"It [science fiction] is untrustworthy as a source of "facts," since these may be wrong, or at least out of date. There is nothing wrong, however, with science fiction as a way of arousing interest in science...it doesn't matter whether the scientific background of a science fiction story is accidentally wrong through ignorance, deliberately wrong through the exigencies of the plot, or simply out-of-date through the progress of science. If the story is interesting, it can be used...that's the educational value of science fiction; that is what makes it a learning device. It stimulates curiosity and the desire to know." ~ Issac Asimov ("Learning Device," IASFM, August 1979 Asimov on Science Fiction, pg.37)]
This is precisely why I agreed with Geko on everything he said about JJ in a prior interview. It's great Sci-Fi and I really love JJ Trek as sci-fi movies, but it will never be Trek (opinion). Making great Sci-Fi is one thing, but once you take on an existing IP with it's own lore etc, it becomes more tricky and whether an artist likes it or not, there are lines they cannot cross. The above would be difficult to use as a justification to the fans for Aliens in a some kind of LOTR spinoff, for example.
I initially felt the same way, specifically, about the V-Rexes - NOT the Voth (as I knew them from Voyager) or any of the smaller Dinos (they bizarrely seemed to make sense somehow) - but somehow Geko's latest justification seemed to hit home. Not really sure why, and in all honesty, before it all kind came across like: 'yea! f**k yea! Those would be hella cool! Hey look guys!! You guys!!! Spock's Brain!!! Freakin Dinos!!! With freakin laser beams on their freakin heads!!! F**k yea!!' and that any fan held objections were just a joke. That's how it seemed to me anyways.
Now it doesn't seem that way as it was put across in a far more palettable way for at least one die hard (me) fan to see eye to eye with. I guess in the end it's all about how you pitch it and not necessarily what you pitch.
So... in case Geko ever finds himself reading this, for any 'less than diplomatic' stuff I may have said in any previous posts, I guess I take it all back.
"So my fun is wrong?"
No. Your fun makes everyone else's fun wrong by default.
I do give credit to Geko for being honest. Regardless about how much I do not want to hear certain stuff, I would rather have the truth rather than the brush off. I am glad he was honest.
Yes. In my experience from doing the Foundry Roundtable Podcast, the "catch more flies with honey" approach really does work. If we'd been mean to Branflakes when he was on, we'd have never gotten a chance to interview Kestrel. And before the inevitable "but you only ask them questions they want to answer!"....
One thing that I personally brought up in the Kestrel interview was Divide et Impera.... But... I was polite about it and Kestrel explained that it was meant to be part of a 3-part story, and that for some reason that plot got shelved.
I've just got to say that I am very saddened to hear how the forum community is often perceived by the Devs.
No, I am not throwing stones at Geko here. I am saying that this is what we have done to ourselves as a Community. It's one of the reasons I wanted to be a Moderator, to make things better for everybody.
"How Many Pages to Hitler?" That is a sobering, shocking thing to me... but at the same time I am not surprised. I see it all the time. Nobody can say one good word about STO or about Cryptic without someone else eventually jumping in with the verbal pitchforks. I'm not even surprised to learn that Geko and his family have been threatened by overzealous fans.
You wonder why they don't post more often? Why they don't share more about what they're doing next month, let alone six months or a year from now? Right here.
I genuinely like a lot of people who post here on the forums regularly. I like seeing positive posts from the fans. I like seeing people who have questions getting help. I enjoy spirited debates about Trek lore and game mechanics. This is an awesome community.
But at the same time, we have some people who ruin the experience for everyone. They behave as if they are the only intelligent, feeling people on the forums and nobody else's opinions matter unless they validate their own. When they treat the Devs (and others) like crud, they are hurting people. They are hurting people who are trying to make a living by bringing us a Star Trek MMO to entertain us.
I'm not saying don't criticize them. Sometimes it's deserved. But don't pretend that you're somehow making the game better by calling the Devs lazy, lying, money-grubbing, etc. You're not.
It's just sad. This is an awesome community that deserves a great relationship with the developers. And there's only one thing I can say that might help:
"Please don't feed the trolls"
My views may not represent those of Cryptic Studios or Perfect World Entertainment. You can file a "forums and website" support ticket here Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
"How Many Pages to Hitler?" That is a sobering, shocking thing to me... but at the same time I am not surprised. I see it all the time. Nobody can say one good word about STO or about Cryptic without someone else eventually jumping in with the verbal pitchforks. I'm not even surprised to learn that Geko and his family have been threatened by overzealous fans.
As someone who works in the design industry, I have sat through a wide verity of critiques. Regardless about how someone felt about a piece of work, I have never seen a critic send out a personal threat. Even though my critiques can be rather harsh, I would never-ever send out a personal attack.
"Star Trek" is a form of entertainment, which teaches people to be tolerant. When I heard Geko talk about the threats and Hitler posts, I thought he was talking about an entirely different game. What is shocking to me is that its happening in a "Star Trek" forum.
Players should be celebrating the richness of diversity, which stems from opinion, beliefs, culture, and lifestyle.
Its okay to disagree.
Its not okay to send out personal attacks and threats.
As someone who works in the design industry, I have sat through a wide verity of critiques. Regardless about how someone felt about a piece of work, I have never seen a critic send out a personal threat. Even though my critiques can be rather harsh, I would never-ever send out a personal attack.
"Star Trek" is a form of entertainment, which teaches people to be tolerant. When I heard Geko talk about the threats and Hitler posts, I thought he was talking about an entirely different game. What is shocking to me is that its happening in a "Star Trek" forum.
Players should be celebrating the richness of diversity, which stems from opinion, beliefs, culture, and lifestyle.
Its okay to disagree.
Its not okay to send out personal attacks and threats.
I agree personal attacks and threats are unacceptable at any time in any way.
"Star Trek" may teach tolerance but this game is mostly only "Star Trek" in name and appearance. This game is about destroying as much as possible as fast as possible to earn the best rewards and be "Top Dog".
How many missions can be resolved peacefully through diplomacy in this game? Not many. And yet the people who designed the game play (intentionally to be so) are surprised when their community is composed of a percentage of persons who conduct their lives in much the same way, through aggression, violence, hate, etc.
Perhaps if game play ACTUALLY employed the values and concepts shown in the show. The community would attract more of the kind of helpful support and cooperative understanding "Star Trek" modeled.
And I am also not surprised by putting all criticism as the lowest common denominator as attempt to ignore any criticism because Hitler.
Funny how things work ...
Wait a minute... let's not take what he said out of context. He did not say that they ignore the forums or criticism. To paraphrase, he said that the criticism turns into flaming that gets worse and worse until the Devs are being painted as the ultimate bad guys.
The point is that the "bad" (flaming) criticism has a tendency to snowball to "worse" before the flamers lose interest or get themselves banned and the other posters start thinking rationally again.
It happens over and over and over and... you get the point.
