In many companies, you cant do side work off the clock and not get in trouble. So you're telling me Dan was going to allow a ton of off the clock work to be used in game to make the company profit. Am I missing something or is that opening up Cryptic to lawsuits from employees? What I feel it is now is just another Dan Spin line. Anything they cant complete becomes an "employee hobby" so they are excused for dropping the ball on something they were never holding on to.
STO: Spin City Expansion Pack
You are correct, many companies do not allow it. Many compnies are also not in an artistic licensing business. My company is not but does promote inovations that can improve the company. I am unsure if they have an incentive program. Cryptic could have something in place that provides a bonus for any side projects that make it into the game.
Why not, as the boss, assign someone to these issues to get them finished, make it a project that someone has to finish.
Quite simply, management didn't set the goals for these individual projects. There was no upper-level decision to allocate resources to these things and prioritize them over other goals.
Because it was an individual decision to spend individual time on these projects, management has no obligation to finish them. Sure, they could decide to put priority on it now, but if every individual project that didn't come to be had to become a team-wide goal, there would be no point for managers to be setting priorities in the first place.
I'm not against putting resources on these projects, but there's no reason that abandoned projects have to become priorities, when they were never such at a team-level in the first place.
Take a look at my Foundry missions! Conjoined, Re-emergence, and . . .
Or they could do the really unthinkable and just apply a measure of common sense to their prioritization process, and shove things that don't make sense to the bottom of the stack.
I don't really care whether or not they make an android BOff for each class. But how freaking hard is it to do that? Is it so hard that it takes this long to get done? For crying out loud, all they have to do is decide on what traits it's going to have, Give it pale skin and yellow eyes, and there it is.
There seems to be too much TRIBBLE involved in their production process that bogs everything down.
Funcom just laid off half of their team which already wasn't already that big, and they have released their third content pack for The Secret World, which hasn't enjoyed the best success in terms of subscribers, in the scope of three months. What the heck is Cryptic's excuse? All these people here buying keys for lockboxes and they don't have the resources to even release a single five minute mission every thirty days?
It's a matter of priorities. If they would just get them in order, STO could be so much better. In my opinion...
Hold on now! Too much of that and things might get finished before the next system revamp!
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.
You are confusing two things. Openness and transparency with the forum community and production schedule. Cryptic hasn't been doing a good job of regularly putting out content. We have lock box ships every now and then but episodic content like FE's or new timed events are scarce. So, basically, that tells me that regardless of their policy on transparency, their production schedule is slow. And this is with supposedly double the number of developers as compared to around the F2P transition.
Yeah, you might say star bases were released but star bases really aren't very much fun. They're just another resource sink like crafting. There is nothing really substantive behind them beyond providing slightly better weapons and ships; They don't offer any sort of persistent gameplay that would make starbases fun to hang around in.
Character customization is also sorely lacking. Klingons still have no new free uniform, hair, and custom options (excluding the feresan thing which was just a slight variation on caitians). Klingon females don't have the option of choosing anything other than dreadlocks. For game that is over two years old, that's sad.
So, what's left? Just grind dilithium until we die? I'll definitely be exploring foundry missions soon because there doesn't seem to be any innovation from Cryptic in any of the key areas of the game: PVP (broken-abandoned by most in the community due to a lack of new maps and severe balancing issues), PVE (dominated by time gated events that are inflexible) and crafting (broken due to the stringent requirements for creating anything).
Well wouldn't it be fair to say STO had a very rough start and not until now post f2p they are able to start working to get back on their feet ?
If you read the various blogs and what not it certainly seems they have plenty of things on the horizon.
The only thing I can think of that hasn't been mentioned must be pvp which is semi weird with the 2 factions at war concept but maybe less of an audience for it ?
While I've been here they come out with a bunch of ships, new maps, new uniforms and new ship abilities and it's available to everyone including f2p'ers, albeit 800 lobi's might take a few years to grind from scratch it's still at least possible to get it for free.
The new fleet system has been flamed to death yet if you look at the dilithium exchange it would seem enough people are doing it to have a royal impact on the game...
And while you might hate the lockboxes it would seem to be working so perhaps they aren't totally without competence.
Well wouldn't it be fair to say STO had a very rough start and not until now post f2p they are able to start working to get back on their feet ?
If you read the various blogs and what not it certainly seems they have plenty of things on the horizon.
The only thing I can think of that hasn't been mentioned must be pvp which is semi weird with the 2 factions at war concept but maybe less of an audience for it ?
