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WORKING THE WISH LIST: Requesting Half-Seasons
sekritagent
Member Posts: 510 Arc User
So in some shows like Battlestar Galactica or something they have a mid-season hiatus. It's usually for scheduling and usually quite annoying, but I'd like to see Cryptic change their delivery cadence to deliver smaller Seasons and the concept of half-Seasons, i.e. Season 7 and then Season 7.5, instead of Season 7 and then Season 8.
Given that:
I think it's high time for some changes on this front.
The Concept
The Half-Season is NOT for major changes like STFs, PVP, skills revamps, new factions and mini-factions like the Romulans or Cardassians. It's not time to tweak the same systems 20 different times over. It's not for fixes to new stuff you just released. It's strictly a direct way of showing some love to the players. Once in a while I'd like to see you pick from the list of stuff we've been asking and begging you for and actually put it on a scheduled mini-release. You need goodwill from us which is in precious short supply.
The Ideas
I won't go over too many of these as there's threads all over about them, and of course you'd have to do some prioritization and decide where some of these fan requests might make better sense in a Season or story context. I'll just give you the 7 key ones.
The Timing
This should happen after a major Season has been released but before the next one. These are intended to be smaller releases, not full-blown game revamps, but you should aim high on these. These should only happen after you've resolved most of the bugs from the current release. But if you release S7 in late November and S8 in late March, you should look to release S7.5 in late January. I know that gets complex with holidays but I'm sure there's something you can make work. I'd even recommend you have a separate group of people working on the half-Seasons while most folks work on the full Seasons.
The Method
No lockboxes, paid expansions, or other bull **** for this stuff. We support you, it's high time you support us back by fixing our annoyances, small problems, and wish list items. You have the team now and you most certainly have the money so all the roadblocks should be removed to make this happen.
Given that:
- We keep hearing that the team is growing
- We keep hearing that the team is busy
- We have reported numerous bugs and problems to you that are never fixed
- We keep hearing that there's a lot of things that could be done if only there was time
- We are continually frustrated by pushing back or dropping of things we keep asking you for, and your constant introduction of stuff we didn't ask for in its place
- Our high priorities are relegated to someone's spare time and are so casually disregarded in your "master plans"
I think it's high time for some changes on this front.
The Concept
The Half-Season is NOT for major changes like STFs, PVP, skills revamps, new factions and mini-factions like the Romulans or Cardassians. It's not time to tweak the same systems 20 different times over. It's not for fixes to new stuff you just released. It's strictly a direct way of showing some love to the players. Once in a while I'd like to see you pick from the list of stuff we've been asking and begging you for and actually put it on a scheduled mini-release. You need goodwill from us which is in precious short supply.
The Ideas
I won't go over too many of these as there's threads all over about them, and of course you'd have to do some prioritization and decide where some of these fan requests might make better sense in a Season or story context. I'll just give you the 7 key ones.
- Standalone Missions: Single missions like "Alpha" or "Hearts and Minds". Advance the story more than once every 6 months and give us a new adventure with some new and/or interesting rewards. For example, a single future time travel PVE mission would have been a great complement to the Temporal Lock Box release, giving out those Relativity guns instead of just slapping them in the Lobi store.
- Re-Chargen: aka retrait, respecies, resex, etc. You want it. We want it. Schedule some time to do it and we'll buy the tokens. We're tired of this being pushed off. Schedule it! LTS should get free or 50% off per toon as we've been dealing with this since you unilaterally changed everything in S5.
- Ship Art Fixes: Some of these need drastic and heavy time. The Intrepid saucer is in shockingly bad shape for a ship that was on TV for 7 years. The Nova badly needs a deflector fix, along with all the other deflectors in game. The Type 6 material needs to be made available to more hulls. Jamjamz acknowledged it but never has time.
- Pre-Order Releases From Way Back: The TR-116A should be released, I'd even be ok with a Fleet store upgrade of it. EMH Console anyone? Neodymium Deflector anyone? There can't be a reason this hasn't been done.
- Missing Ship Classes: And I don't mean those replacements and kitbashes. Biggest misses among these are Ambassador, Steamrunner, Norway, New Orleans and Andorian cruiser idea. Resist the urge to sell these one-by-one or as Refits/Retrofits/Hissyfits. Release these and sell us new and awesome designs. It's 2409, why is 2409 tech so limited in a time of massive war?
- Costumes and Hair Tech: This is literally the only thing blocking the 700 Day Android options which is sad. KDF females can't change their belt color without the top going too. Hair work is badly needed across the board. But you found time to model Morn and TNG Worf?
- The Exchange. You've been avoiding fixing this for far too long. It's not okay anymore for that to be in that shape since 2010. It's ugly and hairy but someone needs to deal with it.
The Timing
This should happen after a major Season has been released but before the next one. These are intended to be smaller releases, not full-blown game revamps, but you should aim high on these. These should only happen after you've resolved most of the bugs from the current release. But if you release S7 in late November and S8 in late March, you should look to release S7.5 in late January. I know that gets complex with holidays but I'm sure there's something you can make work. I'd even recommend you have a separate group of people working on the half-Seasons while most folks work on the full Seasons.
The Method
No lockboxes, paid expansions, or other bull **** for this stuff. We support you, it's high time you support us back by fixing our annoyances, small problems, and wish list items. You have the team now and you most certainly have the money so all the roadblocks should be removed to make this happen.