If posters would moderate themselves, things would be less likely to get to "worse."
So what happens? It gets to the point where it's a no-win scenario and nobody can say anything in defense. The Devs end up having to do the same thing that we Mods tell people all of the time: Don't feed the trolls.
They stop responding. They don't give the trolls anything to work with. And the whole community loses.
Anyway, I don't want to focus on just that one point. I felt it was important enough to point out, and I'm very passionate about the forums, but I want to listen to the rest of the interview and find out more about what's coming up...
My views may not represent those of Cryptic Studios or Perfect World Entertainment. You can file a "forums and website" support ticket here Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
When you rehash Turok (shamelessly), some resistance is valid and to be expected, however, it seems degrading that Geko would bring up Hitler posts. It really does speak to the lowest common denominator, not just of players, but of dev opinions.
Granted, I have not listened, nor do I wish to listen to the interview. However, this is disheartening, but not in the least bit surprising.
I've just got to say that I am very saddened to hear how the forum community is often perceived by the Devs.
No, I am not throwing stones at Geko here. I am saying that this is what we have done to ourselves as a Community. It's one of the reasons I wanted to be a Moderator, to make things better for everybody.
"How Many Pages to Hitler?" That is a sobering, shocking thing to me... but at the same time I am not surprised. I see it all the time. Nobody can say one good word about STO or about Cryptic without someone else eventually jumping in with the verbal pitchforks. I'm not even surprised to learn that Geko and his family have been threatened by overzealous fans.
You wonder why they don't post more often? Why they don't share more about what they're doing next month, let alone six months or a year from now? Right here.
I genuinely like a lot of people who post here on the forums regularly. I like seeing positive posts from the fans. I like seeing people who have questions getting help. I enjoy spirited debates about Trek lore and game mechanics. This is an awesome community.
But at the same time, we have some people who ruin the experience for everyone. They behave as if they are the only intelligent, feeling people on the forums and nobody else's opinions matter unless they validate their own. When they treat the Devs (and others) like crud, they are hurting people. They are hurting people who are trying to make a living by bringing us a Star Trek MMO to entertain us.
I'm not saying don't criticize them. Sometimes it's deserved. But don't pretend that you're somehow making the game better by calling the Devs lazy, lying, money-grubbing, etc. You're not.
It's just sad. This is an awesome community that deserves a great relationship with the developers. And there's only one thing I can say that might help:
"Please don't feed the trolls"
Yet there are people who will ignore all of this and even defend their behavior. They say things like "the devs should be professional and come in here anyway", when it's painfully obvious this is not at all how it works. Three years testing this theory has pretty soundly proved that the devs are in fact not professionally obligated to put up with your TRIBBLE unless absolutely necessary, and "absolutely necessary" is far less often than you want it to be.
It really is this simple. Mature adults don't insult the people they want to do things for them. This is counterproductive. Mature adults will, in a level-headed bu direct manner, explain the situation, what is wrong, and what could potentially be done about it. Mature adults will not expect every single solitary demand to be met, as there are realities developer-side that most people are not aware of that may make some things nonviable. Mature adults will attempt to arrive at a solution that is amicable for both sides. Mature adults will ultimately concede, after all avenues have been tried and the devs have made a decision, that the devs have the final say (but not without the caveat that, given enough universal dislike of a decision, it can be reversed or altered).
It's not rocket science, people. It boils down to being a mature adult.
I've just got to say that I am very saddened to hear how the forum community is often perceived by the Devs.
No, I am not throwing stones at Geko here. I am saying that this is what we have done to ourselves as a Community. It's one of the reasons I wanted to be a Moderator, to make things better for everybody.
"How Many Pages to Hitler?" That is a sobering, shocking thing to me... but at the same time I am not surprised. I see it all the time. Nobody can say one good word about STO or about Cryptic without someone else eventually jumping in with the verbal pitchforks. I'm not even surprised to learn that Geko and his family have been threatened by overzealous fans.
You wonder why they don't post more often? Why they don't share more about what they're doing next month, let alone six months or a year from now? Right here.
I genuinely like a lot of people who post here on the forums regularly. I like seeing positive posts from the fans. I like seeing people who have questions getting help. I enjoy spirited debates about Trek lore and game mechanics. This is an awesome community.
But at the same time, we have some people who ruin the experience for everyone. They behave as if they are the only intelligent, feeling people on the forums and nobody else's opinions matter unless they validate their own. When they treat the Devs (and others) like crud, they are hurting people. They are hurting people who are trying to make a living by bringing us a Star Trek MMO to entertain us.
I'm not saying don't criticize them. Sometimes it's deserved. But don't pretend that you're somehow making the game better by calling the Devs lazy, lying, money-grubbing, etc. You're not.
It's just sad. This is an awesome community that deserves a great relationship with the developers. And there's only one thing I can say that might help:
"Please don't feed the trolls"
So many great points here! I know someone who personally got a lifetime ban for calling a dev's work lazy. Now, I'm not saying it was right or wrong but there are two sides to every coin. Some players find certain bugs more annoying to them than others, they report them, and they go unfixed. These unfixed issues that are allowed to go unacknowledged really is the problem from what I've seen and know. I can appreciate that some bugs take time and some get priority over others. I do think STO needs a concrete list of known bugs and the dev team needs to be accountable for those bugs. Discussing them with players and working towards getting what needs to be fixed and yet acknowledging that there are others that they will get around to. This list would need to be constantly upgraded and it would require both patience and restraint by both the players and dev's dealing with it. One thing that is clearly seen from my prospective is, that the developers of STO treat most feedback on bugs as an attack on their work. That needs to change!
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First of all, that works both ways with the community. Its either defend Cryptic to death or curse Cryptic to death. Kind of like Congress is today, polarized.
Yes, communication is a two-way thing. And yes, fan reactions tend to be quite polarizing.
I will admit that I probably err on the side of cutting Cryptic a lot of slack. Most bugs don't bug me, if they're minor glitches that don't stop me from playing the game.
If something really annoys me, I put in a bug report or post a criticism on the forums... and then promptly forget about it. Because it'll get fixed when it gets fixed, if it's on the schedule to be fixed. My idea of a serious bug might not be their idea of a serious bug. I am a customer and I do have a say, but there are competing priorities they have to juggle. That's just life, folks. We all have to-do's that turn into never-do's.
I'm an IT guy. I'm not a true programmer, but I have a basic concept about what's involved. So I know from experience that sometimes simple fixes are anything but simple. And I bring that understanding to my experience on the forums and playing the game.
So it's interesting to listen to Geko talk about the development process and about the business decisions that go into what updates make the cut and what doesn't. As an IT guy, I can relate to that.
On the other hand, I did cancel my sub for a few months prior to F2P out of my own dissatisfaction with how that was being handled, so I am not a total Cryptic cheerleader either. And I am rather free with my opinions when I think something could be better
Crafting, for example. And wasn't it interesting to hear Geko say that a Crafting update now has some momentum and will likely happen sooner than later?
