Hmmm, intriguing. Thank you thecosmic1 and sirsitsalot. I'm glad I'm patient then because STO improvements seems to be long-term and at least I'm here for the long haul.
Member since November 2009... I think. (UFP) Ragnar
Does anyone make games to play for fun anymore? Why does "Everything" have to be connected to a money pit. Even the simplest things in Sto are connected some way to dilthium. When your not looking the price of items suddenly get a dil upgrade (romulan plasma flamethrower). Heres the thing. If cryptic would first keep the Fun part of the game as their First priority. The money will follow. If I could use this comparison. A church Pastor/Preacher that always gives a sermon about tithing (giving money) ends up gilting ppl into donating money and then they don't show up again at the church. A pastor that rarely preaches about tithing keeps its congregation and slowly builds their church into a mega church empire. A perfect example of this would be Dr. David Jeremiah. He never preaches about money but yet it comes to him, in truck loads. I believe if cryptic would give content first and worry about money second. They would see the same results.
Does anyone make games to play for fun anymore? Why does "Everything" have to be connected to a money pit.
It costs millions of dollars to create MMOs these days. Look at SWTOR: $200 million to produce to Launch. Star Citizen has $80 million in crowd funding and is still 1+ years away from Launch. Unless you are an eccentric billionaire no one is in a rush to throw away millions just for the fun of it.
And money does not always follow a good business. There are hundreds of thousands of business that fail every year around the world.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
It costs millions of dollars to create MMOs these days. Look at SWTOR: $200 million to produce to Launch. Star Citizen has $80 million in crowd funding and is still 1+ years away from Launch. Unless you are an eccentric billionaire no one is in a rush to throw away millions just for the fun of it.
And money does not always follow a good business. There are hundreds of thousands of business that fail every year around the world.
That... or it could be a side-effect of the same mentality which is killing network television: They want ROI and they want it now. Not later. Not when the audience has matured and the product has found it's niche. Now. Integrity of the product be damned.
Does anyone make games to play for fun anymore? Why does "Everything" have to be connected to a money pit. Even the simplest things in Sto are connected some way to dilthium. When your not looking the price of items suddenly get a dil upgrade (romulan plasma flamethrower). Heres the thing. If cryptic would first keep the Fun part of the game as their First priority. The money will follow. If I could use this comparison. A church Pastor/Preacher that always gives a sermon about tithing (giving money) ends up gilting ppl into donating money and then they don't show up again at the church. A pastor that rarely preaches about tithing keeps its congregation and slowly builds their church into a mega church empire. A perfect example of this would be Dr. David Jeremiah. He never preaches about money but yet it comes to him, in truck loads. I believe if cryptic would give content first and worry about money second. They would see the same results.
A game can be the funnest game in existence, stunningly beautiful and controls like a dream, but if it doesn't make the profit, then what's the point? That's one of the downsides to many of the cult classic games: they are amazingly fun, but they didn't make the profits they were hoping for.
A game can be the funnest game in existence, stunningly beautiful and controls like a dream, but if it doesn't make the profit, then what's the point? That's one of the downsides to many of the cult classic games: they are amazingly fun, but they didn't make the profits they were hoping for.
It should make a profit. But it should do so because people want to have a Joined Trill character, or fly a TOS-style Constitution, or want extra furniture/Trophy slots in their captain's quarters or crew lounge, bonus ship interior missions, or something else for their ship interior (Hint: Some things that should really be possible.), or they want to fly a Vulcan ship as a Tellarite or a Starfleet ship as a Romulan, or they want a special, darker, purple Reman bridge and interior for their Mogai instead of the five or so Romulan bridge options you (should, hint hint) get by default. Or, heck, because they want their own personal Risian beachfront home or large Andorian cave dwelling to have parties at. Etc.
Not because they have to repeat a mission where you blow up Undine and they need a ship that can blow up more Undine faster so that they can get piles of "Commendation Marks" (Grind Tokens) and Dilithium, all just so that they can slide some bars and eventually get a reward, which is then used for what... more grinding?
It should make a profit. But it should do so because people want to have a Joined Trill character, or fly a TOS-style Constitution, or want extra furniture/Trophy slots in their captain's quarters or crew lounge, bonus ship interior missions, or something else for their ship interior (Hint: Some things that should really be possible.), or they want to fly a Vulcan ship as a Tellarite or a Starfleet ship as a Romulan, or they want a special, darker, purple Reman bridge and interior for their Mogai instead of the five or so Romulan bridge options you (should, hint hint) get by default. Or, heck, because they want their own personal Risian beachfront home or large Andorian cave dwelling to have parties at. Etc.
