This is a good thread, it gets fan voices out there. Keep giving your opinions, let them know whats on your mind. Whether your for or against ARC, all aspects should be brought to the table to chew on.
It may be a good thread, but you have to admit, the one thing that hurts the voices out there are the ones who type in run-on sentences, screaming at the top of their lungs "NO ARC DOWN WITH PWE PWE MUST DIE". One person said it was more than a quarter of these posts. I wholeheartedly disagree: it's more like 3/4s. I have a feeling if most of those posts were less "NO ARC DOWN WITH PWE PWE MUST DIE" and more "This is why I don't want Arc", we'd have more constructive answers from our PWE overlords. But, we're not going to get that.
Me? If I was running this on my old jalopy that couldn't run DC Universe Online, then, yes, I'd say "No, sorry, I don't think I can follow through." But, on this, I can, so I say "bring it on." Don't turn it off or give up because we don't know what's going to happen. If it does happen, find another way.
It may be a good thread, but you have to admit, the one thing that hurts the voices out there are the ones who type in run-on sentences, screaming at the top of their lungs "NO ARC DOWN WITH PWE PWE MUST DIE". One person said it was more than a quarter of these posts. I wholeheartedly disagree: it's more like 3/4s. I have a feeling if most of those posts were less "NO ARC DOWN WITH PWE PWE MUST DIE" and more "This is why I don't want Arc", we'd have more constructive answers from our PWE overlords. But, we're not going to get that.
Me? If I was running this on my old jalopy that couldn't run DC Universe Online, then, yes, I'd say "No, sorry, I don't think I can follow through." But, on this, I can, so I say "bring it on." Don't turn it off or give up because we don't know what's going to happen. If it does happen, find another way.
Its not just the fact ARC is just going to be an overlord style burden to us, and try to sell and give me news on games I couldnt care less about, its also the fact i would have to redownload the game I did enjoy again. I will play Champs again but Im here for STO and that only.
But if it becomes mandatory to use the ARC launcher and my current one wont let me in, then I would rather just say goodbye to STO, and thats saying a lot! If its not mandatory and I can still get into the game without it, then yes, It be would awesome to continue to play my favorite game, plus I will begin buying zen again.
The reason Im pitching such a strong fit about this is, i have lifetime subs in champs and sto, and put a lot of time and money into it (this has been over 3 years of my life) i wasnt happy for PWE to push their way in before, but i didnt say much because i didnt have to re-download the game or have to download a microscope onto my pc for marketing buzzards. Im not giving into ARC in any way, shape or form! Im setting my paw down about this one.
...i see this thread was buried into another one...well played <--edit
I will probably be done playing STo if you force arc on us like this. I don't want anything to do with arc...I don't want this bloated spyware anywhere near my system files, thanks.
Sad part about this thread is that I kinda agree. Even sadder part is that I don't think they listen, and the saddest part is that the thread will probably vanish magically.
Naww it's in the galactic news section. They'll just lock it.
Cryptic, you where fine by yourselves, you didnt actually need PWE, and you certainly dont need a parasite like ARC.
Actually they were in very dire straits because Atari 1) was going bankrupt, and 2) didn't know what an MMO was and wouldn't give Cryptic the budget needed for keeping the game running, let alone ongoing development. Were you around during the Content Drought?
Nitpicking is a time-honored tradition of science fiction. Asking your readers not to worry about the "little things" is like asking a dog not to sniff at people's crotches. If there's something that appears to violate natural laws, then you can expect someone's going to point it out. That's just the way things are.
Naww it's in the galactic news section. They'll just lock it.
Actually they were in very dire straits because Atari 1) was going bankrupt, and 2) didn't know what an MMO was and wouldn't give Cryptic the budget needed for keeping the game running, let alone ongoing development. Were you around during the Content Drought?
I came around when the Breen deferi thing got started, once i got my first toon and CatStar leveled, i got into RP and developed my caitians personality for rp. You could only play missions once, you would teleport right infront of QUinns office and people would still ask where he was...the uniforms where othing ever used in star trek but the game got me hooked quickly. I leveled my first toons through exploring, and became an Ambassador before id did a VA. lol
..I have remarked before the romulus and voth things where fun, and i hadnt had much beef with pwe, but i still say NO to ARC!!! and always will!!
And they could drone on and on about how feature-rich it is, how shiny and aesthetically pretty it is, and how it's a wonder of engineering and how users will enjoy the ease of access to open the bottle.
But most of the people, including me, just want to drink a bottle of wine and see a lot of unnecessary TRIBBLE that makes it take a stupidly long time to set up to begin with, and then stupidly easy to break.
