I have noticed after playing through CB and several months after release of CO, now CB and release of STO that it seems cryptics largest problem is their lack of a plan. They never seem to have any thoughts to the future or a plan for what they do. They make a decision without thinking about how it effects other parts of the game or what to do down the line, then they make another snap decision to try to fix it and so on. They don't think ahead. case and point end game content.
just more evidence is the captian skill system. Creating the game with no skill cap was stupid because then the game boils down to who has more hours in the day to play which most players hate. Unfortunately they had already built it up to work that way then only changed half the system without any reguard to how it would effect anything else, now we have skills that become useless as soon as you tier up, skills that give the exact same bonus but cost 3 times as many points so that using any weapon other than phaser or disrupter completely gimps you.
This seems to be a trend with them. they don't ever have a plan for anything. they just throw something out there with no thought to the future. other examples include no end game content, lack of real pvp, battlecloak with no working counter, instanced maps in a game where instanced maps don't work well, mission and grouping functions that completely reward and promote afk leachers, autofire system that doesn't work beyond the very first ship, pve only focus with rewards for only dps classes.....the list goes on.
I just get this feeling that no one there has a clear vision or plan for the game, they make decisions in the moment with no thought into it.
I have noticed after playing through CB and several months after release of CO, now CB and release of STO that it seems cryptics largest problem is their lack of a plan. They never seem to have any thoughts to the future or a plan for what they do......
IMO, if someone could state the exact opposite of the situation this is it. I know their apparent plan is different than anyone is familiar with based on other MMOs. But the MMO industry is having some problems right now and a new strategy is a good thing in times like that. Cryptic didn't do the norm and deliver a massive product and say to their players "this is it, we'll tweak it occassionally". They delivered a game intended to be developed moving forward around what their players wants. I know it's not what a lot of people expected, but if Cryptic follows through this could be incredible. More than any MMO before it their whole strategy seems to be based around a plan that includes their players.
They have trends. It seems that year one will see more exploration :
...with the next few updates later this year, we're definitely going to be adding [non-combat gameplay]. We've just scratched the surface of what the Genesis system can do with the exploration content we have and I really look to that realm of the game to be the place where the non-combat, where the diplomacy, where the first contact missions really start happening. I see us doing a lot of work over the next year to fill that gameplay out.
IMO, if someone could state the exact opposite of the situation this is it. I know their apparent plan is different than anyone is familiar with based on other MMOs. But the MMO industry is having some problems right now and a new strategy is a good thing in times like that. Cryptic didn't do the norm and deliver a massive product and say to their players "this is it, we'll tweak it occassionally". They delivered a game intended to be developed moving forward around what their players wants. I know it's not what a lot of people expected, but if Cryptic follows through this could be incredible. More than any MMO before it their whole strategy seems to be based around a plan that includes their players.
Ok I dont mind you defending the game but keep your facts real. All issues asside this is half a game, the game was release before they 2 Factions were complete. Documentation nonexistant. Skill Cap fine but rework the tree or at lease give people the ablity to respec and you want to charge for respecs later fine.
Cryptic doesnt have a solid play everything they are doing is completely reactionary. Now I am willing to through some cash at the game and play a wait and see game with them but please dont tell me this was planned.
They just released a content patch... They told us a couple of weeks ago what it would include. And it included it...
Sounds like a plan to me...
As long as they keep it up, it ought to go pretty well for STO.
that is not a plan. that is several people writing new missions and throwing them in a patch. that is not a direction for a game it is further proof that they are basically making it up as they go with no long term approach.
they need to sit down in a room and white board what they want the game to become in a year and 2 years. They kept using the excuse that they are planning on finishing the game as it goes, but they need to know what this means themselves before they move in any direction.
Ok I dont mind you defending the game but keep your facts real. All issues asside this is half a game, the game was release before they 2 Factions were complete. Documentation nonexistant. Skill Cap fine but rework the tree or at lease give people the ablity to respec and you want to charge for respecs later fine.
Cryptic doesnt have a solid play everything they are doing is completely reactionary. Now I am willing to through some cash at the game and play a wait and see game with them but please dont tell me this was planned.
agreed. this isn't some uber cutting edge way of doing things. it's a half assed, over their heads attempt to just sqeek by. all of their decisions from patch to patch are completely counter-intuitive and random.
as the above quote worded it better than I could. Everything they do is reactionary. that is exactly how it feels. Nothing is planned or outlined it's just by the minute random changes where no one in the company seems to work together for a common direction.
if you're going to release half a game and expect people to pay for it while you finish it up you need to have a very solid direction and plan. especially after they pulled the same TRIBBLE with CO then the "finishing" was just a couple more random missions and never finishing the core of the game. If they are honest about this and show progress in the right direction people won't mind paying for half a game while you turn it into a brilliant game.
let me also explain something to some of you. content does not equal features. I know this is difficult for some of you to comprehend. content are random missions. features are things like chat systems, fleet structure, pvp that works, on open mission reward system (the curent one is slapped together like everything else they do)
when they kept saying they will finish it up as it goes what they obviously ment is content not features. this was obvious through CB, OB, and now. It's even more obvious if you look at CO which is the exact same situation. Instead of finishing the features that should be in the game they just cover it up by having "content" releases that do nothing to finish the core game that was never completed.