Not because they have to repeat a mission where you blow up Undine and they need a ship that can blow up more Undine faster so that they can get piles of "Commendation Marks" (Grind Tokens) and Dilithium, all just so that they can slide some bars and eventually get a reward, which is then used for what... more grinding?
Key word: "should". I really want to see a mmorpg that operates like that.
Funny thing is, Perpetual Entertainment tried to figure that out for Star Trek Online. Except they ended up with nothing besides concept art after four years, which left Cryptic Studios about 18 months to deliver a Star Trek Online. Now Perpetual Entertainment no longer exists and we'll waiting for our STO to continue to grow.
So yeah, circumstances.
Member since November 2009... I think. (UFP) Ragnar
...That said, I wouldn't mind seeing certain kit powers, traits, and even gear enhancement modules of some kind stuck behind a ZEN/Dil wall, but it can't get too far out of hand.
I have many friends who work in this industry too and I assure you that your friend is lying to you. The vast majority of MMOs do not have 300+ people permanently working on them. Working in the industry is not the same thing as working on an established MMO.
Look at Star Citizen as an example. It is still in development but only has around 80 in-house Developers working on it, as of last December. Pre-Launch development is when you have the most people working on a game. Once Development is done and the MMO is launched and stable most of that Development Team leaves the game and goes on to do other things - when STO was launched most of the Development Team went off to start work on NWN's foundations. When NWNs was Launched most of that team went on to start work on the 4th upcoming game, and so on.
As far as websites, billing, promotion, etc, that is all handled by Perfect World and has no bearing on how many people work for Cryptic or how many are on the STO team. Even our two Community Mangers work for PW rather then Cryptic.
I should have said, worthwhile, top mmo's. lol. also, im being vague by using the term dev. I mean employees. when I say a lot of these other gaming companies have a minimum of say 300 employees, what I mean is that they have the developers, usually in teams of 50-100.
then they have a quality assurance team (which cryptic has said they basically do not have), which is why they rely so heavily on tribble and red shirt) they have customer service teams, code monkeys who take what the devs make, and make it work in the engine, ingame moderators, and so on and so forth. as has been stated by devs in the past on these very forums and in interviews, the team for sto pretty much wears all the hats.
who do you think tells say the two community managers what to write. devs are always promoting (ie, the blogs, and announcements usually have a devs signature.) I assure you that the sto website (while the template was not created by the sto team, they most certainly manage it, you wouldn't have someone who has no clue how the game works posting stuff about it lol. and again, you see who posts things, and who is signing said things.). if I remember correctly, there was a video podcast made by stoked a while back, and they poked in on gecko or stahl, and when asked what he was doing, he said he was writing a blow or something for the website.
the reason we have pwe community managers now, is because the cryptic ones screwed the pooch. there was a lot of bad interaction going on, and eventually pwe pulled the plug. this ranged from talking about what was being developed (that never made it into game). to slipping on stuff, and even getting into it with other players. we had that long silence from the devs right before bran came on. making me believe they were told to stop. lol.. even now, only a few interact, and even less say anything at all.
I might have overstepped on the billing thing, it makes sense pwe would do it. but a lot of sto stuff is handled by the cryptic sto team. that much I am 98% sure on. don't take it as I am saying they developed arc, but they have to maintain and post their stuff in it.
that being said, cryptic is doing it wrong then if they send most of their dev team away. but.. that is not the case. if I remember correctly, cryptic has a small dev team that works on all games (generally maintaining the engine, and re-codeing things from one game to another (like the foundry for example). all through beta and what not, they kept telling us the reason stuff wasn't being fixed, or not being worked on or finished was due to their small development team size..
they continued to say this for about 3 years, then, they started hiring a few new peeps here and there. now they have doubled their sto team by a little over double, but it is still below the average for a game that is attached to such a large franchise, and is supposably having the success it is having.
even more intriguing to me, is that I fully expected the dev team to explode in numbers when they went free to play. (because you need to make the monetary things the game needs to make cash, but you also have to make content to keep people interested. I know the c store team was a separate team before. but we know that was a lie because different developers who are "non c store" developers would make comments on how they designed, or how they developed a console or what not. . in my eyes, the poor sto dev team gets pulled into a thousand directions..
