The community is becoming nostalgic about the Stahl era...oh dear things are really ****** up.
I've always liked Dan Stahl. I've never been nostalgic, because he did make some decisions which he did have to own up to. And I have never forgotten them.
But in the end I think the culprit is STO's Publisher, not its Developer. I find it hard to believe the masterminds behind City of Heroes and City of Villains devised these things by themselves.
Especially when there are so many other game assets which are almost uniformly taken from other PW business models in terms of f2p games.
And PWE wants to keep that illusion going. They have reason to.
I actually agree. I think his heart was in the right place. I liked his relative transparency and honesty, even if I disagreed with some of his decisions.
Sure, there were times I rolled my eyes. "Sometimes bad things happen for no good reason." was one of them.
But over all I think most of the problem was the playerbase not understanding or not wanting to understand how game development works.
And I agree with you, in turn.
Seriously, I had some issues with Stahl too, but I always felt that he genuinely cared for the game, beyond it being a money-maker for them. With Geko I don't have that at all: he's monetized the game to the degree that he even begrudges people their small Tau Dewa rewards. And that is sad, on an epic [gold] level.
Seriously, I had some issues with Stahl too, but I always felt that he genuinely cared for the game, beyond it being a money-maker for them. With Geko I don't have that at all: he's monetized the game to the degree that he even begrudges people their small Tau Dewa rewards. And that is sad, on an epic [gold] level.
Agree with this so much.
Its great refreshing the forums atm, its like watching a crash in slow motion... :rolleyes:
Seriously, I had some issues with Stahl too, but I always felt that he genuinely cared for the game, beyond it being a money-maker for them. With Geko I don't have that at all: he's monetized the game to the degree that he even begrudges people their small Tau Dewa rewards. And that is sad, on an epic [gold] level.
Geko has been here the entire time. I like Al Rivera too. I don't care what other people say about him, I like that he's willing to give uncomfortable truths instead of comforting lies. He has no problems admitting faults or past mistakes, but keeps an eye to the future.
My emphasis is still on PWE. They're the ones who tell Cryptic what to do, and give 'advice' on how to do it. They intervene when they want to because they are the ones giving money to Cryptic.
Cryptic has no reason to agree with me or confirm any of my suspicions. You don't bite the hand that feeds you.
But when I see a lot of these gated things in STO which had never existed in a Cryptic game before PWE bought them, and these are the same things I see in other Perfect World games?
Namely the things that TRIBBLE a lot of players off? I have a hard time honestly convincing myself the buck stops with D'Angelo.
It's the people who put the pressure on him to do it.
And if that truth be that, from here on in, they no longer allow real choices, then at least I know where I am at.
But some clarification seems due, methinks.
That's definitely the long term goal no doubt about it. But it takes time to nerf and delete everything, so far 2 years and counting.
They getting close now they almost entirely stripped the game from fun right down to being pitiful enough to nerf vendor trash.
Ideally, they want all the battery hens on the assembly line to be 100% controlled and quantifiable.
So that they decide how much you play, when you do it, what you spend, what you buy etc.
When everyone fits into their little metrics and the projection of profits more or less fits the bill then the game is where they want it to be.
One certified way to make sure you control what people play is deleting all our forms of gameplay which is exactly what we've seen and exactly what is going on right now.
Don't want people getting free materials inside clusters? Delete
The Skill Points and Expertise rewarded for defeating NPCs below the players current level have been updated.
They now correctly scale starting at one level below the player.
After earning all 60 Captain Specialization points, Dilithium is no longer rewarded when filling the Skill Points bar.
All Patrols and Deep Space Encounters in the Tau Dewa Sector now spawn NPCs at the correct level.
Map loading screens have been updated.
Resolved an issue that caused some female Human and Caitian captains to have invisible legs while wearing skirts.
The Small XP Boost in the C-Store has been reverted to its previous value of 1,000 Bonus Skill Points.
Gonna get next to nothing xp from now on!
Anything that happens, happens. Anything that in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen. Anything that in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again.
It doesn't necessarily do it in chronological order though.
Not when the content is working as it is supposed to and as it always has.
Yes actually, exploiting covers that as well. If game devs don't want players doing something, it's an exploit, regardless if the game developers didn't mind before.
the ONLY thing that has changed is how Cryptic applied the changes. They saw that people were doing what they should - team together for xp grinds - and were gaining too much too quickly in their mind, so they acted. There was not a single genuine exploit to be had.
You're invoking the "No True Scotsman" fallacy here. It was an exploit, plain and simple.
So from the patch notes, it looks like it was both dilithium and exp too fast but not the drops of upgrade kits. No doubt related to the ships spawning below squad leader level but I'd think that would have hurt xp.