And they could drone on and on about how feature-rich it is, how shiny and aesthetically pretty it is, and how it's a wonder of engineering and how users will enjoy the ease of access to open the bottle.
But most of the people, including me, just want to drink a bottle of wine and see a lot of unnecessary TRIBBLE that makes it take a stupidly long time to set up to begin with, and then stupidly easy to break.
ROFL!!!!! (Server will be down...maintenance!) :rolleyes:
First of all I have no desire for Arc. Thanks for the freebies, but it seems terribly redundant. The overwhelming majority of the features are things I will never use.
Here's something funny, I was playing yesterday and I wanted to try to use Arc to look up something in game without actually opening my web browser. So I went to the wiki tab on it and what did Arc do? It opened my stinkin web browser. :rolleyes: If it isn't going to be accessed inside of Arc, don't put it in there.
That highlights the absolute redundancy of the app. We're supposed to be streamlining things not making them more complex.
I'm using Arc, on a new computer that I own, and downloading it I downloaded STO and everything was fine. I didn't use Arc for at all. The week before Season 8.5, the launched refused to update the game by itself. I mean it would get to the last file and had an unauthorized to write this file error. But when updating in Arc it worked just fine.
After that, the game refuses to run without Arc. I find this deeply unacceptable, especially if this Arc thing is supposed to be in Beta. I don't want to be forced to use this damn thing. I appreciate what you're trying to do, I just find it deeply unnecessary. STO is the only MMO I play. It's the only MMO I want to play, it's the only MMO I will ever play. I'd prefer it without Arc as long as possible.
All of that said, if I have to use it I want it to function.
Everytime I open Arc I get a User Account Control Warning in Windows 8.1, "do you want this program to be allowed to make changes to your computer?"
That's fine, the first time I open it. There doesn't appear to be any option to make it a trusted program so it will just open. Any help here?
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
Steam, Arc, Borg, ... what else want us assimilaspamed?
By the way, I think it's Arc which makes the huge lag at first log in the game...
Funnily enough, I've noticed that if you use the Arc launcher you don't get that lag on connection. But if you don't use Arc, you do. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I'd say it was intentional to try and get people to move to Arc... Frankly I'd prefer the momentary lag.
Join date is wrong, I've actually been around since STO Beta.
True alters don't have a "main". Account wide unlocks for all unique event rewards!!
Here's something funny, I was playing yesterday and I wanted to try to use Arc to look up something in game without actually opening my web browser. So I went to the wiki tab on it and what did Arc do? It opened my stinkin web browser. :rolleyes: If it isn't going to be accessed inside of Arc, don't put it in there.
Blame the Arc website for that one. The wiki link targets a new blank tab, which the Arc client apparently doesn't have.
<a target="_blank" data-trusted="0" href="http://sto.gamepedia.com/Main_Page#">Wiki</a>
Nitpicking is a time-honored tradition of science fiction. Asking your readers not to worry about the "little things" is like asking a dog not to sniff at people's crotches. If there's something that appears to violate natural laws, then you can expect someone's going to point it out. That's just the way things are.
My opinion... I don't really care about ARC. When it's mandatory, so be it, I will launch the game from it and play as usual. I got used to Steam and Origin for other games, Arc is just another launch platform. I installed it, it could use some polish, but it does its job. If I was worried about spyware, I would just pull the plug and use my computer offline...
Note: I just wish there was an in-game browser if I was to launch the game from ARC, it would save me to tab out, which cause the game to often crash...
There is! You can do this by hitting shift + tab. It'll bring up the overlay, where you can access the forums, Zen, support, etc. Just click any of the buttons at the bottom, and let it load. From there you can stay on their respective page or use it as you would any other browser.
As for everyone's concern regarding Steam, I'll leave this here from our Arc FAQ:
"Will it still be possible to launch my game through Steam without Arc?
The current scope of development does not involve any changes to Steam."
There is! You can do this by hitting shift + tab. It'll bring up the overlay, where you can access the forums, Zen, support, etc. Just click any of the buttons at the bottom, and let it load. From there you can stay on their respective page or use it as you would any other browser.
As for everyone's concern regarding Steam, I'll leave this here from our Arc FAQ:
"Will it still be possible to launch my game through Steam without Arc?
The current scope of development does not involve any changes to Steam."
Many of us are less concerned about the implications ARC has on the near future and more concerned with what happens after "The current scope of development"
In the short term we know we can continue to launch STO without arc but we want to see evidence that our concerns are being taken care of for a time when that may not still be the case as was originally stated to be a goal of ARC.
