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What happened to the dev communication?
sl1ckm1ster
Member Posts: 6 Arc User
It seems like the devs hardly post anymore. And before anyone says its because they are busy, I assume they have always been busy, but that didnt stop them from posting in the past. What happened?
Post edited by sl1ckm1ster on
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Too much QQ on the forums and PWE.
As for them not posting, I wouldn't doubt that the hostility on the forum has got them not to post as much as they use to. Though they can't entirely blame us since they created these extensive grinds and money pits, making us feel less valuable as players.
They can't keep their promises, and seem to get themselves in trouble a lot with the community these days on some things they have said. So instead of fixing things, they've just backed off communicating to avoid problems.
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Honestly, WHY anyone holds everything they say as promises when it's all subject to change, and hence not really a set-in-stone promise, is beyond me. All you get is disappointment that way.
And nobody can really blame them backing off on communication. The more talkitive devs are gone, and the others have to deal with the vociferious community... thick skin or not, it makes people back off at times.
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
Officially Nerfed In Early 2410
Rule #1.
I don't care how long you've been playing. I only care about how you play.
And remember to follow the rules.
what I think he is referring to is Dan's engineering report he used to do
and that he has yet to do since he retururned
If I worked for cryptic I wouldn't post here considering how some of the more passionate players post.
For Tumerboy, who may not have done some digging, and generally for those unaware, it went down more or less like this (YMMV of course, depending on your disposition):
Back then, Stahl was all about letting us know what the grand scheme was for the long term life of STO. The Engineering Reports would contain information that was months, if not years, from fruition. This in and of itself is not a bad thing, of course, but a fair number of people were taking it was promises rather than what it actually was; long-term speculation. The result of this was a great deal of noise from many people about "broken promises", even moreso than we see it today.
The problem, as I mentioned, was people taking the Reports as a set-in-stone timetable. Few then, and frankly few now, grasp the concept that plans can and do change. The simply ignorant would go shouting about broken promises where promises never existed. Those with experience in management and programming and the like admonished the devs for poor time management with statements of how it would have been in their company, what they would have done, how this would be unacceptable for them, without knowing exactly what was actually going on.
Ultimately, Stahl's far-reaching claims caused a great deal of anger, and he rightly chose to shift gears to less far-off goals, focusing on what he was more certain he could deliver as stated. Sadly, this has had its own backlash, and perhaps it could be said he has taken this new angle a step or two too far.
Additional factors are Heretic's spoiling of the DOff community with above-and-beyond community interaction, and CapnLogan's charismatic (if occasionally inflammatory) conversations.
There are probably folks who could have told everyone this better than I have. But I lived through it the same as many others. Hopefully someone will give another view on the whole thing to round out the tale of the Era of Communication...
I Support Disco | Disco is Love | Disco is Life
When did dev communication become an entitlement?
It's still nice to hear stuff from you guys every so often. Helps us remember (Or me at least) that you guys are actual real people rather than a faceless, amorphous, money consuming mass. :P
What I really miss is the twitter and forum thumbnails, it's been a long while since we've had one. Guessing what they could be was great fun!
Speaking of which, I was the first one to guess what the Armitage was, where's my Cookie!?!? :mad:
When Stahl (and a few others over the years) bragged on multiple occasions in interviews, posts, etc... how well they communicated with the community.
That aside however, good communications between a game development team and the community that springs up around them is always much desired by the playerbase. However even at the best of times I've never felt that the STO devs talked with the community so much as they talked AT us. Never have I looked at patch notes and thought to myself "Yes they listened" or the like. Most often when I read the patch notes or the dev blogs or even just posts by devs it only strengthens my opinion that they in fact have no clue what the community wants. Or if they do, then something is going on behind the scenes to get it all muddled up.
They were all sacked and replaced by Llamas.
Lamas are over rated.
So we sacked all people related to hiring the lamas and replaced them.
You, when you said less of it was a punishment. Losing something to which you are entitled is a punishment; losing something to which you are not entitled is not.
The fact that someone has chosen to work at a game developer doesn't mean they are required to submit themselves to abuse. You had a developer come into THIS THREAD and explain why devs are posting less, and the immediate response from several people was to basically accuse him of lying.
