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A sign that STO's Zynga influence is bad
hylanvahr
Member Posts: 110 Arc User
It's a publically known fact that STO executive producer Dan Stahl used to work at Zynga (for about 10 weeks), and that under his leadership upon return to Cryptic, STO has taken significant inspiration from Zynga's business methods in terms of the abhorrent grinding we face in our Fleet Holdings and Reputations. But even at Zynga, their methods have begun failing them, and they very recently had to clean house at the top levels in order to reassess their business strategies, including the ouster of founder Mark Pincus from the CEO's office:
Ars article on Zynga cleaning house
Cryptic, do you and your owners at PWE really want the same to happen to your company? Perhaps it's past due to really, and I mean really start listening to your STO customers right away and give your entire game design approach a fresh new look, otherwise you may unintentionally find yourselves facing internal chaos similar to your friends at Zynga. I personally don't think STO could weather such a horrible storm.
Ars article on Zynga cleaning house
Cryptic, do you and your owners at PWE really want the same to happen to your company? Perhaps it's past due to really, and I mean really start listening to your STO customers right away and give your entire game design approach a fresh new look, otherwise you may unintentionally find yourselves facing internal chaos similar to your friends at Zynga. I personally don't think STO could weather such a horrible storm.
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STO Forum member since before February 2010.
STO Academy's excellent skill planner here: Link
I actually avoid success entirely. It doesn't get me what I want, and the consequences for failure are slim. -- markhawman
But again, my point? STO hasn't changed focus due to DStahl's short tenure at Zynga; it's been that way since the get go, and (for better or worse) is fiollwing a tried and true (IE proven) MO paradigm that started with SOE's EverQuest, and continues with virtually every MMO that came after it (Including the 800 lbs 'gorilla' on MMOs - World of War Craft.
It this regard Cryptic did re-invent the wheel, or really innovate at all - they just stuck with the 'tried and true' method of putting players on a treadmill while they develop new storyline/quest content.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
Of course PWE is a factor, that much is obvious, but their own methods are not unique or original. I'll grant you that it's a combination of influences that drives the systems in play in STO, yet one cannot ignore the similarities the grinds have with some of Zynga's games.
I simply linked to that article because it shows how a prominent game company's bottom line and internal operating structure can be affected when they do things in their games that customers hate. I'm not exactly saying it could definitely happen, but it's just a potential warning sign.
Cryptic, for all its positive merits driven by a host of talented people over the years and up to today, could damage their overall business in the long run if they fail to listen to (and act on) all customer grievances, and possibly STO itself. There is so much incredible potential in this game, but time and time again in countless threads here, many people point out how often Cryptic is dropping the ball and little is being done about it.
Also, I'm startled by the number of rude apologists here that mock even the slightest inkling of customer discontent. I simply wanted to draw possible connections here that could be negatively affecting the game. Why is it so bad for us to want STO to get better? That's all I'm really asking for here.
Grind is not unique to STO. The only thing I believe is unique to the STO experience is that so many players have way too many characters and so burn themselves out doing the same grinds for 5, 8, 20 characters. But the grinds are not unique.
And I won't even address the personal attack.
Fact is, even a lot of the things people didn't like were done for good reasons... like the survival and success of the game. The road was mighty rough, but the game is in better shape now than it was post-season 4 and things are getting better, IMO.
Yes, DStahl has the ultimate responsibility for all of the gameplay decisions, both good and bad. But STO was heading toward F2P long before the Zynga days, and F2P means monetize or die.
People are overlooking one very striking difference between STO and some other F2P MMO's, what people refer to as "grinders"... STO gives away some pretty nice gear for free and at the moment there is no paywall preventing anyone from getting endgame gameplay and gear.
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
Oh well...
So much for keeping Neo outta the loop...
Now we gotta tell him everything. :rolleyes:
:P
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 don't know about that. I once watched a friend as she did grinds with 4 characters at once, in Everquest2. one desktop, 3 laptops set up around her, as she set 3 to follow the 4th, and mainly worked that way
Collecting Runes was an absolute NIGHTMARE.... There was NO way to easily get them.... NONE at ALL. Especially the higher level runes...
My character Tsin'xing
I'll be the last person to deny that Cryptic sometimes richly earns criticism for both design and execution.
But do they really need to listen to and act on all customer grievances?
Because I've got to say, I've seen an awful lot of bad ideas, unrealistic expectations, venting, and outright temper tantrums being expressed here in these forums.