While I've been here they come out with a bunch of ships, new maps, new uniforms and new ship abilities and it's available to everyone including f2p'ers, albeit 800 lobi's might take a few years to grind from scratch it's still at least possible to get it for free.
The new fleet system has been flamed to death yet if you look at the dilithium exchange it would seem enough people are doing it to have a royal impact on the game...
And while you might hate the lockboxes it would seem to be working so perhaps they aren't totally without competence.
We've been giving them chances ever since the F2p transition and all we ever hear is it will be next season, it's on the horizon, etc. When I start seeing real content being released, I'll be happier. Guess we'll just have to be patient until then.
You are correct, many companies do not allow it. Many compnies are also not in an artistic licensing business. My company is not but does promote inovations that can improve the company. I am unsure if they have an incentive program. Cryptic could have something in place that provides a bonus for any side projects that make it into the game.
Well... I think where this falls apart is that devs are not hourly employees... and it seems to me that a big part of how Cryptic works is to build in "flex time."
For example, as I understand it at Cryptic:
Employees hours are not totally fixed. Some come in early and some come in late.
Basically, you work twelve hours a day. Six of those hours are at a set time. The other six can be before everyone else, after everyone else, or -- in a pinch -- on weekends.
You get handed projects with deadlines. Zero comes by your cubicle in funny hats, making announcements, relaying assignments, and making sure you're on deadline while the producers spend most of their days in meetings.
Sometimes, the assignments fill up the full twelve hours. Sometimes not. If you need to play with a Rubick's cube or work on a side project to get your mental juices flowing? Fine. But you have deadlines to hit.
Some weeks, it's all deadlines.
Some weeks, you finish your work seven hours early and start tinkering on side projects because your bosses are busy in meetings or have already gone home for the day.
The important thing is that you hit your big project deadlines and are putting the right hours in per week. But the relatively unsupervised times (you're still in a security camera observed environment with access cards) can add up and you're encouraged to think of ways to fill those times with something productive.
That's my pieced together notion.
Finish your vegetables and you can have all the desert you want. It isn't extra hours. It isn't unpaid hours. You're salary. It's part of your required time. Think of it like a professor with office hours who works on a novel or lesson plans or grades papers or plays solitaire if the students don't have any questions. The university requires the office hours and requires publishing papers. It's part of the paycheck. They pay you for your time. You can use more time. You can devise side projects. If you're in the office at least X hours and you produce results, you're good.
Well... I think where this falls apart is that devs are not hourly employees... and it seems to me that a big part of how Cryptic works is to build in "flex time."
For example, as I understand it at Cryptic:
Employees hours are not totally fixed. Some come in early and some come in late.
Basically, you work twelve hours a day. Six of those hours are at a set time. The other six can be before everyone else, after everyone else, or -- in a pinch -- on weekends.
You get handed projects with deadlines. Zero comes by your cubicle in funny hats, making announcements, relaying assignments, and making sure you're on deadline while the producers spend most of their days in meetings.
Sometimes, the assignments fill up the full twelve hours. Sometimes not. If you need to play with a Rubick's cube or work on a side project to get your mental juices flowing? Fine. But you have deadlines to hit.
Some weeks, it's all deadlines.
Some weeks, you finish your work seven hours early and start tinkering on side projects because your bosses are busy in meetings or have already gone home for the day.
The important thing is that you hit your big project deadlines and are putting the right hours in per week. But the relatively unsupervised times (you're still in a security camera observed environment with access cards) can add up and you're encouraged to think of ways to fill those times with something productive.
That's my pieced together notion.
Finish your vegetables and you can have all the desert you want. It isn't extra hours. It isn't unpaid hours. You're salary. It's part of your required time. Think of it like a professor with office hours who works on a novel or lesson plans or grades papers or plays solitaire if the students don't have any questions. The university requires the office hours and requires publishing papers. It's part of the paycheck. They pay you for your time. You can use more time. You can devise side projects. If you're in the office at least X hours and you produce results, you're good.
Make sense?
I think this sounds like it has a high probability of being exactly how they work.
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?
I tend to agree, leaving a project in the hands of a single staff member is dangerous and a waste of resources as they rotate out you find hours, days or weeks of development time wasted.
I'm still trying to figure out how the 700 Day Vet Reward became a "Side Project"....
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.
Exactly, they need to realize that the TRIBBLE-day projects aren't side projects, I would have thought this would have been a MAIN project assigned to someone. The fact is, they started it, and never finished it. All I'm asking is for them to finish what they start. Don't release something until it's finished, don't release it half-arsed, release it when it's done and ready, or don't release it at all. The fact that it's released, and not even being assigned to be finished, is beyond appalling to me.
