Aside from that, I have just started playing STO and am getting the hang of things slowly. I'm really excited to get to know you all and hopefully I will get time soon to come in-game and chat!
If you have any questions for me, feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer.
I look forward to hearing from you!
Welcome aboard, Captain! You've got an interesting ride ahead of you. Don't be a stranger on the forums while you're experiencing it.
Former moderator of these forums. Lifetime sub since before launch. Been here since before public betas. Foundry author of "Franklin Drake Must Die".
I can appreciate PW's desire to use a Steam-esque DRM management suite to organize their games. Ubisoft and EA have also been interested in doing this. While I applaud anyone that wants to compete with Steam, as it needs competition, I'd rather see more broad opt-in programs rather than a big mix of proprietary systems designed principally with a single publisher's games in mind.
As it stands, I will avoid Arc as I do Origin and the Ubisoft DRM. I simply don't want a lot of DRM systems sitting on my harddrive, each managing one or two games. That means trying to avoid purchasing games that require these unnecessary systems as well.
My name is Anthony and I am the new Community Manager for Arc.
Sooo... What happened to dezstravus? I know he was here for arc and only for arc. Is he okay? Did the community cause him mental anguish to the point where he was no longer able to withstand the poisonous and toxic arc remarks of the sto community?
Well I hope you are more durable. My condolences on your new position.
My name is Anthony and I am the new Community Manager for Arc. I wanted to come and introduce myself to you all, and to let you know that I've been closely monitoring the forums and taking in all of your feedback. I know many of you have questions and concerns, so I will be doing my best to answer them as they come in. I am very excited to be a part of the community and will be working closely with all of you to help make Arc the best possible experience you can have. If you haven't already, go ahead and drop by the Arc FAQ page that we put up recently. This will give you a general guideline on what we plan to offer and where we are currently with our new beta build. Remember, we're always open to feedback and even if you don't get a direct response, I have more than likely taken note and passed it on to the appropriate people!
Aside from that, I have just started playing STO and am getting the hang of things slowly. I'm really excited to get to know you all and hopefully I will get time soon to come in-game and chat!
If you have any questions for me, feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer.
I look forward to hearing from you!
ARC is a waste of space.
For me all I would ever use it for is launch game. The rest of the stuff, I just look on the forums with Firefox.
The stupid thing is still running in the background.
I am currently downloading STO through it.
I can't run CO or even launch it because ARC is hoging all the bandwidth.
With the normal launcher, I can run 2 sessions at once.
This is the new version, it is a heap of S>>>, just like the previous version.
the pages are badly laid out.
It's hard to navigate through.Finding anything is a nightmare.
the scroll bar at the side sometimes vanishes.
the wiki is not attached to ARC but merely a link.
the guides, just like in CO are BUY THIS, not the guides from the forums.
News ? I get from forums
Billing ? I can do from forums
Browse ? I DON'T want to browse in game.
Support ? JUst like the button on the website which sends you into a loop?
Connect ? I can do that ingame already ->friends
First off - welcome and congrats! Also, I hope you enjoy the game as much I do.
I did read the FAQ, but I couldn't find the answers to the questions below.
1. If I were to install Arc, would I need to re-install STO? Sadly, this is a deal-breaker for me - for this month at least.
2. How much longer will the bonus stuff (like the Khan outfit etc.) be available for?
Best of luck with it, sparkiesoft!
I can answer those with my own anecdotal experience.
1) If you installed STO to the default location in C:\Program Files, then you probably don't need to redownload the client. However if you didn't, it won't pick it up right.
2) Bonus stuff is available until the 27th.
IMO, the Arc client has so many simple usability bugs that could have been taken care of with foresight. Reminds me of the company I work for. Bugs/issues I mention are ignored unless a customer complains about them.
Not properly detecting an STO install (since it tries to in the first place), and saving login credentials per-machine basis (HUGE no-no), are just a few of the issues you'll run into.
Thanks for your reply Phoenix841, I appreciate it. I'm definitely going to try it out, and now I know when to do it and what to expect (to some degree).
I tried to keep every version of the star trek online .exe as I'm sure lots of us players did so when something TRIBBLE like this happened we could work around it.
If I'm forced to use your crappy arc add enabled launcher to play star trek I will stop immediately. No more of my money for cryptic or pw.
You asked for feedback, here it is.
Also, someone please explain why ARC is even involved in this? Sounds like pw is getting greedy and selling our souls for a little extra $$ for coffee money.
