Fear and trust. Trust was lost and Dstahl is doing a good job on his part in trying to re-build it. We do appreciate it. But we are aslo fearful of where the road is leading for KDF development. Dstahl has done a good job of trying to assure us that the road leads tomore development...but we also recognize that it will be a slow and narrow road, with limit resources and smaller releases over that extend time.
So...how do we resolve the issues of trust and fear while utilizing the only thing that will actually rebuiild trust and aleviate fear? We need to get the KDF community more involved in creation of our content.
We cant make the devs create more or faster than they can...so we have to make what is made count! We need to part of the process and we need to see the hiccups as they come along, not 2 days before release and the anncouncment of another 6wks or dev time. If we know about the code conflict, the delay from CBS, the bug that draws our dev contributor away, than we are longer just along for the ride...we become part of the crew.
Its like people who are afraid while flying...its because they dont understand whats involved, that their ignorance allows for their minds to go wild about the "what ifs"...fear creeps in.
I propse that KDF content not just be dev projects. but community projects. We dont need surprises anymore, we dont need the surprise unvelings anymore...we need to make the most every little piece of content we get. We need whatever we get to hit the ground running. We dont need another disappoinment like the Kar'fi. If we only get one ship, it needs to be the ship, its needs to be what we've been asking for. We need to be a little less consumer a bit more producer, we need to be intergral.
We need to get simple break downs of what can have resources allocated to it(a new ship, a new planet, a new sector, etc, then we need to discuss what we want to see in that content. Let the devs crank out mock ups and present them, lets say "ya" or "nay", "run with it" or "try it again". Let us know when its sent to CBS, let us know what they ok'ed and what they didnt, lets help with the final selection, then keep us updated with its progression just like any other project. Let us be part of the process, so we dont remain ignorant of the process, ignorant of the effort, ignorant of the hiccups, ignorant of the obstacles....most importantly, ignorant of the delays and why. Then there is less fear, then there is more trust. Its harder to complain about a process when you are part of it.
I remember as a flight instructor they taught us that one of the best ways of helping a student or passenger who is showing signs of fear is to occupy them with something, keep them busy....get them involved. When my wife flew with me for the first time, she was terrified...literally in tears before we got in the plane. We eventually got her settled down, but after about an hour in the air, the fear came back. I did everything right, the flight was good, it was smooth...but it came back(sound familiar?). I didnt have much to work with so I just got out the map. I had here look at the map and look outside to see if she could find where we were, I showed her where we were going and how....the participation didnt allow enough rom for fear to enter in. She was no longer ignorant of the process, she was part of the crew now...not just a passenger(though she wouldnt let allow here to hold the control yoke...that was abit too much).
In the end, she was better off because I included her, I addressed the root of the issues and we both had an eaiser time because of it. It made the remainder of the 3hr flight enjoyable because I let her in.
Dstahl, you are best thing to happen for our KDF...but let us be part of it...together we make this difficult and long process more bearable for all parties involved.
I certainly agree with the sentiment of this post, I'm just unsure how in depth into the development process that DStahl and co can go with us without incurring the wrath of someone higher up the food chain.
Realistically speaking, the new weekly episodes and an occasional new Klingon specific episode is about the most we're going to get from the Dev team. I'd love more, but thats just being realistic. I think the REAL source of new Klingon content is going to come from UGC in season 3, so I just hope the Klingon fan fiction writers are preparing their stories now.
I certainly agree with the sentiment of this post, I'm just unsure how in depth into the development process that DStahl and co can go with us without incurring the wrath of someone higher up the food chain.
Valid point...we need to find that point and draw the line. But we need to be upfront with that line. We dont need to be totally in dark anymore, just so they can have all the fanfare of the unveiling...the time for ticker tape, balloons and the dev team jumping out from behind there hiding places to yell, "surprise!" has passed.
I'll say it again....we cant afford another Kar'fi. Its was cool and all, but we need something more substantial for the few items we get until the content(especially our Fleet options) is more rounded.
Realistically speaking, the new weekly episodes and an occasional new Klingon specific episode is about the most we're going to get from the Dev team. I'd love more, but thats just being realistic. I think the REAL source of new Klingon content is going to come from UGC in season 3, so I just hope the Klingon fan fiction writers are preparing their stories now.
Fix the kdf side, catch them up on content for lvl 5-43 and the other stuff they promised and reverse the one sided to the feds that should have always been dev'd for both sides even if with dif looks and ways of doing it or........
keep with the status quo, watch the kdf side die, people leave and see the negative posts all over the web and reviews on there games for years to come. and pvp destroyed.
Realistically speaking, the new weekly episodes and an occasional new Klingon specific episode is about the most we're going to get from the Dev team. I'd love more, but thats just being realistic. I think the REAL source of new Klingon content is going to come from UGC in season 3, so I just hope the Klingon fan fiction writers are preparing their stories now.
Indeed, as frustrated as I am with things, dstahl and crew are doing the best they can with what they have. We won't see any quick improvements to the game unless the higher ups at Cryptic or Atari (whoever is really in charge of development) pull their heads out of their TRIBBLE$es and devotes more resources to their projects (or consolidate if that is fiscally impossible).