Some people say there are security issues with ARC. Prove to us there are not
Some people have concerns that ARC uses to many resources and will impact the performance of the game. Set up a more scientific test with low end and high end systems and prove it does not effect system performance with real measurable results that we can see and replicate.
Some people like to run more than one instance of the game with multiple accounts and ARC has proven to prevent that. Change it so we can.
That's good. So long as that scope doesn't change without warning. I prefer being able to share my screenshots on Steam, and just in general keep all of my games under one piece of software.
Join date is wrong, I've actually been around since STO Beta.
True alters don't have a "main". Account wide unlocks for all unique event rewards!!
Some people say there are security issues with ARC. Prove to us there are not.
Proof of a negative statement is a logical impossibility, as even a single instance, rare as it might be, would be enough to disprove it. Besides, for those with their tinfoil hats snugly in place, no proof would be sufficient; even if they diagrammed every single function of every single line of the program, the claim would arise that PWE was lying (because we're all just so damn special that international conspiracies are forming to steal our HD data).
Proof of a negative statement is a logical impossibility, as even a single instance, rare as it might be, would be enough to disprove it. Besides, for those with their tinfoil hats snugly in place, no proof would be sufficient; even if they diagrammed every single function of every single line of the program, the claim would arise that PWE was lying (because we're all just so damn special that international conspiracies are forming to steal our HD data).
Even if they gave us the source code, we couldn't PROVE that was what they were compiling from, nor could we prove the compiler itself wasn't adding stuff:
Even if they gave us the source code, we couldn't PROVE that was what they were compiling from, nor could we prove the compiler itself wasn't adding stuff:
Prove may not have been the best word but that doesn't mean they shouldn't try to do more than just giving us a there word that its clean. That was kind of my whole point. Its been long enough since they started pushing ARC that our concerns need to start being met with more than just words especially when most of those words include some form of "currently" , "not at this time" or "not in the near future".
Feedback: you don't have real joysytick support in STO and that why i use Xpadder. But after i launched the game from ARC, i cannot use the joystick anymore. It seems ARC is blocking Xpadder somehow.
I have to bypass ARC to play this game as i want to play it.
That sir was absolutely priceless, although I almost sprayed coffee all over my rig laughing this morning.
I am not that worried about Arc being spyware, although the browser plugin issue is suspicious, but I am much more worried that PWE may not be up to the task of making it secure enough that a criminal element might not be able to use it as a means of gaining entry into a user's computer. Developers of mainstream browsers and chat programs are fighting a constant battle to stay one step ahead of security threats and PWE may be stepping into an arena in which they are ill equipped to fight.
PWE simply doesn't have a library of games that interests me, if I'm going to have a launcher that is such an obvious Steam wannabe I may as well go with the source, which is why I turned to Steam which has a vast library of games that is constantly growing.
Arc has been documented interfering with gaming mice and with various common gaming apps and I am most concerned that Arc in its final "must run in the background" form will adversely affect my gaming performance on my somewhat dated computer as it has done when I tried it in it's various beta incarnations and has been noted to do by many other users.
I'm here to play a video game and enjoy myself, I am not here to make PWE money, I realize their priority is the later, but if I can't enjoy playing the game then what's the point of my being here?
The ARC interface needs to refined not so much in how much memory it takes up than in how much computing power it requires, it should have as small a cpu usage footprint as possible.
When Steam is running you don't even realize it's there, with Arc oh boy do you ever notice.
If something is not broken, don't fix it, if it is broken, don't leave it broken.
THEY LIED!!!! Bottom line is they are going to force ARC on us and there is nothing we can do about it. They want our feedback and never read our posts.
EVERY thread I read regarding arc there is at least 50 posts that say NO TO ARC. Deaf ears is what I think they have. It is easier to hollar down a rain barrel, you get the same response.
Now, the problem there is that those fifty posts are probably done by the same people over and over again without giving out actual feedback other than "I hate Arc. End of story."
Proof of a negative statement is a logical impossibility, as even a single instance, rare as it might be, would be enough to disprove it. Besides, for those with their tinfoil hats snugly in place, no proof would be sufficient; even if they diagrammed every single function of every single line of the program, the claim would arise that PWE was lying (because we're all just so damn special that international conspiracies are forming to steal our HD data).
This wouldn't be an issue if PWE didn't have a documented history of lying about things, then turning around and trying to cover up their original statements when the truth comes out. But they do have said history - it's all over the forums, blogs, and anywhere else they've made statements. The proof is sitting right there in front of us that PWE will happily flip-flop to whatever position they think will put money in their pockets, and deny holding any previous position.
