It's understandable that Cryptic doesn't want too much negativity. If it's criticism that's at least useful, it makes sense to tolerate it. But that's very different from someone saying that they won't offer that anymore and won't in fact do anything in the game/ be part of the community at all anymore. As many have pointed out.
Imagine moving to a different town, but before leaving, putting up signs everywhere about how your old town stinks, how the people living there aren't friendly enough and how you don't like the colour of the houses there. I doubt such posters would remain glued to poles, walls etc. for long. People generally don't appreciate it when someone who's no longer part of it keeps criticising their community.
I certainly hope Cryptic is interested in knowing why people are leaving. But they probably know already, because plenty of reasons are given here by those who remain and care enough to voice their concerns. The 'I quit' message itself is far from informative, on the other hand.
if bugs get pushed down the list for years, you either need to hire more people or stop/slow down releasing new things
Hiring more people may simply not be an option for a company if the budget doesn't allow for it, especially if the budget is determined by a parent company. Slowing or even stopping development of new things would drastically reduce revenue and force the budget to be cut even further, possibly forcing the company to layoff employees and make it even more difficult to get everything done in a timely manner.
It really was an 'I quit' thread: a sheer endless summation of what the poster thought had gone wrong with the game over the years, culminating in a sad bidding us adieu (with a bit of an odd twist of saying it was 'forced' nonetheless).
Here's where I had to chuckle,
"... they'll lose perhaps a third, maybe even half of their population to this Windows 10 requirement."
Likely only a handful of people. Twenty, tops. And even then, they likely figure "People who haven't upgraded their systems in like 10 years, are likely not going to be the big ingame spenders anyway."
I kinda like the guy who wrote his story. Always been decent on the forum; but yeah, it was an 'I quit' thread.
/inb4 the lock.
Kind of this. I'm sorry but the absolute HIGHEST end video card caught in the EOL cutoff is from 12 years ago. I get that some people have outside issues that may restrict their ability to upgrade, and I hope they are able to find some resolution so they can keep playing. But those numbers are not going to be huge. (If you're video card is that old your HDD is likely at at least 3x it's "mean time before failure"). And the long drawn out reasons for quitting, only for it to be "my hardware is no longer supported" that finally forced the issue rings a bit hollow. I'm sorry.
if bugs get pushed down the list for years, you either need to hire more people or stop/slow down releasing new things
Hiring more people may simply not be an option for a company if the budget doesn't allow for it, especially if the budget is determined by a parent company. Slowing or even stopping development of new things would drastically reduce revenue and force the budget to be cut even further, possibly forcing the company to layoff employees and make it even more difficult to get everything done in a timely manner.
Yes, but we're told that each and every new year they're doing better than before. So 'budget' cannot be an excuse.
And while slowing or stopping development might indeed reduce revenue, ensuring that your product works as intended is also worth something, especially in the long run. As mentioned, their financial position should allow for slowing down releasing yet another highly expensive pack or promo ship and work on qualitative improvements instead. If their finances don't allow for that, then they're not doing as well as they'd like us to believe - and in that case a change of course would be wise anyway.
Just stacking bugs on other bugs because you must keep releasing things is thus either not necessary or indicative of an unsustainable strategy.
I'm an application software developer (not at Cryptic). We have a bug and feature tracking system, and each developer has a long list of work items ordered by priority. We work on the top ones first, and the lower-priority ones once the more important bug and feature tickets are resolved.
It is by priority though, not by the age of the issue. New features are added and new bugs are found, and if they are a higher priority then old bugs and features get pushed down. For a low priority bug or feature that can mean it stays unhandled in the work queue for years.
So Cryptic is not the only company with unfixed bugs going back years. It's us, and EA's SWTOR team, and WoW's devs, and Microsoft, and pretty much everybody.
I'm not posting this to excuse Cryptic, just to explain why it happens. We fix and add what we must, then fix and add what else we can in the time we have, all based on priorities set by management.
It is true that adding more developers means more work gets done, both new features and bug fixes. But even then if the new person is a server database person that won't help fix art bugs, and an artist won't help clear out the PC client work queue.
while not an excuse for them, it lines along side of it. people seem to think that others dont have a concept of how things work as we get older.
but using the one link about the persons post from 2018...4 years...4 years and its still broken. and this may be stuff people have paid for, some may have acquired by other means, and some free maybe. then the same from Sep of 21, and the one recently adding the newest box uniforms doing the same thing.
this shows its not about how you envision it to be or presented based on your post, but 4 years is an absolute disregard for customers.
lets also talk about the sci acco in the mission early on in the game. its been dorked for how long? way past any realistic expectations at this juncture. they just ignore it, like they do plenty of others.
i really dont think they even have a tracking system in place. that, or they need to implement some sort of work ethic/expectations from the staff in locating and resolving long standing bugs.
and if that coincides with "i quit" threads, then by all means they should be allowed to express as such and cryptic should be big boy enough to handle a reality about it.
That sci accolade (assuming you refer to the one where you rescue the SS Azura) was actually fixed once - and then it broke again.
if bugs get pushed down the list for years, you either need to hire more people or stop/slow down releasing new things
Hiring more people may simply not be an option for a company if the budget doesn't allow for it, especially if the budget is determined by a parent company. Slowing or even stopping development of new things would drastically reduce revenue and force the budget to be cut even further, possibly forcing the company to layoff employees and make it even more difficult to get everything done in a timely manner.
Yes, but we're told that each and every new year they're doing better than before. So 'budget' cannot be an excuse.