IIRC, sto was only recently added to steam so if you have an OLDER physical copy you /should/ be able to install the client that way. Now, how long that is true and how long until arc is forced on us to log in ala other pwe games depends 100% on two groups
1: People willing to say "no", continue to play but refuse to buy store items, INCLUDING items from the exchange.
2: The apologists who defend everything pwe/cryptic do.
ROTFL for the rest of the response... glad someone else can laugh at this stuff.
Thanks for the good idea in number one about the exchange... I'm already boycotting any more actual cash input into this game. That's my way of saying either stop stealing my money by changing the rules, or give us a way to exchange things we purchased with marks and dilithium so we can get different things that go with the new rules. I'm bored of making builds that are trash before they are complete, and I want my marks (time) and dilithium (cash investment) back when incompetent game design makes my plans obsolete.
But I hadn't thought about the exchange. If ARC goes ahead I'll boycott supporting OTHER PEOPLE'S purchases as well. If ARC becomes mandatory I can't see playing at all.
- Of course if they force ARC on customers with a life time subscription then it would be a violation of contract to deny service because customers refused to start using a new product. That would be solid grounds for a class action lawsuit, and I would be more than happy to organize a legal challenge.
I can answer those with my own anecdotal experience.
1) If you installed STO to the default location in C:\Program Files, then you probably don't need to redownload the client. However if you didn't, it won't pick it up right.
2) Bonus stuff is available until the 27th.
IMO, the Arc client has so many simple usability bugs that could have been taken care of with foresight. Reminds me of the company I work for. Bugs/issues I mention are ignored unless a customer complains about them.
Not properly detecting an STO install (since it tries to in the first place), and saving login credentials per-machine basis (HUGE no-no), are just a few of the issues you'll run into.
Per machine and not per account? So if someone with even a different Windows login can login to our account? Ouch if that's true. I don't have Arc on my machine anymore and got rid of the last remains of it using Malwarebytes that found the left over.
It's bad enough they make it such a cryptic way to find the items in the tailor too. Yes, pun intended.
_____
Lifetime no longer gives a forum title. That should be updated on the Lifetime page that mentions what you get. PMing the CSR doesn't work neither.
Welcome to STO and to what must be a tough position to fill.
As you have seen in the threads involving Arc, there are next to no support for it from the forum dwelling parts of the STO community. Someone might argue and give me a statistics number of how small % of the playerbase that is. OK maybe it's not the biggest part of the playerbase perhaps, but those who bother to post here are those who are still "passionate" (thanks BranFlakes for that word) and caring for Star Trek Online, I know I am. This is the kind of players that are more likely to have long term investments in the game, both a lot of time and real money.
The rest of the playerbase can probably be divided into categories and labeled accordingly also, but let's just divide them into two for now: The silent forum dwellers and The in-game only players. The latter being those who probably is gonna be the main target audience for Arc, but they are also most likely the kind of players that will already have moved on to another game long before Arc will be fully live.
The above may not seem important but please keep that in mind when trying to herd us.
Now some feedback.. and I will throw in facts about Steam too, as I've learned that at this point Steam will be the only way for us to only play STO and avoid Arc in the future.
The selection of which game I am gonna play takes place the moment I choose which icon / shortcut to click from the desktop.
This is an important thing to keep with Arc I think, and if you look at similar "bloatware" like Steam you'll see that you can still do that. By making a shortcut directly to the games files or alternatively, if you already have opened Steam for some reason you can select the desired game directly from the Steam quick access icon (which launches the game without further notice). That way I can choose to launch the features of Steam or the game only, overlay and community features can also be disabled in settings.
Granted that software like Steam have had years and thousands of developing hours and collecting of player feedback to make it what it is today, and to compare Steam with Arc is way unfair. BUT it will remain an option for us that won't use Arc in the future and hence the comparison.
Another thing is the ability to have two STO clients running at the same time, and as I understand from your Arc FAQ page that will not be possible. This would also have to change for me to ever consider try Arc on my PC.
I'm not very concerned about computer resources for myself as my PC is still not ancient. But I must have the option to disable everything unnecessary when playing a game, and that means no Arc running in the background if that is my preference.
So in short here is a couple of my concerns that would have to change before I go ahead and try Arc to then be able give more feedback:
* STO must have the ability to be launched without Arc also launching (too keep running in the background). Alternatively, the player must be able to close Arc without disturbing the STO process/es.
