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Escapist Magazine Interviews Ricossa
pwecaptainsmirk
Member Posts: 1,167 Arc User
In this article at Escapist Magazine, Lead Producer Steve "SalamiInferno" Ricossa, Jr. discusses the last 4 years of STO, and things to come!
Link to the interview.
Link to the interview.
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Anyways, this is an interesting article since we rarely hear from SalamiInferno. I appreciate the shout out to the Foundry, which is nice.
But, er, isn't this the person who sets the artists' schedules? According to Geko, we'll be lucky if we can some "skunk work" on assets by somebody like Taco, who might come in on a Saturday once every two months.
By the way, Starbase UGC will use donations to order him a pizza or tacos that day. I'm serious, we'll contact whatever his favorite delivery place is and order food if he gives us a day and time. That is how desperate we are for floors and ceilings, etc.
It is a nice shout out, however. I hope at least a few of you guys have played the Purity series.
*cough, cough* No surprise if you never really try........
Not "one of their other titles". No mention of Cryptic's flagship title, the one that launched the company and helped inspire PW's acquisition of the company from the even more neglectful Atari, the one that, in the wake of LoR and Season 8.5 and whatever's been going on in NW (I don't know, I don't play that one), has received a few costumes and a couple of updated powers. CO, so far as Cryptic's publicity machine is concerned, doesn't exist.
And they wonder why the game struggles.
Guys, next time there's an interview with one of the online magazines about STO (and there will be), would it kill you to mention the fact that Cryptic has three games?
I'll sum it up... He's a STO Producer not a NW or CO producer. Plus that is some deep mud to step in too if you don't even work on those other teams. As well as CO pretty much being dead and then NW barely surviving although its apparent when you look at how NW runs so smooth and so much less resources and better graphics than STO it was built better. It just does not seem like they are pulling their weight with NW though because STO has 1 lockbox for every 4 or 5 NW lockboxes.
Not to knock Cryptic, PWE, or the Neverwinter team but after I hit max level on NW and then got Guild Wars 2. It wasn't much of a decision when looking at NW which basically asks you to insert 5 dollars into the game every 10 minutes or a game that was better than I expected and has options to spend more money but in no way requires you to spend more money like NW does. NW just needs some major restructuring if they want to compete with the big dogs that are offering a better product and not so greedy on the design of it.
while this is true, he did bring up neverwinter, to me this article was no nothing as in there has been no new information on what is coming. All it is yeah we took champions devs to make sto better and left champions online to rot on the vine.
"Cryptic has had the most trouble with updating or improving upon through the years." This seams more evident when you look at what games have improved and the one game that has not improved.
Taco spilled the beans (no pun intended) a while back - CO isn't getting the development funding, because CO doesn't make enough to cover them. And why doesn't CO make enough to cover them? Well, for one thing, there was a golden shining moment last year when CO could have reached out to those who had just lost their own superhero game, brought them into the fold, and let people know that a superhero game existed. But Cryptic, in their infinitely cryptic wisdom, chose instead to let that golden moment slide, rather than drop a dime on publicizing the game. There were those who speculated at the time that this was in fact a deliberate effort to kill CO entirely. Later, we got some support from the good folks at Cryptic North - but nothing like the support that players of STO and NW decry as being "too little".
If CO got half as much attention as Season 8.5, and half as much advertising as NW, players would be asking, "What's a DCUO?" As it stands, though, well...
Cryptic doesn't do marketing, PWE does. And CO has a significant disadvantage as its super hero world isn't well known compared to DC, and Marvel also having a F2P game out there.
Also, this is an article written based on an interview, of which we don't know the exact content of, or how the author of the article might have modified or interpreted what was said. Also, the point where the article mentions other Cryptic games were not in quotes, but actual quotes were used.
Maybe you aren't a native English reader, so you don't understand the importance or difference between quoted text and non-quoted text in an article, but it seems like you are attributing text and word choice that can only be attributed to the author, and trying to attribute it towards Ricossa.