My views may not represent those of Cryptic Studios or Perfect World Entertainment. You can file a "forums and website" support ticket here Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
Crafting, for example. And wasn't it interesting to hear Geko say that a Crafting update now has some momentum and will likely happen sooner than later?
Before I started my holiday hiatus from "Star Trek: Online", I finally got into the whole crafting aspects of the game. If the system was fleshed out and enhanced, I think crafting could become a perfect alternative to the exchange. Its a system that has a ton of potential.
I had not idea that Cryptic was hiding a space set within the crafting system.
I agree personal attacks and threats are unacceptable at any time in any way.
"Star Trek" may teach tolerance but this game is mostly only "Star Trek" in name and appearance. This game is about destroying as much as possible as fast as possible to earn the best rewards and be "Top Dog".
How many missions can be resolved peacefully through diplomacy in this game? Not many. And yet the people who designed the game play (intentionally to be so) are surprised when their community is composed of a percentage of persons who conduct their lives in much the same way, through aggression, violence, hate, etc.
Perhaps if game play ACTUALLY employed the values and concepts shown in the show. The community would attract more of the kind of helpful support and cooperative understanding "Star Trek" modeled.
One persons opinion.
Um.... no. I see this attitude as being far too.... idealistic even for Star Trek. How often did Kirk get into fights or shoot at people? almost every episode..... Sure, I agree that it'd be nice if we had more missions that involved some sort of diplomacy, but I can't fault the game for having a lot of combat.
As a voiceactor with 14 years of experience, I again offer up my services to Cryptic to help get these voiceless missions (and any other work) affordably voiced.
I am very affordable and I am a STO player so I'm sure we can work something out. Contact info at Cryptic is scant so hopefully Al and the team will notice this post and, if interested, contact me for further discussion.
What I would love to see happen with Crafting, is what went on when Heretic was designing the DOFF system.
Heretic actively solicited the forums about what kinds of things we'd like to see in the DOFF system. He was very candid with us about the things they could do and the things that weren't going to happen. Players were able to dialogue with Heretic and some of us were really geeked about it when it was released. I'm hooked on DOFFing to this day and I still want Cryptic to keep expanding the Commendation system.
Even beyond the DOFF system itself, some other good things came out of that. Cryptic was able to arrange a marriage between the DOFF system and the ship interiors to make interiors interactive and somewhat interesting.
And, inevitably, the bad... Heretic fully expected that they would be able to create a First Officer and Department Heads system. But it didn't happen. There are still people asking for it. (Me included.) And others who think Cryptic broke a promise by not delivering one. But you know what? It may never happen. People think certain DOFFs contribute to too much power creep as it is... FO & DH would likely just compound that. And maybe it's not really something that sells Zen, directly or indirectly.
And that's why we won't get any say in Crafting. Unrealized expectations. There will not be a dialogue and there will not be any solicitation of ideas like with the DOFF system. It's going to show up in a Dev Blog and then on Tribble. We're probably going to get a "gem enhancement" system like CoH, Champs, and Neverwinter. It may not have that Trek Engineering/Kitbashing feel. And some of us are really not going to like it, no matter what they do.
My views may not represent those of Cryptic Studios or Perfect World Entertainment. You can file a "forums and website" support ticket here Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
And some of us are really not going to like it, no matter what they do.
And that's the nail on the head, actually. There are people on both sides of the community that can't accept that, that can't accept that other people don't like what they do or do like what they don't.
It is, unfortunately, human nature.
Actually, it reminds me of a conversation I had the other day where I observed that 24th (25th) century humans were the most 'alien' race on Star Trek because they were the most different from modern humans; we're more like the Cardassians with their 'end justifies the means', the Ferengi with their 'profit', even the Romulans with 'underhandedness' and the occasional brutality of Klingons than we are the idealized, saint-like humans we see so often on Star Trek...
"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross; but it's not for the timid." -- Q, TNG: "Q-Who?"
^Words that every player should keep in mind, especially whenever there's a problem with the game...
The original pilot was The Menagerie. The original cut of it was 75 minutes long (GR hedged his bet in that if it was ultimately dropped by the NBC Network - he had a deal to do a limited theatre release as a science fiction film. (It was cut to 50 minutes - the length of an hour long TV program at the time - for presentation to NBC execs.)
GR likes to also claim that NBC thought it was 'too cerebral'; but it had a couple of issues as far as NBC was concerned:
1) The budget was VERY high even for a pilot and there was the fear that Desilu couldn't produce a watchable episode weekly for the budget they would ultimately be given should the series be greenlight. (IE they wanted REAL proof they could make an actual usable episode within the actual weekly budget they would have.)
2) The network wasn't sure that the visual effects needed could be done quick enough to deliver an episode on a weekly basis to the network.
So, they commissioned a second pilot ("Where No Man Has Gone Before") with the actual weekly budget, etc, - monitored the production/editing time for the VFX, etc. and ultimately made the decision to greenlight the series. They DID give Desilu some lead time, and they had 5 episodes in various stages of production, and three ready to air by the time Star Trek's premiere date hit.
The first 'regular' TV episode filmed on the Desilu soundstage was "The Corbomite Maneuver" (it was the 9th episode aired due to the amount of VFX needed for it.) Of the episodes they had ready to go, NBC decided the 5th episode filmed ("The Man Trap") would be the premiere episode.
The reuse/re-editing of the (then unaired) pilot footage from "The Cage" to create the two-part episode "The Menagerie" was due to a number of factors:
1) NBC spent A LOT of money for it, and they wanted to find a way to get some return out of that investment.
2) Desilu was starting to have issues making sure there WAS a new episode available per the weekly schedule - and doing what they did actually gained them some time in that schedule and allowed them to 'catch up' a bit.
So, in the end, there were two pilots made for the original Star Trek, but there were a couple of different edited versions for both (one version of "Where No Man Has Gone Before" had 'Quinn Martian' style tag bumpers for when they came back from a commercial, etc.)
It may seem overkill, but there was just SO MUCH stated with that TOS trivia question that was so wrong, it bothered the Trek Nerd in me.
Formerly known as Armsman from June 2008 to June 20, 2012 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..."
I personally do not want Cryptic/Perfect World to design the Iconians. Even though the Iconians belong to the storyline, I do not want Cryptic's designs to taint the species.
Species 8472 should have never been called the Undine.
I agree. When it comes to the story development process, Cryptic has the mentality of: (1) create a new mechanic for money, (2) attach the new mechanic to a species, and (3) attempt to stitch everything to the main story.
Do you want to know the irony? Since Geko has an issue with the abandoned social zones, he could have fleshed them out with daily featured episode missions, duty officer missions, and storyline related featured episodes. Andoria, Bajor, Vulcan, and Defera (Visitor Center) are completely wasted maps, which could have been used to extend the main storyline. Even though Bajor and Defera are directly connected to featured episodes, the maps have the potential for more content. All wasted potential.