Finish what you start, especially if it's already released in-game, that should make it a priority to get it done.
Or they could do the really unthinkable and just apply a measure of common sense to their prioritization process, and shove things that don't make sense to the bottom of the stack.
I don't really care whether or not they make an android BOff for each class. But how freaking hard is it to do that? Is it so hard that it takes this long to get done? For crying out loud, all they have to do is decide on what traits it's going to have, Give it pale skin and yellow eyes, and there it is.
There seems to be too much TRIBBLE involved in their production process that bogs everything down.
Funcom just laid off half of their team which already wasn't already that big, and they have released their third content pack for The Secret World, which hasn't enjoyed the best success in terms of subscribers, in the scope of three months. What the heck is Cryptic's excuse? All these people here buying keys for lockboxes and they don't have the resources to even release a single five minute mission every thirty days?
It's a matter of priorities. If they would just get them in order, STO could be so much better. In my opinion...
When they get released in-game, THAT should make it a priority to get it finished. Once you release something, half-arsed, inside the game, that needs to be managed and assigned to someone to finish ASAP, instead of letting it linger and never get finished and be so ho hum about it. If it's in-game, and it's unfinished, and management hasn't seen it through to get it assigned and finished, I just don't know what to say to that, except poor management.
Exactly, they need to realize that the TRIBBLE-day projects aren't side projects, I would have thought this would have been a MAIN project assigned to someone. The fact is, they started it, and never finished it. All I'm asking is for them to finish what they start. Don't release something until it's finished, don't release it half-arsed, release it when it's done and ready, or don't release it at all. The fact that it's released, and not even being assigned to be finished, is beyond appalling to me.
Finish what you start, especially if it's already released in-game, that should make it a priority to get it done.
The side project was giving it a choice of professions, something never before offered with promotional BOs.
The side project was giving it a choice of professions, something never before offered with promotional BOs.
Exactly. The devs could have said nothing and while someone of us would want more options, we would have accepted our own Data. After all, all the FE Bridge officers come in only one style instead of letting us pick or even change their look. There is also the 2 Borg Boffs that doesn't allow us to pick what type of career or gender they are. If the devs kept quiet about their side projects until they are ready to be released, then they would be a nice surprise for when they are done. It is the curse of them being too open with us. It is nice to know what is happening, but it causes grief in the long run and some players are more mature than others when it comes to devs being open.
Personally, I don't see what is taking so long. Just have 3 bridge officer layouts and 2 models for male and female, then have them implemented in the same way as the veteran reward shuttles and Aenar and Caitian Bridge Officer Acquistion forms. The veteran reward shuttles is give a veteran reward bridge officer token if the previous token is used up and the android bridge officer is dismissed. I should be able to go to the bridge officer store and see 6 android boffs listed there that I purchase with my token.
I think it is a sign of a wonderful creative environment to allow the team to take on personal projects, and surely a good sign that this is a dedicated, loving set of craftsmen.
But I also feel that even in an environment which allows personal projects and dedication to flourish should see those side projects and experiments documented or at least standardized in where they are stored, named, and logged.
Not only from the point of view of knowing what your company's assets are, without losing them or duplicating efforts, but equally as part of that individual's love of their personal project - lets face it, all it takes is a prolonged illness or accident, or even a better job offer, to remove you from your beloved little feature - why let it evaporate? Why not subscribe to at least some lighter version of the project management best-practices already in place to ensure your efforts see the light of day someday?
Wampaq@Jnoh, Fleet Leader: ..Bloodbath and Beyond[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]'Iw HaH je Hoch! ALL HOLDINGS FINISHED! - Starbase 5-5-5-5 || Embassy 3-3-3 || Mine 3-3-3 || Spire 3-3-3 A laid back KDF fleet welcoming independent, casual, & part-time players and groups. Roms & alts welcome. Send in-game mail to Wampaq@Jnoh, visit our recruitment thread and FB page for more info.
My thoughts on this being an employee myself, Is this looks like someone in management needs to stop and reexamine what the priorities of the development team should be. I mean really? Did the Fleet bases really fix PvP? Does it make endgame content? Does it even add an appropriate amount of content? No it doesn't. They are missing the main issues people are having.
Fully Fleshed out Klingon Faction with a story of its own.
End Game Content
Story missions and refocus.
Exploration revamp
Tweaking the experience gained to have player stick around longer.
Their recent actions and additions of MORE lockboxes seems to me that they are not concerned with the real problems and want to just do tiny amounts of things for each "season". I know it is a small team but this is why you bust your rear end at your job and get paid. If it is too much then petition the company to give you more people to work on this game if it is going to be worth the money they paid to keep it running.