UGC is going to be depended on to correct the game, and that shouldn't be, it shouldn't have even gotten to that point in the first place, but it has for one reason or another....
this is what gets me about the it takes time argument, feel free to disagree or agree with this, if they have been working on us as much as they have with the feds, if they had stuff in beta but it wasnt ready for release so they held it back and just released kdf as a pvp faction and none of there pve stuff. where is it all.
the standing point there going off now makes me think that they have infact not even thought about touching the kdf upto this point except the 8 episodes scattered about the ranks, they cant call the changes to explore etc as our dev as its just a copy paste of what the feds have but worse and more broken then theres. and this goes back to the vet rewards excuse that they just wernt thought important enough to be deved at the time even though to the conterary there was a post and reply about the kdf longcoat when it was in dev so they knew it was wanted, and the arguemnt but there could be a technical issue, what technical issue, when feds were there vet reward or ambassabor coat it replaces what there wearing, do we have dif models to the feds or something. im sure feds have klingons on there side, can they were vet reqards and formal wear, can aliens.
and to the ugc being usable by the kdf, im highly doubting it for one fact, we have 2 zones, 1 a pvp zone, and erm ow yes the other a pvp zone, so technically feds get access to all the zones via arenas, where are we going to create this content, on what planets and in what zones ?
this is what gets me about the it takes time argument, feel free to disagree or agree with this, if they have been working on us as much as they have with the feds, if they had stuff in beta but it wasnt ready for release so they held it back and just released kdf as a pvp faction and none of there pve stuff. where is it all.
Honestly I don't know what to tell you; the only thing that I can say is that they have too much that they want to do, and way to few people to do it all.
If that is the case, then somebody at Atari (or Cryptic, I really don't know who makes the team and project decisions for these companies) is making mistakes that a 1st year business student wouldn't make with major products.
the standing point there going off now makes me think that they have infact not even thought about touching the kdf upto this point except the 8 episodes scattered about the ranks, they cant call the changes to explore etc as our dev as its just a copy paste of what the feds have but worse and more broken then theres. and this goes back to the vet rewards excuse that they just wernt thought important enough to be deved at the time even though to the conterary there was a post and reply about the kdf longcoat when it was in dev so they knew it was wanted, and the arguemnt but there could be a technical issue, what technical issue, when feds were there vet reward or ambassabor coat it replaces what there wearing, do we have dif models to the feds or something. im sure feds have klingons on there side, can they were vet reqards and formal wear, can aliens.
Here's the thing; I believe that those 8 episodes took a lot of effort, particularly when tied in with everything else that went into Season 2, and therein lies part of the problem (manpower).
Another part of the problem, is that while it's true that they have given the Klingons Star cluster missions, Fleet Actions and STFs, and that likely was a fair bit of work to retool it to the KDF side; the perception works against dstahl and his team. That's because in the eyes of every Klingon player who was here prior to launch, that content should have been in on the Klingon side to begin with (along with the episodes), and so making it seem like we were being given something great only worked to fuel more anger from the dedicated Klingons.
Yet another part of the problem is that so many Klingons have been driven away starting with the announcement that the Klingons would be PvP centric prior to the open beta. Would the population every have been 50/50 between fed and KDF, of course not, but the point is that they have been losing Klingons far more quickly and constantly than they have been gaining them. As a result dstahl has to choose between helping an angry portion of the playerbase, alienating his largest base, or trying to help everbody. So far he's trying to help everybody, but perception is again working against him because he's continuing with old plans that were slated for the Federation at a time when the Klingon base's patience is extremely thin (broken in some cases).
and to the ugc being usable by the kdf, im highly doubting it for one fact, we have 2 zones, 1 a pvp zone, and erm ow yes the other a pvp zone, so technically feds get access to all the zones via arenas, where are we going to create this content, on what planets and in what zones ?
It's how they are going to do it, which entails people creating their own instances on places. It won't be the greatest thing, but some people want it and regardless of how I or others feel about it, it's going to happen.
Honestly I don't know what to tell you; the only thing that comes to mind is that they have too much that they want to do, and way to few people to do it all.
I think that's a really valid point. One I'd agree with. A lot of times I talk about how the issues with the KDF are reflected in the entire game. And I cite oversights and bugs and typos that make it live. I think what you're saying is the crux of the problem.
I'll give them credit that they can turn out some amazing work with a small staff. But each step forward gets a few steps back. Like 2.0. Some amazing content debuted with that. But the patch broke too many things. Not enough people to catch this in time.
I think that's a really valid point. One I'd agree with. A lot of times I talk about how the issues with the KDF are reflected in the entire game. And I cite oversights and bugs and typos that make it live. I think what you're saying is the crux of the problem.
I'll give them credit that they can turn out some amazing work with a small staff. But each step forward gets a few steps back. Like 2.0. Some amazing content debuted with that. But the patch broke too many things. Not enough people to catch this in time.
I think this is part of what dstahl and Jack Emmert mean when they are talking about bringing better quality. Cryptic is good at churning out something that works quickly. But it could work a lot better.
Season 2 brought a lot of diverse things. Level Cap Increase. 2 new currencies (Latinum, Emblems). Diplomacy content. Klingon PvE Missions. Faction-Neutral PvE Missions. A Fleet Action. Refits. Mini-Games. Ship Interiors
That might have been too many things at once. Some stuff I can see being done in parallel. Others less so. For example - add Diplomacy Content and Ship Interiors and compare it to PvE Missions. I have the feeling pretty much the same teams are working on that, since you need to build story content (dialogs!) for them, and you need maps. Ther could have been a few more episodes added to the game for that. Or the Fleet Action could have been more polished and better balanced.
So, if Cryptic is keeping to their word, we might see less of such complex updates. We might see more focused stuff, with less bugs and more features within it. More depth.
We'll see how this works out in Season 3, I suppose.
I think this is part of what dstahl and Jack Emmert mean when they are talking about bringing better quality. Cryptic is good at churning out something that works quickly. But it could work a lot better.
While I did have some faith restored by Jack's interview, the problem is that STO lacks/lacked both quantity AND quality by gamer standards (advancing market = advancing standards); so while it's nice to hear that quality will be the focus, the game is still lacking for the foreseeable future.
Now fast forward a year from today, where we're looking to have 40+ multi-faction episodes (assuming possible delays and holiday breaks) in addition to whatever else they got around to and things might be different. But that is assuming that the game's population hasn't been whittled to the die-hards by Cataclysm and SW:tOR (among other games).
