But anyway, my point was that them focussing on 'fluff' isn't a bad thing per se. Even if the execution of how they do it isn't necessarily always ideal.
It is a bad thing if you view actual gameplay content as the thing that has the most personal value. In that case, focusing on fluff means not focusing on gameplay content, which is where we are at now.
Actually, it doesn't since they are two entirely different sections of the development team. Slowing or stopping the 'fluff' development would only idle the people involved in making it and not lend any speed to the mission content production at all. And if they hired outside talent just to help make missions using the current toolset there would be no noticeable difference (or maybe even a slowdown) until probably sometime near the end of the year.
And yes, their environmental art creation setup is THAT bad, a very outdated system jammed up with over a decade's worth of cruft that has to be navigated manually, relying only on the memory of the artist to know where things probably are stored and which versions of those items are which. I have no idea how bad the rest of the mission creation setup is, it was not directly shown in the livestream, only talked about, but I suspect something similarly disorganized and clunky.
It can take MONTHS to train new people to use that kind of haphazard proprietary mess. And I know that kind of mess firsthand, the last company I worked for (not a game company, but systems are systems regardless of what industry they are in) had a complex business system set up in much the same way, and I trained a lot of people in how to use it. The basic procedures are not the problem, but rather learning all the kludges and quirks the system picked up over the years that takes the majority of that time.
And that is assuming they already know how to use the particular version of the graphics program the company uses, which can be a roadblock in just shuffling people around between departments as if they were all trained the same and had the same skills (which is rarely the case). You would be surprised at how often a company will use different programs and procedures to do the exact same thing in different departments instead of standardizing.
What they really need to get scenarios to come out faster would be a major effort to clean up the mess and to make tools that are not so labor intensive to use.
Also, once having gone to F2P, trying to go back to paywalled content is just asking for trouble, a lot worse than the reaction to pulling the reroll tokens and whatnot out of the free category and locking them behind a minor paywall. The paid content ship sailed long ago.
not directed towards any one person...
but i find it, well, funny, that people find excuses for them to not improve the game in many aspects. always giving scenarios that provide cryptic a reason not to do anything.
What you call 'excuses' is just accepting reality and understanding some basic economics behind decisions made.
Devs have different specialisations. Some of those are more required for the game than other ones and hence their efforts can be more safely monetised.
At this point, a game without much new story content but with many new ships and queues is less of a risk investment-wise than heavily investing in new story content that people may or may not like - and which is much less reliable as a revenue stream anyway. Simply because it takes much longer to develop and the replayment value is lower.
Basically, the costs of developing such new content is much higher, the potential benefits are lower.
For new games it's the other way around obviously - but if you already have like two dozen story arcs, patrol missions, dozens of queues and several zones, it's more interesting financially to create a new ship or kit module that you can use in all that pre-existing content than designing a new Episode which takes much longer and which will be finished by the player in half an hour or so.
I'd love to get a new story arc every months, I'd love it if they stopped focussing on making 'play this content 20 times for a new temporary available fluffy thing'-events - but at the same time I can understand why they do the things they do.
Players love to point out that the Devs say the game is doing better than ever and that we should, therefore, get more content than we're getting. But of course it may well be that the game is doing so well financially, precisely because they have chosen the strategy of heavily investing in things that can easily be monetised.
And yes, in the long run it may not be the best decision. But in the short run it makes sense that they're doing it. Whether you like this or not, is something different. I don't have to like facts to be able to acknowledge them or accept their relevance.
And there is nothing anyone can say to justify them for it.
I think some of their excuses are "legitimate".
That said, I also think that some people who don't really want to do something are happy to find a legitimate excuse, because it gives them a way out of the thing they didn't want to do.
To elaborate on that a little, I've worked with a variety of people over the years. Some people look for any "legitimate" excuse they can find not to do certain work or projects. And because it's technically "legitimate", they get away with it. But other people are so passionate about what they are doing, they figure out some solution.
The truth is, we all get burnt out on our jobs sometimes. But IMHO I don't get a real sense of passion or problem solving from the dev team as a whole. I think they do only what they want to do; no more and no less. And anything they don't want to do, they cite some "legitimate" excuse.
I'm not judging them in any moral sense, but I find their lack of passion has also translated to my own lack of passion for playing this game. That said, I honestly hope that changes and something really cool happens again.
And there is nothing anyone can say to justify them for it.
I think some of their excuses are "legitimate".
That said, I also think that some people who don't really want to do something are happy to find a legitimate excuse, because it gives them a way out of the thing they didn't want to do.
To elaborate on that a little, I've worked with a variety of people over the years. Some people look for any "legitimate" excuse they can find not to do certain work or projects. And because it's technically "legitimate", they get away with it. But other people are so passionate about what they are doing, they figure out some solution.
The truth is, we all get burnt out on our jobs sometimes. But IMHO I don't get a real sense of passion or problem solving from the dev team as a whole. I think they do only what they want to do; no more and no less. And anything they don't want to do, they cite some "legitimate" excuse.
I'm not judging them in any moral sense, but I find their lack of passion has also translated to my own lack of passion for playing this game. That said, I honestly hope that changes and something really cool happens again.
Is that true?
We know, as examples, that some Devs were responsible for creating content - in their own time, i.e., without getting paid to do so. Examples include Heart and Minds and most of the Klingon faction-specific low-level content.
I seriously doubt that the problem is a lack of enthusiasm on their part. Being burnt out may be, though. But that only reinforces the idea that there are too few people doing too much work. So it's hardly their fault, if that is the case.
And there is nothing anyone can say to justify them for it.
I think some of their excuses are "legitimate".
That said, I also think that some people who don't really want to do something are happy to find a legitimate excuse, because it gives them a way out of the thing they didn't want to do.
To elaborate on that a little, I've worked with a variety of people over the years. Some people look for any "legitimate" excuse they can find not to do certain work or projects. And because it's technically "legitimate", they get away with it. But other people are so passionate about what they are doing, they figure out some solution.