* The ability to run more than one STO client at the same time must stay.
Steam is my last resort to be able keep on playing STO in the future if the above isn't corrected for starters, and below is some additional Wikipedia facts about Steam.
Steam is a digital distribution, digital rights management, multiplayer, and communications platform developed by Valve Corporation. It is used to distribute games and related media online, from small independent developers to larger software houses. In October 2012, Valve expanded the service to include non-gaming software. Steam provides the user with installation and automatic management of software across multiple computers, as well as community features such as friends lists and groups, cloud saving, and in-game voice and chat functionality. The software provides a freely available application programming interface (API), Steamworks, that developers can take advantage of to integrate many of Steam's functions within their software products, including copy protection, networking and matchmaking, in-game achievements and micro-transactions, and support for user-created content through Steam Workshop.
Developer(s): Valve Corporation
Initial release Windows: September 12, 2003
Mac OS X: May 12, 2010
Linux: February 14, 2013
Mobile: January 26, 2012
Stable release API: v012
Development status: Active
Platform Desktop Client:
Microsoft Windows
OS X
Linux
Limited Client:
PlayStation 3
iOS
Android
Steam Machine Client:
SteamOS
Available in: 25 languages
I'm not going to go into the whole 'do we need another Steam' debate here. But for the intrest in bug testing & such a few things I've noticed with ARC that feel 'missing'.
1) No scrolling. I can't use my scroll wheel, arrow keys, etc to scroll in the ARC window. I have to click & drag on the tiny scroll bar. Due to the size of the scroll bar I feel this is more a bug then an oversight.
2) Quick Launch. I use Steam (and Origin) but when I do I rarely actually open the program window. It sits microized down by the clock. When I want to play a game I just right-click the Steam icon and pick the game I want to play. It simple & easy to do. However with ARC I have to open up the program window to get to launch STO. So for now just clicking on the desktop icon for STO is way easier.
3) Mail doesn't seem to be mail. The mail system in ARC doesn't appear to be hooked up to the STO mail system. In order for me to check my in-game mail I still have to go in-game. I know that for a while we could check mail on the STO website, so getting your mail out-of-game is possible, just not implemented.
Why do you need to run two instances of STO at the same time on the same machine? I can't parse that one.
As for "bloatware", I can only offer anecdotal evidence, as I obviously am unqualified to pry into the software and tell exactly what it's doing. However, I can say that when I launch STO through Arc, there's a period of about two or three minutes where my system is slowed to a crawl. After that, resource allocation appears to be complete, and play can resume at its normal pace. (When I have to use Arc these days, I just wait until the machine catches up.) This slowdown does not recur when I change toons or accounts, just when I start STO.
Steam does not suffer from this - any more. (When the future launcher requirement was first announced, which I believe was one or two Steam versions ago, it slowed my system down badly. This appears to no longer be the case, which is appreciated.) It is my hope that whatever occurred to make Steam less of a core hog can be applied to Arc in the future.
There is one way in which Arc definitely qualifies as bloatware, IMO - that's the function that lets you access the Net during gameplay. Arc wants to use IE, which is the very heart of the bloatware concept (Microsoft seems to assume that because a function for their browser exists, you must want to use it, and insists on loading all sorts of TRIBBLE on startup every time. Mozilla is more reasonable, and lets the end user decide what parts of Firefox they want to actually run).
Now some feedback.. and I will throw in facts about Steam too, as I've learned that at this point Steam will be the only way for us to only play STO and avoid Arc in the future.
...snip...
Another thing is the ability to have two STO clients running at the same time, and as I understand from your Arc FAQ page that will not be possible. This would also have to change for me to ever consider try Arc on my PC.
...snip...
* STO must have the ability to be launched without Arc also launching (too keep running in the background). Alternatively, the player must be able to close Arc without disturbing the STO process/es.
* The ability to run more than one STO client at the same time must stay.
Steam is my last resort to be able keep on playing STO in the future if the above isn't corrected for starters, and below is some additional Wikipedia facts about Steam.
Steam isn't an option. You can't launch the same game more than once, nor can you launch other steam games. Perhaps there are exceptions, but I've tried with other games and it doesn't work. I don't have my STO installed via Steam and don't intend to (unless Arc is forced).
EDIT: I just thought about it, and some games can be launched directly outside of Steam, even if they were installed by it. That would counter the issues I just mentioned. I still don't like the lack of install location customization, but I can deal with that if I have to use Steam.
