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Do you think they really listen?
firereaper
Member Posts: 28 Arc User
Do you think the developers really listen to us the players or do we fall on deaf ears. I know for me I have spent an ungodly amount of money on this game because I do love the game. But sometimes I feel like me and a bunch of other players ask for small stuff to be put into the game but it’ll never happen. I’ve always wanted the Star Fleet uniform from the wrath of khan, and I’m pretty sure they’re tired of hearing about. But never have gotten any type of reply as to why we can’t have it for the xbox. Do they really care about us or just the amount of money we can spend on the game?
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Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
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Game companies cannot (or do not) afford to pay someone to sift through all that info and select out the useful information to condense and pass on to the devs. Some game co's make some use of Moderators for this, some use a Community Manager for this, I've yet to see (in 25 years of internet gaming) a company make good, consistent use of pulling the useable content out of their forums and using it to improve the game.
Thus, devs ignore 95% of what is said on their own forums (some dev co's don't even participate on their own forums) or Reddit, some pay a little more attention to their twitter/social media accounts, mostly they just do whatever they think sounds good and occasionally pick up an idea from some players who attended a convention with them or directly communicated an idea to someone who could follow up on it.
Normally devs only listen to mass revolts that are coming through on all channels, and/or mass cancellations of subs and drops in income. Then they sort of wake up and go "oh, hey, wait, all our income comes from players? Those people we ignore all the time because hey, what do they know? Well maybe we should run a round table or something and ask them what they want in a game."
If you mean in: "Does Cryptic have an idea what we are talking about, what is important to us, what concerns we have?" Yes. On some occasions you actually see the feedback being turned into action really quick (like when they test features on Tribble and ask for feedback) - but not all of it. They still have to take other things into considerations, like whether something is feasible, whether it will work with the rest of the game and technical or legal requirements or business concerns, and sometimes also what other players have given for feedback that might not agree with feedback of another player. Because "we" are a heterogeneous group and don't all think alike.
I don't listen to any top 40 music -- if record companies followed my suggestions for what they should release, they'd go bankrupt. I don't read the top 10 bestsellers in books, same idea.
PVP players can be very passionate about what they think should be changed. Cryptic mostly ignores them because they are tiny minority. Most of us don't play PVP.
Some of us would like fully customizable ship interiors as strongholds. The majority of players just want to fly their ships, not live in them.
Cryptic "doesn't listen" to our wishes if you define that as "obey them." Cryptic does listen if you mean "knows about, and has even discussed them in the forums, reddit, livestreams."
Yeah, Bran Flakes was the best thing to ever happen to this game. Respected him more then the devs, thats for sure.
Kael is probably an okay dude but... he's not as good as his job as bran flakes was. I understand why Bran left, but because of Kael I'm 90% sure the devs don't have any idea what the players want, and if they do they just flat out don't care.
Under what criteria do you deem Kael as 'not as good' as bran flakes?
Message me in-game (@tm706) for help
1st Alpha Quadrant Fleet
Bran Flakes frequently communicated with the community outside of live streams(I don't even think the streams were a thing during his tenure) and wasn't afraid to tell cryptic what the players were upset about and explained to us if something could be done and why, or if something couldn't be done and why. Kael just kind of ignores any kind of complaints or is dismissive of them and doesn't really ever interact with the forums on any level other than making new topics. Bran Flakes was a true "Community" manager.
There are several good ideas on this forum, several bad ones too. To ignore all of them is a bad idea. Some people have no idea how to run a company or develop a game, some do. Just because this game exist doesn't make it impossible that out of the hundreds of thousands of game developers that exist that do play games, that at least a few play this game.
They could use some ideas, they aren't infallible they're only human and humans can misinterpret data based on bias. There are in game players who fully understand economics and the games economics and become exorbitantly rich in game because of it, yet suggestions from them are promptly ignored such as, make choice boxes tradeable if you really want to lower the price of expensive items like ships on the exchange. And they could have made some romulan ships to go along with the disco stuff, they chose not to. They made a beautiful Romulan ship to go along with the Kelvin stuff, I'm sure they could have done the same with the discovery stuff and made a fair bit of money. And as long as you don't make bad decisions you can keep an MMO going for a very long time. Hell Star Wars Galaxies made some terrible decisions and didn't truly die until Swtor neared its release. Sometimes games can survive off of ip alone, I mean for all we know STO like Galaxies would just get shut down the moment a new MMO based off star trek came along. I doubt a new Star Trek MMO would come out for a while, but I'm fairly certain that even if this game was bad, people would still play it because its star trek.