The truth is, we all get burnt out on our jobs sometimes. But IMHO I don't get a real sense of passion or problem solving from the dev team as a whole. I think they do only what they want to do; no more and no less. And anything they don't want to do, they cite some "legitimate" excuse.
I'm not judging them in any moral sense, but I find their lack of passion has also translated to my own lack of passion for playing this game. That said, I honestly hope that changes and something really cool happens again.
Is that true?
A: none of us actually know, and
B: even if it is true, they would deny it
So it's not something any of us can say is "true" or not; It's just the impression I get in recent years.
We know, as examples, that some Devs were responsible for creating content - in their own time, i.e., without getting paid to do so. Examples include Heart and Minds and most of the Klingon faction-specific low-level content.
You are talking about things from a very long time ago.
I seriously doubt that the problem is a lack of enthusiasm on their part. Being burnt out may be, though. But that only reinforces the idea that there are too few people doing too much work. So it's hardly their fault, if that is the case.
I'm not saying it's anyone's "fault", exactly. It just feels, to me, like this game is putting out the very least amount of content possible to keep people from quitting en masse.
I'm sure they have some kind of stats that tell them "if we don't release X amount of content every X amount of time, X number of people stop playing". And it just feels, to me, like that is absolutely all they are going to do. No more, no less.
Like I said earlier, I'm not judging them in any moral sense. But this "bare minimum" output also doesn't make for a very exciting game, IMO.
not directed towards any one person...
but i find it, well, funny, that people find excuses for them to not improve the game in many aspects. always giving scenarios that provide cryptic a reason not to do anything.
What you call 'excuses' is just accepting reality and understanding some basic economics behind decisions made.
Devs have different specialisations. Some of those are more required for the game than other ones and hence their efforts can be more safely monetised.
At this point, a game without much new story content but with many new ships and queues is less of a risk investment-wise than heavily investing in new story content that people may or may not like - and which is much less reliable as a revenue stream anyway. Simply because it takes much longer to develop and the replayment value is lower.
Basically, the costs of developing such new content is much higher, the potential benefits are lower.
For new games it's the other way around obviously - but if you already have like two dozen story arcs, patrol missions, dozens of queues and several zones, it's more interesting financially to create a new ship or kit module that you can use in all that pre-existing content than designing a new Episode which takes much longer and which will be finished by the player in half an hour or so.
I'd love to get a new story arc every months, I'd love it if they stopped focussing on making 'play this content 20 times for a new temporary available fluffy thing'-events - but at the same time I can understand why they do the things they do.
Players love to point out that the Devs say the game is doing better than ever and that we should, therefore, get more content than we're getting. But of course it may well be that the game is doing so well financially, precisely because they have chosen the strategy of heavily investing in things that can easily be monetised.
And yes, in the long run it may not be the best decision. But in the short run it makes sense that they're doing it. Whether you like this or not, is something different. I don't have to like facts to be able to acknowledge them or accept their relevance.
your reality is far from mine then. and thats fine. i still call them excuses, no matter what you call economics behind anything. i have my reasons for using that word, and your reply also is nothing but assumptions about your view of how it works, or could, or should. and thats fine as well. but dont just assume none of us understand...
hopefully, the new company has hired hands that are observing the forums, as well as other social media, to get a view of the state of affairs. one can only be grateful if changes do get made to aid the longevity of the game, the players, and the company itself. and one of those is to stop making excuses - either as an employee, or a player making them on behalf of the company.
I agree with this.
We do get nothing but excuses. Anyone with common sense knows that under PWE, Cryptic did not have the funding to staff up and take the steps to take things up a notch or two. That is not Cryptic's problem. What IS the problem is the constant line of BS they lay down whenever they remove something or respond to why they haven't added something. And they have a history of turning it back on the players, like whatever the subject matter is, it's somehow our fault that they did this or didn't do that. It pisses me off to be quite honest. They have never OWNED their actions or inactions.
That's one of the things that needs to change. The simple honest and direct answer to everything they have had to remove or have not been able to do is "It is not within the budget PWE has allotted to STO to continue with this, or to do that". No we wouldn't like that answer either, but it would put the blame where it needs to be. But they wouldn't do that, no doubt because of the clause in the contract they signed to "hold Perfect World Entertainment blameless bla bal bla." They contractually can't make PWE the guilty party, and they WON'T own the decisions they make... So let's blame the players in some way.
Exploration got removed because players were getting lost in the star cluster maps. How do you get lost in what is essentially just a square room with one door? And even if that was happening, how hard is it to add a "leave Star Cluster" button? Yeah the old exploration system was a half-baked broken mess that would have taken man hours they didn't have the budget for to fix, maintain and grow into something more robust. So players "getting lost" was not the real reason. Just the reason they gave. An excuse, turned back on players.
They removed Foundry. They DID state that they no longer had the talent available to continue supporting it, which in corporatese means "We don't have the man hours." Again, it isn't an answer that people liked, but it was the truth. But then they had to turn it around on the players talking about how not enough people were using the Foundry to justify continuing. Why were players not using it? Oh yeah: Because it was constantly broken and buggy so producing content with it was problematic at best. And the foundry interface in the game only showed a limited number of available missions. And they were the most popular, but they were played the most because they made grinding a lot easier when completing the daily wrapper mission that yielded rewards. Most of the best work was buried and never seen. You had to come here to a subforum to learn about those missions, and to get the foundry ID to plug in to play it. Sow with the tools constantly bugging out, accessibility of the full range of content because Cryptic couldn't be bothered to add a "More" button to the interface, and the fact that it kept breaking in general every time they updated the game because they never did treat it like part of the core game to make sure that it got updated too, then of course players would not be using it. An answer they could have given which would have shut everyone up was the point that allowing users to pretty much create anything they wanted representing a major legal liability in terms of copyright infringement. We wouldn't like that reason, but it has the virtue of being 100% valid. Especially in a system that is not vetted, with no budget to make it vetted.
BS excuse after BS excuse. And the trend goes back to the beginning. Th players were the reason why they didn't develop Klingon content. Didn't you know? Players weren't playing the klingon side enough to justify allocating man-hours to addressing it. Nevermind the FACT that the players' lack of interest was due to the fact that the KDF was incomplete and uninspiring due to Cryptic's neglect. They didn't bother, so neither did we, but they spun it as we wouldn't bother so they couldn't be bothered.
