I finally got to spend 90 mins on the game before today's patch, and I must say, what an Update!
I managed in that time to get to level 3, but I was taking my time, and soaking in the efforts of all those involved in bringing us LOR.
Many players seem to just come on the forums and just immediately moan. You lot do make me laugh!
To those ungrateful gets, I suggest you start showing appreciation for all the work that has gone into this update. I can promise you that Cryptic would have had an army of devs sorting out LOR and working around the clock just to make us happy. They promised, and they delivered.
Of course there are going to be bugs and glitches, I mean that is hardly surprising considering the massive scale of the latest update. Reporting bugs and glitches is paramount for development, but maybe do it through the proper channels, rather than coming on the forum and just saying "this is broke..." or that bit glitches..."
For me, I would like to say a big thank you to all the staff involved in bringing us LOR. You have brought new zest & spirit into the game, and I am sure the latest content will keep many of us quiet for months to come.
I think you should all take a well deserved long weekend with lots of Vodka and Champagne!
Comments
See you in the game.
So much has been added to the game, I think it's the biggest change (improvement) I've ever seen in an MMO.
I have always been a federation only player for all the star trek games ive played, but after trying out both KDF and Romulan faction in this game I have to admit it is quite fun slaying npcs with my bath'leth or performing sneak attacks with my warbird.
Can't wait to continue playing the romulan campaign...
Dante Alighieri
I can see your point, but as a company, do you think Cryptic would have stood for the barrage of queries/issues coming from players if they released it gradually? Also, the players would have held a revolt waiting for more and more content to come out!
Yeah, the queue time does annoy me, but that could be cos Cryptic are either not using all of their servers or because everyone who left the game has now come back for a nosey.
Part of my job (in the real world) is website development, and that can be a pain in the a*se, so I cant imagine how long it took to do all the renderings for all the new toons, the ships, the interiors, the weapons, the scenery, the PvP, the PvE, the story, the missions, the items, the Boffs, the Doffs, and everything else that went into this.
Its like someone making you build a mansion, then when you have done, you get a flood of visitors come in, and complain that the toilet roll holder is in the wrong shade of colour, or the floor tiles in the kitchen should be octagonal not square...
A Massive effort by Cryptic, and I for one and very grateful.
Grateful?
Sorry I have been with this game since closed beta. This company has made LOADS and LOADS of money on the Zen store. This game is over 3 years old. There is absolutely no excuse now how their servers can't handle the load. It's ridiculous. For people who actually have a subscription and spend actual money on ZEN, it would make anyone PO'ed. Especially me, because I did pay in some money. Now I am regretting it because what am I paying for?
Servers should always been the number one priority. Because the product is good, if you can't use it or it doesn't work right, makes it extremely bad and not appealing. I came back to this game about 3 weeks ago, and I was impressed by the changes. But when I dug deeper and now seeing they are still having the same server issues after 3 years and became even more greedy and money grubbing, it makes me angry. I will quit again if this continues.
If this was TRUELY F2P where you didn't have to pay for one thing, that would be a different story. But when a company is taking loads of money from people and blatantly advertising there sales, right in your face, there is no excuse for this kind of down time and loading ques. Sorry, if you are in sales, or deal with vendors on a daily basis you would understand this.
If a vendor tries to TRIBBLE us over, or there products start to become sub-standard. We switch, we are not going to "stick" with them just because there product was good before.
If they want to run this game like a business, then they have to treat there customers better and start making some major changes to their server structures or upgrade them.
What happens if new people were coming to this game after the announcement on IGN? They will be turned off IMMEDIATELY. Lost profit once again.
Ditto. Cryptic have done a blooming AWESOME job. They ALL should be commended NOT berated. I would like to give a very VERY special three cheers to Branflakes (Brandon). His live feed on Raptr for LoR was terrific. Brandon has also kept us up to date every step of the way up to the launch. He has been a true Community Manager.
Yes there has been some issue prior to the launch namely the servers, buy hey sometimes the brown stuff hits the fan. Instead of moaning about it appreciate they they were doing everything they could to limit lost playing time for us. At the end of the day anything could cause the servers to go down, a power outage in the area could occur. Just ride it out.
I personally had no issues with the update yesterday, everything happened for me in one smooth run.