Why do you need to run two instances of STO at the same time on the same machine? I can't parse that one.
Logging into Tribble and Holodeck at the same time for testing and comparison. I've done it several times before. Saves time having to reload the client for a quick Tribble test.
My feedback is that Arc is the single biggest resource hog on my computer. Why? To collect info about me and send it to marketing??
At least disable Arcbrowser.exe when playing a game it's just sitting there doing and collecting god knows what. Really inefficient and unnecessary extra program taking up resources.
The recent patch for Season 8.5 took about 5 minutes on this computer using the old launcher (through Steam), trying it with the Arc launcher (same machine, same internet connection, same bandwidth/processor/ect load from other programs) took over an HOUR. I do not see why I would ever use Arc again, and if it is "forced" on me (either by saying you won't get updates through any other existing launcher, not letting any other launcher work, or, as I suspect that the Arc people will try, only allowing some content if you use Arc) I will find some other game to play. While I will miss STO, I have no desire for spyware/bloatware on my computer.
I am perfectly fine with promotional items (like the Khan uniforms) given away exclusively through Arc (and MAY download it long enough to grab them in the future before removing it completely from my system. What I am NOT ok with is these "promotional items" being marketed as something that they are clearly not (and clearly NEVER were intended to be) I.E. Account Unlocks in this case.
I saw, with this Khan promotion, what the Future of STO is planned to be, and I am NOT amused.
Edit: I recently watched a Podcast where one of the individuals, for the first time since starting the series, was unable to do things they had in the past and was having serious (I am talking well over a minute) lag with chat and the video. The only difference this last time you may ask??? Arc!!!
Ok. I've not read all 92 pages of comments in this thread, but I have two observations about this version of Arc over the last one, not sure if they have already been mentioned.
1. When my machine has been idle for a while, Arc starts to use up alot of CPU time, at one point after leving my computer alone and doing nothing for a couple of hours, I came back to find my computer very sluggish, pulled up the task manager and Arc was using 92% of the cpu. I know that this machine only has a core 2 duo CPU, but I'm not sure why Arc would need to use that much processor time.
2. More of an anoyance here. The previouse version, when comming to the forum from within Arc, would have me logged into the forum, in this version, I need to log in manualy.
TL;DR: Arc is badly programmed spyware that does nothing you couldn't do already.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
So you lovely gentlemen just sent me an email trying to get me to download arc, so I thought I'd put my response here as feedback. It's a piece of TRIBBLE, I don't want it, nobody does, stop trying to force it.
ARC---65-100MB RAM consuming spyware (really, why does it need to monitor things? I don't want ANY program to monitor things other than the OS) that prevents STO from running properly....
Seriously? I'd much rather have that memory used for things that is useful. Especially since:
1) ARC has to be run as administrator to operate properly
2) It causes STO to lockup---or just take 5+ minutes to load some maps causing me to have to terminate the process, and restart to have the same item load within 2 seconds.
OR... I could NOT run arc, and get rid of the issues. Plus, all it does is run the actual login program for the game, which can be run manually (and needs to be since arc messes things up). All I'm doing is running a program to take up more memory--it's the same number of clicks to get STO open with or without arc. It's only redeeming factor is saving the password so I don't have to enter it all the time--and really, it loses that when I have to terminate STO every hour just to have maps load.
Hmm........Monday, January 27 Arc had some sort of update. Ever since then I have had a lot of lag and several disconnects in the game with Arc running. Today I am playing without ever having launched Arc after booting my computer and so far no lag whatsoever. Before I thought it was just the game because I could exit it, close Arc, then launch the game without it and still have lag. I'm guessing Arc didn't shut itself down fully.
Something screwed up in the Arc update me thinks. Until that update, everything ran fine with Arc running. :mad:
Ok, so I'm a sucker for costumes so considering the give-away, even though I normally use Steam and didn't need Arc, I decided to give it a go..
I'll start out with the good part: after installation, Arc actually detected my STO installation through Steam, so I didn't have to download or install a second copy of STO.. kudos on that since the STO installation is actually in one of steam's sub directories..
As for the bad however: 2 words: resource usage.
I don't really care about not being able to close the process down like a launcher after starting STO, that's to be expected if Arc is meant to offer more steam like functions such as an integrated in the future.. However, Arc has 2 processes, each which uses a third to half more then the single process running steam.. and that's ignoring the fact that Steam already fits a lot more functionality within that memory footprint.. it's not exactly promising considering many features are yet to be added to Arc...