B. S. Excuses.
And there is nothing anyone can say to justify them for it.
While I don't necessarily disagree with the points you make - yes, some of the examples you give prove that they indeed made up quite stupid excuses for certain changes, with 'getting lost' in the exploration clusters undoubtely the lamest of all - I'd like to point out that these things are only vaguely related to the original thing we were discussing...
Which is that there may be good reasons for focussing so much on 'fluff' instead of monetising playable content.
Just to make sure we're talking about the same thing again; your rant and the earlier topic are connected by one common factor; namely, that resources are, apparently, very limited. Resulting in them having to make highly unpopular choices. And yes, they should be more honest about that sad fact. And, preferably, do something about it (or the new owners should).
My guess would be the countdown until the next major event (probably the next Mirror segment or the Anniversary, though I suppose it is possible it could be the next recruitment).
hopefully, the new company has hired hands that are observing the forums, as well as other social media, to get a view of the state of affairs.
Oh man, I hate to be the one to pop this bubble, but most companies don't actually do that anymore. What they have largely found over the past few years is that Forums and Social Media, while useful for getting some carefully sifted feedback on some items such as major product faults, are otherwise not best ignored, in fact really must be ignored. Because they amplify the voices of an extremely small dedicated minority of customers. Often those holding the most extreme views on the products and properties. Youtuber "Spector Creative" aka Scott Neitlich a long time brand manager at Mattel and other toy companies did a great video about this last year. He said that Mattel had been looking at the activity in a particularly large and active Mattel Interest forum for feedback regarding their D2C MattyCollector lines. And Marketing was at first swayed by the seeming directions of the feedback. But the following the feedback always seemed to lead to product dead ends. They finally took a look at the actual Forum activities that they were using for feedback. It had tens of thousands of users. And a post volume of 1000-5000 posts/month. But when they drilled down they found that 99% of the posts and feedback were coming from less than a dozen users. They were drawing their planning feedback from barely 10 angry internet warriors. It's the same with Twitter. It's the same with here or on Redit. You're not really getting good feedback in the way most people assume you are. Because the medium is amplifying a very small number of voices. You can see that here. Just look at how often this same basic complaint and discussion comes up on this forum. Than look at the participants. You see the same names carrying on the same debates and discussions actively across multiple threads sometimes for years. What you get out of it is a few peoples opinions and occasionally good ideas. What you don't get is any meaningful data reflective of what the playerbase or consumerbase as a whole actually wants. In fact more often than not you get the exact opposite of that. The last thing any game company wants to be doing is listening to the forums, at least the forums complaints. Because more often than not doing so is the fastest way to TRIBBLE off or drive off the actual broader playerbase.
not directed towards any one person...
but i find it, well, funny, that people find excuses for them to not improve the game in many aspects. always giving scenarios that provide cryptic a reason not to do anything.
Some would call them white knights. Fanbois... Etc.
I think it is simply because they have become so used to the status quo that they can't see it ever being any other way, and they feel that nothing has changed for so long that it never could. Things only remain a certain way until someone in a decision-making position decides to change them. PWE saved Cryptic by buying them from Atari. But Cryptic was not saved for greatness, but rather mediocrity. They didn't even have enough staff on hand to address issues with certain features and functionality, so they REMOVED them. And they still can't do more than 2 content releases per year that can be blown through in a day, leaving players to run the same stuff over and over for six months at a time. All the while the lockbox keeys keep selling and so do the ships. But all the while the money has been flowing into PWE's coffers and not back into live development of stO.
Well we're about to get new decision-makers in charge. Maybe they will make decisions that actually improve the game.
And "STO is over a decade old" is not an excuse. It's still live. It's still making a profit. As long as the servers run, there is always an opportunity for growth and improvement. But only with a team that is equipped to make it so, and a budget that allows them to be so equipped.
New owners mean new decisions. Maybe they'll make some good ones.
A few times now you've been on this "Only delivering two content releases per year & us having to wait 6 months in between" stance for a while. Since a certain person isn't here to relay facts, let me break things down, starting from the last year we got a true expansion, 2018.
- January 23rd 2018: 8th anniversary, "Scylla & Charybdis" & Re-engineering were both introduced.
- April 3rd 2018: Season 14.5 update, "The Renegade's Regret" & Constable secondary specialization
- June 5th 2018: Victory is Life, gave us playable Jem'hadar, revamped DS9 interior, Gamma Quadrant addition to map, 6 new missions + "Home" 3 weeks later, Gamma Task Force Reputation, Romulans gain access to most Tier 5 & Tier 6 ally ships.
- October 9th 2018: Age of Discovery, added Discovery starting experience, "Secrets" & "Downfall" were added along with Tier 6 reputation expansion, Random TFOs
- January 23rd 2019: Mirror of Discovery & 9th anniversary, "Para Pacem" & "Illusion of Communication" were added along with Personal Endeavors
- May 14th 2019: Rise of Discovery, "The Plausibility of the Possible" & "The Impossibility of Reason" were added along with scaling Tier 6 starships, Discovery Legends reputation, August 29th 2019: Romulan faction restriction from Romulan ships removed
- September 10th 2019: Awakening, Patrols got revamped, "Beneath the Skin" story was added, Event system overhauled & Event reputation retired
- January 28th 2020: Legacy, 10th anniversary, "The Measure of Morality (part 1)" & "The Measure of Morality (part 2)" story as added
- June 30th 2020: House Divided, Start of Klingon playable experience revamp, "The Centre cannot Hold" & "The Khitomer Discord" stories added
- October 6th 2020: House Shattered, Experimental Ship upgrade token added for Tier 5-U and Tier 6 ships, "Partisans" story was added
- January 26th 2021: House Reborn & 11th anniversary, Discovery Klingon playable species option added alongside Klingon Recruitment, Cross-faction Flying, "Knowledge is Power" & "Leap of Faith" story added
- May 25th 2021: House United, "Warriors of the Empire" & "A Day Long Remembered" story to close out Year of Klingon update
- September 14th 2021:Reflections, Elite Captain Training Token introduced, Long awaited Mirror Universe storyline added with "Firewall"
From here, we can see that after Victory is Life, we had to wait usually around THREE OR FOUR months for major content updates. 2020 had a delay because of the impact of Covid & them transitioning to work from home. More or less we've been at THREE content updates a year, usually with around a few months of waiting in between, but never more than half a year.