Have come across some bugs since going live, but this is on the stuff that wasn't on Tribble. Have submitted bug reports and Cryptic will sort them out as and when it appears on the to do list.
Overall though Cryptic. A job well done. Thank you, and I raise a glass to everyone's good health. You should all be very very proud.
RED ALERT!
Captain, there are huge quantities of self entitlement in this sector!
Seriously, Get a grip. Yeah, I'm a paying gold subscriber too, Yeah i've spent craptonns more than i should have done on Zen.
BUT
That is optional. Your anger would be just if this wasn't a FREE to play game. Buying a sub/zen is optional, just because you, Like me chose to buy it ( I did it because i want to support the people behind this game, Nothing else) doesn't mean we suddenly deserve everything and anything.
This is a fantastic expansion, what i've played for the 3hrs i managed to get onto day has the most fun i've had on this game in ages.
Sure it's going to be a bumpy couple of days, but this can be expected with every MMO, especially around a heavily published expansion such as LoR.
And people that are complaining...it's a GAME. Even if you're a Lifetime from beta like me it's still a FREE expansion. If you're that upset about the server problems you probably need to take a break from this fantasy so get your butt out of your chair, go outside, do something meaningful, and then come back to play a *free* **game** when you have a better perspective.
While I rarely find myself at a loss for words, today I feel truly speechless. Anyway, I'm going to try to form a few comprehensive paraghraphs on my thoughts and feelings.
GG Cryptic, what have you done? What happened to STO and what is this new game I logged into today? I'm sorry people if I sound a bit overwhelmed, but to me this feels like playing a completely new game.
If anyone is interested in digging through older threads (which I'm not atm), you can find a post of mine from late december telling people that I feel Cryptic is shifting STO in a higher gear. Looking at it from the present, boy was that an understatement. This feels almost like STO2.
Today I spent more than 2 hours just drooling on Virinat with a dumb grin on my face enjoying the scenery. :P
The new UI is simply amazing. I love what you guys did with it. I love how it blinks in red when I'm into red alert. I like how Boff skills are portrayed in their own career colour.
The Romulan standard color scheme is so easy on the eyes too.
Then the voicedover tips during the tutorial? Great idea, I can only imagine how helpfull and nice that is for new players trying out STO, hell even I listened to them all.
The graphics are also amazing. I logged on my KDF side as well and everything seemed somehow, better, sharper....improved. IDK, maybe it's the new UI playing tricks on me.
But what probably amazed me most is how smooth my game runs after yesterday's patch. I didn't believe it is possible, but it runs better than before on my PC, it just slides. In Spock's own words: "Fascinating!"
Devs., today you should really feel proud of yourselves for what you've accomplished. You have really outdone yourselves with the LoR expansion. You deserve every praise and every raise. And now I believe you deserved yourself a nice long break from working 6 days per week and overtime in the last six months. The summer is approaching so it's perfect time to go subathing, partying, drinking cocktails, surfing or whatever it is you guys like to do. I think we'll all be good for a while, I know I'll have at least 2 completely new chars. to take to lvl 50 and through 3 reputations now, so I'm good.
Take a break, fill up the batteries and take the time to enjoy the fruits of your amazing labour. As a Star Trek fan and a MMO player I feel exalted and don't know what more to say atm than the simple "Thank you" and hope it's enough.
So, thank you devs. and long live STO!
Also, the graphics revamp is pretty stunning.
It really is like playing STO 2, something familiar but entirely new.
"We are smart." - Grebnedlog
Member of Alliance Central Command/boq botlhra'ghom
1) Bugs that haven't been fixed in a year and a half
2) Turning the game into a money gamble, where gameplay/content matters little to you
3) Making ships that are better than ones you can purchase in the Z-Store making any other ship obsolete
4) Downtime on the biggest patch day of your careers (because Winter whatever's a huge flop)
the rest of it, for me, is not very usefull...
only 2 new end game mission and one of them is for ground and the other one for shuttlecrafts.:(
the respec will costs us more from today. the traits and reputation tokens should be in the skills token as well.
the loging que is very very anoying and i hope they will improve the server soon... a few hours ago i have been able to play the game( there were only 200people in the que back than), but now i m to the position 3000+
anyway i'm glad that the patch brings happiness for some of us and i really want to fight against the borgs beside a romulan warbird:)
But to look at the whole thing objectively, STO has really taken a quantum leap in its paradigm. I have to say you devs really outdid yourselves. Whatever it is (I'm guessing more hands at the battle stations) keep it up. You're on the right track.