Finally, the ugly: the integrated browser!
I suspect this is an IE integrated browser object or so because on almost every page Arc displays I see whole parts of the page that do not show any content, instead giving the following error message
The Adobe Flash Player or an HTML 5 supported browser is required for video playback.
I don't use Internet explorer, I always use Chrome which has a much safer integrated flash player.. so I won't be installing an insecure standalone flash player for a browser I don't use..
The weirdest part is that when I go to the Arc website in Internet Explorer itself, those black boxes actually do load correctly! Instead of using flash, it uses the HTML5 player.. the integrated browser used by Arc however, doesn't seem to support this..
I don't know how Steam handles this, but everything in it is displayed correctly.. either they don't rely on flash and have moved to HTML5 (assuming their embedded player supports it) or their embedded browser has its own flash player.. in any case, no flash doesn't make a difference to steam, but with Arc you're better off with a standalone browser...
The verdict? I like the interface, it's simple and clean, but since I already have an existing investment in Steam and Arc doesn't really offer any integration with STO that steam doesn't, I won't be using it. I'll keep it installed, in case it gets some cool features like the old mail integration with the forums we used to have..
Considering its resource hungry nature however the first thing I did was disable auto start on system start-up.. unlike steam this isn't an app that I feel safe running in the background all the time.
I do like the new website, but since the Arc client can't even properly display it, I'll stick to a browser for that..
I really like the ARC client. I have been using it for Neverwinter and I also have the start button for Star Trek as well. I have not used it yet but I am sure it will work just as good. The only suggestion that I can make is the following.
On Neverwinter you can send people on mission or quests. They are people you have hired in your professions. It would be cool to do this thru a gateway on Star Trek as well with the Duty Officers. Other than this and even if it is never an option ARC is still great and thank you for a really good client program.
Thank you all for the warm welcomes, I really appreciate it. I know a lot of you have questions, so I'll see what I can answer.
1) A lot of you have expressed concerned with dual clients running and I wanted to let you know that we are aware of this, and will let you know when we get more updates regarding this. Arc is still in beta, so a lot of functionality is either not implemented yet, or is being worked on.
2) We're currently looking at the resources it's using to see if we can find any potential issues.
3) I've read a good amount of issues regarding the scroll bar in Arc. I've brought that up with the rest of the team, so we are also aware of that.
If I missed anything else, feel free to point it out. I'm constantly browsing the forums looking for any and all feedback I can. I understand all of your concerns and I do want you to know that I'm elevating all of your feedback to the right people. Once again, thank you all and I hope to hear from you soon!
I've tried arc and I went in with an open mind, I liked the setup and the installing of games.... However every game I launch with it is much slower than just running them on their own. So I uninstalled it and went back to using the launcher, I know a lot of people are worried that using arc is somehow running in the background, people are worried that you are basically using spyware masquerading as a launcher, they worry that the company they put money and time into is now going all shady, it would be nice if a dev wrote an article allaying people's fears by categorically telling us in plain English with no spin that your not spying on our systems with this in any way. Till this happens a lot will still want it to be optional and the day it does become mandatory they will leave a lot of them very lucrative paying customers, please concider that.
Comments
Welcome aboard, Captain! You've got an interesting ride ahead of you. Don't be a stranger on the forums while you're experiencing it.
As it stands, I will avoid Arc as I do Origin and the Ubisoft DRM. I simply don't want a lot of DRM systems sitting on my harddrive, each managing one or two games. That means trying to avoid purchasing games that require these unnecessary systems as well.
Sooo... What happened to dezstravus? I know he was here for arc and only for arc. Is he okay? Did the community cause him mental anguish to the point where he was no longer able to withstand the poisonous and toxic arc remarks of the sto community?
Well I hope you are more durable. My condolences on your new position.
ARC is a waste of space.
For me all I would ever use it for is launch game. The rest of the stuff, I just look on the forums with Firefox.
The stupid thing is still running in the background.
I am currently downloading STO through it.
I can't run CO or even launch it because ARC is hoging all the bandwidth.
With the normal launcher, I can run 2 sessions at once.
This is the new version, it is a heap of S>>>, just like the previous version.
the pages are badly laid out.
It's hard to navigate through.Finding anything is a nightmare.
the scroll bar at the side sometimes vanishes.
the wiki is not attached to ARC but merely a link.
the guides, just like in CO are BUY THIS, not the guides from the forums.
