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In Despair of the Adversarial Mindset
raeat
Member Posts: 186 Arc User
The devs (and their masters) have now developed a well-refined adversarial mentality between the players and the dev team. Instead of players talking excitedly about new content, or fixes to issues, or responsiveness to players and player concerns, the players now spend most of their time complaining about changes, *in anticipation* of the worst possible outcomes in each case. The word nerf is used more often than any celebratory term. This is what happens when you deliberately foster an adversarial relationship. And the devs and their masters respond to that by doubling down on unpopular changes, apparently heedless that theirs is an entertainment industry, reliant on the goodwill and interest of the players for their financial survival. What we are seeing is austerity brought to gaming.
I first really noticed this with the release of Neverwinter Nights and the HCR (Hard Core Rules) garbage instituted by some world builders to crush the players underfoot and keep players from progressing. Some have confused providing challenge with hobbling gameplay and that has carried over. It seems that HCR generation of gamers has grown into our current crop of garbage devs with garbage policies.
There is a thread anticipating the next flurry of nerfs. That that thread even exists should be a warning sign to the devs that their relationship with the players has become so strained that the players are suffering *severe* disenchantment with what is essentially a fantasy game.
The downward spiral is already in place, and will only get worse as the players abandon STO or refuse to invest in a game with worse than no return, and the marketeers push for more and more ways to coerce (yes, "coerce") players into paying for their zen. Disenchanted players look for their entertainment elsewhere. In my fleet's v-chat server, there is already a room for Star Citizen that has fleeced many players from STO. I cannot talk to other players without hearing a lengthy litany of gripes and grievances - and no, this should not be "situation normal." There is a deep unhappiness with Cryptic and it deepens with every patch.
Meanwhile, the interface becomes more bug-intrusive with each passing update. Bugs are not fixed. Why hasn't that gorram loot critter been taken out behind the woodshed and shot yet? Why do the buttons on the HUD still dance around if you try to click them. Why don't clicks on the hotbar reliably activate the ready skill? Why does the chat window still become a small, blank box when you leave a challenge match? Why isn't anyone thinking about enhancing the play experience instead of letting it deteriorate under the weight of the devs' adversarial mentality and compounding bugs?
Nothing ever gets better, and they want real money for this?
Get out of HCR mode, devs. Remember that from the players' perspective. this is a game. The players are here to enjoy themselves. If we wanted to dwell in a hostile environment of constant crushing, soul-withering despair, we'd spend more time in reality.
Or maybe you should hire actual gamers to advise on the progress of the game, rather than just chartered accountants.
I first really noticed this with the release of Neverwinter Nights and the HCR (Hard Core Rules) garbage instituted by some world builders to crush the players underfoot and keep players from progressing. Some have confused providing challenge with hobbling gameplay and that has carried over. It seems that HCR generation of gamers has grown into our current crop of garbage devs with garbage policies.
There is a thread anticipating the next flurry of nerfs. That that thread even exists should be a warning sign to the devs that their relationship with the players has become so strained that the players are suffering *severe* disenchantment with what is essentially a fantasy game.
The downward spiral is already in place, and will only get worse as the players abandon STO or refuse to invest in a game with worse than no return, and the marketeers push for more and more ways to coerce (yes, "coerce") players into paying for their zen. Disenchanted players look for their entertainment elsewhere. In my fleet's v-chat server, there is already a room for Star Citizen that has fleeced many players from STO. I cannot talk to other players without hearing a lengthy litany of gripes and grievances - and no, this should not be "situation normal." There is a deep unhappiness with Cryptic and it deepens with every patch.
Meanwhile, the interface becomes more bug-intrusive with each passing update. Bugs are not fixed. Why hasn't that gorram loot critter been taken out behind the woodshed and shot yet? Why do the buttons on the HUD still dance around if you try to click them. Why don't clicks on the hotbar reliably activate the ready skill? Why does the chat window still become a small, blank box when you leave a challenge match? Why isn't anyone thinking about enhancing the play experience instead of letting it deteriorate under the weight of the devs' adversarial mentality and compounding bugs?
Nothing ever gets better, and they want real money for this?
Get out of HCR mode, devs. Remember that from the players' perspective. this is a game. The players are here to enjoy themselves. If we wanted to dwell in a hostile environment of constant crushing, soul-withering despair, we'd spend more time in reality.
Or maybe you should hire actual gamers to advise on the progress of the game, rather than just chartered accountants.
Post edited by raeat on
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Comments
...#LLAP...
I use them as examples when I presentations on pr vs communication With clients. I hope they don't change then I have to find another company "in the present" but I don't think it is possible.
But remember they are also responsible to their shareholders.
It's not the bugs per se, it's the relationship between the players and Cryptic.
Increasingly, its less a partnership and is becoming more adversarial.