Utopia Planitia Shipyards is a beautiful waste of space, which could be fleshed out and used for a wide variety of reasons. Its a shame that its used once a year.
Dyson Sphere, New Romulus, and reputation system were created as gimmicks, so Cryptic could make as much money as possible. If Cryptic put this much work into the abandoned social zones, the past year and a half could have been about 'meaningful' storyline progression. Dyson Sphere and New Romulus should have been cross faction PvP maps, which focused on the capture the flag (zone) mentality.
While leveling my last character, I used the patrols to reach level fifty. Some of the game's best environments and assets are hiding within plain sight. I do not think many players know about "STO's" hidden gems.
I cannot believe how much of "Star Trek: Online" has been abandoned and wasted.
This guy gets it.
CRYPTIC: Seasons around dedicated adventure zones are worthless to me. They lag, I have to play on lowest settings, they're just MMO inception. It's a virtual world within a virtual word! OooOOooOOooOh! I spent one day in the sphere, I'm not going back.
I already avoided new romulus because it was boring and grindy.
I had no reason to go to Deferra or Nimbus because people's idea of single player content is 6 missions per year, the majority of which require you to walk a block and say one thing to one guy, and then reward you a turret, and then there's never any more follow up unless you just decide you want another turret. Which would be unwise, because the turret can only be a blue mk XI as an absolute maximum, and is completely obsolete in any competetive pvp, rendering any neat novel mechanic it introduced to nothing more than novelty vanity item.
And now I have the dyson sphere, something that, even though my computer meets the minimum system requirements for the game, the game has been upgraded to the extent that the sphere is unplayably laggy for me now.
All the coolest parts of the game have been abandoned. Why are there no tholian/elachi versions of Kerrat? Will we ever catch other reps' level of content up to the level Omega and the borg have? Will the borg ever get more attention and develop more credibility as a threat, or at least have their story advanced? Then there's Nukara, the unloved middle child. But then again, the poor Elachi only get like 3 queued events, too. We've got more fleet holdings than the starbase for all these enemies to attack, people. Put them to use. I'd love to fly a fighter, chasing tholian widows between laser drills on the dilithium mine, or defend a blacked out embassy from the elachi or borg by the glow of our terrarium with the octopus breaking out and becoming an ally or assimilated/corrupted boss for the final battle, based on how well the team did on the optionals or something. For ship interiors, maybe even a daily where we compete in EV suits against players from the enemy faction to capture and reactivate the systems of a derelict ship for the Lobi crystal consortium as freelance salvage agents like when we mine dilithium, but being paid in Lobi. Bonus points for putting different ones in different exploration clusters spawning randomly like doff jobs, with the ship depending on which lockbox the area was associated with, and maybe an additional Trade CXP reward, or a Trade cxp level based interrupt (like with maxed diplomacy) that lets you talk the ferengi from the Consortium into paying you an extra bit of crystals or something.
Instead, these gorgeous areas are neglected, sitting there solely to be visited when someone wants to buy a kit or a boff that can't be customized.
Why do the captains table, andoria, vulcan, bajor, deferra, utopia planatia have nothing to do? Jeez, turn andoria and rura penthe's surfaces into seasonal settings for the winter event that only become hospitable for long periods of time around the same time as earth winter, then give them both their canon subterranean ground maps and make them alternate hubs for people who don't like ESD zone chat. Really, they should all be hubs so players can station themselves where they please, linked by inter-hub shuttles for fast travel and doffing convenience. Give them better dailies that award large amounts of CXP. Vulcan can be diplomacy, Andoria can be military. Throw in some more minigames that cost/reward GPL than just dabo, maybe some holosuite sims like the new tutorial training program while we're at it. At least tie them into the story somehow! What about class based intro-tutorials, or maybe time travel missions back to your training period? Tac captains get MACO survival training on Andoria, Science captains get secondary education at the academy on Vulcan, Engineers spend time as civil engineers on Bajor learning about alien technology, all of which being unique points in the story where they meet and pick their Tovan/Flores first officer character from an assortment of options before taking a shuttle to starfleet academy for their final training cruise. Maybe, one day, give fleets the option to pick a patron planet or something to base their starbase or future holdings around, maybe with toggle-able racial cosmetic options. That'd be worth a couple hundred thousand dilithium for a change. Lest I even mention the possibility of player housing on all of these worlds, players being able to pick where they're "stationed" upon reaching admiral or something.
Meanwhile, we've learned next to nothing about Tholians or the Elachi, they've gotten equivalent screen time to what they had in the series instead of being expanded upon, but we still stole hundreds of their ships and technology, even had some join us on our ships as doffs. Ditto for the suliban, where are those boffs, where's the opportunity to explore the environment of a Helix that's less a military base and more a refugee camp like in the first half of Mine Enemy, something much more starfleet's MO. But no, let's go ahead and make a new enemy, one that never fired a shot and was one of the dumber episodes in trek history, and just use their inexplicable semi-supposed-advanced nature to explain why they're harder to kill, instead of addressing the almighty endgame damage curve, and then introduce them by having their source of incursion literally just drop out of subspace onto our heads because the romulans were dumb enough to gamble their new, not even fully moved into homeworld by recreating the same planet's most recent extinction event.
Who's making these choices? Why are you making more of the same undesirable grind zone stuff than expanding gems you have like canon planets, ship interiors, your storyline, rep and fleet content (as in events and missions and story progression, not more stuff to buy)? For god's sake, a quick google confirms that first contact missions have been broken since 2010, you have no business making a fourth adventure zone with bugs that old!
What got me into this game was the customization. That I could fly a ship I picked, designed, and set up with a crew I picked and trained my way, in a diverse and expansive universe. If I wanted to fight Borg, I could, or I could go and do diplomacy in exploration clusters, or PvP klingon characters. Now, all our new content is "be a romulan, enjoy the dyson sphere or try again in another half year!"
That's my honest feedback. Nobody's Hitler, someone would just rather take the path of least resistance forward instead of detailing and repairing and finishing their old work first.
I can't recall a single instance in which a forum poster compared a dev to Hitler. I've seen some pretty harsh comments about PWE, but even those don't rival the TRIBBLE comparison.
It's good to know that our legit criticisms can be inflated on the other side of the fence.
I can't recall a single instance in which a forum poster compared a dev to Hitler. I've seen some pretty harsh comments about PWE, but even those don't rival the TRIBBLE comparison.
It's good to know that our legit criticisms can be inflated on the other side of the fence.
That's ultimately the main thing that stands out the most. Any legit concern raised by a player is instantly taken by the dev team as an attack on their work and a direct insult. The longer this continues, the more distance there will be between the players and the STO team.