Granted, the last major big system update we had was when the Event system was overhauled, which enabled them to add events that could handle different type of activities besides just TFOs for credit. It's what help make the Event Campaigns possible for different reward options.
More or less we've been at THREE content updates a year,
IMO, the term "content updates" is a fairly useless term because it can mean so many different things and also does not even quantify the actual amount of content.
And TBH, I feel the same way about long lists that you know who was famous for. So let's put it another way; a very simple and easy to understand way.
What is the yearly average number of:
A: new episodes
B: new TFOs
Once we get that we can talk about those actual numbers, and not have to use vague terms that can mean different things to different people.
I thought there was a page on the wiki that showed all content released by year, but I can't find it at the moment to maybe someone else can.
So you're saying 1 (House Reborn) + 1 (House United) + 1 (Reflections) = 2?? In 2021 we received three content releases with a total of 5 new missions and 2 new queues. That is far less than I would like, but it's important to be accurate when complaining about these things. Whoever made the decisions before felt that STOs record profits didn't warrant any additional funding, hopefully Gearbox sees things differently and allows them to double the content development team. It will be awhile before we know if that's going to happen though, and if it does happen it will still take time to get any new hires up to speed on how things work with STO.
not directed towards any one person...
but i find it, well, funny, that people find excuses for them to not improve the game in many aspects. always giving scenarios that provide cryptic a reason not to do anything.
Some would call them white knights. Fanbois... Etc.
I think it is simply because they have become so used to the status quo that they can't see it ever being any other way, and they feel that nothing has changed for so long that it never could. Things only remain a certain way until someone in a decision-making position decides to change them. PWE saved Cryptic by buying them from Atari. But Cryptic was not saved for greatness, but rather mediocrity. They didn't even have enough staff on hand to address issues with certain features and functionality, so they REMOVED them. And they still can't do more than 2 content releases per year that can be blown through in a day, leaving players to run the same stuff over and over for six months at a time. All the while the lockbox keeys keep selling and so do the ships. But all the while the money has been flowing into PWE's coffers and not back into live development of stO.
Well we're about to get new decision-makers in charge. Maybe they will make decisions that actually improve the game.
And "STO is over a decade old" is not an excuse. It's still live. It's still making a profit. As long as the servers run, there is always an opportunity for growth and improvement. But only with a team that is equipped to make it so, and a budget that allows them to be so equipped.
New owners mean new decisions. Maybe they'll make some good ones.
A few times now you've been on this "Only delivering two content releases per year & us having to wait 6 months in between" stance for a while. Since a certain person isn't here to relay facts, let me break things down, starting from the last year we got a true expansion, 2018.
- January 23rd 2018: 8th anniversary, "Scylla & Charybdis" & Re-engineering were both introduced.
- April 3rd 2018: Season 14.5 update, "The Renegade's Regret" & Constable secondary specialization
- June 5th 2018: Victory is Life, gave us playable Jem'hadar, revamped DS9 interior, Gamma Quadrant addition to map, 6 new missions + "Home" 3 weeks later, Gamma Task Force Reputation, Romulans gain access to most Tier 5 & Tier 6 ally ships.
- October 9th 2018: Age of Discovery, added Discovery starting experience, "Secrets" & "Downfall" were added along with Tier 6 reputation expansion, Random TFOs
- January 23rd 2019: Mirror of Discovery & 9th anniversary, "Para Pacem" & "Illusion of Communication" were added along with Personal Endeavors
- May 14th 2019: Rise of Discovery, "The Plausibility of the Possible" & "The Impossibility of Reason" were added along with scaling Tier 6 starships, Discovery Legends reputation, August 29th 2019: Romulan faction restriction from Romulan ships removed
- September 10th 2019: Awakening, Patrols got revamped, "Beneath the Skin" story was added, Event system overhauled & Event reputation retired
- January 28th 2020: Legacy, 10th anniversary, "The Measure of Morality (part 1)" & "The Measure of Morality (part 2)" story as added
- June 30th 2020: House Divided, Start of Klingon playable experience revamp, "The Centre cannot Hold" & "The Khitomer Discord" stories added
- October 6th 2020: House Shattered, Experimental Ship upgrade token added for Tier 5-U and Tier 6 ships, "Partisans" story was added
- January 26th 2021: House Reborn & 11th anniversary, Discovery Klingon playable species option added alongside Klingon Recruitment, Cross-faction Flying, "Knowledge is Power" & "Leap of Faith" story added
- May 25th 2021: House United, "Warriors of the Empire" & "A Day Long Remembered" story to close out Year of Klingon update
- September 14th 2021:Reflections, Elite Captain Training Token introduced, Long awaited Mirror Universe storyline added with "Firewall"
From here, we can see that after Victory is Life, we had to wait usually around THREE OR FOUR months for major content updates. 2020 had a delay because of the impact of Covid & them transitioning to work from home. More or less we've been at THREE content updates a year, usually with around a few months of waiting in between, but never more than half a year.
Granted, the last major big system update we had was when the Event system was overhauled, which enabled them to add events that could handle different type of activities besides just TFOs for credit. It's what help make the Event Campaigns possible for different reward options.
Okay... So in 2018, we saw 5 content releases.
In 2019 we saw 3 content releases.
In 2020 we saw 2 content releases.
In 2021 we saw 2 content releases.
The last two years have established the trend. But to take your total period from 2018-2021, we've had 11 content releases in four years. And we are not talking about major content releases either. If you total up the number of missions that have been added in the last four years it falls drastically short of what the average MMO releases in expansion content in the same amount of time. How many lockbox ships or C-store ships (singularly or in bundles) have they released in the last 4 years?