News ? I get from forums
Billing ? I can do from forums
Browse ? I DON'T want to browse in game.
Support ? JUst like the button on the website which sends you into a loop?
Connect ? I can do that ingame already ->friends
Notifications ?I get from the forums
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
^ this. If STO ever were to become arc only, i'd stop playing. And not just because of the arc, but arc would be the last drop for me with this game.
First off - welcome and congrats! Also, I hope you enjoy the game as much I do.
I did read the FAQ, but I couldn't find the answers to the questions below.
1. If I were to install Arc, would I need to re-install STO? Sadly, this is a deal-breaker for me - for this month at least.
2. How much longer will the bonus stuff (like the Khan outfit etc.) be available for?
Best of luck with it, sparkiesoft!
I can answer those with my own anecdotal experience.
1) If you installed STO to the default location in C:\Program Files, then you probably don't need to redownload the client. However if you didn't, it won't pick it up right.
2) Bonus stuff is available until the 27th.
IMO, the Arc client has so many simple usability bugs that could have been taken care of with foresight. Reminds me of the company I work for. Bugs/issues I mention are ignored unless a customer complains about them.
Not properly detecting an STO install (since it tries to in the first place), and saving login credentials per-machine basis (HUGE no-no), are just a few of the issues you'll run into.
I CONTINUE to play WITHOUT ARC!
I tried to keep every version of the star trek online .exe as I'm sure lots of us players did so when something TRIBBLE like this happened we could work around it.
If I'm forced to use your crappy arc add enabled launcher to play star trek I will stop immediately. No more of my money for cryptic or pw.
You asked for feedback, here it is.
Also, someone please explain why ARC is even involved in this? Sounds like pw is getting greedy and selling our souls for a little extra $$ for coffee money.
ROTFL for the rest of the response... glad someone else can laugh at this stuff.
Thanks for the good idea in number one about the exchange... I'm already boycotting any more actual cash input into this game. That's my way of saying either stop stealing my money by changing the rules, or give us a way to exchange things we purchased with marks and dilithium so we can get different things that go with the new rules. I'm bored of making builds that are trash before they are complete, and I want my marks (time) and dilithium (cash investment) back when incompetent game design makes my plans obsolete.
But I hadn't thought about the exchange. If ARC goes ahead I'll boycott supporting OTHER PEOPLE'S purchases as well. If ARC becomes mandatory I can't see playing at all.
Nerfing is Fraud...
Per machine and not per account? So if someone with even a different Windows login can login to our account? Ouch if that's true. I don't have Arc on my machine anymore and got rid of the last remains of it using Malwarebytes that found the left over.
It's bad enough they make it such a cryptic way to find the items in the tailor too. Yes, pun intended.
Lifetime no longer gives a forum title. That should be updated on the Lifetime page that mentions what you get. PMing the CSR doesn't work neither.
Welcome to STO and to what must be a tough position to fill.
As you have seen in the threads involving Arc, there are next to no support for it from the forum dwelling parts of the STO community. Someone might argue and give me a statistics number of how small % of the playerbase that is. OK maybe it's not the biggest part of the playerbase perhaps, but those who bother to post here are those who are still "passionate" (thanks BranFlakes for that word) and caring for Star Trek Online, I know I am. This is the kind of players that are more likely to have long term investments in the game, both a lot of time and real money.
The rest of the playerbase can probably be divided into categories and labeled accordingly also, but let's just divide them into two for now: The silent forum dwellers and The in-game only players. The latter being those who probably is gonna be the main target audience for Arc, but they are also most likely the kind of players that will already have moved on to another game long before Arc will be fully live.
The above may not seem important but please keep that in mind when trying to herd us.
Now some feedback.. and I will throw in facts about Steam too, as I've learned that at this point Steam will be the only way for us to only play STO and avoid Arc in the future.
The selection of which game I am gonna play takes place the moment I choose which icon / shortcut to click from the desktop.
This is an important thing to keep with Arc I think, and if you look at similar "bloatware" like Steam you'll see that you can still do that. By making a shortcut directly to the games files or alternatively, if you already have opened Steam for some reason you can select the desired game directly from the Steam quick access icon (which launches the game without further notice). That way I can choose to launch the features of Steam or the game only, overlay and community features can also be disabled in settings.
Granted that software like Steam have had years and thousands of developing hours and collecting of player feedback to make it what it is today, and to compare Steam with Arc is way unfair. BUT it will remain an option for us that won't use Arc in the future and hence the comparison.