Delta Rising is the best expansion ever and the players love it! No, seriously! ...Why are you laughing so hard? 
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
- Most canon ship classes have their own unique deck / corridor / room layout(s)
- Allow limit choices of decor - change doors, corridors, arches, walls and LCARS panels the same way one changes hull materials and windows.
- Tie player-customised ship interiors into past, present and future episode missions and STFs
Taco himself made some unofficial musings in a thread which myself and a few others have expanded upon.
Everything else can be minor QoL releases.
I do see one consistent thing happening, though. New lock boxes seem to be coming out every other month. However, I don't see any of the following: PVP fixed by re-balancing some of the P2W consoles or territory control or new pvp maps, the exchange streamlined, any new KDF uniform or hair tech, new missions, New FE's, new mini-games, pop-up cloak bug fixed, new STF's, KDF expansion promised to us by stormy, KDF retrofits promised to us, Enterprise zen store bundle with new bridges and galaxy_X saucer separation, and most of the cannon ships promised to us for free or as zen store purchases.
Edit: Out of the list for half season fixes you're suggesting, I think the most important ones for a smaller team of devs to work on are stand-alone missions, fixing and streamlining the exchange, and getting new costumes and hair tech. People are constantly complaining that they can't make their characters and BOFF's look unique because they look like everybody else's, and can you blame them? Klingons have so few choices for what to wear that we all look like a bunch of conformists.
I'd much rather Cryptic take this list and commit to two of these being added features for every season release.
Minus standalone mission content, which should be on its own schedule, and realistically quarterly.
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Not sure if you read the original post. The point is the team is larger so that Cryptic can permit itself to have smaller groups working on half-season type releases. Or, is it that the team still isn't large enough? How many more developers would they need to be able to have a small group focus on these half seasons? I would think the revenue the developers are earning from lock boxes should be enough to hire more devs and get the ball rolling.
That makes assumptions about team composition.
For all we know, every hire from that net 25 person increase could be working on bug fixes for a massive December Bug Fix patch.
I think it's a matter of will. The prioritization of work seems to be all out of whack with player desires, and I'll freely admit that sometimes we don't do the best job of establishing credibility or solidarity with what we want. But 1) that's not a reason to openly ignore us as they've been doing and 2) there's a long list of stuff that's universally-felt pain that has gone unaddressed for too long. There will never be some mythical day when everything Cryptic wants to do is done and this stuff is "all that's left". There needs to be a far more concerted effort on the part of the Cryptic team to meet us in the middle.
For example, remember the old sniper rifle bug that would leave you stuck in the sniper position if the enemy died before you got your shot off? That took 4-5 seasons to fix, which is patently absurd. But yet they close any "exploit" with German efficiency. Remember the "blow up 100 Foundry enemies at once for kill accolades" bug? That was patched out inside a few weeks. It's all about will. Set aside the time and make the effort is what I'm saying which should be more possible now than ever if what Stahl is constantly telling us is true.
I'd much rather see the issues you've listed 'just fixed' because they should be, call that a season if needs be, but get it done.
From here on I'd like to see the major seasons used to introduce near features, revamps etc, then use an X.5 season to release a ton of content designed around the new system, and to revamp some of the old content to include it too.
Although it's a really minor issue, the pod on the Luna Class isn't completely accurate. The one currently in STO has some kind of deflector dish in it whereas I'm pretty sure that it should be a torpedo launcher instead.. Two forward ones and one aft one.
I agree with all of this, BUT if they are going to add an Andorian cruiser to join the current Vulcan ship, they need to also add a Tellarite ship as they are one of the four founding members of the Federation. Give the Tellarites some love!
but all the points the OP listed do get a +1 from me.
that all very much needs to happen.
i don't care how.
just that it happens.
and not when somebody in his off time MAYBE gets to it,
put it on the damn schedule!
in particular Ship fixing time is something that has to happen.
for us and for the Dev's an Intrepid or Galaxy class might be an "old art asset" but for every new player that downloads the client today or tomorrow those ships could look a lot better and convince them to pay $ for it... instead of saying "lol those look fugly"
and by now we KNOW you can do a lot better, just look at the detail on the Odyssey, Bridgecake and all that...
my totally insane suggestion would be, while you create the Regent, why not take a look at the *old* Sovereign variants and give it some SCHEDULED dev hours?
i mean, half the players bought the Regent because they wanted the new BOff Slots, not the new ugly Ship skin, i bought it, clicked on Sovereign and kept flying my Sovy, if that Sovy would have gotten some love, i'd at least had some visual return of investment, not only some better Stats.
Same with Akira before...
and every +1 before that...
also now they want to RE-SELL all those old art assets to us via the Fleetstores, still not enough reason to touch even the worst ships up?
that would be too much work, just put a new one fits all texture on them, and ask another 2000 Zen per Ship.
by now every ship that had a +1 version or any other type of refit could have been touched up at least once, instead they still look the same.
this quantity over quality approach has to stop, they are only adding to the problem and (almost) never fixing it.
For example, that 1000 day veteran ship that was just released,
has no Federation Pinstripes... you know the red ones with the Starfleet Logo... not there.
The running lights could be placed better as well.
That is adding to the problem, fixing it, probably will never happen because its considered done, unless we make a huge stink about it on the Forum.