2020 & 2021 had THREE content releases each, so the same as 2019.
- 2020 had Legacy, House Divided & House Shattered
- 2021 had House Reborn, House United & Reflections.
I've said before that ships take a lot smaller investment in manpower, so they can be done & released faster than the new story content can. However, if you REALLY want the list, here it is, along with ships that were also given away for free for events
2018 had quite a number of ships, especially since it was an expansion release year. 2019 & 2020 were more or less equal, though they put more emphasis on legendary ships in 2020 which meant us getting fewer regular C-store ships and more of a legendary focus of ships. 2021 so far had the fewest ships of all the years.
We know that there is going to be new ships to look forward to as they still have the the California-class, the new version of the Excelsior from Lower Decks, The Viridian from Discovery S3, Friendship-class, Merian-Class, Angelou-class (Rainforest ship), Dresselhaus type, Ni'Var Razor & the USS Credence which appeared in S4 of Discovery, though that likely won't be in for a while.
More or less we've been at THREE content updates a year,
IMO, the term "content updates" is a fairly useless term because it can mean so many different things and also does not even quantify the actual amount of content.
And TBH, I feel the same way about long lists that you know who was famous for. So let's put it another way; a very simple and easy to understand way.
What is the yearly average number of:
A: new episodes
B: new TFOs
Once we get that we can talk about those actual numbers, and not have to use vague terms that can mean different things to different people.
I thought there was a page on the wiki that showed all content released by year, but I can't find it at the moment to maybe someone else can.
Has anybody got an answer to items "A" and "B" above? I'm looking for simple numbers here, not walls of text.
More or less we've been at THREE content updates a year,
IMO, the term "content updates" is a fairly useless term because it can mean so many different things and also does not even quantify the actual amount of content.
And TBH, I feel the same way about long lists that you know who was famous for. So let's put it another way; a very simple and easy to understand way.
What is the yearly average number of:
A: new episodes
B: new TFOs
Once we get that we can talk about those actual numbers, and not have to use vague terms that can mean different things to different people.
I thought there was a page on the wiki that showed all content released by year, but I can't find it at the moment to maybe someone else can.
Has anybody got an answer to items "A" and "B" above? I'm looking for simple numbers here, not walls of text.
After a quick check through the wiki, it looks like the past three years have looked like this:
2019: 5 missions and 4 queues
2020: 5 missions and 3 queues
2021: 5 missions and 2 queues
all that money from all of those ships did not increase the size of the content team in the slightest.
During that 4 years, Cryptic DID hire a team of developers to work on the ill-fated Magic The Gathering game. When that project failed, did they float those developers over to STO or any other title? Based on what I heard and read, they just cut them loose.
This was PROBABLY a Perfect World decision since they would have been the ones deciding how much funding Cryptic received.
More or less we've been at THREE content updates a year,
IMO, the term "content updates" is a fairly useless term because it can mean so many different things and also does not even quantify the actual amount of content.
And TBH, I feel the same way about long lists that you know who was famous for. So let's put it another way; a very simple and easy to understand way.
What is the yearly average number of:
A: new episodes
B: new TFOs
Once we get that we can talk about those actual numbers, and not have to use vague terms that can mean different things to different people.
I thought there was a page on the wiki that showed all content released by year, but I can't find it at the moment to maybe someone else can.
Has anybody got an answer to items "A" and "B" above? I'm looking for simple numbers here, not walls of text.
After a quick check through the wiki, it looks like the past three years have looked like this:
2019: 5 missions and 4 queues
2020: 5 missions and 3 queues
2021: 5 missions and 2 queues
More or less we've been at THREE content updates a year,
IMO, the term "content updates" is a fairly useless term because it can mean so many different things and also does not even quantify the actual amount of content.
And TBH, I feel the same way about long lists that you know who was famous for. So let's put it another way; a very simple and easy to understand way.
What is the yearly average number of:
A: new episodes
B: new TFOs
Once we get that we can talk about those actual numbers, and not have to use vague terms that can mean different things to different people.
I thought there was a page on the wiki that showed all content released by year, but I can't find it at the moment to maybe someone else can.
Has anybody got an answer to items "A" and "B" above? I'm looking for simple numbers here, not walls of text.
After a quick check through the wiki, it looks like the past three years have looked like this:
2019: 5 missions and 4 queues
2020: 5 missions and 3 queues
2021: 5 missions and 2 queues
Another thought on this.
So, episodes are the story content of this game. And on average, let's say episodes represent 2 hours (if we're being generous) of playtime.
So this means Cryptic is putting out... 10 hours (again, being generous) of actual story content... PER YEAR.
That is just...hard to comprehend...for an MMO.
But hey, they sure are putting out a bunch of ships to play those10 hours with!
Comments
Actually, it doesn't since they are two entirely different sections of the development team. Slowing or stopping the 'fluff' development would only idle the people involved in making it and not lend any speed to the mission content production at all. And if they hired outside talent just to help make missions using the current toolset there would be no noticeable difference (or maybe even a slowdown) until probably sometime near the end of the year.
And yes, their environmental art creation setup is THAT bad, a very outdated system jammed up with over a decade's worth of cruft that has to be navigated manually, relying only on the memory of the artist to know where things probably are stored and which versions of those items are which. I have no idea how bad the rest of the mission creation setup is, it was not directly shown in the livestream, only talked about, but I suspect something similarly disorganized and clunky.
It can take MONTHS to train new people to use that kind of haphazard proprietary mess. And I know that kind of mess firsthand, the last company I worked for (not a game company, but systems are systems regardless of what industry they are in) had a complex business system set up in much the same way, and I trained a lot of people in how to use it. The basic procedures are not the problem, but rather learning all the kludges and quirks the system picked up over the years that takes the majority of that time.
And that is assuming they already know how to use the particular version of the graphics program the company uses, which can be a roadblock in just shuffling people around between departments as if they were all trained the same and had the same skills (which is rarely the case). You would be surprised at how often a company will use different programs and procedures to do the exact same thing in different departments instead of standardizing.
What they really need to get scenarios to come out faster would be a major effort to clean up the mess and to make tools that are not so labor intensive to use.