Season 2 brought a lot of diverse things. Level Cap Increase. 2 new currencies (Latinum, Emblems). Diplomacy content. Klingon PvE Missions. Faction-Neutral PvE Missions. A Fleet Action. Refits. Mini-Games. Ship Interiors
That might have been too many things at once. Some stuff I can see being done in parallel. Others less so. For example - add Diplomacy Content and Ship Interiors and compare it to PvE Missions. I have the feeling pretty much the same teams are working on that, since you need to build story content (dialogs!) for them, and you need maps. Ther could have been a few more episodes added to the game for that. Or the Fleet Action could have been more polished and better balanced.
It boils down to perception:
Most Klingons believed that Season 2 would be primarily a Klingon update, and we got 8 episodes; the perception is the eight is a terribly small number and the quality of those eight takes a back seat when weighed against what the Federation got.
It's nice that Cryptic is learning that quality matters (as said above), but they haven't learned to balance it yet when the relationship with part of your playerbase is on the line.
So, if Cryptic is keeping to their word, we might see less of such complex updates. We might see more focused stuff, with less bugs and more features within it. More depth.
We'll see how this works out in Season 3, I suppose.
Season 3 being mainly bug fixes aside, it again boils down to perception.
Cryptic is releasing and showing teasers for this and that, but what are the received messages to their players?
Neutral missions send a message that they can't hit both individually so they have to do them at the same time; continued work on the Nebula sends the message that they're still putting the Federation first instead of honoring what they said about increasing the Klingon ships (and time tables); releasing Federation ships with special abilities and BO layouts (and nothing but promises for the Klingons) sends the message that even those they said the Klingons are getting attention, the Federation is more important to them; and so on.
Get the picture? Sony has made a lot of changes and improvements to SWG over the past few years, but does anybody care? No they don't, and If Cryptic wants to fix their image, they need to pay more attention to how their actions will reflect back on them by the players.
Get the picture? Sony has made a lot of changes and improvements to SWG over the past few years, but does anybody care? No they don't, and If Cryptic wants to fix their image, they need to pay more attention to how their actions will reflect back on them by the players.
I think that's one of the lesson Jack Emmert spoke in one of the first Neverwinter interviews.
Start without a feature, adding it later will go unnoticed by most.
Start with a mediocre or badly implemented feature, improving it later will go unnoticed by most.
It seems from a certain business perspective, starting without features with mediocre quality can still yield good returns. But it might not be sustainable in the long run, since once you are known for lacking feature and mediocre quality, no one wants your product.
Neverwinter as well as Season 3 might need to prove that Cryptic can also deliver quality, otherwise they don't need to really bother churning out new games at a faster pace then most companies, since it won't sell anymore. Of course, it could also be too late for that, though I don't think that. Not if they can deliver at least.
Trust?...there is no trust between KDF players and Cryptc...It is nice that they are 'trying' to get on good terms, but I must say that until they deliver, my trust...and I might be speaking for more people than myself....my trust will not be earned until the content is delivered and is not just slapped together like the new Kar'Fi, or portions of the Klingon missions....
I trust Dstahl when he says that the development of the KDf is a concern he has interest in fleshing out more. One can not argue though that we feel neglected and are leery of any promises made since very little has come from such promises. Once even a small part od any playerbase feels neglected its always difficult for the Dev's to reclaim thier trust without action to back it up.
My number one recommendation is to ignore a number of Fed posters. I mean actually put them on ignore. There are three that come to mind that actively try to disrupt any and all constructive Klingon discussions, especially those that get attention from the devs. I will not post their names here but if anyone wants them send me a PM and you can add them to your ignore list.
Let's avoid getting drag into the stupid arguments about "But you were meant to be a step child" or "You shouldn't even be a faction" or any iteration of the same tired and ignorant claim. These people have their own agenda and it is to discredit and destroy our faction.
It could have been such an amazing piece of the puzzle. And had the potential to move KDF evolution forward.
The story around it ... it's a reverse engineered ship from an ancient enemy.
That's got so much potential.
The reality of it ...
It's a carrier no one asked for, has limited in-game functionality, and the "ancient enemy" accounts for two story missions. And that's it! You can't encounter these "ancient enemies" anywhere else. The way the thing was implemented, I see no reason to bother reverse engineering a ship in the first place.
The banner "Ancient Enemies" looked cool (to me), but didn't really represent the patch very well since they were such an insignificant portion of what was released. I blinked and I was done with the missions.
The carrier had a lot of potential both with the story and with the game. But it fell very short of its potential. And so when people say it's a ship no one asked for, I'm now of a mind to agree with that. It could have been amazing, even as a carrier, if some things were developed differently. But the way it all turned out, it really is just a fish out of water.
@Varrangian: That's some great advice. Advice I have trouble listening to. But it works. It really does. Takes some willpower, but when you do what you suggest, you find it much easier to participate in discussions, not get infraction points and generally be more even keeled and open minded.
i wasnt saying that ugc is a waste on the kdf side and it is ow so most definatly coming, the thing that worrys me is that whilst the feds have ambles of unique planets and zones including poi's and space stations and a reci planet to tie there missions into not including the fact they have a dipo bridge on there ships to utilise too the kdf have maybe 2-3 planets to utilize, maybe 2 sectors at best and 1 space station and 1 neutral station, where are we going to create our own content for it.
if they unlock every fed zone to us bar regulas and sirius or even give us 2 more pve only zones with little episode content within them just for the kdf with cardy and ramy space for us to utilize ugc into and for somewhere for leveling kdf players to go into and play and level up that would be very impressive and add huge scope as a building block to the kdf side.
there are already presidents of kdf zones that could be added within the feds own episodes where they load into a kdf zone for stop the kdf q's, like the one where low end feds do the listening posts and the other where they help a kdf battlefleet to take down an undine battleship.
