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Dan Stahl's Answers for why things aren't finished in the latest Ask Cryptic
thedoctorbluebox
Member Posts: 749 Arc User
In the latest Ask Cryptic - http://sto.perfectworld.com/news/?p=705951
This question was asked:
Dan Stahl's Answer follows:
My Response to Dan Stahl:
Why not, as the boss, assign someone to these issues to get them finished, make it a project that someone has to finish. We as players do not like having unfinished things, when you start something, and even if someone leaves, then assign someone else to finish the darn thing! What's stopping you?
It is very poor management if you can't assign someone to finish these things that need to be finished. There is no excuse not to finish them. We won't buy "well uh when someone feels like doing it it'll get done". NO! Assign someone to it, get it finished, and you will have happy players.
All we are asking is that you finish what you start, is that too much to ask for?
This question was asked:
(tilarium1979) Why do projects die as staff rotates out or take leaves of absence? 700-day veteran android, First Officer, Department Heads, Off-Duty clothing revamp, etc ? all were close to being done, but then the person(s) working on it left the dev team (or on a leave of absence) and the project was scrapped.
Dan Stahl's Answer follows:
Dstahl: There are a couple reasons why you might think that some projects were close to being done and why they appear to be going nowhere. First of all, as a small team, every individual has a large amount of ownership over a specific area of the game. If any one person leaves, then there is a void that has to be filled by someone else. In the case of many of the items you mention, these were individual side projects that each individual owner had decided to add to their own schedule and had in some cases even communicated on the forums that they would like to ?get that done sometime?. Many times, these are after work projects, or items never scheduled to be in the game, that the individual owners wanted to get done out of their own desires to answer player feedback. So when that person leaves, it is not always the case that the feature was anywhere near done, nor is it the case that they had communicated what their intentions where to begin with. We allow this level of entrepreneurial spirit on the team, but as I?m well aware, when you communicate what you would ?like? to do, it can haunt you when it doesn?t get done. For the most part, the individuals who mentioned these features should not have done so until they were certain they could be implemented.
That?s not to say that features like First Officer, Department Heads, and Off-Duty revamps will not happen. In an MMO, anything can eventually happen and I wouldn?t be surprised if these features are in the game in the future. But for now, they are on hold until someone else on the team picks up where the owner?s idea left off.
My Response to Dan Stahl:
Why not, as the boss, assign someone to these issues to get them finished, make it a project that someone has to finish. We as players do not like having unfinished things, when you start something, and even if someone leaves, then assign someone else to finish the darn thing! What's stopping you?
It is very poor management if you can't assign someone to finish these things that need to be finished. There is no excuse not to finish them. We won't buy "well uh when someone feels like doing it it'll get done". NO! Assign someone to it, get it finished, and you will have happy players.
All we are asking is that you finish what you start, is that too much to ask for?
Brent Justice
JustGaming4US - https://www.youtube.com/user/JustGaming4Us/
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JustGaming4US - https://www.youtube.com/user/JustGaming4Us/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/Brent_Justice
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Post edited by thedoctorbluebox on
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Comments
This read it...
Okay than, the projects they where working on, was on there free NON payed time, So like a hobby. They would love to get those things in game. But when they leave it wont happen.
The new person that replaces him or her, has no idea on what the first person was up to.
So project gets canceled, Not so hard to understand i hope?
when new person comes in he has to get trained up and confident in what he is doing. he has to follow the official schedule and deal with what is put in front of him.
he may not be at a stage where he want to work after hours. he may not be at a stage where he feels confident enough to start doing his own thing and he may not even have the slightest idea what the previous guys was doing, or agree with that direction he was taking. they also have about 4 people who have left recently so that potentially 4 projects started or conceptualised by 4 different people in 4 different aspects of the game.
this is another problem of their communication and telling us too much. we only think they are unfinished because they have told us its something they would like to do.
perhaps they could assign someone to clean up and finish off all these random projects although its probably nowhere near that simple, and will take one person off of the official schedule which would delay something else for people to complain about being late.
Say Dev 1 has this side project with only 5 hours left to do before it is ready. Dev 1 leaves resulting in Dev 2 to finish the project. Dev 2 has to understand what the side project is about and how to accomplish it. Now it takes 20 hours to finish the project. Dev 2 already has their workload to do and their side projects to do. Things aren't as simple as get er done.
I mean it's not rocket science.