Also, once having gone to F2P, trying to go back to paywalled content is just asking for trouble, a lot worse than the reaction to pulling the reroll tokens and whatnot out of the free category and locking them behind a minor paywall. The paid content ship sailed long ago.
What you call 'excuses' is just accepting reality and understanding some basic economics behind decisions made.
Devs have different specialisations. Some of those are more required for the game than other ones and hence their efforts can be more safely monetised.
At this point, a game without much new story content but with many new ships and queues is less of a risk investment-wise than heavily investing in new story content that people may or may not like - and which is much less reliable as a revenue stream anyway. Simply because it takes much longer to develop and the replayment value is lower.
Basically, the costs of developing such new content is much higher, the potential benefits are lower.
For new games it's the other way around obviously - but if you already have like two dozen story arcs, patrol missions, dozens of queues and several zones, it's more interesting financially to create a new ship or kit module that you can use in all that pre-existing content than designing a new Episode which takes much longer and which will be finished by the player in half an hour or so.
I'd love to get a new story arc every months, I'd love it if they stopped focussing on making 'play this content 20 times for a new temporary available fluffy thing'-events - but at the same time I can understand why they do the things they do.
Players love to point out that the Devs say the game is doing better than ever and that we should, therefore, get more content than we're getting. But of course it may well be that the game is doing so well financially, precisely because they have chosen the strategy of heavily investing in things that can easily be monetised.
And yes, in the long run it may not be the best decision. But in the short run it makes sense that they're doing it. Whether you like this or not, is something different. I don't have to like facts to be able to acknowledge them or accept their relevance.
I think some of their excuses are "legitimate".
That said, I also think that some people who don't really want to do something are happy to find a legitimate excuse, because it gives them a way out of the thing they didn't want to do.
To elaborate on that a little, I've worked with a variety of people over the years. Some people look for any "legitimate" excuse they can find not to do certain work or projects. And because it's technically "legitimate", they get away with it. But other people are so passionate about what they are doing, they figure out some solution.
The truth is, we all get burnt out on our jobs sometimes. But IMHO I don't get a real sense of passion or problem solving from the dev team as a whole. I think they do only what they want to do; no more and no less. And anything they don't want to do, they cite some "legitimate" excuse.
I'm not judging them in any moral sense, but I find their lack of passion has also translated to my own lack of passion for playing this game. That said, I honestly hope that changes and something really cool happens again.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
Is that true?
We know, as examples, that some Devs were responsible for creating content - in their own time, i.e., without getting paid to do so. Examples include Heart and Minds and most of the Klingon faction-specific low-level content.
I seriously doubt that the problem is a lack of enthusiasm on their part. Being burnt out may be, though. But that only reinforces the idea that there are too few people doing too much work. So it's hardly their fault, if that is the case.
A: none of us actually know, and
B: even if it is true, they would deny it
So it's not something any of us can say is "true" or not; It's just the impression I get in recent years.
You are talking about things from a very long time ago.
I'm not saying it's anyone's "fault", exactly. It just feels, to me, like this game is putting out the very least amount of content possible to keep people from quitting en masse.
I'm sure they have some kind of stats that tell them "if we don't release X amount of content every X amount of time, X number of people stop playing". And it just feels, to me, like that is absolutely all they are going to do. No more, no less.
Like I said earlier, I'm not judging them in any moral sense. But this "bare minimum" output also doesn't make for a very exciting game, IMO.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
While I don't necessarily disagree with the points you make - yes, some of the examples you give prove that they indeed made up quite stupid excuses for certain changes, with 'getting lost' in the exploration clusters undoubtely the lamest of all - I'd like to point out that these things are only vaguely related to the original thing we were discussing...
Which is that there may be good reasons for focussing so much on 'fluff' instead of monetising playable content.
Just to make sure we're talking about the same thing again; your rant and the earlier topic are connected by one common factor; namely, that resources are, apparently, very limited. Resulting in them having to make highly unpopular choices. And yes, they should be more honest about that sad fact. And, preferably, do something about it (or the new owners should).
My guess would be the countdown until the next major event (probably the next Mirror segment or the Anniversary, though I suppose it is possible it could be the next recruitment).
Oh man, I hate to be the one to pop this bubble, but most companies don't actually do that anymore. What they have largely found over the past few years is that Forums and Social Media, while useful for getting some carefully sifted feedback on some items such as major product faults, are otherwise not best ignored, in fact really must be ignored. Because they amplify the voices of an extremely small dedicated minority of customers. Often those holding the most extreme views on the products and properties. Youtuber "Spector Creative" aka Scott Neitlich a long time brand manager at Mattel and other toy companies did a great video about this last year. He said that Mattel had been looking at the activity in a particularly large and active Mattel Interest forum for feedback regarding their D2C MattyCollector lines. And Marketing was at first swayed by the seeming directions of the feedback. But the following the feedback always seemed to lead to product dead ends. They finally took a look at the actual Forum activities that they were using for feedback. It had tens of thousands of users. And a post volume of 1000-5000 posts/month. But when they drilled down they found that 99% of the posts and feedback were coming from less than a dozen users. They were drawing their planning feedback from barely 10 angry internet warriors. It's the same with Twitter. It's the same with here or on Redit. You're not really getting good feedback in the way most people assume you are. Because the medium is amplifying a very small number of voices. You can see that here. Just look at how often this same basic complaint and discussion comes up on this forum. Than look at the participants. You see the same names carrying on the same debates and discussions actively across multiple threads sometimes for years. What you get out of it is a few peoples opinions and occasionally good ideas. What you don't get is any meaningful data reflective of what the playerbase or consumerbase as a whole actually wants. In fact more often than not you get the exact opposite of that. The last thing any game company wants to be doing is listening to the forums, at least the forums complaints. Because more often than not doing so is the fastest way to TRIBBLE off or drive off the actual broader playerbase.
A few times now you've been on this "Only delivering two content releases per year & us having to wait 6 months in between" stance for a while. Since a certain person isn't here to relay facts, let me break things down, starting from the last year we got a true expansion, 2018.