If you would like the Author to understand that CO exists, there is a comments section on the article site in which you can correct the authors poor word choices.
you are right cryptic doesn't do the advertising, however it is undeniable that it was cryptic that put champions online in its sorry state that it is now. A mmo that is 5 years old should so much more content, powers, and such. It is stuck at having minimal development lock boxes and temporary missions.
Sto however a year after it launched it got a injection of more funds and devs, leaving champions to slowly going down the drain. If cryptic so wanted to they could even now put more funds into champions, but they are not going to do that, instead they are making a new game instead of fixing the one game that needs it.
Of course it's trouble, that's PvP in a nutshell. :P
But I personally have posted many times in the past (even back in the days of Open Beta) that you wouldn't have as much trouble if you make a 2-value system, like older MMOs did for their PvE-PvP Balance. One value for PvE, another value for PvP.
This would've easily fixed the trouble with Science powers, where at first they were godly in PvP, then nerfed so much they were useless in PvE, then science fell out of favor.
So if you implemented this from the get-go, all it would've taken is simple adjustments to get them at a favorable level and PvP wouldn't have been such a pain to balance.
And here we go again, hyping the Foundry......
Come on, Cryptic. How about you fix it and stop nerfing rewards so people would play it more?
^This ... I've also written in many MMO forums with pretty much exactly the same idea ... You can't have a fun PvE game and a balanced PvP game together, it just doesn't work ...
It could be done in STO now, with the, albeit still somewhat broken, quick-equip feature, you could easily create a "dual spec" system = 1 for PvE and 1 for PvP ... Why not use the now opened gateway to the Gamma Quadrant, a gateway to a pure PvP Sector? And leave the the rest for PvE?
As for the Foundry ... It's sadly a "catch 22" situation ... IMO, the vast majority of players want the Foundry maps to simply be "cheat" maps ... Any map that is properly constructed and well thought out with challenging gameplay, is not going to be popular with the "quick fix" masses ... By putting restrictions on rewards, and limiting what authors can give away, sadly you limit who will play the map ...
Why not just let the 'cheaters" cheat? In the end who does it hurt? If they end up with all the best gear in 2 weeks, they'll get bored and leave = No loss ...
If they have to grind out for months to get the best gear, they get bored and leave = No one creates or plays Foundry Maps and the system dies ...
Also, it really bothered me that he said the tutorial is far more important that things like Game balance, or PvP anything. The tutorials are a mission that most people rush through or skip entirely after they've played it once. Granted while the new tutorial is a little nicer, it would have been better if they'd gone back and fixed a lot of the bugs that have been around for this long, or made more skins (infected for example) full body, or actually updated and upgraded the character creator instead of giving it a new UI only and telling everyone how you redid the whole thing. If you're telling the players how to have fun, instead of expanding or adding to the way they actually are having fun, than you're doing it wrong.
I'm in total agreement With jonsills though. Cryptic built this engine for Champions, which despite it's overly cartoonish art, still has the best character customization in any cryptic game hands down. It still even beats out most other MMO's with only a few exceptions, like APB, EVE, and possibly a few that aren't out yet (wildstar, ESO). Star Trek Online would greatly benefit from adding in a few of the champions options for character creation (muscle tone, better and more slider options, more clothing options, less limitations on uniforms), and that's just for looks.
Co basically only had one good solid year of development before it became the red-headed stepchild of Cryptic, and this was another year before STO came out. They dropped development of it as soon as they could, and honestly it was a huge mistake. Had they been giving Champions online the actual development level that STO gets, that game would easily be making more money. Especially as jonsills pointed out, after the loss of CoH. They even managed to put the game under Cryptic North, yet all CO ever gets is a mission here and there, most of which could have been done better in the foundry, a few lackluster costumes, and a revamp of single powers here and there.
The Game desperately needs the foundry, it needs new powersets, not just some one coming in on the weekend to add new visuals to an existing power base, and they need to actually get some development going for it. The real reason it doesn't draw in as much money is because Cryptic dropped it the first chance they got instead of playing into what few strengths they have.