My thoughts on this being an employee myself, Is this looks like someone in management needs to stop and reexamine what the priorities of the development team should be. I mean really? Did the Fleet bases really fix PvP? Does it make endgame content? Does it even add an appropriate amount of content? No it doesn't. They are missing the main issues people are having.
Fully Fleshed out Klingon Faction with a story of its own.
End Game Content
Story missions and refocus.
Exploration revamp
Tweaking the experience gained to have player stick around longer.
Their recent actions and additions of MORE lockboxes seems to me that they are not concerned with the real problems and want to just do tiny amounts of things for each "season". I know it is a small team but this is why you bust your rear end at your job and get paid. If it is too much then petition the company to give you more people to work on this game if it is going to be worth the money they paid to keep it running.
Precisely
I think their priorities, are much different from us, the gamers playing this game's, priorities. There is a disconnect with what the community sees as important, and what Cryptic sees as important.
Not good to have that disconnect in an MMO, which relies on the community.
If staff are working in their own time but on STO assets wouldn't it be a good idea to fill in something saying what they're doing and transferring the work-in-progress at the end of the week. That way another person could easily see what the now-gone person was doing, where they were up to and could work from where the other person stopped.
If that isn't possible then the existing arrangement is foolish as a lot of work goes into something that is then discarded. Work that is badly needed.
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.
Assign them from where?
There are only so many employees that Stahl has under his supervision. STO is a fairly low-resource game, and although they're working on changing that, they also don't have a whole lot of flex at this point.
Simply put - a lot of what we're seeing? Is a result of the oft-celebrated developer closeness to the community biting the devs - yet again, I'm afraid. A dev is over-enthusiastic, boasts a bit (or tries to get some enthusiasm from the community), stuff happens, etc. While the employee can be told to put a sock in it, by the time they do the information is already available to the players that they have pet project XYZ. Granted, this may be helpful at times as it shows which pet projects to make official projects should the need arise; nevertheless, there are still going to be people miffed if they just can't get it out the door.
People don't understand the qualifiers on these things are because they have other necessary work. If you have 10 people and you need to get Nukara out, are you going to assign four of them to cover a few projects only otherwise covered by one person? Probably not. That's the kind of thing we're looking at here.
I've had to do management of things along these lines before (on a volunteer basis, mind). I only had so many workers doing so many things, and that included me being in there helping putting them together. There were a lot of neat things we could do that I just couldn't afford to throw in there in case something imploded like this.
Some of these projects definitely should be finished, and some should have some official assignments done to make sure they get finished. They are a definite asset to both players and the game as a whole. But many are just highly impractical to complete.
That said it still baffles me why it takes so insanely long to put together a few maps for a mission. I'd have thought they'd be able to toss out some decently playable filler for stock "episodes" without too much trouble - a little dialog, a few maps, some thought put into how to arrange them, and instant mission, a couple things put out once or twice a week for people to do. But then, I don't know what things look like on the inside - either of Cryptic, or of the game's internal engineering.
Personally, I feel like this is another 'story' were being sold on to explain why they havent come thru on something they paraded around for months. These arent side projects at all. Its just DStahl trying to rebrand this so he can avoid a bit of heat from the community. Its a cycle of introduction, advertising, then denial.
It always starts out with a post on either Twitter or here about some new thing THEY are working on. Of course if its something the community has been asking for or thinks it sounds very interesting. They create twenty million topics about it in anticipation. This goes on for a few months until people start to wonder why the project hasnt been seen on Tribble. Another uproar of topics are created asking WHY!!!??? and eventually the Devs make a statement denying the project was ever anywhere close to what was believed to be or its on hold/theres issues/its a side project.
They are simply trying to dismiss what was mentioned because the truth is, Cryptic and STO is plagued by lack of direction and purpose. They have probably close to 30 different things they are working on. And it takes them forever to accomplish them. They need to cut back on the multitude of projects. Take a hard look at what is essential and what isnt. Prioritize. I bet if they simply cut things back to 10-15 projects at a time. Things would flow out at a faster rate.
Priority Projects would be things like major content additions and serious bug fixes. They would take up the top of the list of 10-15 projects. If they had room they could add some of the minor things that the community is constantly asking for. Once major projects were knocked off, other major projects would be added. If theres a lulle in the big projects then they could take that time work on minor projects.
I know programming can be a tough job. I know that there are times things break in the code and its almost impossible to hunt it down and fix it without breaking something else in the process. But I also know that when youre trying to tackle more projects then there are staff....Youre bound to come up short constantly.