from what I have read over the years, an sto developer is someone who not only develops a piece of content (weather it be a ship/mission/weapon/adventure zone/ etc), but they also have to code it into the game, deal with the bugs, and maintain it. normally, that is three or four separate jobs at correctly staffed mmo gaming company.
hey, they have gotten it done up to this point on such a small team, but I think its time to grow the team. as I have said in the past, sh*t or get off the pot. they are at a point where to make the next step, they need a larger army of emplyees to support it, and to fix some of the problems they are having.. the way I look at it, if you want my money, you have to be as good as the other games I am playing. I have not spent a red cent in over 2 years on the game.. no, not because I don't have the money, but I do not support what in my eyes is half of the potential. I spent a lot in the first few years, supporting and hoping to see the company and game grow. I spent more in 2 years on sto, than I did in the 8 years of wow, and the 4 years of rift. from my life time, to all the special edition original releases (for the stuff lol) to c points/zen etc.
ill gladly give them more money, when they elevate this game to where I know they can bring it.. I might always dump on some of their ideas or what not, but, all in all, the stuff they do come out with, they do a good job on. but I want a release or expansion to take me more than three days to conquer like some of the other games I play. I want it to keep me intrigues rather than me having to leapfrog my time in game so I don't get bored. lol.. and I want to see bugs and issues fixed in a relatively short amount of time. id rather see them release a fix that doesn't work, than not release a fix at all. it shows me they are trying, and listening.
then they have a quality assurance team (which cryptic has said they basically do not have),
You do understand that there is an actual chat channel in game where you can chat with the QA team while you are playing, right? They have a QA team, and have always had a QA team - and they are looking to hire more.
the reason we have pwe community managers now, is because the cryptic ones screwed the pooch. there was a lot of bad interaction going on, and eventually pwe pulled the plug. this ranged from talking about what was being developed (that never made it into game). to slipping on stuff, and even getting into it with other players. we had that long silence from the devs right before bran came on. making me believe they were told to stop. lol.. even now, only a few interact, and even less say anything at all.
Dude, you could not be more wrong. The CMs have never worked for Cryptic. Prior to PW's purchase the CMs worked for Atari: Stormshade, Wishstone, etc; they were Atari employees. Since the day this game has gone live it has never had a Cryptic CM. The CMs have always come from the parent company.
from what I have read over the years, an sto developer is someone who not only develops a piece of content (weather it be a ship/mission/weapon/adventure zone/ etc), but they also have to code it into the game, deal with the bugs, and maintain it. normally, that is three or four separate jobs at correctly staffed mmo gaming company.
Again, no. You are completely wrong. The game has several different Divisions. Taco did a whole post about this a couple of weeks ago.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
Key word: "should". I really want to see a mmorpg that operates like that.
Funny thing is, Perpetual Entertainment tried to figure that out for Star Trek Online. Except they ended up with nothing besides concept art after four years, which left Cryptic Studios about 18 months to deliver a Star Trek Online. Now Perpetual Entertainment no longer exists and we'll waiting for our STO to continue to grow.
So yeah, circumstances.
In other words, Cryptic had to rush, resulting in an undercapable engine and no time now to fix it, resulting in STO being pretty much limited to what it is today?
You do understand that there is an actual chat channel in game where you can chat with the QA team while you are playing, right?
I didn't know that. And, while I don't claim ultimate knowledge, I do know my way around STO a bit.
Perhaps said QA team could institute some kind of presence on the fora or twitter. Both to better publicise their very existence, and to give them a sense of any areas of concern.
In other words, Cryptic had to rush, resulting in an undercapable engine and no time now to fix it, resulting in STO being pretty much limited to what it is today?
How many people would really be disappointed in STO's Engine if this game had another 20 STFs and 50 other types of end-game and PvP Content? Content is what this game has always needed. The game Engine is fine for what it needs to do.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
I didn't know that. And, while I don't claim ultimate knowledge, I do know my way around STO a bit.
Perhaps said QA team could institute some kind of presence on the fora or twitter. Both to better publicise their very existence, and to give them a sense of any areas of concern.
They do have a presence in game and in twitter. They don't advertise it too much because the last thing you want is a bunch of people asking about when the borg faction will show up when you may have an actual issue that needs to be dealt with.
Bro; these guys are bound to a profit market; Cryptic and perfect world are just puppet's; they take their order from another entity; wich bring me to the main point; You cannot expect them to take point of your opinion; But there was a time; a few years ago; a time when MMORPG were dedicated and improved with the community; these time's will never come back; so realized that from now on; No MMORPG will never be as fun as an simple online game or single players; hard realization; but the faster you accept it; the better you will become ....