I agree. Cryptic managed to salvage this game from the god awful clutches of Atari/Infrogames (do you remember the 3 strike/infraction rules of the original forums - it was hilarious).
They have kept the game running and free for a very long time, and even managed to throw in a good number of voice overs from original Trek' actors, so I think they are doing pretty well despite the number of complaints/suggestions they have had over the course of the years.
I'm no Cryptic fanboy as any glance as my post history will tell you - but I've mellowed with the years, and come to accept that they are doing a pretty good job, despite the number of irritatations I still have with the game.
Because most companies shut down an mmo the moment it becomes unprofitable. Servers are actually pretty cheap to uphold, its why some ancient games still have servers up even though their hayday is long past. Now paying development costs might stop, but its not out of the ordinary to just pay for server upkeep for a while even after games go down. Players can even make their own servers sometimes like when fans revived that Fusion Fall MMO from Cartoon network. But Companies usually aren't interested in keeping MMOs around for longer than they have to though, possibly they just consider mmos less of a priority. And I'm sure it wouldn't have taken too much longer for the romulan ships to be made if they were keeping the workload consistent, and despite their aggressive stance on disco ships some ships in game still take forever to come out. The Jem Vet ship has been in development for over 1 year after all.
Also, just because a bug has not been tackled yet, does not mean it never will be or that they are not listening to you, the player. Apparently, this was mentioned in a live stream, they prioritize bugs on a certain continuum and they have lists regarded this continuum. Sometimes they also are not aware of the bug and someone has to bring it to their attention. For those seeing bugs, continue to report them both on the forums, in-game, and through the STO support page. Don't give up, don't lose heart.
How do you know the workload is not consistent? I am not in game development but based on what I have heard about game companies, the employees of said companies work grinding hours and even have to do things in their extra time for the game (some call those pet projects).
Branflakes was Branflakes. Not every community manager can be a Branflakes, everyone is different. Different personalities, ways to approach the playerbase, etc. Though there was a time before livestreams that Branflakes as well as other personalities had a show about Star Trek Online (it got cancelled though).
Also, contrary to you, Kael does not ignore complaints or is dismissive of them but it also helps if the poster is not vitriolic. There is one thing to vent, there is another to spew hatred against the devs. Also, creating new topics helps in the discussion of content that has been released, ideas being debated, etc. West, I don't think you are being fair to Kael in this regard. You have liked Branflakes and that is fine but give Kael with his idiosyncrasies, faults, etc a fair shake, then you can decide whether you like him or not. Yes, he at times is haphazard but there are many ways to be a community manager and he also is learning as well including from the players as well. Thanks.
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I have given Kael a fair shake, and yes not every community manager can be like Branflakes but they should aspire to be. Kael doesn't even seem to try, or even try to stand out.
And I'm not sure where I said their workload isn't consistent? And many AAA gaming companies overwork their employees in order to produce games and content. Happens a lot with the more successful titles or companies that are poorly manages. (Crunch only exists because of either unrealistic deadlines or poor management)
And there are some long standing bugs that still haven't been tackled like a few appearance glitches with some outfit pieces that would most likely be easy to fix, but are as far as I know, a very low priority for the team.
Just FYI, Kael's predecessor (LaughingTrendy) listened to the community..
She was fired for it.
Technically.. he was 'promoted' and then quietly fired later.
No, Kael is not responsive to the community at all.. but honestly, it's hard to blame him. I don't think Cryptic wants him to interact with us too much. Kael strikes me as a generally friendly person and is probably not the type that just hates to listen to people. Like most everyone else though, he has to answer to those above him so his lack of interaction might not fully be his fault (if at all.)
Still, I believe overall that they listen to feedback, they just don't honor every little request and report. That's probably a good thing too.
Unlike some, I actually think Cryptic is responsive to bug reports.. most things that I have had serious issue with in game have been rapidly fixed. We get a laundry list of bug fixes every Thursday, so this 'they never fix bugs' thing is something I have never understood.
I think the Dev team have a genuine affection for Star Trek - Perfect World may be 'riding the gravy train', but I see no evidence of the Dev team resting on their laurels, the quality of the episodes released over the past 2 years is superior to what he have had in the past (will better voice acting too boot).
Well said and absolutely true.
The last couple years have brought some of the best content in the history of the game.
The devs are professionals and making this game is their work. It never hurts to ask question or say "hey, that would be cool" - chances are, the devs already think that it would be cool but it's not going to get realized due to their schedule being already full to the brim (keep in mind, many, many things like new ship models have been made by devs on their own time because the work schedule doesn't permit it). Never try to tell anyone how to make their job if you have no idea what you are talking about.
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