And while slowing or stopping development might indeed reduce revenue, ensuring that your product works as intended is also worth something, especially in the long run. As mentioned, their financial position should allow for slowing down releasing yet another highly expensive pack or promo ship and work on qualitative improvements instead. If their finances don't allow for that, then they're not doing as well as they'd like us to believe - and in that case a change of course would be wise anyway.
Just stacking bugs on other bugs because you must keep releasing things is thus either not necessary or indicative of an unsustainable strategy.
As have said before, I remain cynical with regard to the claims pertaining to financial success, since that 'success' seems to do little more than maintain their current business model.
We often hear of how they're a small team and how the existing team has to wear XX hats, and yet increasing employee numbers, or retaining employees who were redeployed to another (now failed) project, doesn't seem to factor into their business plans.
Sorry, but that doesn't seem all that sucessful to me.
Somebody's telling porkie pies along the line or there's a lot of fingers not knowing what the hands are doing. For all we know 'successful' is having enough petty cash to fix a roof leak each year. Though they could probably lose the hat budget and save a few 100k.
Think of a certain other F2P gaming enterprise and it's regular 'miscommunication ' kerfuffles.
if bugs get pushed down the list for years, you either need to hire more people or stop/slow down releasing new things
Hiring more people may simply not be an option for a company if the budget doesn't allow for it, especially if the budget is determined by a parent company. Slowing or even stopping development of new things would drastically reduce revenue and force the budget to be cut even further, possibly forcing the company to layoff employees and make it even more difficult to get everything done in a timely manner.
Yes, but we're told that each and every new year they're doing better than before. So 'budget' cannot be an excuse.
They've been making record profits, yes, but Cryptic wasn't in charge of the budget, PWE was. If PWE refused to increase the budget based on sales then there's nothing Cryptic could have done about it.
if bugs get pushed down the list for years, you either need to hire more people or stop/slow down releasing new things
Hiring more people may simply not be an option for a company if the budget doesn't allow for it, especially if the budget is determined by a parent company. Slowing or even stopping development of new things would drastically reduce revenue and force the budget to be cut even further, possibly forcing the company to layoff employees and make it even more difficult to get everything done in a timely manner.
Yes, but we're told that each and every new year they're doing better than before. So 'budget' cannot be an excuse.
They've been making record profits, yes, but Cryptic wasn't in charge of the budget, PWE was. If PWE refused to increase the budget based on sales then there's nothing Cryptic could have done about it.
I recall Geko once saying they were doing very well, whilst PWE thought STO was trailing behind, compared to the rest of their games. I believe it. I think Cryptic is doing great, for Western standards; but Asian gaming companies tend to want to more aggressively target whales and rake in huge profits. All generalizations aside, I think, yes, Cryptic is doing very well, and yes, PWE may still not be happy (enough). They're not going to tell us, of course, but I don't see the two necessarily contradict one another.
Comments
It's understandable that Cryptic doesn't want too much negativity. If it's criticism that's at least useful, it makes sense to tolerate it. But that's very different from someone saying that they won't offer that anymore and won't in fact do anything in the game/ be part of the community at all anymore. As many have pointed out.
Imagine moving to a different town, but before leaving, putting up signs everywhere about how your old town stinks, how the people living there aren't friendly enough and how you don't like the colour of the houses there. I doubt such posters would remain glued to poles, walls etc. for long. People generally don't appreciate it when someone who's no longer part of it keeps criticising their community.
I certainly hope Cryptic is interested in knowing why people are leaving. But they probably know already, because plenty of reasons are given here by those who remain and care enough to voice their concerns. The 'I quit' message itself is far from informative, on the other hand.
Hiring more people may simply not be an option for a company if the budget doesn't allow for it, especially if the budget is determined by a parent company. Slowing or even stopping development of new things would drastically reduce revenue and force the budget to be cut even further, possibly forcing the company to layoff employees and make it even more difficult to get everything done in a timely manner.
Yes, but we're told that each and every new year they're doing better than before. So 'budget' cannot be an excuse.
And while slowing or stopping development might indeed reduce revenue, ensuring that your product works as intended is also worth something, especially in the long run. As mentioned, their financial position should allow for slowing down releasing yet another highly expensive pack or promo ship and work on qualitative improvements instead. If their finances don't allow for that, then they're not doing as well as they'd like us to believe - and in that case a change of course would be wise anyway.
Just stacking bugs on other bugs because you must keep releasing things is thus either not necessary or indicative of an unsustainable strategy.
That sci accolade (assuming you refer to the one where you rescue the SS Azura) was actually fixed once - and then it broke again.
Somebody's telling porkie pies along the line or there's a lot of fingers not knowing what the hands are doing. For all we know 'successful' is having enough petty cash to fix a roof leak each year. Though they could probably lose the hat budget and save a few 100k.
Think of a certain other F2P gaming enterprise and it's regular 'miscommunication ' kerfuffles.
They've been making record profits, yes, but Cryptic wasn't in charge of the budget, PWE was. If PWE refused to increase the budget based on sales then there's nothing Cryptic could have done about it.
I recall Geko once saying they were doing very well, whilst PWE thought STO was trailing behind, compared to the rest of their games. I believe it. I think Cryptic is doing great, for Western standards; but Asian gaming companies tend to want to more aggressively target whales and rake in huge profits. All generalizations aside, I think, yes, Cryptic is doing very well, and yes, PWE may still not be happy (enough). They're not going to tell us, of course, but I don't see the two necessarily contradict one another.