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Looking for a new fleet? Drop by the in-game chat channel, "tenforwardforum", and say hi to the members of A Fleet Called Ten Forward (Fed) and The Orion Pirates (KDF). If you already have a fleet you are happy with, please feel free to drop by our chat channel if you are looking for a friendly bunch of helpful people to socialize with.
It's all in how it's phrased. I have had long thread discussions on an issue, with everyone expressing their opinions respectfully. And I've been told that Cryptic is a bunch of lazy, money-grubbing uh. . . jerks. . . after a single post. And while often, if I'm in that thread, "Present company is excluded," I AM a part of Cryptic, so if you are calling Cryptic as a whole any of those things, you are leveling that accusation at each of us.
I think Al was being a little hyperbolic. I've never heard anyone around the office ask "How many posts to Hitler." But there is an expectation (just or not) that any comment by a Dev will be twisted, read into, and ultimately turned around to bite us in the butts.
It's all in how it's phrased. I have had long thread discussions on an issue, with everyone expressing their opinions respectfully. And I've been told that Cryptic is a bunch of lazy, money-grubbing uh. . . jerks. . . after a single post. And while often, if I'm in that thread, "Present company is excluded," I AM a part of Cryptic, so if you are calling Cryptic as a whole any of those things, you are leveling that accusation at each of us.
I think Al was being a little hyperbolic. I've never heard anyone around the office ask "How many posts to Hitler." But there is an expectation (just or not) that any comment by a Dev will be twisted, read into, and ultimately turned around to bite us in the butts.
I would just like to say that I do not believe that you are responsible for massive genocide, Taco. Not seeming to give a TRIBBLE about any connection between the art team and the Foundry... yes. But I don't think you are responsible for gassing human beings to purify the Volk. Just my two cents. Please don't misunderstand my critique, since it's obvious that your bosses determine your schedule, and they don't give a TRIBBLE about the Foundry, so enough said.
But you are not Hitler, for the record. You are not evil.
If you can?t see the flaws in your own work, you probably need to get some distance. You can?t do your best work if you cannot get that distance, because you will learn to gloss over problems. It is amazing how they will vanish into a blind spot.
Instead, these gorgeous areas are neglected, sitting there solely to be visited when someone wants to buy a kit or a boff that can't be customized.
I know this sounds weird, but - When the Omega office on DS9 was operational, I use to love gathering with random people. Someone was guaranteed to do an stf call out. Even though we can use the stf channels, the experience is not the same as before the changes. Its these type of small things that pushed me to spend money on zen.
Some random thoughts:
Andoria ground can be easily turned into a Borg stf map, which mirrors the crash site in the Enterprise episode "Regeneration". Players have to stop the Borg from sending out a signal.
Vulcan ground can be easily turned into a Tal Shiar invasion map, which can be used to give players Romulan marks. As a result of using the Iconian gate, the Tal Shiar have managed to setup some sort of foothold situation.
Starbase 39 could use a tailor, Romulan duty officer store, and base exclusive missions.
Bajor: Hathon has tons of empty stores, which could use duty officer missions, featured episodes, etc... Cryptic could add a map exclusive holodeck mission, which will allow people to earn some exclusive Bajoran items.
Utopia Planitia Yards could be used as a PvP platform. When players walk along one of the lower decks, they can access PvP exclusive space and ground gear. If you add in a small social section, PvP players can gather to talk about strategy and tips. Across one of the ceiling monitors, the game could display player stats and results from recent PvP encounters. Maybe players can get some exclusive PvP duty officer missions, which will give them some PvP consumables.
It's all in how it's phrased. I have had long thread discussions on an issue, with everyone expressing their opinions respectfully. And I've been told that Cryptic is a bunch of lazy, money-grubbing uh. . . jerks. . . after a single post. And while often, if I'm in that thread, "Present company is excluded," I AM a part of Cryptic, so if you are calling Cryptic as a whole any of those things, you are leveling that accusation at each of us.
I think Al was being a little hyperbolic. I've never heard anyone around the office ask "How many posts to Hitler." But there is an expectation (just or not) that any comment by a Dev will be twisted, read into, and ultimately turned around to bite us in the butts.
I think there should be a little give and take with the respect. There are times people don't like Cryptic, people love to hate on EA, and there are tons of other companies out there that get some well deserved flak as well. Taking things personally is when things get out of hand. You may work for Cryptic/PWE but taking offense to someone putting down your company shouldn't prevent you from doing your job and continuing the work that you do. People flaming EA doesn't stop them from buying their games. People flaming Cryptic isn't going to stop people from spending money on your games either. At the end of the day, we are your customers and you are at your job. Once you clock out, you forget about your work, go home, and enjoy whatever you do in your off time, just like the rest of us. In the end, we all want what's best for STO. We all just have our own vision of that is.
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Looking for a new fleet? Drop by the in-game chat channel, "tenforwardforum", and say hi to the members of A Fleet Called Ten Forward (Fed) and The Orion Pirates (KDF). If you already have a fleet you are happy with, please feel free to drop by our chat channel if you are looking for a friendly bunch of helpful people to socialize with.
People criticizing Cryptic does not prevent anyone on the Dev team from doing their jobs. Their jobs are to continue to work on STO. Their jobs are not to interact with the community. That is strictly extra.
People criticizing Cryptic does stop Devs from posting.
And for the record, if I were the only competent person on the team (which I most certainly am not), and people were telling me that Cryptic was incompetent, I would still take some of that personally. That doesn't mean I'm going to break down into a quivering pile of self loathing. I can take it, but I am a Human, not Vulcan. My work is my work, and you can tell me all day that I shouldn't feel anything when people tell me it's bad, but feelings are not something I have a ton of control over.
I've been watching this thread pop up on my Twitter dev tracker for a while and had to chime in here with my advice...
Taco:
Take ten points off your blood pressure and stop reading the forums for the night, lol. Enjoy a well earned night at home. Most of us enjoy what you all put out for the playerbase!
Comments
This is precisely why I agreed with Geko on everything he said about JJ in a prior interview. It's great Sci-Fi and I really love JJ Trek as sci-fi movies, but it will never be Trek (opinion). Making great Sci-Fi is one thing, but once you take on an existing IP with it's own lore etc, it becomes more tricky and whether an artist likes it or not, there are lines they cannot cross. The above would be difficult to use as a justification to the fans for Aliens in a some kind of LOTR spinoff, for example.
I initially felt the same way, specifically, about the V-Rexes - NOT the Voth (as I knew them from Voyager) or any of the smaller Dinos (they bizarrely seemed to make sense somehow) - but somehow Geko's latest justification seemed to hit home. Not really sure why, and in all honesty, before it all kind came across like: 'yea! f**k yea! Those would be hella cool! Hey look guys!! You guys!!! Spock's Brain!!! Freakin Dinos!!! With freakin laser beams on their freakin heads!!! F**k yea!!' and that any fan held objections were just a joke. That's how it seemed to me anyways.
