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bonwatnam
Member Posts: 20 Arc User
As co-leader of The House of Duras Fleet (we run a multi-leader system. It saddens me, the way the last episode of Star Trek Enterprise saddens most star trek fans, that cryptic seem to be unwilling to make the necessary improvements.
In all honesty, who here can say they would play this game if it wasn't star trek, instead having to stand purely on its own merits. I'm not talking about story lines here, as they are of course inseparable from the star trek theme. I'm talking about all the none star trek elements, which are vital to a truly successful mmo.
Chat system: ropey, works if your lucky. when working, is clumbersome and none intuitive.
Guild logs: in some cases, barely adequate, in a lot of cases (promotions, demotions ect), info is inadequate, not showing who promoted/demoted a member, and in some cases, not even which member was promoted/demoted.
Banks: I have in the past moved items from account storage, only to have a wait so long, i made a cup of coffee and returned to my PC before the item finally transferred. This is not lag related, my latency is always very low, and lag is not a factor for me in any other mmo.
I could go on listing, but the point of this post isn't to list bugs. its to point out that purely on the merits of the game system, social elements, and providing relevant tools to properly organize in-game, Cryptic is failing the Star Trek brand, and the Star Trek fans that play this game.
Having the Star Trek franchise is an ace in the hole for cryptic, unfortunately, one ace isn't always going to be enough. Cryptic seem to be relying on it far to heavily, leaving bugs and poor system design in place, while adding more equally bug ridden, ill thought through game elements.
Please cryptic, make the quality of the game live up to star trek, rather than living off of it, ie, make it very much better than it is.
In all honesty, who here can say they would play this game if it wasn't star trek, instead having to stand purely on its own merits. I'm not talking about story lines here, as they are of course inseparable from the star trek theme. I'm talking about all the none star trek elements, which are vital to a truly successful mmo.
Chat system: ropey, works if your lucky. when working, is clumbersome and none intuitive.
Guild logs: in some cases, barely adequate, in a lot of cases (promotions, demotions ect), info is inadequate, not showing who promoted/demoted a member, and in some cases, not even which member was promoted/demoted.
Banks: I have in the past moved items from account storage, only to have a wait so long, i made a cup of coffee and returned to my PC before the item finally transferred. This is not lag related, my latency is always very low, and lag is not a factor for me in any other mmo.
I could go on listing, but the point of this post isn't to list bugs. its to point out that purely on the merits of the game system, social elements, and providing relevant tools to properly organize in-game, Cryptic is failing the Star Trek brand, and the Star Trek fans that play this game.
Having the Star Trek franchise is an ace in the hole for cryptic, unfortunately, one ace isn't always going to be enough. Cryptic seem to be relying on it far to heavily, leaving bugs and poor system design in place, while adding more equally bug ridden, ill thought through game elements.
Please cryptic, make the quality of the game live up to star trek, rather than living off of it, ie, make it very much better than it is.
Post edited by bonwatnam on
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It is. Lots of people use the bank, the bank lag. It's server side.
Not saying this game is fine and don't need improvement.
I find it hard to see the logic to leaving bugs like the jem bug ship imbalances, fleet logs being incomplete, lag, consoles u have to inch around on to be able to use, the exchange and its, at times, very odd behavior when searching, various boff bugs, such as very rare gorn not having the same quality of skills as other races of commensurate quality, or outfit on X boff type not working. chat channels going missing.
"but", say cryptic, "lets prioritizes making these novelty balloons that add very little to the game, then lets realize we didn't make them right, and prioritize a bug fix for the balloons", while of course, leaving all of the above long standing, and far more important bugs.
If anyone can explain to me why fixing the balloons sizing was more important than fixing some of the other bugs mentioned, and how it made the game better as compared to if one of the other bugs had been fixed, I'll hail you a genius.
Note, the lag some players were experiencing when a large number of balloons were on screen already had the solution of actually setting your graphical options correctly, so was not a game bug.
Setting aside your other arguments, some people were using the huge balloons to actively 'grief' other players by blocking necessary doorways (e.g. transporter room doorways on Qo'noS). That was also probably a very easy fix - just resetting the maximum value on a line of code.
In regard to graphical options, I know some players who had to reduce their graphics settings to be rid of the balloons, whether because of lag or simply sheer annoyance, while they were running the game fine in every other instance on their previous, higher, graphics settings. Players shouldn't have to view the game at a lower quality because, again, some people chose to use the balloons as a griefing tool.
Joined January 2010.
In regard to hating Star Trek 2009:
Hence my earlier point about ill thought out implementation. The balloon are just a symptom of this. Your correct that cryptic shouldn't add novelty objects that can have a serious and negative effect on player enjoyment. and should have put sensible limits on their usage, prior to adding to the game.
However, not being able to chat with fleet, or on custom channels randomly, or teams being split up in queues, or not being able to copy mail text, or search the exchange reliably, or use the base as a gathering point for teaming (as when u leave what ever u were doing, you don't return to your base), is griefing me, and no amount of option changing or switching instances fixes these issues, unlike the balloons both pre and post fix.
The PvP is fun in both space and on the ground, offering a rarely seen dynamic. If you get sick of one playstyle, you can switch ships, switch careers, go from space to ground, switch it up there, use all sorts of (marginally but still) effective parlor trick weapons, then go back to space when you get bored of ground.
The only thing this game lacks for me is challenging PvE AI. The most "difficult" things spam you with unfair abilities (cough cough d'deridex warships) or oneshot you like they don't care.
I haven't had many problems with the chat system. It could use some work, but it's functional. Fleets do need more security options, logging abilities, etc.
Regarding the larger balloons, they were not really the problem, it's the number of balloons. The larger balloons have the same amount of polygons as the smaller ones, they're just scaled up in size. More polygons = more cpu load, which is what caused the lag. They aren't physically solid so they can't block access to certain areas, though it is funnily annoying to open a door and have a torrent of balloons explode out at you.
Oh yeah, the exchange annoys me too, my items almost never get listed. I basically use it as bank space >_>
Fanfiction! ZOMG! Read it now!
kate-wintersbite.deviantart.com/art/0x01-Treachery-293641403
Again we hit the difficulty of replicating and tracking down what causes these bugs.
The balloon fix was a simple fix, they knew what was causing the problem and where the code to fix it was.
The other bugs you mentioned are random and difficult for the devs to replicate to track them down, or are not bugs and currently WAI. This makes them harder to track down and fix. (please note that the WAI is referring to you not going back to your starbase when you leave what you're doing, this is because the Starbase is a private instance and it takes you back to the last public instanced location you were in.)
I can replicate many of these bugs repeatedly, and in some cases, with 100% reliability, so replication and tracking should not be an issue in those cases (mostly the chat bugs). Also, fleet bases were billed as being a new social map for fleets, a social map that disappears, and worse, disperses ppl who were there is next to useless as a social space, regardless of what other assets are available there.
and finding the code that governs console interaction hot spot size and alignment shouldn't be beyond any competent programmer, given its one of the central systems to the game.
This game is full of great ideas that are poorly implemented. its also full of long standing bugs, gimmicks that cause issues, and major imbalances. It should be so much better.