It could have been such an amazing piece of the puzzle. And had the potential to move KDF evolution forward.
The story around it ... it's a reverse engineered ship from an ancient enemy.
That's got so much potential.
The reality of it ...
It's a carrier no one asked for, has limited in-game functionality, and the "ancient enemy" accounts for two story missions. And that's it! You can't encounter these "ancient enemies" anywhere else. The way the thing was implemented, I see no reason to bother reverse engineering a ship in the first place.
The banner "Ancient Enemies" looked cool (to me), but didn't really represent the patch very well since they were such an insignificant portion of what was released. I blinked and I was done with the missions.
The carrier had a lot of potential both with the story and with the game. But it fell very short of its potential. And so when people say it's a ship no one asked for, I'm now of a mind to agree with that. It could have been amazing, even as a carrier, if some things were developed differently. But the way it all turned out, it really is just a fish out of water.
@Varrangian: That's some great advice. Advice I have trouble listening to. But it works. It really does. Takes some willpower, but when you do what you suggest, you find it much easier to participate in discussions, not get infraction points and generally be more even keeled and open minded.
Yes, the banner looked nice...but that's about it...lol Everything has fallen short with little to no follow-through on the end of the devs...
Realistically speaking, the new weekly episodes and an occasional new Klingon specific episode is about the most we're going to get from the Dev team. I'd love more, but thats just being realistic. I think the REAL source of new Klingon content is going to come from UGC in season 3, so I just hope the Klingon fan fiction writers are preparing their stories now.
This is one of the reason we asked for the UGC engine to be developed in the first place. We recognize that we'll never be able to keep up with player's desire for content.
I've discussed in the past that there is diminishing returns for devoting a ton of time on any one specific piece of content. Case in point the STFs. We spent *the most* time out of all of our mission types, making those STFs (multiple weeks of development for 1 mission) and the problem is - they are very complex to make and ended up with bugs and very few people ultimately end up being able to play them. They are at a point now where I'd redesign them and open them up for smaller teams or cross-faction teams if I had the manpower to do it.
The lessons learned from that is that we can waste a lot of precious content development time making content that is exclusive to a very small percentage of the paying customer base. When you have limited content development resources (which we've always had) it makes more sense for us to be spending our content efforts on either missions that everyone can enjoy or tools that allow players to make tons of content on their own.
This is why you are seeing me spend the apples I have on Featured Episodes and UGC. They are the biggest bang for the buck for everyone and ultimately they help solve the content problem in 2 ways: They provide a base of content for *any* future faction over time, and UGC allows players to create the content they are interested in playing. If that is more KDF content - then players will be able to make far more missions than we ever could.
I really hope that helps to explain our thinking and why we are spending our mission dollars where we are.
This is one of the reason we asked for the UGC engine to be developed in the first place. We recognize that we'll never be able to keep up with player's desire for content.
I've discussed in the past that there is diminishing returns for devoting a ton of time on any one specific piece of content. Case in point the STFs. We spent *the most* time out of all of our mission types, making those STFs (multiple weeks of development for 1 mission) and the problem is - they are very complex to make and ended up with bugs and very few people ultimately end up being able to play them. They are at a point now where I'd redesign them and open them up for smaller teams or cross-faction teams if I had the manpower to do it.
The lessons learned from that is that we can waste a lot of precious content development time making content that is exclusive to a very small percentage of the paying customer base. When you have limited content development resources (which we've always had) it makes more sense for us to be spending our content efforts on either missions that everyone can enjoy or tools that allow players to make tons of content on their own.
This is why you are seeing me spend the apples I have on Featured Episodes and UGC. They are the biggest bang for the buck for everyone and ultimately they help solve the content problem in 2 ways: They provide a base of content for *any* future faction over time, and UGC allows players to create the content they are interested in playing. If that is more KDF content - then players will be able to make far more missions than we ever could.
I really hope that helps to explain our thinking and why we are spending our mission dollars where we are.
without giving to much away can you tell us where the kdf will be able to create our ugc content.
without giving to much away can you tell us where the kdf will be able to create our ugc content.
I don't have the specific details of that yet because the tools are still in development. The library of assets will allow you to make content using all the enemy groups and pretty much anything else that is used elsewhere so I don't see a reason why you could have a mission take place anywhere you wanted.
The way you'll get UGC missions is through a remote contact mission system. You'll find the mission you are interested in playing and selecting it will give you the mission and say "go here to start the mission". Players will have various places in game where players can "go to" to start missions.
This is one of the reason we asked for the UGC engine to be developed in the first place. We recognize that we'll never be able to keep up with player's desire for content.
I've discussed in the past that there is diminishing returns for devoting a ton of time on any one specific piece of content. Case in point the STFs. We spent *the most* time out of all of our mission types, making those STFs (multiple weeks of development for 1 mission) and the problem is - they are very complex to make and ended up with bugs and very few people ultimately end up being able to play them. They are at a point now where I'd redesign them and open them up for smaller teams or cross-faction teams if I had the manpower to do it.
The lessons learned from that is that we can waste a lot of precious content development time making content that is exclusive to a very small percentage of the paying customer base. When you have limited content development resources (which we've always had) it makes more sense for us to be spending our content efforts on either missions that everyone can enjoy or tools that allow players to make tons of content on their own.
This is why you are seeing me spend the apples I have on Featured Episodes and UGC. They are the biggest bang for the buck for everyone and ultimately they help solve the content problem in 2 ways: They provide a base of content for *any* future faction over time, and UGC allows players to create the content they are interested in playing. If that is more KDF content - then players will be able to make far more missions than we ever could.
I really hope that helps to explain our thinking and why we are spending our mission dollars where we are.