Now it doesn't seem that way as it was put across in a far more palettable way for at least one die hard (me) fan to see eye to eye with. I guess in the end it's all about how you pitch it and not necessarily what you pitch.
So... in case Geko ever finds himself reading this, for any 'less than diplomatic' stuff I may have said in any previous posts, I guess I take it all back.
No. Your fun makes everyone else's fun wrong by default.
One thing that I personally brought up in the Kestrel interview was Divide et Impera.... But... I was polite about it and Kestrel explained that it was meant to be part of a 3-part story, and that for some reason that plot got shelved.
My character Tsin'xing
No, I am not throwing stones at Geko here. I am saying that this is what we have done to ourselves as a Community. It's one of the reasons I wanted to be a Moderator, to make things better for everybody.
"How Many Pages to Hitler?" That is a sobering, shocking thing to me... but at the same time I am not surprised. I see it all the time. Nobody can say one good word about STO or about Cryptic without someone else eventually jumping in with the verbal pitchforks. I'm not even surprised to learn that Geko and his family have been threatened by overzealous fans.
You wonder why they don't post more often? Why they don't share more about what they're doing next month, let alone six months or a year from now? Right here.
I genuinely like a lot of people who post here on the forums regularly. I like seeing positive posts from the fans. I like seeing people who have questions getting help. I enjoy spirited debates about Trek lore and game mechanics. This is an awesome community.
But at the same time, we have some people who ruin the experience for everyone. They behave as if they are the only intelligent, feeling people on the forums and nobody else's opinions matter unless they validate their own. When they treat the Devs (and others) like crud, they are hurting people. They are hurting people who are trying to make a living by bringing us a Star Trek MMO to entertain us.
I'm not saying don't criticize them. Sometimes it's deserved. But don't pretend that you're somehow making the game better by calling the Devs lazy, lying, money-grubbing, etc. You're not.
It's just sad. This is an awesome community that deserves a great relationship with the developers. And there's only one thing I can say that might help:
"Please don't feed the trolls"
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
I watch the only good STO podcast STOked Radio
Want to learn more about any of the above? Let me know!
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
"Star Trek" is a form of entertainment, which teaches people to be tolerant. When I heard Geko talk about the threats and Hitler posts, I thought he was talking about an entirely different game. What is shocking to me is that its happening in a "Star Trek" forum.
Players should be celebrating the richness of diversity, which stems from opinion, beliefs, culture, and lifestyle.
Its okay to disagree.
Its not okay to send out personal attacks and threats.
I agree personal attacks and threats are unacceptable at any time in any way.
"Star Trek" may teach tolerance but this game is mostly only "Star Trek" in name and appearance. This game is about destroying as much as possible as fast as possible to earn the best rewards and be "Top Dog".
How many missions can be resolved peacefully through diplomacy in this game? Not many. And yet the people who designed the game play (intentionally to be so) are surprised when their community is composed of a percentage of persons who conduct their lives in much the same way, through aggression, violence, hate, etc.
Perhaps if game play ACTUALLY employed the values and concepts shown in the show. The community would attract more of the kind of helpful support and cooperative understanding "Star Trek" modeled.
One persons opinion.
Wait a minute... let's not take what he said out of context. He did not say that they ignore the forums or criticism. To paraphrase, he said that the criticism turns into flaming that gets worse and worse until the Devs are being painted as the ultimate bad guys.
The point is that the "bad" (flaming) criticism has a tendency to snowball to "worse" before the flamers lose interest or get themselves banned and the other posters start thinking rationally again.
It happens over and over and over and... you get the point.
If posters would moderate themselves, things would be less likely to get to "worse."
So what happens? It gets to the point where it's a no-win scenario and nobody can say anything in defense. The Devs end up having to do the same thing that we Mods tell people all of the time: Don't feed the trolls.
They stop responding. They don't give the trolls anything to work with. And the whole community loses.
Anyway, I don't want to focus on just that one point. I felt it was important enough to point out, and I'm very passionate about the forums, but I want to listen to the rest of the interview and find out more about what's coming up...
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
Granted, I have not listened, nor do I wish to listen to the interview. However, this is disheartening, but not in the least bit surprising.
Yet there are people who will ignore all of this and even defend their behavior. They say things like "the devs should be professional and come in here anyway", when it's painfully obvious this is not at all how it works. Three years testing this theory has pretty soundly proved that the devs are in fact not professionally obligated to put up with your TRIBBLE unless absolutely necessary, and "absolutely necessary" is far less often than you want it to be.
It really is this simple. Mature adults don't insult the people they want to do things for them. This is counterproductive. Mature adults will, in a level-headed bu direct manner, explain the situation, what is wrong, and what could potentially be done about it. Mature adults will not expect every single solitary demand to be met, as there are realities developer-side that most people are not aware of that may make some things nonviable. Mature adults will attempt to arrive at a solution that is amicable for both sides. Mature adults will ultimately concede, after all avenues have been tried and the devs have made a decision, that the devs have the final say (but not without the caveat that, given enough universal dislike of a decision, it can be reversed or altered).
It's not rocket science, people. It boils down to being a mature adult.
I Support Disco | Disco is Love | Disco is Life
So many great points here! I know someone who personally got a lifetime ban for calling a dev's work lazy. Now, I'm not saying it was right or wrong but there are two sides to every coin. Some players find certain bugs more annoying to them than others, they report them, and they go unfixed. These unfixed issues that are allowed to go unacknowledged really is the problem from what I've seen and know. I can appreciate that some bugs take time and some get priority over others. I do think STO needs a concrete list of known bugs and the dev team needs to be accountable for those bugs. Discussing them with players and working towards getting what needs to be fixed and yet acknowledging that there are others that they will get around to. This list would need to be constantly upgraded and it would require both patience and restraint by both the players and dev's dealing with it. One thing that is clearly seen from my prospective is, that the developers of STO treat most feedback on bugs as an attack on their work. That needs to change!
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Yes, communication is a two-way thing. And yes, fan reactions tend to be quite polarizing.
I will admit that I probably err on the side of cutting Cryptic a lot of slack. Most bugs don't bug me, if they're minor glitches that don't stop me from playing the game.
If something really annoys me, I put in a bug report or post a criticism on the forums... and then promptly forget about it. Because it'll get fixed when it gets fixed, if it's on the schedule to be fixed. My idea of a serious bug might not be their idea of a serious bug. I am a customer and I do have a say, but there are competing priorities they have to juggle. That's just life, folks. We all have to-do's that turn into never-do's.
I'm an IT guy. I'm not a true programmer, but I have a basic concept about what's involved. So I know from experience that sometimes simple fixes are anything but simple. And I bring that understanding to my experience on the forums and playing the game.
So it's interesting to listen to Geko talk about the development process and about the business decisions that go into what updates make the cut and what doesn't. As an IT guy, I can relate to that.