From an STO players who haven't played since season 9; desastreous decision make desastreous game...
They do have a presence in game and in twitter. They don't advertise it too much because the last thing you want is a bunch of people asking about when the borg faction will show up when you may have an actual issue that needs to be dealt with.
Yeah, that keeps coming up with cryptic.
We can't get too open with our players because we'll get swamped.
IMO, they're erring way too much on the side of caution with that one, institutionally.
Designate someone on the QA team to host a subforum here.
Doesn't use up all your peoples time, but you do get to plug into another significent part of the player base...
Bro; these guys are bound to a profit market; Cryptic and perfect world are just puppet's; they take their order from another entity; wich bring me to the main point; You cannot expect them to take point of your opinion; But there was a time; a few years ago; a time when MMORPG were dedicated and improved with the community; these time's will never come back; so realized that from now on; No MMORPG will never be as fun as an simple online game or single players; hard realization; but the faster you accept it; the better you will become ....
From an STO players who haven't played since season 9; desastreous decision make desastreous game...
First of all, is "disastrous" not "desastreous". /grammar
Second of all, if you have played the game since Season 9 dropped, then you'd realize that the game is still quite as fun as it was before those "desastreous" decisions were implemented. It's the whole "Eye of the Beholder" thing: what may be fun for me may not be fun for you.
Comments
(UFP) Ragnar
And money does not always follow a good business. There are hundreds of thousands of business that fail every year around the world.
That... or it could be a side-effect of the same mentality which is killing network television: They want ROI and they want it now. Not later. Not when the audience has matured and the product has found it's niche. Now. Integrity of the product be damned.
A game can be the funnest game in existence, stunningly beautiful and controls like a dream, but if it doesn't make the profit, then what's the point? That's one of the downsides to many of the cult classic games: they are amazingly fun, but they didn't make the profits they were hoping for.
It should make a profit. But it should do so because people want to have a Joined Trill character, or fly a TOS-style Constitution, or want extra furniture/Trophy slots in their captain's quarters or crew lounge, bonus ship interior missions, or something else for their ship interior (Hint: Some things that should really be possible.), or they want to fly a Vulcan ship as a Tellarite or a Starfleet ship as a Romulan, or they want a special, darker, purple Reman bridge and interior for their Mogai instead of the five or so Romulan bridge options you (should, hint hint) get by default. Or, heck, because they want their own personal Risian beachfront home or large Andorian cave dwelling to have parties at. Etc.
Not because they have to repeat a mission where you blow up Undine and they need a ship that can blow up more Undine faster so that they can get piles of "Commendation Marks" (Grind Tokens) and Dilithium, all just so that they can slide some bars and eventually get a reward, which is then used for what... more grinding?
Key word: "should". I really want to see a mmorpg that operates like that.
Funny thing is, Perpetual Entertainment tried to figure that out for Star Trek Online. Except they ended up with nothing besides concept art after four years, which left Cryptic Studios about 18 months to deliver a Star Trek Online. Now Perpetual Entertainment no longer exists and we'll waiting for our STO to continue to grow.
So yeah, circumstances.
(UFP) Ragnar
I should have said, worthwhile, top mmo's. lol. also, im being vague by using the term dev. I mean employees. when I say a lot of these other gaming companies have a minimum of say 300 employees, what I mean is that they have the developers, usually in teams of 50-100.
then they have a quality assurance team (which cryptic has said they basically do not have), which is why they rely so heavily on tribble and red shirt) they have customer service teams, code monkeys who take what the devs make, and make it work in the engine, ingame moderators, and so on and so forth. as has been stated by devs in the past on these very forums and in interviews, the team for sto pretty much wears all the hats.
who do you think tells say the two community managers what to write. devs are always promoting (ie, the blogs, and announcements usually have a devs signature.) I assure you that the sto website (while the template was not created by the sto team, they most certainly manage it, you wouldn't have someone who has no clue how the game works posting stuff about it lol. and again, you see who posts things, and who is signing said things.). if I remember correctly, there was a video podcast made by stoked a while back, and they poked in on gecko or stahl, and when asked what he was doing, he said he was writing a blow or something for the website.
the reason we have pwe community managers now, is because the cryptic ones screwed the pooch. there was a lot of bad interaction going on, and eventually pwe pulled the plug. this ranged from talking about what was being developed (that never made it into game). to slipping on stuff, and even getting into it with other players. we had that long silence from the devs right before bran came on. making me believe they were told to stop. lol.. even now, only a few interact, and even less say anything at all.