Oh I definitely get it, and I honestly cant say I would do it any differently were I in your position with what you have to work with. However, I am slightly concerned about the weekly episodes. While I have REALLY enjoyed the past two, at some people the Feds should be fighting the Klingons, Romulans, and Cardies again, and if you design a mission like that it wont work for whichever of those factions I just mention tries to play it. So are your plans for the weekly episodes to pretty much never use any of the main factions as enemies again or what? Because as much as I have enjoyed fighting the Breen, I DO want to fight against the main factions again too.
This is one of the reason we asked for the UGC engine to be developed in the first place. We recognize that we'll never be able to keep up with player's desire for content.
I've discussed in the past that there is diminishing returns for devoting a ton of time on any one specific piece of content. Case in point the STFs. We spent *the most* time out of all of our mission types, making those STFs (multiple weeks of development for 1 mission) and the problem is - they are very complex to make and ended up with bugs and very few people ultimately end up being able to play them. They are at a point now where I'd redesign them and open them up for smaller teams or cross-faction teams if I had the manpower to do it.
The lessons learned from that is that we can waste a lot of precious content development time making content that is exclusive to a very small percentage of the paying customer base. When you have limited content development resources (which we've always had) it makes more sense for us to be spending our content efforts on either missions that everyone can enjoy or tools that allow players to make tons of content on their own.
This is why you are seeing me spend the apples I have on Featured Episodes and UGC. They are the biggest bang for the buck for everyone and ultimately they help solve the content problem in 2 ways: They provide a base of content for *any* future faction over time, and UGC allows players to create the content they are interested in playing. If that is more KDF content - then players will be able to make far more missions than we ever could.
I really hope that helps to explain our thinking and why we are spending our mission dollars where we are.
This candor is much appreciated as is your stopping by our neck of the woods. I understand the bang for buck equation, and as I understand it the design choice of spending time on the weeklies and UGC is not to say you do not want to come back and revisit all the factions with new individual episodes, so all around this is good news.
The only thing I think we desperately need is a "hook" like the Federation diplomatic corps. I believe a House system with a similar design philosophy would go a long way to making us feel more of a separate but equal faction.
This is one of the reason we asked for the UGC engine to be developed in the first place. We recognize that we'll never be able to keep up with player's desire for content.
I've discussed in the past that there is diminishing returns for devoting a ton of time on any one specific piece of content. Case in point the STFs. We spent *the most* time out of all of our mission types, making those STFs (multiple weeks of development for 1 mission) and the problem is - they are very complex to make and ended up with bugs and very few people ultimately end up being able to play them. They are at a point now where I'd redesign them and open them up for smaller teams or cross-faction teams if I had the manpower to do it.
The lessons learned from that is that we can waste a lot of precious content development time making content that is exclusive to a very small percentage of the paying customer base. When you have limited content development resources (which we've always had) it makes more sense for us to be spending our content efforts on either missions that everyone can enjoy or tools that allow players to make tons of content on their own.
This is why you are seeing me spend the apples I have on Featured Episodes and UGC. They are the biggest bang for the buck for everyone and ultimately they help solve the content problem in 2 ways: They provide a base of content for *any* future faction over time, and UGC allows players to create the content they are interested in playing. If that is more KDF content - then players will be able to make far more missions than we ever could.
I really hope that helps to explain our thinking and why we are spending our mission dollars where we are.
Well, it would definitely fill in the gap where people have seen nothing as far as Klingon goodies like dahar master coats, veteran rewards. If tis UGC allows us to create things for use in STO, then we might very well have less to gripe about.....
Oh I definitely get it, and I honestly cant say I would do it any differently were I in your position with what you have to work with. However, I am slightly concerned about the weekly episodes. While I have REALLY enjoyed the past two, at some people the Feds should be fighting the Klingons, Romulans, and Cardies again, and if you design a mission like that it wont work for whichever of those factions I just mention tries to play it. So are your plans for the weekly episodes to pretty much never use any of the main factions as enemies again or what?
Not necessarily true. We do want to introduce conflict between our main factions in future episodes. You are correct in that it is tricky because we have to create missions from 2 different perspectives, but there is nothing stopping us from doing this from a technical standpoint.
I'm pushing for the next two series to exclusively take place in locations around Klingon space so that we can start to introduce these sorts of elements.
The only thing I think we desperately need is a "hook" like the Federation diplomatic corps. I believe a House system with a similar design philosophy would go a long way to making us feel more of a separate but equal faction.
I tend to agree with this and why I keep bringing up some sort of territory game. We really need to go back and tell the story of why the KDF and FED are at war and build some content around that whole neutral zone conflict. I'm not sure how fast we'll be able to make this (we've been talking about it for a while) but I'm hopeful that once UGC is available - the constant content pressure will be off my team enough that we can take a breather and work on something like this.
Not necessarily true. We do want to introduce conflict between our main factions in future episodes. You are correct in that it is tricky because we have to create missions from 2 different perspectives, but there is nothing stopping us from doing this from a technical standpoint.
I'm pushing for the next two series to exclusively take place in locations around Klingon space so that we can start to introduce these sorts of elements.
I really look forward to seeing what you can do with the weeklies. I have enjoyed them so far, but if you can push the concept and the Tech to make them even better I'm all for that.
I don't have the specific details of that yet because the tools are still in development. The library of assets will allow you to make content using all the enemy groups and pretty much anything else that is used elsewhere so I don't see a reason why you could have a mission take place anywhere you wanted.