Making matters worse is the refusal to give a straight answer on anything Arc-related. Anything they say is buried in so many hedging phrases and doublespeak that there's maybe one or two lines of actual content to any dev post. If they had been upfront from the beginning about how Arc works, what it does, and why it eats several times the resources a launcher should, people might be willing to trust them a little. But after months of hemming and hawing and undisclosed program features being discovered the hard way - not to mention skirting close to breaking laws in some regions - that chance is long gone.
Now, the problem there is that those fifty posts are probably done by the same people over and over again without giving out actual feedback other than "I hate Arc. End of story."
Pretty much, yeah. I think it's like five or six people filling out those 50 posts.
Comments
Pffft, don't mention it.
It may be a good thread, but you have to admit, the one thing that hurts the voices out there are the ones who type in run-on sentences, screaming at the top of their lungs "NO ARC DOWN WITH PWE PWE MUST DIE". One person said it was more than a quarter of these posts. I wholeheartedly disagree: it's more like 3/4s. I have a feeling if most of those posts were less "NO ARC DOWN WITH PWE PWE MUST DIE" and more "This is why I don't want Arc", we'd have more constructive answers from our PWE overlords. But, we're not going to get that.
Me? If I was running this on my old jalopy that couldn't run DC Universe Online, then, yes, I'd say "No, sorry, I don't think I can follow through." But, on this, I can, so I say "bring it on." Don't turn it off or give up because we don't know what's going to happen. If it does happen, find another way.
Its not just the fact ARC is just going to be an overlord style burden to us, and try to sell and give me news on games I couldnt care less about, its also the fact i would have to redownload the game I did enjoy again. I will play Champs again but Im here for STO and that only.
But if it becomes mandatory to use the ARC launcher and my current one wont let me in, then I would rather just say goodbye to STO, and thats saying a lot! If its not mandatory and I can still get into the game without it, then yes, It be would awesome to continue to play my favorite game, plus I will begin buying zen again.
The reason Im pitching such a strong fit about this is, i have lifetime subs in champs and sto, and put a lot of time and money into it (this has been over 3 years of my life) i wasnt happy for PWE to push their way in before, but i didnt say much because i didnt have to re-download the game or have to download a microscope onto my pc for marketing buzzards. Im not giving into ARC in any way, shape or form! Im setting my paw down about this one.
...i see this thread was buried into another one...well played
Naww it's in the galactic news section. They'll just lock it.
Actually they were in very dire straits because Atari 1) was going bankrupt, and 2) didn't know what an MMO was and wouldn't give Cryptic the budget needed for keeping the game running, let alone ongoing development. Were you around during the Content Drought?
Joined January 2009
I came around when the Breen deferi thing got started, once i got my first toon and CatStar leveled, i got into RP and developed my caitians personality for rp. You could only play missions once, you would teleport right infront of QUinns office and people would still ask where he was...the uniforms where othing ever used in star trek but the game got me hooked quickly. I leveled my first toons through exploring, and became an Ambassador before id did a VA. lol
..I have remarked before the romulus and voth things where fun, and i hadnt had much beef with pwe, but i still say NO to ARC!!! and always will!!
So far I am very happy with it.
If PWE designed a corkscrew, it would look like this.
And they could drone on and on about how feature-rich it is, how shiny and aesthetically pretty it is, and how it's a wonder of engineering and how users will enjoy the ease of access to open the bottle.
But most of the people, including me, just want to drink a bottle of wine and see a lot of unnecessary TRIBBLE that makes it take a stupidly long time to set up to begin with, and then stupidly easy to break.
ROFL!!!!! (Server will be down...maintenance!) :rolleyes:
Here's something funny, I was playing yesterday and I wanted to try to use Arc to look up something in game without actually opening my web browser. So I went to the wiki tab on it and what did Arc do? It opened my stinkin web browser. :rolleyes: If it isn't going to be accessed inside of Arc, don't put it in there.
That highlights the absolute redundancy of the app. We're supposed to be streamlining things not making them more complex.
I'm using Arc, on a new computer that I own, and downloading it I downloaded STO and everything was fine. I didn't use Arc for at all. The week before Season 8.5, the launched refused to update the game by itself. I mean it would get to the last file and had an unauthorized to write this file error. But when updating in Arc it worked just fine.
After that, the game refuses to run without Arc. I find this deeply unacceptable, especially if this Arc thing is supposed to be in Beta. I don't want to be forced to use this damn thing. I appreciate what you're trying to do, I just find it deeply unnecessary. STO is the only MMO I play. It's the only MMO I want to play, it's the only MMO I will ever play. I'd prefer it without Arc as long as possible.
All of that said, if I have to use it I want it to function.