- January 23rd 2018: 8th anniversary, "Scylla & Charybdis" & Re-engineering were both introduced.
- April 3rd 2018: Season 14.5 update, "The Renegade's Regret" & Constable secondary specialization
- June 5th 2018: Victory is Life, gave us playable Jem'hadar, revamped DS9 interior, Gamma Quadrant addition to map, 6 new missions + "Home" 3 weeks later, Gamma Task Force Reputation, Romulans gain access to most Tier 5 & Tier 6 ally ships.
- October 9th 2018: Age of Discovery, added Discovery starting experience, "Secrets" & "Downfall" were added along with Tier 6 reputation expansion, Random TFOs
- January 23rd 2019: Mirror of Discovery & 9th anniversary, "Para Pacem" & "Illusion of Communication" were added along with Personal Endeavors
- May 14th 2019: Rise of Discovery, "The Plausibility of the Possible" & "The Impossibility of Reason" were added along with scaling Tier 6 starships, Discovery Legends reputation, August 29th 2019: Romulan faction restriction from Romulan ships removed
- September 10th 2019: Awakening, Patrols got revamped, "Beneath the Skin" story was added, Event system overhauled & Event reputation retired
- January 28th 2020: Legacy, 10th anniversary, "The Measure of Morality (part 1)" & "The Measure of Morality (part 2)" story as added
- June 30th 2020: House Divided, Start of Klingon playable experience revamp, "The Centre cannot Hold" & "The Khitomer Discord" stories added
- October 6th 2020: House Shattered, Experimental Ship upgrade token added for Tier 5-U and Tier 6 ships, "Partisans" story was added
- January 26th 2021: House Reborn & 11th anniversary, Discovery Klingon playable species option added alongside Klingon Recruitment, Cross-faction Flying, "Knowledge is Power" & "Leap of Faith" story added
- May 25th 2021: House United, "Warriors of the Empire" & "A Day Long Remembered" story to close out Year of Klingon update
- September 14th 2021:Reflections, Elite Captain Training Token introduced, Long awaited Mirror Universe storyline added with "Firewall"
From here, we can see that after Victory is Life, we had to wait usually around THREE OR FOUR months for major content updates. 2020 had a delay because of the impact of Covid & them transitioning to work from home. More or less we've been at THREE content updates a year, usually with around a few months of waiting in between, but never more than half a year.
Granted, the last major big system update we had was when the Event system was overhauled, which enabled them to add events that could handle different type of activities besides just TFOs for credit. It's what help make the Event Campaigns possible for different reward options.
IMO, the term "content updates" is a fairly useless term because it can mean so many different things and also does not even quantify the actual amount of content.
And TBH, I feel the same way about long lists that you know who was famous for. So let's put it another way; a very simple and easy to understand way.
What is the yearly average number of:
A: new episodes
B: new TFOs
Once we get that we can talk about those actual numbers, and not have to use vague terms that can mean different things to different people.
I thought there was a page on the wiki that showed all content released by year, but I can't find it at the moment to maybe someone else can.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
So you're saying 1 (House Reborn) + 1 (House United) + 1 (Reflections) = 2?? In 2021 we received three content releases with a total of 5 new missions and 2 new queues. That is far less than I would like, but it's important to be accurate when complaining about these things. Whoever made the decisions before felt that STOs record profits didn't warrant any additional funding, hopefully Gearbox sees things differently and allows them to double the content development team. It will be awhile before we know if that's going to happen though, and if it does happen it will still take time to get any new hires up to speed on how things work with STO.
2020 & 2021 had THREE content releases each, so the same as 2019.
- 2020 had Legacy, House Divided & House Shattered
- 2021 had House Reborn, House United & Reflections.
I've said before that ships take a lot smaller investment in manpower, so they can be done & released faster than the new story content can. However, if you REALLY want the list, here it is, along with ships that were also given away for free for events
2018 ships
- C-store: Andorian Pilot Escort 3 pack, Lethean Pilot Escort 3 pack, Dewan Pilot Escort 3 pack, Jem'Hadar Vanguard Carrier (T6), Jem'Hadar Vanguard Heavy Raider (T6), Jem'Hadar Vanguard Dreadnought Cruiser (T6), Jem'Hadar Vanguard Warship (T6), Cardassian Damar-class Intel Science Dreadnought (T6), Cardassian Detapa-class Intel Escort (T6), Cardassian Ghemor-class Intel Flight Deck Carrier (T6), Lafayette-class Recon Destroyer, Ketha-class Recon Raptor, Narendra-class Support Cruiser, Vorral-class Support Cruiser, Walker-class Prototype Light Exploration Cruiser (T4), Europa Heavy Battlecruiser
- Event: Bajoran Denorios-class Interceptor, Vorgon Ytijara Dreadnought Cruiser, Fek'lhri S'torr-class Warship
- Lockbox: Crossfield-class Science Spearhead & Sarcophagus-class Dreadnought Carrier, Verne Temporal Science Vessel (T6), Qul’poH Temporal Science Vessel (T6) , Sui’Mor Temporal Science Vessel (T6), Jem'hadar Light Battlecruiser, Mirror Strike Wing Escort, Hur’q Assembly Multi-Mission Science Vessel, Hur’q Ravager Strike Wing Escort
- Lobi: Walker-class Light Exploration Cruiser, Klein Temporal Destroyer (T6), Chargh’poH Temporal Destroyer (T6), Tal’aura Temporal Destroyer (T6), Maquis Raider
- Promotional box: Hur’q Vedcrid Hive Dreadnought Carrier, Vaadwaur Juggernaut
- Other: Jem'hadar Escort (T5)- Exclusive to Jem'hadar; Malachowski Light Cruiser (T1)