Another thing is the ability to have two STO clients running at the same time, and as I understand from your Arc FAQ page that will not be possible. This would also have to change for me to ever consider try Arc on my PC.
I'm not very concerned about computer resources for myself as my PC is still not ancient. But I must have the option to disable everything unnecessary when playing a game, and that means no Arc running in the background if that is my preference.
So in short here is a couple of my concerns that would have to change before I go ahead and try Arc to then be able give more feedback:
* STO must have the ability to be launched without Arc also launching (too keep running in the background). Alternatively, the player must be able to close Arc without disturbing the STO process/es.
* The ability to run more than one STO client at the same time must stay.
Steam is my last resort to be able keep on playing STO in the future if the above isn't corrected for starters, and below is some additional Wikipedia facts about Steam.
From: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_(software) 2014-02-01
useless hard drive space? does not take up that much space, idk how much space you guys got on your pc's....
Their not forcing you to use arc guys. Calm down lol.
1) No scrolling. I can't use my scroll wheel, arrow keys, etc to scroll in the ARC window. I have to click & drag on the tiny scroll bar. Due to the size of the scroll bar I feel this is more a bug then an oversight.
2) Quick Launch. I use Steam (and Origin) but when I do I rarely actually open the program window. It sits microized down by the clock. When I want to play a game I just right-click the Steam icon and pick the game I want to play. It simple & easy to do. However with ARC I have to open up the program window to get to launch STO. So for now just clicking on the desktop icon for STO is way easier.
3) Mail doesn't seem to be mail. The mail system in ARC doesn't appear to be hooked up to the STO mail system. In order for me to check my in-game mail I still have to go in-game. I know that for a while we could check mail on the STO website, so getting your mail out-of-game is possible, just not implemented.
peter
As for "bloatware", I can only offer anecdotal evidence, as I obviously am unqualified to pry into the software and tell exactly what it's doing. However, I can say that when I launch STO through Arc, there's a period of about two or three minutes where my system is slowed to a crawl. After that, resource allocation appears to be complete, and play can resume at its normal pace. (When I have to use Arc these days, I just wait until the machine catches up.) This slowdown does not recur when I change toons or accounts, just when I start STO.
Steam does not suffer from this - any more. (When the future launcher requirement was first announced, which I believe was one or two Steam versions ago, it slowed my system down badly. This appears to no longer be the case, which is appreciated.) It is my hope that whatever occurred to make Steam less of a core hog can be applied to Arc in the future.
There is one way in which Arc definitely qualifies as bloatware, IMO - that's the function that lets you access the Net during gameplay. Arc wants to use IE, which is the very heart of the bloatware concept (Microsoft seems to assume that because a function for their browser exists, you must want to use it, and insists on loading all sorts of TRIBBLE on startup every time. Mozilla is more reasonable, and lets the end user decide what parts of Firefox they want to actually run).
Steam isn't an option. You can't launch the same game more than once, nor can you launch other steam games. Perhaps there are exceptions, but I've tried with other games and it doesn't work. I don't have my STO installed via Steam and don't intend to (unless Arc is forced).
EDIT: I just thought about it, and some games can be launched directly outside of Steam, even if they were installed by it. That would counter the issues I just mentioned. I still don't like the lack of install location customization, but I can deal with that if I have to use Steam.
That was what I found. I reported it here a few pages back: http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?p=14838671
Logging into Tribble and Holodeck at the same time for testing and comparison. I've done it several times before. Saves time having to reload the client for a quick Tribble test.
I have removed it and will not be installing it again.
STO launcher and Gameclient.exe are working just fine now that ARC IS REMOVED!
Thanks for the help on my ticket PWE/Cryptic ... NOT!
At least disable Arcbrowser.exe when playing a game it's just sitting there doing and collecting god knows what. Really inefficient and unnecessary extra program taking up resources.
ArcOSBrowser (32 bit) = 46 MB
Why is the Arc system using so much memory?
...and, ever since I have installed Arc, I have been experiencing game and launcher hesitations.
grrr... I have been having a similar issue.
I am perfectly fine with promotional items (like the Khan uniforms) given away exclusively through Arc (and MAY download it long enough to grab them in the future before removing it completely from my system. What I am NOT ok with is these "promotional items" being marketed as something that they are clearly not (and clearly NEVER were intended to be) I.E. Account Unlocks in this case.
I saw, with this Khan promotion, what the Future of STO is planned to be, and I am NOT amused.