On the other hand, I did cancel my sub for a few months prior to F2P out of my own dissatisfaction with how that was being handled, so I am not a total Cryptic cheerleader either. And I am rather free with my opinions when I think something could be better
Crafting, for example. And wasn't it interesting to hear Geko say that a Crafting update now has some momentum and will likely happen sooner than later?
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
I had not idea that Cryptic was hiding a space set within the crafting system.
Link: Aegis Technological Research
My character Tsin'xing
My most recent notable works are the characters of Tal'Zerash, Ordherin, and Vorian in StarCraft Universe and as Cenobite Torturer, Demonic Shaman, (Western) Gunblade, and Steampunk Electrician in Heroes of Newerth.
I am very affordable and I am a STO player so I'm sure we can work something out. Contact info at Cryptic is scant so hopefully Al and the team will notice this post and, if interested, contact me for further discussion.
Heretic actively solicited the forums about what kinds of things we'd like to see in the DOFF system. He was very candid with us about the things they could do and the things that weren't going to happen. Players were able to dialogue with Heretic and some of us were really geeked about it when it was released. I'm hooked on DOFFing to this day and I still want Cryptic to keep expanding the Commendation system.
Even beyond the DOFF system itself, some other good things came out of that. Cryptic was able to arrange a marriage between the DOFF system and the ship interiors to make interiors interactive and somewhat interesting.
And, inevitably, the bad... Heretic fully expected that they would be able to create a First Officer and Department Heads system. But it didn't happen. There are still people asking for it. (Me included.) And others who think Cryptic broke a promise by not delivering one. But you know what? It may never happen. People think certain DOFFs contribute to too much power creep as it is... FO & DH would likely just compound that. And maybe it's not really something that sells Zen, directly or indirectly.
And that's why we won't get any say in Crafting. Unrealized expectations. There will not be a dialogue and there will not be any solicitation of ideas like with the DOFF system. It's going to show up in a Dev Blog and then on Tribble. We're probably going to get a "gem enhancement" system like CoH, Champs, and Neverwinter. It may not have that Trek Engineering/Kitbashing feel. And some of us are really not going to like it, no matter what they do.
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
And that's the nail on the head, actually. There are people on both sides of the community that can't accept that, that can't accept that other people don't like what they do or do like what they don't.
It is, unfortunately, human nature.
Actually, it reminds me of a conversation I had the other day where I observed that 24th (25th) century humans were the most 'alien' race on Star Trek because they were the most different from modern humans; we're more like the Cardassians with their 'end justifies the means', the Ferengi with their 'profit', even the Romulans with 'underhandedness' and the occasional brutality of Klingons than we are the idealized, saint-like humans we see so often on Star Trek...
^Words that every player should keep in mind, especially whenever there's a problem with the game...
Tal'Shiar/Reman Resistance/Romulan Nemesis uniform, pls.
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7403/13262502435_5604548f2c_o.png
Your TOS Fu is weak.
The original pilot was The Menagerie. The original cut of it was 75 minutes long (GR hedged his bet in that if it was ultimately dropped by the NBC Network - he had a deal to do a limited theatre release as a science fiction film. (It was cut to 50 minutes - the length of an hour long TV program at the time - for presentation to NBC execs.)
GR likes to also claim that NBC thought it was 'too cerebral'; but it had a couple of issues as far as NBC was concerned:
1) The budget was VERY high even for a pilot and there was the fear that Desilu couldn't produce a watchable episode weekly for the budget they would ultimately be given should the series be greenlight. (IE they wanted REAL proof they could make an actual usable episode within the actual weekly budget they would have.)
2) The network wasn't sure that the visual effects needed could be done quick enough to deliver an episode on a weekly basis to the network.
So, they commissioned a second pilot ("Where No Man Has Gone Before") with the actual weekly budget, etc, - monitored the production/editing time for the VFX, etc. and ultimately made the decision to greenlight the series. They DID give Desilu some lead time, and they had 5 episodes in various stages of production, and three ready to air by the time Star Trek's premiere date hit.
The first 'regular' TV episode filmed on the Desilu soundstage was "The Corbomite Maneuver" (it was the 9th episode aired due to the amount of VFX needed for it.) Of the episodes they had ready to go, NBC decided the 5th episode filmed ("The Man Trap") would be the premiere episode.
The reuse/re-editing of the (then unaired) pilot footage from "The Cage" to create the two-part episode "The Menagerie" was due to a number of factors:
1) NBC spent A LOT of money for it, and they wanted to find a way to get some return out of that investment.
2) Desilu was starting to have issues making sure there WAS a new episode available per the weekly schedule - and doing what they did actually gained them some time in that schedule and allowed them to 'catch up' a bit.
So, in the end, there were two pilots made for the original Star Trek, but there were a couple of different edited versions for both (one version of "Where No Man Has Gone Before" had 'Quinn Martian' style tag bumpers for when they came back from a commercial, etc.)
It may seem overkill, but there was just SO MUCH stated with that TOS trivia question that was so wrong, it bothered the Trek Nerd in me.
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..."
This guy gets it.
CRYPTIC: Seasons around dedicated adventure zones are worthless to me. They lag, I have to play on lowest settings, they're just MMO inception. It's a virtual world within a virtual word! OooOOooOOooOh! I spent one day in the sphere, I'm not going back.
I already avoided new romulus because it was boring and grindy.
I had no reason to go to Deferra or Nimbus because people's idea of single player content is 6 missions per year, the majority of which require you to walk a block and say one thing to one guy, and then reward you a turret, and then there's never any more follow up unless you just decide you want another turret. Which would be unwise, because the turret can only be a blue mk XI as an absolute maximum, and is completely obsolete in any competetive pvp, rendering any neat novel mechanic it introduced to nothing more than novelty vanity item.
And now I have the dyson sphere, something that, even though my computer meets the minimum system requirements for the game, the game has been upgraded to the extent that the sphere is unplayably laggy for me now.
All the coolest parts of the game have been abandoned. Why are there no tholian/elachi versions of Kerrat? Will we ever catch other reps' level of content up to the level Omega and the borg have? Will the borg ever get more attention and develop more credibility as a threat, or at least have their story advanced? Then there's Nukara, the unloved middle child. But then again, the poor Elachi only get like 3 queued events, too. We've got more fleet holdings than the starbase for all these enemies to attack, people. Put them to use. I'd love to fly a fighter, chasing tholian widows between laser drills on the dilithium mine, or defend a blacked out embassy from the elachi or borg by the glow of our terrarium with the octopus breaking out and becoming an ally or assimilated/corrupted boss for the final battle, based on how well the team did on the optionals or something. For ship interiors, maybe even a daily where we compete in EV suits against players from the enemy faction to capture and reactivate the systems of a derelict ship for the Lobi crystal consortium as freelance salvage agents like when we mine dilithium, but being paid in Lobi. Bonus points for putting different ones in different exploration clusters spawning randomly like doff jobs, with the ship depending on which lockbox the area was associated with, and maybe an additional Trade CXP reward, or a Trade cxp level based interrupt (like with maxed diplomacy) that lets you talk the ferengi from the Consortium into paying you an extra bit of crystals or something.