Then it would not be free time, and just be called work. It's a hobby for them, something they like to do on their off time, they could spend that time sleeping, or going home and watching TV.
"You have hobbies? Things you do for fun? You could be using that time to work! What the hell is wrong with you? :mad: "
If that's your attitude, please never, ever become someone's boss. Or own a business. Or, really, have contact with anyone ever again.
Agreed...holy cow. The level of unabashed self-centeredness here is flat out astonishing.
ROTFLMAO
New Dev reply: "As soon as they stop paying me today to work on the scheduled projects I think I will stay around late every night unpaid to work on someone elses project that I don't even care that much about - hmm -NOT!"
OK...easy fix....make it STANDARD PROCEDURE for the employee leaving to turn his side-projects over to Stahl for review. If Stahl likes them, then he passes on this information and the new employee can devote X amount of time to this project "IF" it was deemed VERY GOOD. Perhaps 10-15% of their time. The newbie can personalize whatever it is to their preferences, but the JOB WOULD GET FINISHED.
Don't think for a second that even unofficial "side-projects" arent property of PWE the second the employee steps out the door and into other opportunities.
What the hell is so difficult about this? I do this when employees of my company leave and go off to other opportunities . I don't just "throw everything away", or scrap good ideas. I assign one of my other employees to the task to see it through.
And what if STO is just a "side project" right now and Neverwinter is the main time consumption at Cryptic?
Two separate teams, in separate areas. if you looked at the office visits that the Jupiter Broadcast guys did.
So Dan only oversee's STO and does not devote any time to Neverwinter?
On the matter of "poor management", I beg to differ.
Consider: Dan, as a (hopefully even semi-competent) manager has to have a "master plan", which is the primary driver for the implementation of content into STO. IMO, projects started by "individual initiative" most likely aren't on the "master plan", because as a "competent" manager, I sure wouldn't be allowing my staff to undertake activities that would eventually be paid for on their "free time".
With the fact that certain "primary" projects, such as, oh, a fully fleshed out 1-50 Klingon storyline and/or a third faction seem to be part of the "master plan" and not scheduled to be released till at least Season 8, I personally don't see how he would be a "good manager" that is focused on the "master plan" if he's gonna postpone that official content to season 9 in order to "finish off" projects that aren't (weren't) officially sanctioned. Therefore, we have to be content if he's at least offering these projects to the staff so that they can be picked up by anyone willing to complete the project in their free time, or he finds official slots to integrate their completion, which might not be until season 9 or 10, because I get the feeling that he's hoping to make "even better" master plan content than half-baked "master" content and "rushed" completions of "someone else's desires"...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
That to me is something the Entire Team, should have been concerned about and working on.
It never should have dropped off the Priority List.
I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born!
Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
I believe that is correct...
He oversees STO and keeps in contact with the NW Team because of the cross-over of their Foundry to STO.
Somebody else is the NW Producer.
(though I have no idea who is)
Edit: See below...
I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born!
Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
Didn't say that but, Craig Zinkievich is the executive producer Andy Velasquez is the lead producer...Dan more than likely works on both but Dan isn't the entire STO team.
STO: Spin City Expansion Pack
Capt. Will Conquest of the U.S.S. Crusader
Same here...
I thought the "official" 700 day android was the male android that's already in game, and the "side project" was the inclusion of a female android option...
Therefore, the "master plan" portion of the project was completed, and as such fell off the "entire team's" priority list.
Sadly, it's not something that I can check on, because I started with F2P, and am counting on the subscription special to get me to 100 day reward by december...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
So it's possible that Dan has a lot more to keep track of than most people here know about?
Brad Stoken is the EP for CO.
Dan Stahl is the EP for STO.
They all hold the same position and authority for their respective teams. They talk and share resources, like the Foundry, but they do not work on each other's projects.
This part is key, and only a few people on these boards have been willing to point it out.
Cryptic apparently has a much different work environment than most of the industry. When they started working on STO (and probably CO too), they had this grand idea to be completely open with the community. They would share everything they were doing, including everything they were thinking about doing with us. This amount of openness would create a sense of camaraderie with their public, including them like they were part of the team instead of other companies that don't share any information about what's going into the game until it's ready to go live or into public testing.
And it worked. Too well. We saw too much about how the sausage is being made without understanding what we were seeing. The unfortunate side effect of all this information sharing is that it created expectations from things that were brainstorms or side projects. And that's another thing to consider: there are a lot of things that devs are working on that are side projects that they do on their own time. Think about that for a moment. These devs are already taking time outside of their normal work schedules, without extra pay (unless maybe there's a bonus if they manage to complete it), to make stuff for us in this game on their own. What does that tell us?