The way you'll get UGC missions is through a remote contact mission system. You'll find the mission you are interested in playing and selecting it will give you the mission and say "go here to start the mission". Players will have various places in game where players can "go to" to start missions.
will the ugc be basically a sandbox editor then and if so that adds great amount of playerer dev which alot of us have propably more time to work on, we arnt all masters at it but the shared talents within the kdf diehard is very large pool or talents that we could pass ugc content between ourselves until polished, to this end the zones that could be created uniquely have a great potential to be used by cryptic themselfs to just without looking for a better word plopped in along side omega block so we expand our own gameplay.as in cryptic would supply us with a blank sector or 2 and we give you the dev'd blueprints to go within that zone.
does that sound like a comparison to you and do able.
will the ugc be basically a sandbox editor then and if so that adds great amount of playerer dev which alot of us have propably more time to work on, we arnt all masters at it but the shared talents within the kdf diehard is very large pool or talents that we could pass ugc content between ourselves until polished, to this end the zones that could be created uniquely have a great potential to be used by cryptic themselfs to just without looking for a better word plopped in along side omega block so we expand our own gameplay.as in cryptic would supply us with a blank sector or 2 and we give you the dev'd blueprints to go within that zone.
The design of the system calls for a shared resource library and each player has a set amount of projects they can be working on. You could then share projects with one another and collaborate on them together (although I think only one person can have it checked out at a time). If someone is really good at making environements, they could do that part - then someone else could write the dialog - someone else could make the NPC costumes - and someone else could design the combat parts. It is a slick idea and add in the ratings system and I'm hoping that we'll be able to see some really good missions come up in the ratings really fast once this goes live.
Not necessarily true. We do want to introduce conflict between our main factions in future episodes. You are correct in that it is tricky because we have to create missions from 2 different perspectives, but there is nothing stopping us from doing this from a technical standpoint.
I'm pushing for the next two series to exclusively take place in locations around Klingon space so that we can start to introduce these sorts of elements.
Well then that takes care of my concerns as far as that matter goes. Thanks for the replies
The design of the system calls for a shared resource library and each player has a set amount of projects they can be working on. You could then share projects with one another and collaborate on them together (although I think only one person can have it checked out at a time). If someone is really good at making environements, they could do that part - then someone else could write the dialog - someone else could make the NPC costumes - and someone else could design the combat parts. It is a slick idea and add in the ratings system and I'm hoping that we'll be able to see some really good missions come up in the ratings really fast once this goes live.
I have to say this comment here has me more excited about the UGC idea than I have ever been. I recently talked an old time LordDave into coming back and I will have to share this with him as I know he will love the idea.
One advantage is that area also includes the Archer system. Why is that interesting you ask? Because the "real name" of that system is also the name of the Kzinti homeworld.
A Kzinti/Caitian dispute would do a lot to elevate these races from the "lorelol" status some fans attribute to them and bring them more into the gameworld.
Plus... You could work in M'Ress. It would be nice to see a former Enterprise Bridge Crew member and I can't imagine anything that would keep you from pulling her in for a Caitian/Kzinti arc.
That's also where Empress Sela was conceived so you might see some shady Romulan activity stirring everything up.
Comments
Valid point...we need to find that point and draw the line. But we need to be upfront with that line. We dont need to be totally in dark anymore, just so they can have all the fanfare of the unveiling...the time for ticker tape, balloons and the dev team jumping out from behind there hiding places to yell, "surprise!" has passed.
I'll say it again....we cant afford another Kar'fi. Its was cool and all, but we need something more substantial for the few items we get until the content(especially our Fleet options) is more rounded.
I plan to do my part.
Fix the kdf side, catch them up on content for lvl 5-43 and the other stuff they promised and reverse the one sided to the feds that should have always been dev'd for both sides even if with dif looks and ways of doing it or........
keep with the status quo, watch the kdf side die, people leave and see the negative posts all over the web and reviews on there games for years to come. and pvp destroyed.
Indeed, as frustrated as I am with things, dstahl and crew are doing the best they can with what they have. We won't see any quick improvements to the game unless the higher ups at Cryptic or Atari (whoever is really in charge of development) pull their heads out of their TRIBBLE$es and devotes more resources to their projects (or consolidate if that is fiscally impossible).
UGC is going to be depended on to correct the game, and that shouldn't be, it shouldn't have even gotten to that point in the first place, but it has for one reason or another....
the standing point there going off now makes me think that they have infact not even thought about touching the kdf upto this point except the 8 episodes scattered about the ranks, they cant call the changes to explore etc as our dev as its just a copy paste of what the feds have but worse and more broken then theres. and this goes back to the vet rewards excuse that they just wernt thought important enough to be deved at the time even though to the conterary there was a post and reply about the kdf longcoat when it was in dev so they knew it was wanted, and the arguemnt but there could be a technical issue, what technical issue, when feds were there vet reward or ambassabor coat it replaces what there wearing, do we have dif models to the feds or something. im sure feds have klingons on there side, can they were vet reqards and formal wear, can aliens.
and to the ugc being usable by the kdf, im highly doubting it for one fact, we have 2 zones, 1 a pvp zone, and erm ow yes the other a pvp zone, so technically feds get access to all the zones via arenas, where are we going to create this content, on what planets and in what zones ?
Honestly I don't know what to tell you; the only thing that I can say is that they have too much that they want to do, and way to few people to do it all.
If that is the case, then somebody at Atari (or Cryptic, I really don't know who makes the team and project decisions for these companies) is making mistakes that a 1st year business student wouldn't make with major products.
Here's the thing; I believe that those 8 episodes took a lot of effort, particularly when tied in with everything else that went into Season 2, and therein lies part of the problem (manpower).
Another part of the problem, is that while it's true that they have given the Klingons Star cluster missions, Fleet Actions and STFs, and that likely was a fair bit of work to retool it to the KDF side; the perception works against dstahl and his team. That's because in the eyes of every Klingon player who was here prior to launch, that content should have been in on the Klingon side to begin with (along with the episodes), and so making it seem like we were being given something great only worked to fuel more anger from the dedicated Klingons.