Instead, these gorgeous areas are neglected, sitting there solely to be visited when someone wants to buy a kit or a boff that can't be customized.
Why do the captains table, andoria, vulcan, bajor, deferra, utopia planatia have nothing to do? Jeez, turn andoria and rura penthe's surfaces into seasonal settings for the winter event that only become hospitable for long periods of time around the same time as earth winter, then give them both their canon subterranean ground maps and make them alternate hubs for people who don't like ESD zone chat. Really, they should all be hubs so players can station themselves where they please, linked by inter-hub shuttles for fast travel and doffing convenience. Give them better dailies that award large amounts of CXP. Vulcan can be diplomacy, Andoria can be military. Throw in some more minigames that cost/reward GPL than just dabo, maybe some holosuite sims like the new tutorial training program while we're at it. At least tie them into the story somehow! What about class based intro-tutorials, or maybe time travel missions back to your training period? Tac captains get MACO survival training on Andoria, Science captains get secondary education at the academy on Vulcan, Engineers spend time as civil engineers on Bajor learning about alien technology, all of which being unique points in the story where they meet and pick their Tovan/Flores first officer character from an assortment of options before taking a shuttle to starfleet academy for their final training cruise. Maybe, one day, give fleets the option to pick a patron planet or something to base their starbase or future holdings around, maybe with toggle-able racial cosmetic options. That'd be worth a couple hundred thousand dilithium for a change. Lest I even mention the possibility of player housing on all of these worlds, players being able to pick where they're "stationed" upon reaching admiral or something.
Meanwhile, we've learned next to nothing about Tholians or the Elachi, they've gotten equivalent screen time to what they had in the series instead of being expanded upon, but we still stole hundreds of their ships and technology, even had some join us on our ships as doffs. Ditto for the suliban, where are those boffs, where's the opportunity to explore the environment of a Helix that's less a military base and more a refugee camp like in the first half of Mine Enemy, something much more starfleet's MO. But no, let's go ahead and make a new enemy, one that never fired a shot and was one of the dumber episodes in trek history, and just use their inexplicable semi-supposed-advanced nature to explain why they're harder to kill, instead of addressing the almighty endgame damage curve, and then introduce them by having their source of incursion literally just drop out of subspace onto our heads because the romulans were dumb enough to gamble their new, not even fully moved into homeworld by recreating the same planet's most recent extinction event.
Who's making these choices? Why are you making more of the same undesirable grind zone stuff than expanding gems you have like canon planets, ship interiors, your storyline, rep and fleet content (as in events and missions and story progression, not more stuff to buy)? For god's sake, a quick google confirms that first contact missions have been broken since 2010, you have no business making a fourth adventure zone with bugs that old!
What got me into this game was the customization. That I could fly a ship I picked, designed, and set up with a crew I picked and trained my way, in a diverse and expansive universe. If I wanted to fight Borg, I could, or I could go and do diplomacy in exploration clusters, or PvP klingon characters. Now, all our new content is "be a romulan, enjoy the dyson sphere or try again in another half year!"
That's my honest feedback. Nobody's Hitler, someone would just rather take the path of least resistance forward instead of detailing and repairing and finishing their old work first.
It's good to know that our legit criticisms can be inflated on the other side of the fence.
That's ultimately the main thing that stands out the most. Any legit concern raised by a player is instantly taken by the dev team as an attack on their work and a direct insult. The longer this continues, the more distance there will be between the players and the STO team.
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I think Al was being a little hyperbolic. I've never heard anyone around the office ask "How many posts to Hitler." But there is an expectation (just or not) that any comment by a Dev will be twisted, read into, and ultimately turned around to bite us in the butts.
I would just like to say that I do not believe that you are responsible for massive genocide, Taco. Not seeming to give a TRIBBLE about any connection between the art team and the Foundry... yes. But I don't think you are responsible for gassing human beings to purify the Volk. Just my two cents. Please don't misunderstand my critique, since it's obvious that your bosses determine your schedule, and they don't give a TRIBBLE about the Foundry, so enough said.
But you are not Hitler, for the record. You are not evil.
And read again.
http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
wow.
10chars
Some random thoughts:
Andoria ground can be easily turned into a Borg stf map, which mirrors the crash site in the Enterprise episode "Regeneration". Players have to stop the Borg from sending out a signal.
Vulcan ground can be easily turned into a Tal Shiar invasion map, which can be used to give players Romulan marks. As a result of using the Iconian gate, the Tal Shiar have managed to setup some sort of foothold situation.
Starbase 39 could use a tailor, Romulan duty officer store, and base exclusive missions.
Bajor: Hathon has tons of empty stores, which could use duty officer missions, featured episodes, etc... Cryptic could add a map exclusive holodeck mission, which will allow people to earn some exclusive Bajoran items.
Utopia Planitia Yards could be used as a PvP platform. When players walk along one of the lower decks, they can access PvP exclusive space and ground gear. If you add in a small social section, PvP players can gather to talk about strategy and tips. Across one of the ceiling monitors, the game could display player stats and results from recent PvP encounters. Maybe players can get some exclusive PvP duty officer missions, which will give them some PvP consumables.
I could go on for hours.
I think there should be a little give and take with the respect. There are times people don't like Cryptic, people love to hate on EA, and there are tons of other companies out there that get some well deserved flak as well. Taking things personally is when things get out of hand. You may work for Cryptic/PWE but taking offense to someone putting down your company shouldn't prevent you from doing your job and continuing the work that you do. People flaming EA doesn't stop them from buying their games. People flaming Cryptic isn't going to stop people from spending money on your games either. At the end of the day, we are your customers and you are at your job. Once you clock out, you forget about your work, go home, and enjoy whatever you do in your off time, just like the rest of us. In the end, we all want what's best for STO. We all just have our own vision of that is.
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People criticizing Cryptic does stop Devs from posting.
And for the record, if I were the only competent person on the team (which I most certainly am not), and people were telling me that Cryptic was incompetent, I would still take some of that personally. That doesn't mean I'm going to break down into a quivering pile of self loathing. I can take it, but I am a Human, not Vulcan. My work is my work, and you can tell me all day that I shouldn't feel anything when people tell me it's bad, but feelings are not something I have a ton of control over.
Taco:
Take ten points off your blood pressure and stop reading the forums for the night, lol. Enjoy a well earned night at home. Most of us enjoy what you all put out for the playerbase!
Cheerio!
I hope the Devs read that.
That geko guy looks like he's ready to go postal.
RIP KDF and PvP 2014-07-17 Season 9.5 - Death by Dev