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?
To be honest , that sounds a bit harsh -- in context of what we know happened @ Cryptic .
And what did happen over the last 3 years ?
I call it "the yanking of the wheel" .
Here are a few examples :
- Sometime during the creation of the 5th STF , wheel yanked , project left half completed .
- During the hay day of FE's , wheel yanked , priorities reassigned , FE's cancelled , possibly F2P change commenced .
- During the Ground Combat Upgrade , a grand New KDF Map was created (Qu'onos) -- with a New KDF tutorial in mind . Wheel yanked , roughly working New Tutorial shelved .
- The latest one that we heard about was Dan mentioning the sudden need for Endgame Content after going F2P , and finding most of the population at Lvl 50 within a few weeks . Again , wheel yanked , replayable content got priority (see : what we got in Season 6) .
So , while I agree with you that "side-projects" need to be re-classified and some accountability needs to be had there -- you should also take a look at "how things are done" @ Cryptic -- not always intentionally mind you .
Simply put , with so many wheel yanking + the natural shuffling of incoming new ppl and leaving Cryptic veterans -- it becomes a bit easier to see how "side-projects" , especially un-administered side-projects can get either "lost" in the shuffle or have not time for because of the crazy-crazy change of priorities .
We've been giving them chances ever since the F2p transition and all we ever hear is it will be next season, it's on the horizon, etc. When I start seeing real content being released, I'll be happier. Guess we'll just have to be patient until then.
Quite agree......and only last month on massively Stahl was stating STO was "Kicking butt" and they were hiring "Great talent" from certain studio's............now we have a statement, or a excuss, i cant tell which, on why content has been dropped due to it being done on people free time.....i mean what is going on behind the scenes.
I'm still trying to figure out how the 700 Day Vet Reward became a "Side Project"....
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.
Uh, maybe because it would benefit to 100 players or less? It's not a good design policy to focus on the "needs of the few". :rolleyes:
Anyway, Stahl said it's not going to happen if you can't read between the lines. He doesn't have the guts or he's a too good politician to say it clearly. I'm sure you can live with it, it's just a bridge officer, something you barely use at high level.
By the way I hope you guys work for free on someone else's project on your own time schedule, because that's what you're asking for.
^^I would say people are asking for Cryptic to priorities better and get the main office hours projects completed first, before they decide to not finish and drop even more stuff out of office hours. lol
The lack of discipline and focus in the company has never been more apparent.
If I talked to a customer and promised them a feature to be developed on my spare time... I would be fired faster than light.
While I am grateful for the open communication between devs and players there needs to be boundary lines established. All well and good to communicate official news and features... but we can't have any more "I'm working on this nifty idea at lunch time, it's going to do ALL THESE COOL THINGS when I finish it and if it gets approved."
---
Look at my horta/my horta is amazing/give it a lick/tastes just like raisins.
It is the curse of them being too open with us. It is nice to know what is happening, but it causes grief in the long run and some players are more mature than others when it comes to devs being open.
I think they sometimes need something to grow hype around, since their own scheduled releases take so long. So they release a nugget of info on a someone's side project that they know people will like and get hype for a week or two.
The whole game is a side project at this point, it seems all the actual resources outside of lockbox creation has gone to neverwinter.
I'd be lying if I said this hadn't crossed my mind as I grind for a whole bunch of dilithium for a table and chairs for my starbase.
A few potted plants, piles of tribbles, a couple of security guards...
I think they sometimes need something to grow hype around, since their own scheduled releases take so long. So they release a nugget of info on a someone's side project that they know people will like and get hype for a week or two.
S7 and S8 and their "renewed commitment to story" are their last chance to save me. They TRIBBLE that up, and I expect them to, Im finally giving up on this game. I'll retire my three Captains and see if Jean Luc Picard needs a few extra hands in his vineyards.
STO: @AGNT009 Since Dec 2010
Capt. Will Conquest of the U.S.S. Crusader
I think they sometimes need something to grow hype around, since their own scheduled releases take so long. So they release a nugget of info on a someone's side project that they know people will like and get hype for a week or two.
Comments
You are correct, many companies do not allow it. Many compnies are also not in an artistic licensing business. My company is not but does promote inovations that can improve the company. I am unsure if they have an incentive program. Cryptic could have something in place that provides a bonus for any side projects that make it into the game.
Quite simply, management didn't set the goals for these individual projects. There was no upper-level decision to allocate resources to these things and prioritize them over other goals.