Making a game of this complexity requires a huge amount of planning. Just because you don't see all the spreadsheets, project files, monthly trend charts, milestone reviews, etc... doesn't mean that we don't have a plan.
It sounds to me that this thread is talking more about the fact that Cryptic purposfully follows agile development practices and allows player feedback to be incorporated into current scheduled update plans. To me that is a benefit and not an issue and one of the reasons I enjoy working on this game.
Ok I dont mind you defending the game but keep your facts real. All issues asside this is half a game, the game was release before they 2 Factions were complete. Documentation nonexistant. Skill Cap fine but rework the tree or at lease give people the ablity to respec and you want to charge for respecs later fine.
Cryptic doesnt have a solid play everything they are doing is completely reactionary. Now I am willing to through some cash at the game and play a wait and see game with them but please dont tell me this was planned.
Dude, you can't complain that I'm not keeping my facts real and then state a mind readers ability to say "everything they are doing is completely reactionary", lol.
I've stated my opinion about the timeline for launch on these forums before so I won't go into detail again. Briefly, Perpetual took 4 years to go bankrupt, CBS pulls license and considers the two year dev cycle and lower cost of desktop/console games, Cryptic has good delivery reputation and gets license with promise to CBS of 2 year delivery. Cryptic delivers fun playable game with a new development model (plan).
This view is based on the available facts on the development of the game that I've been able to find. Only the principal players know what really went on behind closed doors but I'm confident that this is closer to the truth than those who insist on telling us that Cryptic is totally clueless and evil.
Making a game of this complexity requires a huge amount of planning. Just because you don't see all the spreadsheets, project files, monthly trend charts, milestone reviews, etc... doesn't mean that we don't have a plan.
It sounds to me that this thread is talking more about the fact that Cryptic purposfully follows agile development practices and allows player feedback to be incorporated into current scheduled update plans.
Translation: "Cryptic Purposely Released The Game Unfinished And Are Quickly Scrambling To Finish It As Players Are Pleading For Their Missing Content"
Making a game of this complexity requires a huge amount of planning. Just because you don't see all the spreadsheets, project files, monthly trend charts, milestone reviews, etc... doesn't mean that we don't have a plan.
It sounds to me that this thread is talking more about the fact that Cryptic purposfully follows agile development practices and allows player feedback to be incorporated into current scheduled update plans. To me that is a benefit and not an issue and one of the reasons I enjoy working on this game.
dang a dev response! I'm pleasently suprised.
First I have to give you props because I'm in marketing for a major software company and that was an amazing spin, which i know is your job so I'm not trashing your for it.
secondly I don't think you guys give your customers enough credit. If cryptic wasn't so scared that the moment they were honest in their shortcommings subs would drop choosing to instead be vauge and spin everything the community would trust in your ability to deliver more. gamers are usually smart people and much more loyal to a company who is honest about mistakes and problems while making progress to fix them instead of just pretending everything is peachy. I have no problem paying you for a half finished game if I have faith that my money will go to make for a great experience down the road. currently everything you guys do indicates that you're lost as to what direction to go and how to finish very basic aspects of the game now that it's released and too late to make major changes.
third, content is important because of the complete lack of any end game (pvp cough cough) but It should be secondary to finishing the features that were obviously pushed to the wayside due to time crunch coming up to release.
I truly believe a complaint forum is necessary, then make a fanboi forum too. So many catch phrases like noob and fail. People decide to enjoy themselves or not. Flame me if you want I wont check back on this thread as its my oppinion, not meant to be bashed, appraised ,praised or quoted. Expectations, that will kill you. I am having fun and grateful it isnt stagnant, a week and stuff was added.EVIL CRYPTIC!!....moving on now
It sounds to me that this thread is talking more about the fact that Cryptic purposfully follows agile development practices and allows player feedback to be incorporated into current scheduled update plans. To me that is a benefit and not an issue and one of the reasons I enjoy working on this game.
/Nod -> Part of the reason why i am still here.
And besides, plans change
Announcing detailed plans to the community is just asking for disaster down the road.
Translation: "I have no clue what to say so I can only nitpick others thoughts out of context."
you really need to go somewhere else. no one thinks your funny, no one thinks your e-peen is big, and no one cares about your pointless drivel. either have something valid to say or go somewhere else. you're just pathetic and wasting space.