Everytime I open Arc I get a User Account Control Warning in Windows 8.1, "do you want this program to be allowed to make changes to your computer?"
That's fine, the first time I open it. There doesn't appear to be any option to make it a trusted program so it will just open. Any help here?
By the way, I think it's Arc which makes the huge lag at first log in the game...
Funnily enough, I've noticed that if you use the Arc launcher you don't get that lag on connection. But if you don't use Arc, you do. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I'd say it was intentional to try and get people to move to Arc... Frankly I'd prefer the momentary lag.
<a target="_blank" data-trusted="0" href="http://sto.gamepedia.com/Main_Page#">Wiki</a>
This post has been edited to remove content which violates the Perfect World Entertainment Community Rules and Policies. ~Askray
Joined January 2009
to arc...,
or not to arc...,
that is the question...!!!
There is! You can do this by hitting shift + tab. It'll bring up the overlay, where you can access the forums, Zen, support, etc. Just click any of the buttons at the bottom, and let it load. From there you can stay on their respective page or use it as you would any other browser.
As for everyone's concern regarding Steam, I'll leave this here from our Arc FAQ:
"Will it still be possible to launch my game through Steam without Arc?
The current scope of development does not involve any changes to Steam."
You can find the FAQ here: http://www.arcgames.com/en/arc-news/detail/3028293-arc-faq#Steam
Many of us are less concerned about the implications ARC has on the near future and more concerned with what happens after "The current scope of development"
In the short term we know we can continue to launch STO without arc but we want to see evidence that our concerns are being taken care of for a time when that may not still be the case as was originally stated to be a goal of ARC.
Some people say there are security issues with ARC. Prove to us there are not
Some people have concerns that ARC uses to many resources and will impact the performance of the game. Set up a more scientific test with low end and high end systems and prove it does not effect system performance with real measurable results that we can see and replicate.
Some people like to run more than one instance of the game with multiple accounts and ARC has proven to prevent that. Change it so we can.
That's good. So long as that scope doesn't change without warning. I prefer being able to share my screenshots on Steam, and just in general keep all of my games under one piece of software.
Even if they gave us the source code, we couldn't PROVE that was what they were compiling from, nor could we prove the compiler itself wasn't adding stuff:
http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html
Prove may not have been the best word but that doesn't mean they shouldn't try to do more than just giving us a there word that its clean. That was kind of my whole point. Its been long enough since they started pushing ARC that our concerns need to start being met with more than just words especially when most of those words include some form of "currently" , "not at this time" or "not in the near future".
I have to bypass ARC to play this game as i want to play it.
I am not that worried about Arc being spyware, although the browser plugin issue is suspicious, but I am much more worried that PWE may not be up to the task of making it secure enough that a criminal element might not be able to use it as a means of gaining entry into a user's computer. Developers of mainstream browsers and chat programs are fighting a constant battle to stay one step ahead of security threats and PWE may be stepping into an arena in which they are ill equipped to fight.
PWE simply doesn't have a library of games that interests me, if I'm going to have a launcher that is such an obvious Steam wannabe I may as well go with the source, which is why I turned to Steam which has a vast library of games that is constantly growing.
Arc has been documented interfering with gaming mice and with various common gaming apps and I am most concerned that Arc in its final "must run in the background" form will adversely affect my gaming performance on my somewhat dated computer as it has done when I tried it in it's various beta incarnations and has been noted to do by many other users.
I'm here to play a video game and enjoy myself, I am not here to make PWE money, I realize their priority is the later, but if I can't enjoy playing the game then what's the point of my being here?
The ARC interface needs to refined not so much in how much memory it takes up than in how much computing power it requires, it should have as small a cpu usage footprint as possible.
When Steam is running you don't even realize it's there, with Arc oh boy do you ever notice.
Now, the problem there is that those fifty posts are probably done by the same people over and over again without giving out actual feedback other than "I hate Arc. End of story."
This wouldn't be an issue if PWE didn't have a documented history of lying about things, then turning around and trying to cover up their original statements when the truth comes out. But they do have said history - it's all over the forums, blogs, and anywhere else they've made statements. The proof is sitting right there in front of us that PWE will happily flip-flop to whatever position they think will put money in their pockets, and deny holding any previous position.
Making matters worse is the refusal to give a straight answer on anything Arc-related. Anything they say is buried in so many hedging phrases and doublespeak that there's maybe one or two lines of actual content to any dev post. If they had been upfront from the beginning about how Arc works, what it does, and why it eats several times the resources a launcher should, people might be willing to trust them a little. But after months of hemming and hawing and undisclosed program features being discovered the hard way - not to mention skirting close to breaking laws in some regions - that chance is long gone.