Yet another part of the problem is that so many Klingons have been driven away starting with the announcement that the Klingons would be PvP centric prior to the open beta. Would the population every have been 50/50 between fed and KDF, of course not, but the point is that they have been losing Klingons far more quickly and constantly than they have been gaining them. As a result dstahl has to choose between helping an angry portion of the playerbase, alienating his largest base, or trying to help everbody. So far he's trying to help everybody, but perception is again working against him because he's continuing with old plans that were slated for the Federation at a time when the Klingon base's patience is extremely thin (broken in some cases).
Those are just three problems here...
It's how they are going to do it, which entails people creating their own instances on places. It won't be the greatest thing, but some people want it and regardless of how I or others feel about it, it's going to happen.
I think that's a really valid point. One I'd agree with. A lot of times I talk about how the issues with the KDF are reflected in the entire game. And I cite oversights and bugs and typos that make it live. I think what you're saying is the crux of the problem.
I'll give them credit that they can turn out some amazing work with a small staff. But each step forward gets a few steps back. Like 2.0. Some amazing content debuted with that. But the patch broke too many things. Not enough people to catch this in time.
I think this is part of what dstahl and Jack Emmert mean when they are talking about bringing better quality. Cryptic is good at churning out something that works quickly. But it could work a lot better.
Season 2 brought a lot of diverse things. Level Cap Increase. 2 new currencies (Latinum, Emblems). Diplomacy content. Klingon PvE Missions. Faction-Neutral PvE Missions. A Fleet Action. Refits. Mini-Games. Ship Interiors
That might have been too many things at once. Some stuff I can see being done in parallel. Others less so. For example - add Diplomacy Content and Ship Interiors and compare it to PvE Missions. I have the feeling pretty much the same teams are working on that, since you need to build story content (dialogs!) for them, and you need maps. Ther could have been a few more episodes added to the game for that. Or the Fleet Action could have been more polished and better balanced.
So, if Cryptic is keeping to their word, we might see less of such complex updates. We might see more focused stuff, with less bugs and more features within it. More depth.
We'll see how this works out in Season 3, I suppose.
While I did have some faith restored by Jack's interview, the problem is that STO lacks/lacked both quantity AND quality by gamer standards (advancing market = advancing standards); so while it's nice to hear that quality will be the focus, the game is still lacking for the foreseeable future.
Now fast forward a year from today, where we're looking to have 40+ multi-faction episodes (assuming possible delays and holiday breaks) in addition to whatever else they got around to and things might be different. But that is assuming that the game's population hasn't been whittled to the die-hards by Cataclysm and SW:tOR (among other games).
It boils down to perception:
Most Klingons believed that Season 2 would be primarily a Klingon update, and we got 8 episodes; the perception is the eight is a terribly small number and the quality of those eight takes a back seat when weighed against what the Federation got.
It's nice that Cryptic is learning that quality matters (as said above), but they haven't learned to balance it yet when the relationship with part of your playerbase is on the line.
Season 3 being mainly bug fixes aside, it again boils down to perception.
Cryptic is releasing and showing teasers for this and that, but what are the received messages to their players?
Neutral missions send a message that they can't hit both individually so they have to do them at the same time; continued work on the Nebula sends the message that they're still putting the Federation first instead of honoring what they said about increasing the Klingon ships (and time tables); releasing Federation ships with special abilities and BO layouts (and nothing but promises for the Klingons) sends the message that even those they said the Klingons are getting attention, the Federation is more important to them; and so on.
Get the picture? Sony has made a lot of changes and improvements to SWG over the past few years, but does anybody care? No they don't, and If Cryptic wants to fix their image, they need to pay more attention to how their actions will reflect back on them by the players.
Start without a feature, adding it later will go unnoticed by most.
Start with a mediocre or badly implemented feature, improving it later will go unnoticed by most.
It seems from a certain business perspective, starting without features with mediocre quality can still yield good returns. But it might not be sustainable in the long run, since once you are known for lacking feature and mediocre quality, no one wants your product.
Neverwinter as well as Season 3 might need to prove that Cryptic can also deliver quality, otherwise they don't need to really bother churning out new games at a faster pace then most companies, since it won't sell anymore. Of course, it could also be too late for that, though I don't think that. Not if they can deliver at least.
Let's avoid getting drag into the stupid arguments about "But you were meant to be a step child" or "You shouldn't even be a faction" or any iteration of the same tired and ignorant claim. These people have their own agenda and it is to discredit and destroy our faction.
This ship is a perfect example.
It could have been such an amazing piece of the puzzle. And had the potential to move KDF evolution forward.
The story around it ... it's a reverse engineered ship from an ancient enemy.
That's got so much potential.
The reality of it ...
It's a carrier no one asked for, has limited in-game functionality, and the "ancient enemy" accounts for two story missions. And that's it! You can't encounter these "ancient enemies" anywhere else. The way the thing was implemented, I see no reason to bother reverse engineering a ship in the first place.
The banner "Ancient Enemies" looked cool (to me), but didn't really represent the patch very well since they were such an insignificant portion of what was released. I blinked and I was done with the missions.
The carrier had a lot of potential both with the story and with the game. But it fell very short of its potential. And so when people say it's a ship no one asked for, I'm now of a mind to agree with that. It could have been amazing, even as a carrier, if some things were developed differently. But the way it all turned out, it really is just a fish out of water.
@Varrangian: That's some great advice. Advice I have trouble listening to. But it works. It really does. Takes some willpower, but when you do what you suggest, you find it much easier to participate in discussions, not get infraction points and generally be more even keeled and open minded.
if they unlock every fed zone to us bar regulas and sirius or even give us 2 more pve only zones with little episode content within them just for the kdf with cardy and ramy space for us to utilize ugc into and for somewhere for leveling kdf players to go into and play and level up that would be very impressive and add huge scope as a building block to the kdf side.
there are already presidents of kdf zones that could be added within the feds own episodes where they load into a kdf zone for stop the kdf q's, like the one where low end feds do the listening posts and the other where they help a kdf battlefleet to take down an undine battleship.