It should tell us that 1) They love this game, and 2) They love their jobs of making this stuff so much that they do it not because they're told to, but because they want to. They have a vision to improve this game and are taking initiatives on their own to make it happen.
Unfortunately, life is also something that happens. Sometimes the vision is too big to do for the initial time and effort that can be affordably allotted on their own. Sometimes events or opportunities arise elsewhere that takes the dev(s) away from the studio. Sometimes the ideas change.
And that's why we saw a huge change when Stahl left last year and D'Angelo took the helm. Stahl is a Producer through and through. He is supercharged to get people excited about all sorts of ideas and creative things that they want to do. He can get us the customers excited about these things too. However, the openness and supersharing was detrimental to the work team by creating inflated expectations and huge letdowns when plans change.
When D'Angelo sat in during Stahl's absence, coming from an Engineer's background he took a much more pragmatic view, and would only tell us about the things that were getting ready to be implemented, rather than sharing whiteboard brainstorming discussions. While this probably relieved the stress on the workers by not having to deal with "overpromises" or the inflated expectations of their unfinished ideas, it left the community feeling cold and out of the loop.
So when Stahl came back, a median had to be drawn. He was still going to bring back the heat and get people excited about future projects, but he had to tone it down a bit so he wasn't giving away every little idea they had before they had anything solid baked in.
So that's where we are now. Side projects should remain secret until they're ready to be implemented, but sometimes the individual devs like to share what they're working on too. There's a very hard balancing act that has to be done between sharing info to get the public excited about upcoming features and keeping things quiet until they're ready.
Raptr profile
Otherwise, revealing these projects raises expectations. When something goes wrong, disappointment and whining reigns supreme.
The whole game is a side project at this point, it seems all the actual resources outside of lockbox creation has gone to neverwinter.
My time here they put in lockboxes x 3 and fleets, neither of which I even marginally care about.
But hey 1up for the tholian scarf
It's all fair and well though, I don't pay them anything and they don't have to deliver so when I eventually lose my mind doing the same 3 stf I will move on to the next f2p
I hear kotor is going soon
Well just meybe they should go to bed, watch Tv or switch off....possibly not swiching off is having a adverse affect on the work they are doing during working hours......possibly one of the factors why the game is so starved of content that is not a lockbox.....could overwork and fatigue be hindering STO....i would much prefer the team to be working solely on STO during offical hours and producing stuff that's is not a lockbox on a regular basis, come back the next day refreshed and ready for another days work........rather then what we have at present and having DS state that stuff has been dropped because it was not finished in somebody's free time.
I can think of a hundred things of higher priority then an android Boff; let alone an android Boff of each class. But some fanboy wanted an android Boff so some developer's time was wasted giving it to us; and then the minute we get it we demand more.
The best thing that could happen to STO is if they treated it like a console game: the devs create the game they wanted to make and shut-out all the community jibberjabber that only convolutes the integrity of the setting.
This game would look even less like a Star trek game if the devs would just add what they find "cool", even so with other aspect of the game.
Another big problem this game has is the totally inappropriate ship classification/balance.
Their interpretation of Star Trek ships is even worse than their designs, they seriously pressed Trek ships into roles they just don't belong, just to keep the typical stone/paper/scissor MMO mechanic.
I am not saying they should completely do whatever is demanded, but what this game needs is a team who is well familiar with star trek and not some Star Wars fanboys doing a Trek game. (I'm sorry to say that)
My point is that i liked the idea of devs who listen what the players want and to try to realize it to the game. But in my opinion they listend way too much to the typical MMO players who wanted to have "their" typical MMO mechanics in this game.
Instead of making a consistend Star Trek game they made a Trek/generic sci fi circus where nothing really fits together and some things are completely turned upside down compared to "real" Star Trek.
What i want is more consistency and truth to Star Trek than this Star Wars/Mass effect like mess.
Thank you for reading or ignoring, depending on who you are.
I don't know if that's happening behind the scenes, but I've felt for a long, looonngg time that STO lacked focus - not just in storyline stuff, but also in design and mechanics. More than could be explained by external oversight, switching hands, and going f2p. Given Dan's comment, I can't help but think that "entrepreneurial spirit" has been given too loose a reign.