The Star Trek community used to be better than this. This game has flaws, and it needs our feedback to drive the limited resources in the proper directions to fix them, but nobody benefits if the atmosphere here drives the devs out of the forums. There are a lot of games whose developers don't interact with the community nearly as much as Cryptic does; it would be nice if more Cryptic devs felt like they're welcome in here.
F2P let all the riff-raff in.
Well, when you/we see some of those flaws not getting fixed for months, but a new Z-store item coming out every week, you start to wonder where those resources are going.
For example... the range needed to interact with the KDF banks is about a 2ft radius near the left side of the terminal(s). It got broke when Season 6 came out. We have another patch tomorrow, I don't see that in the punch list, do you? But we'll get useless Raptr prizes!
If Cryptic wants to show that they are listening, do like they had before... have a Punch List thread! A list of all the bugs, errors and Oops! they need to fix. And then when it's fixed put a -fixed- tag next to it. That will show that they are doing more than filling the Z-store with stuff.
Such a thread may also cut down on the duplicate "X is broke" threads in the Gameplay Bugs section.
Not to mention the cloaking bug that's been in for well over a year now. Or the black textures showing up on models ever since they implemented DX11. Way too many old bugs still around to really list.
The open communication pretty much ended when Dan left prior to F2P and it became clear Cryptic was going to keep a closed door policy going forward. The additions like Tacofangs has been nice, but communication has never regained itself due to a few key attempts that have ended poorly on behalf of Cryptic.
Overall I agree with the OP that communication has gone to being almost nonexistent. One key thing they used to do is defend their decisions against the mob, now they seem to not bother with them. In its place is a level of censorship over the past few months that I never saw before the forum change. That trend is a clear sign you shouldn't expect communication pre-F2P communication to come back.
Join Date: Sept 2008
"Holographic tissue paper for the holographic runny nose. Don't give them to patients." - The Doctor
I knew this would happen by the way. Folks would start talking about Devs, and bring up T5 Connie, KDF content, no more FE, Lockboxes, or the content drought and start bashing the Devs with out them even being here.
And if they did show up? You had better belive they would get quoted and reminded of their past "falures", "false promisise" and "greed". And the poster would defend their right to spew venom because they spent 300 bucks on something two years ago.
That might be because the Reddit STO community actually enjoys playing the game and doesn't seem to rage against every thing PWE does. Reading the Raptr thread is hilarious at how angry folks are Cryptic is giving something away.
Oh, believe me, there's definitely some dissatisfaction amongst us, especially on the KDF side. We just don't bombard the devs with it when they show up, because we like talking with them
As I recall, a dev once got wailed on in public for posting a rational speculation as to what might happen in a hypothetical legal situation in another country.
Specifically, they postulated that, should a country from which there is not much income coming for STO outlawed lockboxes, instead of cutting off this massive cash flow outright, they would instead cut off that country, which gave only a fraction of the profit. This was, again, IIRC, done on a forum that WASN'T EVEN THIS ONE. God knows the mess that would result if it was here.
And this got blown up and Cryptic/PWE/etc. was looked at as the ultimate evil that ever was. Never mind that STO would continue to exist and probably still be accessible in that country for people who REALLY wanted to play it, and never mind that lockboxes are one of the reasons they can still keep the lights on for STO.
This is the kind of stuff people get fired for. I would not risk my job to get flamed on a daily basis by players who think that the devs are conspiring to crush them to goo.
Truth be told, player communication, due to a relatively small percentage of STO's population, comes out as a bit of a lose-lose proposition in general. It's very unfortunate, but it's the reality of things. I'm very unhappy with some dev decisions, myself, but talking with the players about things that might happen, being honest and personable, and getting lynched for it routinely, does not sound to be wise professionally. Or personally, for that matter.
Unhappiness = Expectation - Reality
Cryptic communicated often with STO community but managed E poorly, which made R hit hard resulting in big U.
STO: Recently - Present
Limited communication automatically manages E to a great extent. R value is as before but new E value could change equation resulting in Happiness or Contentment. Calcualtion in progress.