Yes, the banner looked nice...but that's about it...lol Everything has fallen short with little to no follow-through on the end of the devs...
This is one of the reason we asked for the UGC engine to be developed in the first place. We recognize that we'll never be able to keep up with player's desire for content.
I've discussed in the past that there is diminishing returns for devoting a ton of time on any one specific piece of content. Case in point the STFs. We spent *the most* time out of all of our mission types, making those STFs (multiple weeks of development for 1 mission) and the problem is - they are very complex to make and ended up with bugs and very few people ultimately end up being able to play them. They are at a point now where I'd redesign them and open them up for smaller teams or cross-faction teams if I had the manpower to do it.
The lessons learned from that is that we can waste a lot of precious content development time making content that is exclusive to a very small percentage of the paying customer base. When you have limited content development resources (which we've always had) it makes more sense for us to be spending our content efforts on either missions that everyone can enjoy or tools that allow players to make tons of content on their own.
This is why you are seeing me spend the apples I have on Featured Episodes and UGC. They are the biggest bang for the buck for everyone and ultimately they help solve the content problem in 2 ways: They provide a base of content for *any* future faction over time, and UGC allows players to create the content they are interested in playing. If that is more KDF content - then players will be able to make far more missions than we ever could.
I really hope that helps to explain our thinking and why we are spending our mission dollars where we are.
without giving to much away can you tell us where the kdf will be able to create our ugc content.
I don't have the specific details of that yet because the tools are still in development. The library of assets will allow you to make content using all the enemy groups and pretty much anything else that is used elsewhere so I don't see a reason why you could have a mission take place anywhere you wanted.
The way you'll get UGC missions is through a remote contact mission system. You'll find the mission you are interested in playing and selecting it will give you the mission and say "go here to start the mission". Players will have various places in game where players can "go to" to start missions.
Oh I definitely get it, and I honestly cant say I would do it any differently were I in your position with what you have to work with. However, I am slightly concerned about the weekly episodes. While I have REALLY enjoyed the past two, at some people the Feds should be fighting the Klingons, Romulans, and Cardies again, and if you design a mission like that it wont work for whichever of those factions I just mention tries to play it. So are your plans for the weekly episodes to pretty much never use any of the main factions as enemies again or what? Because as much as I have enjoyed fighting the Breen, I DO want to fight against the main factions again too.
This candor is much appreciated as is your stopping by our neck of the woods. I understand the bang for buck equation, and as I understand it the design choice of spending time on the weeklies and UGC is not to say you do not want to come back and revisit all the factions with new individual episodes, so all around this is good news.
The only thing I think we desperately need is a "hook" like the Federation diplomatic corps. I believe a House system with a similar design philosophy would go a long way to making us feel more of a separate but equal faction.
Well, it would definitely fill in the gap where people have seen nothing as far as Klingon goodies like dahar master coats, veteran rewards. If tis UGC allows us to create things for use in STO, then we might very well have less to gripe about.....
Not necessarily true. We do want to introduce conflict between our main factions in future episodes. You are correct in that it is tricky because we have to create missions from 2 different perspectives, but there is nothing stopping us from doing this from a technical standpoint.
I'm pushing for the next two series to exclusively take place in locations around Klingon space so that we can start to introduce these sorts of elements.
I tend to agree with this and why I keep bringing up some sort of territory game. We really need to go back and tell the story of why the KDF and FED are at war and build some content around that whole neutral zone conflict. I'm not sure how fast we'll be able to make this (we've been talking about it for a while) but I'm hopeful that once UGC is available - the constant content pressure will be off my team enough that we can take a breather and work on something like this.
I really look forward to seeing what you can do with the weeklies. I have enjoyed them so far, but if you can push the concept and the Tech to make them even better I'm all for that.
will the ugc be basically a sandbox editor then and if so that adds great amount of playerer dev which alot of us have propably more time to work on, we arnt all masters at it but the shared talents within the kdf diehard is very large pool or talents that we could pass ugc content between ourselves until polished, to this end the zones that could be created uniquely have a great potential to be used by cryptic themselfs to just without looking for a better word plopped in along side omega block so we expand our own gameplay.as in cryptic would supply us with a blank sector or 2 and we give you the dev'd blueprints to go within that zone.
does that sound like a comparison to you and do able.
The design of the system calls for a shared resource library and each player has a set amount of projects they can be working on. You could then share projects with one another and collaborate on them together (although I think only one person can have it checked out at a time). If someone is really good at making environements, they could do that part - then someone else could write the dialog - someone else could make the NPC costumes - and someone else could design the combat parts. It is a slick idea and add in the ratings system and I'm hoping that we'll be able to see some really good missions come up in the ratings really fast once this goes live.
Well then that takes care of my concerns as far as that matter goes. Thanks for the replies
I have to say this comment here has me more excited about the UGC idea than I have ever been. I recently talked an old time LordDave into coming back and I will have to share this with him as I know he will love the idea.
One advantage is that area also includes the Archer system. Why is that interesting you ask? Because the "real name" of that system is also the name of the Kzinti homeworld.
A Kzinti/Caitian dispute would do a lot to elevate these races from the "lorelol" status some fans attribute to them and bring them more into the gameworld.
Plus... You could work in M'Ress. It would be nice to see a former Enterprise Bridge Crew member and I can't imagine anything that would keep you from pulling her in for a Caitian/Kzinti arc.
That's also where Empress Sela was conceived so you might see some shady Romulan activity stirring everything up.