I might have overstepped on the billing thing, it makes sense pwe would do it. but a lot of sto stuff is handled by the cryptic sto team. that much I am 98% sure on. don't take it as I am saying they developed arc, but they have to maintain and post their stuff in it.
that being said, cryptic is doing it wrong then if they send most of their dev team away. but.. that is not the case. if I remember correctly, cryptic has a small dev team that works on all games (generally maintaining the engine, and re-codeing things from one game to another (like the foundry for example). all through beta and what not, they kept telling us the reason stuff wasn't being fixed, or not being worked on or finished was due to their small development team size..
they continued to say this for about 3 years, then, they started hiring a few new peeps here and there. now they have doubled their sto team by a little over double, but it is still below the average for a game that is attached to such a large franchise, and is supposably having the success it is having.
even more intriguing to me, is that I fully expected the dev team to explode in numbers when they went free to play. (because you need to make the monetary things the game needs to make cash, but you also have to make content to keep people interested. I know the c store team was a separate team before. but we know that was a lie because different developers who are "non c store" developers would make comments on how they designed, or how they developed a console or what not. . in my eyes, the poor sto dev team gets pulled into a thousand directions..
from what I have read over the years, an sto developer is someone who not only develops a piece of content (weather it be a ship/mission/weapon/adventure zone/ etc), but they also have to code it into the game, deal with the bugs, and maintain it. normally, that is three or four separate jobs at correctly staffed mmo gaming company.
hey, they have gotten it done up to this point on such a small team, but I think its time to grow the team. as I have said in the past, sh*t or get off the pot. they are at a point where to make the next step, they need a larger army of emplyees to support it, and to fix some of the problems they are having.. the way I look at it, if you want my money, you have to be as good as the other games I am playing. I have not spent a red cent in over 2 years on the game.. no, not because I don't have the money, but I do not support what in my eyes is half of the potential. I spent a lot in the first few years, supporting and hoping to see the company and game grow. I spent more in 2 years on sto, than I did in the 8 years of wow, and the 4 years of rift. from my life time, to all the special edition original releases (for the stuff lol) to c points/zen etc.
ill gladly give them more money, when they elevate this game to where I know they can bring it.. I might always dump on some of their ideas or what not, but, all in all, the stuff they do come out with, they do a good job on. but I want a release or expansion to take me more than three days to conquer like some of the other games I play. I want it to keep me intrigues rather than me having to leapfrog my time in game so I don't get bored. lol.. and I want to see bugs and issues fixed in a relatively short amount of time. id rather see them release a fix that doesn't work, than not release a fix at all. it shows me they are trying, and listening.
Dude, you could not be more wrong. The CMs have never worked for Cryptic. Prior to PW's purchase the CMs worked for Atari: Stormshade, Wishstone, etc; they were Atari employees. Since the day this game has gone live it has never had a Cryptic CM. The CMs have always come from the parent company.
Again, no. You are completely wrong. The game has several different Divisions. Taco did a whole post about this a couple of weeks ago.
In other words, Cryptic had to rush, resulting in an undercapable engine and no time now to fix it, resulting in STO being pretty much limited to what it is today?
I didn't know that. And, while I don't claim ultimate knowledge, I do know my way around STO a bit.
Perhaps said QA team could institute some kind of presence on the fora or twitter. Both to better publicise their very existence, and to give them a sense of any areas of concern.
They do have a presence in game and in twitter. They don't advertise it too much because the last thing you want is a bunch of people asking about when the borg faction will show up when you may have an actual issue that needs to be dealt with.
From an STO players who haven't played since season 9; desastreous decision make desastreous game...
Yeah, that keeps coming up with cryptic.
We can't get too open with our players because we'll get swamped.
IMO, they're erring way too much on the side of caution with that one, institutionally.
Designate someone on the QA team to host a subforum here.
Doesn't use up all your peoples time, but you do get to plug into another significent part of the player base...
Kinda like the Q&A livestreams that CaptainSmirk is now doing? http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1115931
(UFP) Ragnar
First of all, is "disastrous" not "desastreous". /grammar
Second of all, if you have played the game since Season 9 dropped, then you'd realize that the game is still quite as fun as it was before those "desastreous" decisions were implemented. It's the whole "Eye of the Beholder" thing: what may be fun for me may not be fun for you.