This is not wise.
Cryptic would be well advised to consider mending some of the bridges they've been setting fire to.
It's really bad when someone can use the company as a example of bad PR communication with its customers. Oddly. I take business classes and I would do the same thing.
Crpytic model is a perfect model of bad customer and business relationship especially when it comes to Star Trek Online.
Gm makes products that have killed a dozen people and talk about it all the time.
Schneider meat was filled with deadly bacteria. The co went in front of everyone and talked about it.
Cryptic isn't allowed to talk about the possibility of season 9.5.
Foundry Authors are rather happy at the moment, since we've been granted a whole bunch of new stuff seemingly out of the blue, We've had devs chatting to us
Look in the art section, devs have been vocal and communicative in that department
I'm not saying that means theres not a genuine reason for people to be unhappy, just saying it depends what part of the forum your looking at
In my opinion, it's more the small minority of players wanting more communication and transparency - but the vast majority could not care less about any of it. This mindset is only within that small minority.
This is a fair point.
Some parts of Cryptic are much better at maintaining a working relationship with players than others.
I just wish the whole lot of them would adopt the best practise of some of them.
The root of the problem, to me, is the Free to Play model. I don't really want to get into all the reasons why the free to play model is bad for the players and good for the Devs and their Paymasters but it is.
What I do know is that Star Citizen, Wildstar, ESO, and the instant lvl 90 being offered by WoW later this year will see a large group of people leaving STO for greener pastures. Or even leaving for Neverwinter which gets so much more content, and has so much more stuff going on than Cryptics new red headed step child STO. Heck, if my comp could run Neverwinter with a reasonable FPS, I'd probably have stuck around and focused on that instead.
It just drives me nuts that Neverwinter just got a massive PvP content update, and immediately after started promoting the next module.
At this point it feels like Rivera and D'angelo are trolling the forum goers. Like why in god's green earth would the luxury liner with no amenities get a LTC Tac and 3 Tac consoles? lol And the new fleet project that gives half the FC's as a normal project...FFS.
The current trend is for subscription based games to go F2P after a year at most it seems. While many people think that means the game is failing, the truth probably has more to do with money.
The STO IP can be more of a hindrance than a help. It's not so much Star Trek but the puppet masters at CBS. Classic example is SWG and what became of it because of SOE having to deal with LA ON EVERYTHING. A lot of people don't realize that the CU was SOE failure and the NGE was actually LA's failure. SOE even warned them not to do it. Don't get me wrong SOE was responsible for a lot of SWG's problems but LA had it's hands in the cookie jar too.
Lastly, with popular IPs like Star Trek and Star Wars, the business minds at the various companies only see dollar signs, not realizing the the player base will call BS and raze everything when something is supposedly "not canon" or not right. They don't realize that they have to up their game when dealing with such IPs. People that play these game play because they are fans of the franchise not so much fans of gaming. Yet, they fail to do it every time. If STO, SWTOR, or even SWG, were done right would have taken WoW out behind the shed beat it to death with a shovel and left it there to rot. While the franchises are/were successful, the companies that produced them still failed at epic levels because they could have been so much more.
Absolutely, people need to realize this. These are calculated moves by corporations to make as much money as possible. Which is what businesses do and it's fine. For them. Not for us. Release hyped game at $50-60 for an initial profit, when sales slow down, switch to free to play and promote cash store for more profit.
Legitimate complaints and criticisms disappear in an ocean of snark, sarcasm and old fashioned rudeness. When Cryptic does not respond to this negativity, forum posters continue to marinate in their own bile, re-affirming their own biases. Thus, the forum posts get nastier and nastier. I believe the existence of the threads you mention have more to do with the toxic nature of the STO forums than Cryptic's lack of direct communication with angry forum posters.
I totally agree. F2P is good for the business, not so good for the players. Eventually the rubber will have to meet the road between the two where both are happy. Right now businesses are dominating players. One-sided relationships are not healthy.
I agree here also. Just because there is a popular IP out there doesn't mean it will translate well into a MMO. There is a lot of potential with the Trek IP however.
Well said.
Um, your post seems rather adversarial in of itself, no? As far as the word "nerf" being used more often than any celebratory term; you can't lay that at the feet of the devs when it's obvious how spoiled rotten and dishonest the playerbase are. They're all over Cryptic to fix any bugs that adversely affect them and they're all over Cryptic when Cryptic fixes any bugs that benefited them.
This sounds like the garbage offered with the flood of tears about effort and being victims that is often slopped around the forums. What would these people do if they broke a shoelace? It would be the end of the world! Wait, who am I kidding? Shoelaces are too much effort...they're struggling with flipflops.
The game is in serious need of a balance pass. Those folks struggling with their flipflops can't fathom that...