Thanks Cryptic!
I can imagine that Cryptic have multiple servers, but not all of them would be upgraded for the latest game platform. If they did upgrade all of their servers and a major error occurs, then STO could be offline for days.
Also, they would have deliberately put the queue system in place to make sure that the server gets a consistent flow of incoming traffic, not everyone in at once. I started queuing 10 mins ago, and I was in 3900 place. I am now 1359, so in a few mins i'll be in. If you cant get in, then you're just being impatient. Load up the queue, then go make a tea/coffee and have a cig.
If the above is not trolling then don't know what it is. Who made you the KING to judge others. Treat others as you like to be treated....juts saying
Not using all their servers? That seems to mean they are making all this mess on purpose? As for people coming back to the game, that should be a given, especially after all the expansion publicity. If they didn't know that, then they are in desperate need of new management. No, these are not excuses.
I can understand that. As I wrote, it's obvious that a lot of time and effort was invested on the technical side, and the end result, the product, is a good one. But what good is it if customers cannot use it as they should be able to? Are we as complacent when we buy a good product at a store and it turns out defective? No, we return it or exchange it for something that works. Imagine, I can have the best smartphone in the world, but if my signal and data connection sucks, then it's just a brick.
No one is "making" them develop a game. They do it because they believe it's good business. But there is no good business without customers, and that requires customer satisfaction and meeting demand adequately. Unsatisfied gamers will not earn them money. Neither will gamers who cannot even get to the game.
The product alone doesn't make the business. Among other things, they need to consider a proper infrastructure (servers and related hardware) to manage the expected load (or what they should have expected).
Again, great effort, great product, poor execution.
I really dont see what the big deal is, the excitement about this event will last for a week, tops.
It is fantastic.
R.I.P
This is the only star trek mmo so people have high expectations of it and this is what probably leads to the tough criticism that we see. I only hope they keep coming back to old areas that need attention bad in the future.
Still, good work, especially on adding warp cores, that was a good idea.
If I understand this correctly, then I should count myself lucky if I pay for something and it actually works?
Yes, no one is forcing us to be subscribers or to buy stuff from the Z store. But if they offer it, then they have the responsibility to deliver, just like any other service. The burden is, by choice, on their shoulders, not on ours. The problem is that so many believe that we have been given a privilege in playing the game and we should not question it, when it should be the other way around. Even if a significant portion of players is Silver, as long as there is one paying customer, they have an obligation.
you get big its time to go to more servers. NOPE not gonna happen.
I made a post of the stuff i liked...ya form the 30 minutes ive played since thepatch
yup right on .....well no more cash from me and prolly others so you better get working cause that slush funds draining right now......
-_
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As a big fan of the game from the moment I read about its then-nearing release in late 2009, I'm overjoyed to see it doing so well and evolving beautifully. Sure, the launch was pretty ropey, but in a few days' time it'll all have blown over and there'll be a lot of very happy players, myself included.
Well done, Cryptic. Very well done, and thank you.
Lifetime Subscriber since Open Beta
Yes I know what a server is. I manage a small scale network.
I saw these issues come for weeks now. Which means a competent person at cryptic/pwe should saw it coming and act to mitigate the issues.
There been server and network issues this entire month. At least the last 3 to four weeks. That was before the extra load this expansion was to bring in.
I got no probelm with que. It the fact that even once you log in you get frequent server DC and if you switch characters your back in que again.
Sorry but Cryptic/PWE gets a -20 on scale of 1-10 IT infrustructor. Same score they got on open beta weekend as well.
Clearly you have no clue based on this statement about IT. They should have head test system to test thing on. Then there tribble.
Lot probelms would be solve by having the tribble open test weekend say 2 or three weeks ago. Then many of the issues we facing know would be fix.
Even better would been to plan two Beta test weeks. One to find the issues, tweak, then to retest.
That what professional IT personal would do.
Planing, test, and fix are critical to any IT network.