, for the health of Star Trek Online, Neverwinter, and Cryptic Studios.

7) Is everything just going to be deleted?

No, they worked really hard to back up and save everything that players worked on and created in the Foundry, it just won't be accessible. They don't know if that is going to change. They hope it does, but that's still up in the air.

8) Are they hoping to make a Foundry 2.0?

No, not at this time. The original Foundry took a year to build, and they aren't dedicating those kinds of resources and time to that right now.

9) Is there an engine overhaul coming because of this change?

Not because of this change, and there's not an "engine overhaul" coming, but a lot of the things the programmers are working on right now are quality of life fixes and a lot of "under the hood" changes that make the games better: animations and just day-to-day life of playing the game better. Some are being developed for the upcoming project: Magic the Gathering, some for Neverwinter, Star Trek, and Champions, but no matter where they are developed, all Cryptic games work on the same ecosystem, so they make all of the games better. There is a core team of programmers working on all of these updates.

10) There is virtually no reason why those missions cannot be made part of the actual game.

No, that is actually incorrect, and they know, because they tried. The Foundry missions do not run on the same system as the in-game missions. A herculean effort was made by Al and Thomas to convert Foundry missions to in-game missions. It turned out that it would take months of work for each individual mission, because of the way the Foundry is setup and the way their editing tools are setup. It's still a hope, but if there's not a way to do it efficiently and to a quality that they expect, then they can't do it. If they just took the missions and dumped them on live, there's a good chance that the missions wouldn't work as designed: assets in the wrong place, objective not completable, etc.

11) With the Foundry being removed, will the missing Klingon War arc missions be fast tracked to return?

There are different people working on the Klingon War arc missions, the Content Team: Jesse, Paul, Ryan, and John, and they are focused right now on stuff for later content drops this year, but they are hoping to open up some time later in the year to bring it back, though.

12) Is this part of a wider plan to rid Cryptic Studios of "legacy tech?" Are you moving on to new games, new platforms, new engines, etc.?

Tech upgrades happen always. New things being worked on for Magic the Gathering go into new things for all the games. Every game has different systems and that works differently sometimes, but there is an angle towards improvement at Cryptic Studios right now and that means going into the old things they have and trying to make them better.

13) Will this free up time for [insert specific request]?

Things for Star Trek and Neverwinter will still move forward on the same schedule. What the core team, who would work on fixing the Foundry, will do is work on fixes that effect all the games or major programming bugs. A lot of their top priorities right now are working on things that will eventually make their way into STO, NW, and CO.

14) In response to using the Foundry to complete Personal Endeavors:

They have seen the feedback that many players think some of the endeavors take too long to complete, and Kael and Bort were discussing it earlier in the day. The Systems Team was having a longer discussion on it, but not sure what will come out of that yet.

15) Is there anything coming to replace the Foundry as far as player created content?

No, not at this time.

16) Do authors own the rights to their stories and characters?

No, per the Foundry End User License Agreement (EULA). Materials in Foundry missions are considered property of Cryptic Studios.

17) Is there any chance of getting the mission editor that the devs use to make real missions or is that too difficult?

Too difficult.

18) What will happen to Foundry test characters?

They are going to disappear. There will be no access to them anymore. Let Kael know if that has any effect on the account, though. If Foundry characters use characters slot, you should get those back, although that has not been confirmed at this time.

19) Quest contact related to the Foundry are being removed from Neverwinter and Star Trek Online. Universal Endeavor to complete a Foundry mission was removed already the last time that the Foundry was broken.

20) How many years does Star Trek Online have left?

Hopefully, another decade. This is not a reflection on the life cycle of any of the games. It's a reflection on the state of the company, that they are moving towards the future and have to dedicate programmer resources towards new technologies instead of constantly fixing old ones. The STO, NW, and CO are all showing strong numbers and are profitable.

21) In-game memorial for the Foundry?

Kael would love it, but doesn't know if that will happen. They are offering the rewards, however, and that is one way that the Foundry will stay alive.

22) Was Kael shocked and caught off guard since a Foundry spotlight went out on the previous Friday?

No, he knew the sunsetting of the Foundry was coming. He wanted to make sure that there was one final Foundry spotlight, because he knew they were giving away rewards for it. If you had a spotlight mission, but don't receive your rewards, contact Kael.

23) Can the Foundry source code be made open to the public?

No, that's proprietary Cryptic Studios code.

24) When will the rewards be sent out?

Closer to the shutdown. No exact date at this time.

25) Will demorecord playback of Foundry missions still work after April 11?

Yes, but will need to check and make sure.

26) Why the short lead time?

Actually, this was the longest lead time that could be given. The CEO was very adamant that the Foundry wasn't left broken and not fixed. He wanted to make sure that everyone had time to finish their missions.

27) The cutoff for rewards was set to the announcement date, because it was felt that what the authors did was special and they didn't want rewards going to just anyone who saw the blog and made a mission without anything in it in 5 minutes just to get the rewards.

baddmoonrizin

25) Dilithium Refinement Cap Increase

The question was asked via Twitter about increasing the Dilithium refinement cap, and whether it could be done or why it shouldn't be done.