And it happens with every game. It happens with almost everything. People want things their way...and if they don't get it...they throw a tantrum. Everybody grows old, but not everybody grows up.
Why do you believe that Cryptic is not addressing bugs? There might be bugs that are "important" to you...oh noes, I have to resize my chat window sometimes after zoning out of instanced content (yeah, it's not just challenges)...when there are just so many different bugs to be addressed.
Everybody's got something they'd prefer that Cryptic addressed before they addressed something else...whining that Cryptic's not addressing it in their preferred order is just that...whining.
Nothing ever gets better? I don't know...some of the ridiculous doom threads like this get better. /sigh
Please don't speak for all the players. There was no unanimous election held where we all voted you in to speak for us. Some of us find that attempts from certain players to turn STO into little more than a 3D chatroom/dating game for folks to be sickening...there's all sorts of folks here for all sorts of different reasons. There is no hardcore mode in STO...suggesting there is - is simply pointing to yourself as having major issues. Cryptic can't fix that.
Gamers do give feedback. There are many types of gamers. There are folks that want a reward for doing something...there are folks that want a reward because they figured out how to log in to the game...
Cryptic is by no means perfect - sorry, Cryptic - you're nowhere near perfect. There are definitely some persistent bugs that point to a need for some more QA and bug squashing. No doubt you guys have gotten better over the years, the fork stuff was always a trip - reintroducing a slew of old bugs over and over again because the different forks were never patched with the bug fixes from other forks.
There are definitely times when a little more communication would be helpful as well - still, even there - you guys do a much better job than you have in the past. But there are definitely times where you guys come off as dropping the ball.
The inconsistency drives me crazy...it really does. Sure, plans change - they evolve - things go in different directions. That's expected...but when something was changed from X to Y and the overall plan changes from Y to Z, you guys often forget to change those things that changed from X to Y so they're Z too...which tends to be more of a slap in the face with the inconsistency than it being that natural evolution of the game over a period of time.
You've spent years catering to uber casuals so they could play the game with a single button joystick...leading to jokes about puppies playing the game on their iPads...which has driven away many certain types of gamers while attracting new types. IMHO, it should have been a case of being brutally honest with them - bringing them in - allowing for them to be able to do certain things and just holding the line that Elite content should mean something instead of watering everything down. Instead, you've grown the cesspool that is the forums erupting with a flood of tears when anything offers even the most miniscule inkling of challenge or you fix a bug that was allowing a player to pat themselves on the back harder and faster than intended.
STO is a game that can support many different types of players...the RP chat folks, the casual I'm flying a starship, the average gamer, the hardcore gamer...STO could support them all - but you've got to be honest with some of the ubercasuals that just can't be honest with themselves.
edit: I'm just an average gamer. The stuff some folks can do - just leaves me in awe. Cause I'm not them - I accept that - I know my limitations, what I can do to improve, and so forth...I'm not laying that at Cryptic's feet. I accept that I'm average, that it's going to take me an average amount of time to do things, I'm going to have average damage and average survivability. Folks that are better than me will be able to do things I can't do - will be able to do things faster than I can...etc, etc, etc. I don't need to be buffed out the wahzoo or have content nerfed out the wahzoo so I can do what they do. It's called acceptance...
edit2: Lol, mind you...even though I have no Fed toons and I'm not a fan of the Galaxy-class in the least...it definitely does appear that Cryptic's got some beef with the Galaxy.
You are one of the nicest people on the forums, and I agree with all your points.
Welcome to the attitude of (and situation) of practically every MMO Dev Team/Company in existence 4 years or so into said MMO's lifecycle.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
I agree with this. It's not Cryptic that's adversarial, it's the players' interpretation of Cryptic. Cryptic is just trying to make a game good enough to make money. They aren't out to get you.
In the old days, Cryptic used to be one of the most talkative developers I'd ever seen. They'd tell us their plans up to a few years out, and they'd tell us every decision they were making along the way.
Then, when plans would change, players would get upset. They'd say "and whatever happened to x, which they promised us 2 years ago," not realizing that they were not promises, that plans can change for many reasons, and that Cryptic was not personally out to get them. But this is why they don't talk about season 9.5. It's not done yet, and if they told you about it and then changed it, I'm sure there would be a lot of unhappy people on this forum.
I think some people here need to get a little perspective. The forums are where the angriest players congregate. The forums do not necessarily represent the wants and needs of the entire player base. Yeah, Cryptic makes mistakes, but they usually explain their reasoning for the stuff they do in one way or another.
If you don't like the direction the game is going, you need to leave. I'm not saying that to be mean, I'm saying that because that's how capitalism works. You vote with your time and money.
What I see on the forums all the time is the equivalent of "I swear if you guys rip on me 13 or 14 more times, I'm outta here." And it's getting a little old. Like the OP said, it's just a game.