Because it was an individual decision to spend individual time on these projects, management has no obligation to finish them. Sure, they could decide to put priority on it now, but if every individual project that didn't come to be had to become a team-wide goal, there would be no point for managers to be setting priorities in the first place.
I'm not against putting resources on these projects, but there's no reason that abandoned projects have to become priorities, when they were never such at a team-level in the first place.
Conjoined, Re-emergence, and . . .
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Hold on now! Too much of that and things might get finished before the next system revamp!
You are confusing two things. Openness and transparency with the forum community and production schedule. Cryptic hasn't been doing a good job of regularly putting out content. We have lock box ships every now and then but episodic content like FE's or new timed events are scarce. So, basically, that tells me that regardless of their policy on transparency, their production schedule is slow. And this is with supposedly double the number of developers as compared to around the F2P transition.
Yeah, you might say star bases were released but star bases really aren't very much fun. They're just another resource sink like crafting. There is nothing really substantive behind them beyond providing slightly better weapons and ships; They don't offer any sort of persistent gameplay that would make starbases fun to hang around in.
Character customization is also sorely lacking. Klingons still have no new free uniform, hair, and custom options (excluding the feresan thing which was just a slight variation on caitians). Klingon females don't have the option of choosing anything other than dreadlocks. For game that is over two years old, that's sad.
So, what's left? Just grind dilithium until we die? I'll definitely be exploring foundry missions soon because there doesn't seem to be any innovation from Cryptic in any of the key areas of the game: PVP (broken-abandoned by most in the community due to a lack of new maps and severe balancing issues), PVE (dominated by time gated events that are inflexible) and crafting (broken due to the stringent requirements for creating anything).
If you read the various blogs and what not it certainly seems they have plenty of things on the horizon.
The only thing I can think of that hasn't been mentioned must be pvp which is semi weird with the 2 factions at war concept but maybe less of an audience for it ?
While I've been here they come out with a bunch of ships, new maps, new uniforms and new ship abilities and it's available to everyone including f2p'ers, albeit 800 lobi's might take a few years to grind from scratch it's still at least possible to get it for free.
The new fleet system has been flamed to death yet if you look at the dilithium exchange it would seem enough people are doing it to have a royal impact on the game...
And while you might hate the lockboxes it would seem to be working so perhaps they aren't totally without competence.
We've been giving them chances ever since the F2p transition and all we ever hear is it will be next season, it's on the horizon, etc. When I start seeing real content being released, I'll be happier. Guess we'll just have to be patient until then.
Well... I think where this falls apart is that devs are not hourly employees... and it seems to me that a big part of how Cryptic works is to build in "flex time."
For example, as I understand it at Cryptic:
Employees hours are not totally fixed. Some come in early and some come in late.
Basically, you work twelve hours a day. Six of those hours are at a set time. The other six can be before everyone else, after everyone else, or -- in a pinch -- on weekends.
You get handed projects with deadlines. Zero comes by your cubicle in funny hats, making announcements, relaying assignments, and making sure you're on deadline while the producers spend most of their days in meetings.
Sometimes, the assignments fill up the full twelve hours. Sometimes not. If you need to play with a Rubick's cube or work on a side project to get your mental juices flowing? Fine. But you have deadlines to hit.
Some weeks, it's all deadlines.
Some weeks, you finish your work seven hours early and start tinkering on side projects because your bosses are busy in meetings or have already gone home for the day.
The important thing is that you hit your big project deadlines and are putting the right hours in per week. But the relatively unsupervised times (you're still in a security camera observed environment with access cards) can add up and you're encouraged to think of ways to fill those times with something productive.
That's my pieced together notion.
Finish your vegetables and you can have all the desert you want. It isn't extra hours. It isn't unpaid hours. You're salary. It's part of your required time. Think of it like a professor with office hours who works on a novel or lesson plans or grades papers or plays solitaire if the students don't have any questions. The university requires the office hours and requires publishing papers. It's part of the paycheck. They pay you for your time. You can use more time. You can devise side projects. If you're in the office at least X hours and you produce results, you're good.
Make sense?
I think this sounds like it has a high probability of being exactly how they work.
Raptr profile
For the love of gamers, change how this works.
Exactly, they need to realize that the TRIBBLE-day projects aren't side projects, I would have thought this would have been a MAIN project assigned to someone. The fact is, they started it, and never finished it. All I'm asking is for them to finish what they start. Don't release something until it's finished, don't release it half-arsed, release it when it's done and ready, or don't release it at all. The fact that it's released, and not even being assigned to be finished, is beyond appalling to me.