Making a game of this complexity requires a huge amount of planning. Just because you don't see all the spreadsheets, project files, monthly trend charts, milestone reviews, etc... doesn't mean that we don't have a plan.
It sounds to me that this thread is talking more about the fact that Cryptic purposfully follows agile development practices and allows player feedback to be incorporated into current scheduled update plans. To me that is a benefit and not an issue and one of the reasons I enjoy working on this game.
The main complaint is that none of this stuff was prototyped and properly tested before release. During beta you have the chance to listen for player feedback and still make some design changes, but at release, everything must be finished, polished, balanced, and more or less bug free.
It cannot be denied that this game is far from balanced, bug-free and most importantly, finished.
I think that if the developers had listened to the expectations of the players years ago, they wouldn't have decided for full-instancing and a fully combat-orientated game. A lot of the fundamental design decissions are simply not in line with what most players want out of a Star Trek game, or an MMO for that matter.
Translation: "Cryptic Purposely Released The Game Unfinished And Are Quickly Scrambling To Finish It As Players Are Pleading For Their Missing Content"
Translation: "They Pay Me To Say This"
Translation: "For some reason, I have to capitalize every single word in a sentence."
Translation: "Cryptic Purposely Released The Game Unfinished And Are Quickly Scrambling To Finish It As Players Are Pleading For Their Missing Content"
Translation: "They Pay Me To Say This"
We have a plan but we are not telling you what it is = We have no plan?
We listen to community ideas = The game is unfinished?
(Name one MMO with an active developer that is "Finished")
And how dare they get paid! I want a team of volunteers because that always results in quality! Wait... no...
Making a game of this complexity requires a huge amount of planning. Just because you don't see all the spreadsheets, project files, monthly trend charts, milestone reviews, etc... doesn't mean that we don't have a plan.
It sounds to me that this thread is talking more about the fact that Cryptic purposfully follows agile development practices and allows player feedback to be incorporated into current scheduled update plans. To me that is a benefit and not an issue and one of the reasons I enjoy working on this game.
That is clearly a benefit (and for the record a lot of people reading this post, but not necessarily posting, probably have no clue about what an "Agile development practice" is. ). But anyway, the biggest issue I've had with projects that use the various Agile methods is that even though the product is delivered on-time and sometimes of high quality, the documentation suffers. I'm not talking about the documentation for release planning, feature specs, QA testing, etc. I mean end-user documentation. That's is typically because too much "documentation" effort is spent on internal documentation to get the product itself out the door but not on end-user documentation which is typically not treated as part of the product (when it ALWAYS should be).
On more than one occasion I've seen products be delivered on time but the end-user docs suffer greatly. This is also the case with STO.
Look what happened to Lionhead with the first Fable. They had a plan and told the world what their plans were and what they were working on. Because you can never get everything you want or planned into a game before release ( and how many years did it take WoW and Eve to get to the point they are at now) people were shocked that the game didn't have everything that Lionhead said they were working on.
Making a game of this complexity requires a huge amount of planning. Just because you don't see all the spreadsheets, project files, monthly trend charts, milestone reviews, etc... doesn't mean that we don't have a plan.
It sounds to me that this thread is talking more about the fact that Cryptic purposfully follows agile development practices and allows player feedback to be incorporated into current scheduled update plans. To me that is a benefit and not an issue and one of the reasons I enjoy working on this game.
Well they weren't wrong.
"Agile methods break tasks into small increments with minimal planning, and do not directly involve long-term planning."
Comments
Sounds like a plan to me...
As long as they keep it up, it ought to go pretty well for STO.
http://fidgit.com/archives/2010/02/star_trek_online_producer_warn.php
Ok I dont mind you defending the game but keep your facts real. All issues asside this is half a game, the game was release before they 2 Factions were complete. Documentation nonexistant. Skill Cap fine but rework the tree or at lease give people the ablity to respec and you want to charge for respecs later fine.
Cryptic doesnt have a solid play everything they are doing is completely reactionary. Now I am willing to through some cash at the game and play a wait and see game with them but please dont tell me this was planned.
that is not a plan. that is several people writing new missions and throwing them in a patch. that is not a direction for a game it is further proof that they are basically making it up as they go with no long term approach.
they need to sit down in a room and white board what they want the game to become in a year and 2 years. They kept using the excuse that they are planning on finishing the game as it goes, but they need to know what this means themselves before they move in any direction.
agreed. this isn't some uber cutting edge way of doing things. it's a half assed, over their heads attempt to just sqeek by. all of their decisions from patch to patch are completely counter-intuitive and random.
as the above quote worded it better than I could. Everything they do is reactionary. that is exactly how it feels. Nothing is planned or outlined it's just by the minute random changes where no one in the company seems to work together for a common direction.