Total: 43 ships, not counting fleet
2019 ships
- C-store: Gagarin-class Miracle Worker Battlecruiser, Shran-class Light Pilot Escort, M'Chla-class Pilot Bird-of-Prey, Qugh-class Miracle Worker Battlecruiser, Buran-class Command Dreadnought Cruiser, Qoj-class Command Dreadnought Cruiser, Edison-class Temporal Warship, Chargh-class Temporal Warship, Kholhr-class Temporal Warbird, Jem'Hadar Vanguard Temporal Warship (T6), Somerville-class Intel Science Vessel, Batlh-class Intel Science Vessel, Earhart-class Strike Wing Escort, Sech-class Strike Wing Escort
- Event: Vulcan T'pau-class Scout Ship, Risian corvette, Risian Pilot Corvette (Fleet exclusive if owned), Elachi Qulash-class Frigate, Fek'Ihri Fe'rang-class Dreadnought Carrier
- Lockbox: Terran Styx-class Dreadnought Cruiser, Tholian Jorogumo Carrier, Voth Rampart-class Command Flight Deck Carrier, Section 31 Intel Science Destroyer, Na'Qjej-class Intel Battlecruiser, Kelvin Einstein-class Heavy Destroyer,
Kelvin D7-class Heavy Destroyer
- Lobi: Tholian Iktomi-class Science Vessel, Voth Bastille-class Temporal Science Vessel
- Promotional box: Mirror Crossfield Science Destroyer, Constitution-class Miracle Worker Flight Deck Carrier, D7-class Miracle Worker Flight Deck Carrier, Freedom-class Exploration Frigate, Vulcan Experimental Scout Vessel
- Other: Jem'Hadar Vanguard Heavy Destroyer
Total: 34 not counting fleet
2020 ships
- C-store: Columbia-class Legendary Temporal Operative Escort, Constitution-class Legendary Miracle Worker Light Cruiser, Constitution-class Legendary Temporal Flight Deck Carrier, Defiant-class Legendary Pilot Warship, Glenn-class Legendary Temporal Operative Science Vessel, Intrepid-class Legendary Miracle Worker Multi-Mission Science Vessel, Kelvin Constitution-class Legendary Intel Battlecruiser, Ross-class Legendary Command Exploration Cruiser, Sovereign-class Legendary Miracle Worker Assault Cruiser, Verity-class Legendary Command Dreadnought Cruiser, T'liss-class Legendary Light Intel Warbird, Caitian Aspero-class Support Carrier, Vo'devwl-class Support Carrier, Ra'nodaire-class Support Carrier Warbird, Jem'Hadar Vanguard Support Carrier, Rahhae-class Recon Warbird, Jem'Hadar Vanguard Recon Destroyer, Shenzhou-class Legendary Light Battlecruiser, Galaxy-class Legendary Dreadnought Cruiser, Titan-class Science Destroyer
- Event: Khitomer-class Alliance Battlecruiser, Kobayashi Maru-class Freighter (scaling T4), Tong'Duj-class Freighter (scaling T4), Risian Weather Control Vessel, Fek'Ihri Gok'tad-class Carrier
- Lockbox: Liberated Borg Command Juggernaut, Ferengi Quark-class Marauder, Undine Cheirax-class Bio-Warship, Ba'ul Science Intel Spearhead, Deimos-class Pilot Destroyer, Mirror Constitution-class Warship
- Lobi: Undine Kiwavi-class Bio-Cruiser
- Promotional box: Section 31 Command Heavy Battlecruiser, La Sirena-class Heavy Raider, Inquiry-class Battlecruiser
- Other: None for this year
Total: 35 not counting fleet
2021 ships
- C-store: Horatio-class Legendary Intel Support Cruiser, Repulse-class Legendary Miracle Worker Heavy Cruiser, Vo'n'talk-class Legendary Pilot Bird-of-Prey, Vor'cha-class Legendary Command Support Battlecruiser, D7-class Legendary Intel Battlecruiser, Clarke-class Multi-Mission Command Cruiser, Grissom-class Light Science Vessel, Legendary D'deridex-class Miracle Worker Warbird Battlecruiser, Legendary Scimitar-class Intel Dreadnought Warbird, Legendary Miranda-class Multi-Mission Cruiser, Appalachia-class Blockade Runner Escort, Equinox-class Pilot Scout Ship, Da Vinci-class Miracle Worker Escort
- Event: Temer-class Alliance Raider, Risian Luxury Cruiser, Mirror Gagarin-class Warship, Eisenberg-class Star Cruiser
- Lockbox: Jovian Intel Heavy Raider, Kwejian Pilot Frigate, Dhailkhina-class Command Strike Wing Warbird, Crossfield-class Science Spearhead Refit, Courage-class Command Science Destroyer, Mars-class Pilot Escort, Parliament-class Miracle Worker Surveyor Cruiser, Saturn-class Intel Science Spearhead, United Earth Defense Force Vessel
- Promotional box: Janeway-class Command Science Vessel, Courage-class Command Science Destroyer, Kirk-class Temporal Heavy Battlecruiser
- Other: M'Chla-class Bird-of-Prey Refit
Total 30 not counting fleet only
2018 had quite a number of ships, especially since it was an expansion release year. 2019 & 2020 were more or less equal, though they put more emphasis on legendary ships in 2020 which meant us getting fewer regular C-store ships and more of a legendary focus of ships. 2021 so far had the fewest ships of all the years.
We know that there is going to be new ships to look forward to as they still have the the California-class, the new version of the Excelsior from Lower Decks, The Viridian from Discovery S3, Friendship-class, Merian-Class, Angelou-class (Rainforest ship), Dresselhaus type, Ni'Var Razor & the USS Credence which appeared in S4 of Discovery, though that likely won't be in for a while.
Has anybody got an answer to items "A" and "B" above? I'm looking for simple numbers here, not walls of text.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
After a quick check through the wiki, it looks like the past three years have looked like this:
2019: 5 missions and 4 queues
2020: 5 missions and 3 queues
2021: 5 missions and 2 queues
First, thanks for the answer.
Second...yikes.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
Another thought on this.
So, episodes are the story content of this game. And on average, let's say episodes represent 2 hours (if we're being generous) of playtime.
So this means Cryptic is putting out... 10 hours (again, being generous) of actual story content... PER YEAR.
That is just...hard to comprehend...for an MMO.
But hey, they sure are putting out a bunch of ships to play those10 hours with!
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008