Finish what you start, especially if it's already released in-game, that should make it a priority to get it done.
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When they get released in-game, THAT should make it a priority to get it finished. Once you release something, half-arsed, inside the game, that needs to be managed and assigned to someone to finish ASAP, instead of letting it linger and never get finished and be so ho hum about it. If it's in-game, and it's unfinished, and management hasn't seen it through to get it assigned and finished, I just don't know what to say to that, except poor management.
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The side project was giving it a choice of professions, something never before offered with promotional BOs.
Exactly. The devs could have said nothing and while someone of us would want more options, we would have accepted our own Data. After all, all the FE Bridge officers come in only one style instead of letting us pick or even change their look. There is also the 2 Borg Boffs that doesn't allow us to pick what type of career or gender they are. If the devs kept quiet about their side projects until they are ready to be released, then they would be a nice surprise for when they are done. It is the curse of them being too open with us. It is nice to know what is happening, but it causes grief in the long run and some players are more mature than others when it comes to devs being open.
Personally, I don't see what is taking so long. Just have 3 bridge officer layouts and 2 models for male and female, then have them implemented in the same way as the veteran reward shuttles and Aenar and Caitian Bridge Officer Acquistion forms. The veteran reward shuttles is give a veteran reward bridge officer token if the previous token is used up and the android bridge officer is dismissed. I should be able to go to the bridge officer store and see 6 android boffs listed there that I purchase with my token.
But I also feel that even in an environment which allows personal projects and dedication to flourish should see those side projects and experiments documented or at least standardized in where they are stored, named, and logged.
Not only from the point of view of knowing what your company's assets are, without losing them or duplicating efforts, but equally as part of that individual's love of their personal project - lets face it, all it takes is a prolonged illness or accident, or even a better job offer, to remove you from your beloved little feature - why let it evaporate? Why not subscribe to at least some lighter version of the project management best-practices already in place to ensure your efforts see the light of day someday?
ALL HOLDINGS FINISHED! - Starbase 5-5-5-5 || Embassy 3-3-3 || Mine 3-3-3 || Spire 3-3-3
A laid back KDF fleet welcoming independent, casual, & part-time players and groups. Roms & alts welcome.
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Fully Fleshed out Klingon Faction with a story of its own.
End Game Content
Story missions and refocus.
Exploration revamp
Tweaking the experience gained to have player stick around longer.
Their recent actions and additions of MORE lockboxes seems to me that they are not concerned with the real problems and want to just do tiny amounts of things for each "season". I know it is a small team but this is why you bust your rear end at your job and get paid. If it is too much then petition the company to give you more people to work on this game if it is going to be worth the money they paid to keep it running.
Precisely
I think their priorities, are much different from us, the gamers playing this game's, priorities. There is a disconnect with what the community sees as important, and what Cryptic sees as important.
Not good to have that disconnect in an MMO, which relies on the community.
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If that isn't possible then the existing arrangement is foolish as a lot of work goes into something that is then discarded. Work that is badly needed.
Besides I figured that PWE would lend resources to a IP as STO to replace lost or long term absent personal as needed.
But then again I have no idea what is going on.?
?going to read it again.
Get well Jessie.
R.I.P
Assign them from where?
There are only so many employees that Stahl has under his supervision. STO is a fairly low-resource game, and although they're working on changing that, they also don't have a whole lot of flex at this point.
Simply put - a lot of what we're seeing? Is a result of the oft-celebrated developer closeness to the community biting the devs - yet again, I'm afraid. A dev is over-enthusiastic, boasts a bit (or tries to get some enthusiasm from the community), stuff happens, etc. While the employee can be told to put a sock in it, by the time they do the information is already available to the players that they have pet project XYZ. Granted, this may be helpful at times as it shows which pet projects to make official projects should the need arise; nevertheless, there are still going to be people miffed if they just can't get it out the door.
People don't understand the qualifiers on these things are because they have other necessary work. If you have 10 people and you need to get Nukara out, are you going to assign four of them to cover a few projects only otherwise covered by one person? Probably not. That's the kind of thing we're looking at here.
I've had to do management of things along these lines before (on a volunteer basis, mind). I only had so many workers doing so many things, and that included me being in there helping putting them together. There were a lot of neat things we could do that I just couldn't afford to throw in there in case something imploded like this.
Some of these projects definitely should be finished, and some should have some official assignments done to make sure they get finished. They are a definite asset to both players and the game as a whole. But many are just highly impractical to complete.