Borticus answers:

https://twitter.com/BorticusCryptic/status/1225489778398912516?s=20

Jeremy Randall
@BorticusCryptic

The Dilithium economy would be made even less healthy by increasing supply of this currency. It need effective sinks, not more faucet bandwidth.

https://twitter.com/BorticusCryptic/status/1225490400980488195?s=20

Jeremy Randall
@BorticusCryptic

The root cause of this request can frequently be translated as “the rewards I receive in the form of Ore don’t increase my wealth or spending capacity” which probably needs alternative solutions.

baddmoonrizin

26) Why Can't We Customize Weapons Color?

Our Community Manager, Ambassador Kael recently answered this:

ambassadorkael#6946 wrote: »

Hey folks!

It's true that, once upon a time, CBS asked us to not allow cosmetic changes to weapons. That was waaaay back at the beginning of STO. Unfortunately, because of that request, weapons were built in a different way in STO than powers are built in CO. The way I've had it explained to me is that the FX for a weapon are tied to that weapon pretty specifically, so recolors and such would require a massive overhaul in the code, and changes to each individual weapon. It's not *impossible* (we had to make changes to every single ship in the game to make it possible for everyone to fly them, but there are more weapons then there are ships, I think), but it's not something that's gotten a lot of traction over the years, especially since CBS has never come back and said, "Ok, you can do that now."

baddmoonrizin

27) PVP Development, Balancing, and Promotion

Of late, there have been many threads popping up regarding PVP development in Star Trek Online. These discussions tend to turn heated, especially after PVP proponents, who question the lack of continued PVP development, are told by other forum members about Cryptic's stance on the subject, and then want to disregard this information in favor of a direct response from a developer. So, withoout further ado, here are your direct responses from the developers:


Regarding new PVP development:

“Some people have said, ‘Does this mean we’re getting more PVP content?’ No. We’re not going to be making, like, new PVP maps or anything like that, but as a good designer, Jonathan is looking at how things affect all of the game including PVP.”

- CM Ambassador Kael responding to questions about development of new PVP content while interviewing System Designer Jonathan Herlache about the new Pilot BOFF ability upgrades.

Ten Forward Weekly: Pilot BOFF Upgrades!, February 7, 2023, Timestamp 52:22

Regarding balancing abilities and PVP:

“There’s cost/benefit thresholds, right? Like for me, that’s what it’s about. I’m gonna watch. I’m gonna wait. I’m probably gonna wait longer to act than folks might be comfortable with sometimes. But that’s going to let me be more successful when I do act. And PVP is a situation that is, like, you do it two ways. You either update constantly. You’re not afraid of creating strange circumstances as an intermediate goal, and you work towards a better goal, and you’re updating and balancing consistently. STO can never live in that world. I can’t, like, easily nerf stuff that people have bought. Ah, I have to, like, restrain my balance changes to global powers. I have to, like, to be very cautious. And so, now that I’m the master of my own destiny, it’ll be a cold day in hell before you see me nerf something like, Agony Redistributor. Like, that’s not a project I would undertake on my own, um, frankly. And, uh, generally speaking, I’m gonna try to be certain I’m onto something good that will improve the space before I push the change out, because that’s how the model is. If this was some, a different game, a more PVP-focused game, where I could patch every couple weeks, then it’d be different. Then I’d be trying to, like, promote build diversity and, like, do incremental changes, and collect stats, and wait and see, and win rate data, and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. But this is, this is not that game. This is like, PVP in DDO. This is, this is like, you know, Command & Conquer remastered rank ladder. We’re in niche-audience-land, where the people who are here, who have been here a long time, they wouldn’t be here if they didn’t like it, so I’m gonna default to assuming that for the most part, on the main, they’re happy with the way it is, and they have a few problems with it. So, I’m not trying to be the sheriff that’s cleaning up the town. I’m just trying to, like, wait a little while, watch a little while, and if I’m like, ‘That building would be better if it weren’t on fire,’ maybe I’d go put the fire out.”

- Systems Designer Jonathan Herlache responding to remarks about balancing game powers globally and how that might affect PVP.

Ten Forward Weekly: Pilot BOFF Upgrades!, February 7, 2023, Timestamp 52:36

Regarding promoting PVP in-game:

“I think we might have officially taken the PVP Endeavor out. Um, because it was not really fun for people who don’t regularly play PVP.”

- CM Ambassador Kael responding to a question about PVP Endeavors not being included in rotation.

Ten Forward Weekly: Chill Q&A, February 21, 2023, Timestamp 1:00:30

“It’s a really not fun experience to enter a PVP area, and um, get instantly one-shot at the spawn point and then re-spawn, fly for half a second, and get instantly one-shot again. Ah, it’s just not a fun experience. And so, because it’s not a fun experience, it’s not one we want to promote.”

- CM Ambassador Kael responding to a question about PVP Endeavors.

Ten Forward Weekly: Chill Q&A, February 28, 2023, Timestamp 55:50