if you're going to release half a game and expect people to pay for it while you finish it up you need to have a very solid direction and plan. especially after they pulled the same TRIBBLE with CO then the "finishing" was just a couple more random missions and never finishing the core of the game. If they are honest about this and show progress in the right direction people won't mind paying for half a game while you turn it into a brilliant game.
gg cryptic
:rolleyes:
It didn't take me long to spot bug fixes in the release notes. I mean really lol
http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=113184
let me also explain something to some of you. content does not equal features. I know this is difficult for some of you to comprehend. content are random missions. features are things like chat systems, fleet structure, pvp that works, on open mission reward system (the curent one is slapped together like everything else they do)
when they kept saying they will finish it up as it goes what they obviously ment is content not features. this was obvious through CB, OB, and now. It's even more obvious if you look at CO which is the exact same situation. Instead of finishing the features that should be in the game they just cover it up by having "content" releases that do nothing to finish the core game that was never completed.
This post has been edited to remove content which violates the Cryptic Studios Forum Usage Guidelines ~Dionaea
Back at you.
It sounds to me that this thread is talking more about the fact that Cryptic purposfully follows agile development practices and allows player feedback to be incorporated into current scheduled update plans. To me that is a benefit and not an issue and one of the reasons I enjoy working on this game.
I've stated my opinion about the timeline for launch on these forums before so I won't go into detail again. Briefly, Perpetual took 4 years to go bankrupt, CBS pulls license and considers the two year dev cycle and lower cost of desktop/console games, Cryptic has good delivery reputation and gets license with promise to CBS of 2 year delivery. Cryptic delivers fun playable game with a new development model (plan).
This view is based on the available facts on the development of the game that I've been able to find. Only the principal players know what really went on behind closed doors but I'm confident that this is closer to the truth than those who insist on telling us that Cryptic is totally clueless and evil.
This will now go into my signature :P. Very good read!
Translation: "We Have No Plan"
Translation: "Cryptic Purposely Released The Game Unfinished And Are Quickly Scrambling To Finish It As Players Are Pleading For Their Missing Content"
Translation: "They Pay Me To Say This"
If they didn't have a "plan", they would have never got the game out of Alpha.
See! I can over simplify too!
dang a dev response! I'm pleasently suprised.
First I have to give you props because I'm in marketing for a major software company and that was an amazing spin, which i know is your job so I'm not trashing your for it.
secondly I don't think you guys give your customers enough credit. If cryptic wasn't so scared that the moment they were honest in their shortcommings subs would drop choosing to instead be vauge and spin everything the community would trust in your ability to deliver more. gamers are usually smart people and much more loyal to a company who is honest about mistakes and problems while making progress to fix them instead of just pretending everything is peachy. I have no problem paying you for a half finished game if I have faith that my money will go to make for a great experience down the road. currently everything you guys do indicates that you're lost as to what direction to go and how to finish very basic aspects of the game now that it's released and too late to make major changes.
third, content is important because of the complete lack of any end game (pvp cough cough) but It should be secondary to finishing the features that were obviously pushed to the wayside due to time crunch coming up to release.
Translation: "I have no clue what to say so I can only nitpick others thoughts out of context."
/Nod -> Part of the reason why i am still here.
And besides, plans change
Announcing detailed plans to the community is just asking for disaster down the road.
"YOU PROMISED!!!" :rolleyes:
Appropriate Picture. I am going to keep this one
you really need to go somewhere else. no one thinks your funny, no one thinks your e-peen is big, and no one cares about your pointless drivel. either have something valid to say or go somewhere else. you're just pathetic and wasting space.
The main complaint is that none of this stuff was prototyped and properly tested before release. During beta you have the chance to listen for player feedback and still make some design changes, but at release, everything must be finished, polished, balanced, and more or less bug free.
It cannot be denied that this game is far from balanced, bug-free and most importantly, finished.
I think that if the developers had listened to the expectations of the players years ago, they wouldn't have decided for full-instancing and a fully combat-orientated game. A lot of the fundamental design decissions are simply not in line with what most players want out of a Star Trek game, or an MMO for that matter.
Translation: "For some reason, I have to capitalize every single word in a sentence."
"I love it when a plan comes to gether"
We have a plan but we are not telling you what it is = We have no plan?
We listen to community ideas = The game is unfinished?
(Name one MMO with an active developer that is "Finished")
And how dare they get paid! I want a team of volunteers because that always results in quality! Wait... no...
That is clearly a benefit (and for the record a lot of people reading this post, but not necessarily posting, probably have no clue about what an "Agile development practice" is.
On more than one occasion I've seen products be delivered on time but the end-user docs suffer greatly. This is also the case with STO.
Well they weren't wrong.
"Agile methods break tasks into small increments with minimal planning, and do not directly involve long-term planning."