That said it still baffles me why it takes so insanely long to put together a few maps for a mission. I'd have thought they'd be able to toss out some decently playable filler for stock "episodes" without too much trouble - a little dialog, a few maps, some thought put into how to arrange them, and instant mission, a couple things put out once or twice a week for people to do. But then, I don't know what things look like on the inside - either of Cryptic, or of the game's internal engineering.
It always starts out with a post on either Twitter or here about some new thing THEY are working on. Of course if its something the community has been asking for or thinks it sounds very interesting. They create twenty million topics about it in anticipation. This goes on for a few months until people start to wonder why the project hasnt been seen on Tribble. Another uproar of topics are created asking WHY!!!??? and eventually the Devs make a statement denying the project was ever anywhere close to what was believed to be or its on hold/theres issues/its a side project.
They are simply trying to dismiss what was mentioned because the truth is, Cryptic and STO is plagued by lack of direction and purpose. They have probably close to 30 different things they are working on. And it takes them forever to accomplish them. They need to cut back on the multitude of projects. Take a hard look at what is essential and what isnt. Prioritize. I bet if they simply cut things back to 10-15 projects at a time. Things would flow out at a faster rate.
Priority Projects would be things like major content additions and serious bug fixes. They would take up the top of the list of 10-15 projects. If they had room they could add some of the minor things that the community is constantly asking for. Once major projects were knocked off, other major projects would be added. If theres a lulle in the big projects then they could take that time work on minor projects.
I know programming can be a tough job. I know that there are times things break in the code and its almost impossible to hunt it down and fix it without breaking something else in the process. But I also know that when youre trying to tackle more projects then there are staff....Youre bound to come up short constantly.
To be honest , that sounds a bit harsh -- in context of what we know happened @ Cryptic .
And what did happen over the last 3 years ?
I call it "the yanking of the wheel" .
Here are a few examples :
- Sometime during the creation of the 5th STF , wheel yanked , project left half completed .
- During the hay day of FE's , wheel yanked , priorities reassigned , FE's cancelled , possibly F2P change commenced .
- During the Ground Combat Upgrade , a grand New KDF Map was created (Qu'onos) -- with a New KDF tutorial in mind . Wheel yanked , roughly working New Tutorial shelved .
- The latest one that we heard about was Dan mentioning the sudden need for Endgame Content after going F2P , and finding most of the population at Lvl 50 within a few weeks . Again , wheel yanked , replayable content got priority (see : what we got in Season 6) .
So , while I agree with you that "side-projects" need to be re-classified and some accountability needs to be had there -- you should also take a look at "how things are done" @ Cryptic -- not always intentionally mind you .
Simply put , with so many wheel yanking + the natural shuffling of incoming new ppl and leaving Cryptic veterans -- it becomes a bit easier to see how "side-projects" , especially un-administered side-projects can get either "lost" in the shuffle or have not time for because of the crazy-crazy change of priorities .
Quite agree......and only last month on massively Stahl was stating STO was "Kicking butt" and they were hiring "Great talent" from certain studio's............now we have a statement, or a excuss, i cant tell which, on why content has been dropped due to it being done on people free time.....i mean what is going on behind the scenes.
Uh, maybe because it would benefit to 100 players or less? It's not a good design policy to focus on the "needs of the few". :rolleyes:
Anyway, Stahl said it's not going to happen if you can't read between the lines. He doesn't have the guts or he's a too good politician to say it clearly. I'm sure you can live with it, it's just a bridge officer, something you barely use at high level.
By the way I hope you guys work for free on someone else's project on your own time schedule, because that's what you're asking for.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
If I talked to a customer and promised them a feature to be developed on my spare time... I would be fired faster than light.
While I am grateful for the open communication between devs and players there needs to be boundary lines established. All well and good to communicate official news and features... but we can't have any more "I'm working on this nifty idea at lunch time, it's going to do ALL THESE COOL THINGS when I finish it and if it gets approved."
Look at my horta/my horta is amazing/give it a lick/tastes just like raisins.
I think they sometimes need something to grow hype around, since their own scheduled releases take so long. So they release a nugget of info on a someone's side project that they know people will like and get hype for a week or two.
I'd be lying if I said this hadn't crossed my mind as I grind for a whole bunch of dilithium for a table and chairs for my starbase.
A few potted plants, piles of tribbles, a couple of security guards...
This 100% ......
Capt. Will Conquest of the U.S.S. Crusader
Yup, I agree as well. The thing is, they can never finish any of these sideline items.
I would rather they not tell us than them tell us, and then not bother finishing it.
Same goes for releasing something, finish it BEFORE you move onto the next item.
It is counter productive, unprofessional and the EP should know this. No excuse can cover this up!