Even now, how many people have openly admitted to not playing Cryptic's games if they didn't have the IP like Star Trek or D&D? Champions had a fan base, but even then, most people had never heard of it, but still enjoyed it as it was. I couldn't even say that about this game if it had the License pulled.
CO is good, don't get me wrong, but it does not hold a candle against DCUO.
DCUO has some of the most iconic, if not the most iconic superhero out there: Superman and not to forget Batman. The DC universe is so much richer with lots of back stories and character interaction, but CO? Not so much. Even the main heroes is mostly forgettable.
"Welcome to the side of the heroes, Good Guy! Now go get Batman some coffee."
Happifun Security System X-4 singlehandedly stopped Armageddon. Can you do that in DCUO?
Wow, in a nutshell this is how I feel about Champions. This is very articulate and accurate.
Thank you, i guess even i have my moments.
Indeed, those individuals did ruin the Foundry. But at the same time some blame is on the Dev Team for not "nipping in the bud" (not reacting fast enough to stop the exploiting).
Hopefully with the change of the guards, they will work more with the community and stop problems and work ways without hurting the community.
Um, Pardon me, but would you be referring to City of Heroes?
Because CO was nary a glimmer in anyone's eye before CoH...
Not to pick nits, but Respect Must Be Paid.
It seems the vast majority of your most active players (forum regulars) hate the idea... and while that's a small subset of the playerbase, I think it's an important constituency.
THE PLAYERS DO NOT WANT THIS.
How about, "the title that launched Cryptic as a new entity, after NCSoft severed ties"?
Actually, judging by Steam numbers, STO's their second most popular game; NW gets about twice as many people playing it. STO's important, and makes them more money than City of Heroes did, but it's not the only thing keeping them afloat anymore.
Marvel pulling out almost bankrupted them; STO saved them, but it's not the only success story.
Thing about NW is that its already ftP. Quite frankly I can't see it growing at all, can't see where it'll get an audience from.
And because its not the historical IP star Trek is, I doubt it'll have STO's legs.
If Cryptic were smart, they'd bank on STO being the long term golden goose and make sure it keeps laying.
It's true that D&D isn't as popular as Star Trek, but don't underestimate its popularity; in terms of gross revenues to the IP owner, it's over 20% as large as Star Trek. That's not bad for a game; that's AMAZING for a game.
Both NW and STO have to appeal to a broader audience than just D&D fans and Star Trek fans, respectively, and they do; I run into people in both who will straight up tell you they're not Star Trek fans, or have never played D&D. That's where the legs come from, for both games; especially as Star Trek gets farther and farther away from the material in STO. The fans of the source material are a niche; total revenues of Star Trek and D&D combined are a fraction of those of Star Wars, for instance, despite each having a head start (for D&D, a very short one) over Star Wars.
NW can update to keep up with changes in the source material; STO can't anymore. The number of new players who come into STO having never seen a single episode of pre-JJ Trek will grow every year. This game effectively *IS* the "Prime Universe" now, and CBS expects Cryptic to treat it that way too.
If STO had nothing but prime universe Star Trek fans, and NW had nothing but D&D fans, they'd both go out of business. Instead, they're smashing successes, making profits that in either case would justify the purchase PWE made, making PWE very happy, and paying a very healthy and growing dev team for each. It would be folly to say "ignore your most successful game ever, because I think your second-most-successful game ever has more staying power".
It would also be folly to kill STO by ignoring it, too; it's a huge success, and should get lots of developer attention, which it does.
Note to Cryptic: I really wish you guys would spend a few marketing $$ to post a banner on University Avenue, highlighting some of your games/projects.
Baja Fresh is one of the closer Mexican venues, although I'm sure you'll accomodate whatever he's hungry for.
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Could we hava less self-congratulatory noises and more dense substance per interview? I really love you guys, but wow with the repetetive non-information...
It seems the vast majority of your most active players (forum regulars) hate the idea... and while that's a small subset of the playerbase, I think it's an important constituency.
THE PLAYERS DO NOT WANT THIS.
They can afford cars?
and a stalker?