Edit: I recently watched a Podcast where one of the individuals, for the first time since starting the series, was unable to do things they had in the past and was having serious (I am talking well over a minute) lag with chat and the video. The only difference this last time you may ask??? Arc!!!
1. When my machine has been idle for a while, Arc starts to use up alot of CPU time, at one point after leving my computer alone and doing nothing for a couple of hours, I came back to find my computer very sluggish, pulled up the task manager and Arc was using 92% of the cpu. I know that this machine only has a core 2 duo CPU, but I'm not sure why Arc would need to use that much processor time.
2. More of an anoyance here. The previouse version, when comming to the forum from within Arc, would have me logged into the forum, in this version, I need to log in manualy.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Seriously? I'd much rather have that memory used for things that is useful. Especially since:
1) ARC has to be run as administrator to operate properly
2) It causes STO to lockup---or just take 5+ minutes to load some maps causing me to have to terminate the process, and restart to have the same item load within 2 seconds.
OR... I could NOT run arc, and get rid of the issues. Plus, all it does is run the actual login program for the game, which can be run manually (and needs to be since arc messes things up). All I'm doing is running a program to take up more memory--it's the same number of clicks to get STO open with or without arc. It's only redeeming factor is saving the password so I don't have to enter it all the time--and really, it loses that when I have to terminate STO every hour just to have maps load.
Something screwed up in the Arc update me thinks. Until that update, everything ran fine with Arc running. :mad:
I'll start out with the good part: after installation, Arc actually detected my STO installation through Steam, so I didn't have to download or install a second copy of STO.. kudos on that since the STO installation is actually in one of steam's sub directories..
As for the bad however: 2 words: resource usage.
I don't really care about not being able to close the process down like a launcher after starting STO, that's to be expected if Arc is meant to offer more steam like functions such as an integrated in the future.. However, Arc has 2 processes, each which uses a third to half more then the single process running steam.. and that's ignoring the fact that Steam already fits a lot more functionality within that memory footprint.. it's not exactly promising considering many features are yet to be added to Arc...
Finally, the ugly: the integrated browser!
I suspect this is an IE integrated browser object or so because on almost every page Arc displays I see whole parts of the page that do not show any content, instead giving the following error message I don't use Internet explorer, I always use Chrome which has a much safer integrated flash player.. so I won't be installing an insecure standalone flash player for a browser I don't use..
The weirdest part is that when I go to the Arc website in Internet Explorer itself, those black boxes actually do load correctly! Instead of using flash, it uses the HTML5 player.. the integrated browser used by Arc however, doesn't seem to support this..
I don't know how Steam handles this, but everything in it is displayed correctly.. either they don't rely on flash and have moved to HTML5 (assuming their embedded player supports it) or their embedded browser has its own flash player.. in any case, no flash doesn't make a difference to steam, but with Arc you're better off with a standalone browser...
The verdict? I like the interface, it's simple and clean, but since I already have an existing investment in Steam and Arc doesn't really offer any integration with STO that steam doesn't, I won't be using it. I'll keep it installed, in case it gets some cool features like the old mail integration with the forums we used to have..
Considering its resource hungry nature however the first thing I did was disable auto start on system start-up.. unlike steam this isn't an app that I feel safe running in the background all the time.
I do like the new website, but since the Arc client can't even properly display it, I'll stick to a browser for that..
On Neverwinter you can send people on mission or quests. They are people you have hired in your professions. It would be cool to do this thru a gateway on Star Trek as well with the Duty Officers. Other than this and even if it is never an option ARC is still great and thank you for a really good client program.
Blessings to all,
Christopher Whiteley (Lightforce1492/1971)
Thank you all for the warm welcomes, I really appreciate it. I know a lot of you have questions, so I'll see what I can answer.
1) A lot of you have expressed concerned with dual clients running and I wanted to let you know that we are aware of this, and will let you know when we get more updates regarding this. Arc is still in beta, so a lot of functionality is either not implemented yet, or is being worked on.
2) We're currently looking at the resources it's using to see if we can find any potential issues.
3) I've read a good amount of issues regarding the scroll bar in Arc. I've brought that up with the rest of the team, so we are also aware of that.
If I missed anything else, feel free to point it out. I'm constantly browsing the forums looking for any and all feedback I can. I understand all of your concerns and I do want you to know that I'm elevating all of your feedback to the right people. Once again, thank you all and I hope to hear from you soon!