Most of the time, there's real, solid customer feedback buried in there and more often than you might think that feedback results in changes somewhere down the line, sooner or later. Maybe not the changes everybody was suggesting, but sometimes a player's suggestions become reality. Don't tell me it doesn't happen, because I've seen evidences of it here in these forums with my own eyes.
I'll be honest here. I did not read the first post and think, "Gee, the OP wants to make STO better". What I read was more along the lines of "STO is a grind, Cryptic's going down, and it's all Dan Stahl's fault". And probably not too far away from "OMG, get rid of Dan Stahl NOW".
If that's not the impression you meant to leave, then I'm sorry to say that you may have missed your mark.
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
^This... Look no further than PWE to see where the worst changes have come from. They are the staple garbage of that Corporation...
Say what you will about Cryptic but PWE has always been pretty horrible and while it may have swallowed up Cryptic and saved it from going under it is basically like being saved by the Devil. "Sell your soul to me or Die." That is pretty much the reality of it.
Perhaps I have looking back given all the negative responses I got. I was in a rush when writing the OP, but by no means did I intend for DStahl to go. Not in the least.
I've talked to him in game once when he spoke to the players on the steps of the New Romulus embassy/command building not long after Season 7 lauched. I mentioned the poor spawn rate of the green bug clouds for the Staging Area red alert, he ran it with me and others, took notes and agreed with my assessment, and it was fixed the following week. That's great customer service, and a mark of good leadership. For a time, it gave me a small sliver of hope for the game's future.
He seems to care about STO, and knowing this, I think he can do better for the game, but I just don't see that happening lately as community discontent rises with each new Reputation and Fleet Holding getting piled onto the shoulders of every struggling player that appreciates and regularly plays the game, not to mention the swath of old and new bugs that keep appearing and getting ignored.
What is happening now to zynga is definitely NOT what I want to happen to Cryptic, but we've gotta stay on them to make sure things improve.
Probably, and on that note I have some land in the everglades and a NY bridge for sale if the OP is interested.
I blame.... Canada.
A lot of the Cryptic folks are casual gamers who have played a lot of Zynga and Playfish games.
They're also very big into RTS games and to a lesser extent FPSes. I know Cryptic is always looking for, in general, two things: a background in fighting games and a background in RTSes.
I think they tend to treat MMOs as a descendant of Defense of the Ancients, Gauntlet Legends, that kind of thing, crossed with Collectible Card Games like Magic and Overpower. (Less so the Trek card game but that was more complicated than some RPGs. Heinig did work for Decipher so I'm sure he played it and Thomas is an all around Trek nerd, probably one of the Trekiest Trekkies at Cryptic.)
Stahl also worked for Microsoft for a long time on XBOX and prior to that Magic the Gathering. I kinda suspect XBOX and Magic influence his views and leadership of the game more than Zynga directly.
A lot of what you're talking about is the PWE influence. I don't think it's orders per se but I do think they have revenue goals and PWE's approaches are well researched and brutally pragmatic in the short run... and Cryptic's job is to figure out how to make those work even better, both bigger numbers and better retention.
I've heard Stahl's analogy is that an MMO is a bucket in a sink with a hole in the bottom of it.
Players drip in. Players leak out. The bigger the hole, the more you need the faucet to spew new players in. You want the hole small and the faucet steady but any balance that keeps the bucket full works in the short term.
They focus on both but the focus goes back and forth between trying to partly patch the hole and get the faucet pumping harder.
Sometimes they focus too much on the wrong end. Sometimes, maybe, it's not the hole or the faucet but that the bucket needs to be bigger. I think they know this. If it's working, they're making money. If they aren't making money, it isn't working.
My character Tsin'xing
Most of the stuff in the CStore is actually fairly useful, and if I don't play STO for a year, I sit down to play again and my character is exactly how I left her, except with whatever DOff missions I started a year ago finished. I don't have an equivalent to wilted crops or having had my gang (in Zynga's Mafia Wars game) slowly dismantled by other players in my absence - I just haven't gained anything from my time not playing.
So STO has skipped the defining traits of Zynga's game design. The things STO shares with Zynga, it also shares with the entire free-to-play MMORPG market - aggressive monetization (though nowhere near as aggressive as many - you can play every piece of content in the game without spending a dime, and complete all that content), high grind (not unique to F2P titles - honestly, it tends to be worse in subscription games where they need to keep you paying month after month), and... well, that's actually about it.
*golf clap
I bet you're wrong. I bet the metrics say "players participate in grind in large numbers".
And I bet the devs are smart enough to know this is because they (the devs) designed the game so that the grindy bits are the most efficient way to get key pieces of gear other than spending zen.
I don't think any of the devs think players "love" repeating the same tasks over and over and over and over.