Eh, this is the internet. And an MMO game forum on the internet. Based on what I've seen on similar forums, the devs could release patch notes saying "Two free ships and twelve new costumes for everyone!" and there would be threads complaining that it wasn't more. Or how dare they waste dev time on that when they could be working on <posters favorite feature>. Or how it's probably a smokescreen for a money grab.
Yay, internet gaming forums.
The part that jumped out at me from the OP was taking the mere existence of a gripe thread as evidence of a problem. The fact of the matter is that some people are always going to complain. You could be handing out hundred dollar bills and some would be unhappy about only getting one, or five, or that they're not crisp and fresh from the mint, or they don't (or do) have consecutive numbers...
I'm not trying to claim that the game or the company are flawless, but that goes both ways. Players need to acknowledge and accept responsibility for their own conduct, and that an "unpleasable" segment of any population finds enjoyment in complaining and will look for and eventually find any reason to do so.
This^
I've noticed that a large part of the community here has issues with Cryptic and the way they do things, but you guys need to get out more often.
This kind of stuff is going on all over the industry, and while I'm certainly no Cryptic fanboy, the real truth is that they're actually much better when it comes to this kind of thing than most.
The modern mmo model is F2P, if the game doesn't launch that way, it certainly will be in the near future. The real money in this model is in NEW players. Enticing these new players to spend money is all they're after now. They don't want you to hang out for years with all your cool gear and your attitude about the good old days. You've already spent most of what you're going to spend on the game (on average) compared to someone who's been here less than a year. Keeping these new players happy with bells and whistles, fast leveling, and lots of ways to spend money, that's the thing! If they could make more money with the traditional subscription plan they would. They'd do their damndest to retain their older customer base. But that's not the case any more.
And the lies.... well it's just sad. It used to be that the best games had a thriving community with engaged developers who truly listened to their player base. But now a gaming community is just a wing of the studio's marketing department. They spit out BS and Hype, shut their ears to criticism, and even do their best to squash any and all dissent. This has the result of disenfranchising the veterans, who've been around long enough in any particular game to see through the lies. But that doesn't matter see, they don't care what the vets think any more, it's that guy who has been playing for two months, he's the only one that counts, he's the one who just spent a hundred bucks, and will be spending more over the next few.
Like I said, these are all realities of the modern MMO market. The trick is to find a game you like with as little of this going on as possible. Guess what? This is one of the better ones.. unfortunately.
Nope.
Dismiss any negative comment as just another internet forum and carry on regardless.
Speaking for myself, and of course thats all I can do with any reliability, I feel that Cryptic have cultivated this sense of animosity towards the fora.
That they have an exaggeratedly defensive posture towards it.
There are honourable exceptions, but on the whole the forum is something they don't respect.
How many things has Gecko announced or confirmed, not here, but on third party podcasts?
When was the last time D'Angelo addressed the players here?
The fora, if they do have a sense of ennui with cryptic, came by it fairly.
Once you throw away the whole "Us versus Them" mentality, you realize there's only just.. us. The Developers are players as well and they're just trying to do the best they can to make it a better game - that is also able to financially support itself, and the people working on it. You can scream, yell and get upset, but what are you actually doing to improve the game - and community?
I'd argue giving unalloyed feedback, good or ill, is a whole hell of a lot more useful to an intelligent game company than waving a flag for them continually.
I have something to add :
Cryptic is wasting time -- time that is not theirs to waste .
This is an awesome game , but it is 4 years old .
It won't get to be 8 years old if we keep going this way . "We" , meaning the fans as well as the Devs .
My vote is that along side the next expansion , serious plans are devised for this game's eventual "maintenance mode" .
Those plans must include serious raids (not the 15 minute 'coffee break' missions that we get for the Rep systems) , and some form of "normal PVP" like the PVP that can be in this game between levels 10-45 .
The non-trolled/vaped kind .
Something that most can relate to , instead of the "Elite Only" power creep bonanza that we have today @ Level 50 .
I want this game to flourish , I really do , but the Reputation & Lockbox thing has gotten old ... , a lot faster then the clever raids that Cryptic originally designed 4 years ago that are it's still most played PVE content .
I'm not pretending to see the numbers playing the Borg STF's queues .
Those numbers are there every day , next to the lot's of zeroes in the other public queues .
Those are my Metrics , and since I play Borg STF's mostly in private matches , those are the only numbers that count for me .
Moving the awards around again and again has not changed that one bit .
Nor has adding an outstanding amount of Dil to Gecko's Dinoz with Lazors 'golden child' .
Ppl play that for the Dil .
Ppl play the Borg STF's because they are fun .
Make more FUN !
... and I'm here posting instead of being on Risa ... . a telling sign ...
and +1 for the OP !