On the other hand, they reduced exp needed for ship mastery and even are giving mastery buffs for exp already earned. So clearly is was the captain exp that they thought was too fast.
The Skill Points and Expertise rewarded for defeating NPCs below the players current level have been updated.
They now correctly scale starting at one level below the player.
After earning all 60 Captain Specialization points, Dilithium is no longer rewarded when filling the Skill Points bar.
All Patrols and Deep Space Encounters in the Tau Dewa Sector now spawn NPCs at the correct level.
Map loading screens have been updated.
Resolved an issue that caused some female Human and Caitian captains to have invisible legs while wearing skirts.
The Small XP Boost in the C-Store has been reverted to its previous value of 1,000 Bonus Skill Points.
Gonna get next to nothing xp from now on!
Where are they? I'd like to read the whole thing but don't see them in the patch notes forum.
Yes actually, exploiting covers that as well. If game devs don't want players doing something, it's an exploit, regardless if the game developers didn't mind before.
You're invoking the "No True Scotsman" fallacy here. It was an exploit, plain and simple.
Sorry, but I call it like it is.
Cryptic: Hey everyone! We know that there can be a level gap slowing the story down so we encourage you to go out and play patrols to gain that xp! Go go gi gi!
Players: Wheeeee!
Cryptic: Wait, you're going too fast... no that not what we meant... wait! You know what, we're calling that an exploit now. Yeah, you did EXACTLY what we told you to do but we didn't know you'd ALL do it so... NERF! There, done. that's what you get for not playing the way we want you to, even if you're following the rules we set.
So from the patch notes, it looks like it was both dilithium and exp too fast but not the drops of upgrade kits. No doubt related to the ships spawning below squad leader level but I'd think that would have hurt xp.
On the other hand, they reduced exp needed for ship mastery and even are giving mastery buffs for exp already earned. So clearly is was the captain exp that they thought was too fast.
Oh, so they fixed it? Well, they forgot to turn the maps back on.
Tau Dewa was locked down becuase some people were running the patrol mission on Elite after teaming with a low level player, making them team leader, and then side kicking down to their level, and then killing all the now weaker NPCs which are also more numerous from the teaming up with likely very little effort and a decent amount of XP.
Okay, how is this not an exploit? Because I don't think they actually intended the sidekick system to level down players, just level them up in case they bumped into a high ranking instance so they down get steam rolled by NPCs 20-40 levels higher than them.
And no I don't think using basically the same defense for the old one click foundry missions people used to use to farm the foundry daily is a good one.
so wait, this was an exploit? but how does instance jumping to tagging a dino just once and run to the next and then the next one to get all three, get credit for all three, and then instance switch to the next zone that has the dinos ready and get a mass of dili and mark not an exploit?
"Frankly, not sure why you're on a one man nerf campaign. "
oh man, I loved stahl, only because out of all the devs, he was the one who " cared" for the game and the ip more than anyone else in the studio.
as far all this about gecko, well its no secret that im not a fan of him. but, without sounding petty or anything, the big difference between stahl and gecko (not that they held different positions at cryptic lol). was stahl always wanted a good all around star trek game.. he got excited about what other people thought star trek online should be..
gecko wants to make his game, with all the thngs "he" wants. it is very apparent by his interviews.. and that is not a good person to be leading a game. (even though Deangelo runs it, it seems that gecko has had more than a foot in the door since stahl left. )
as a musician, when my band plays a wedding, we don't play all the songs we want to play, we play what our customer wants played.
the community has been (for the most part) trying to tell cryptic what they want on the forums, in chat, in other forums, on twitter, whatever.. some people give good indepth feedback that others get behind (example: we wanted harder content... what we said pretty much as a whole was that we wanted more challenging mechanics, more challenging boss fights, we even said that we didn't want just npc buffs and mobs increased. what did we get, exactly what most people said they didn't want.. and then cryptic had the gaul to say, "well, more difficulty is what you asked for" lol... )
lately, the actions of cryptic employees, cryptic itself, and pwe, shows me that they are disconnecting from the players. I have played a lot of games,(and I mean a lot for a long time). I have never felt so ignored, or unhappy about a gaming company and how it runs its game ever. as a player, each content release, sure, we get some cool things, but we pay a price everytime, (weather in real money, or in something we didn't want to lose).
like I have said in other threads over the last year, I have a friend who does 3d rendering for a few gaming companies, and when he brought up cryptic, he got a chuckle out of most of the emplyees from other gaming companies.
it is what it is, but cryptic/pwe as a whole needs to shape up....
Okay, how is this not an exploit? Because I don't think they actually intended the sidekick system to level down players, just level them up in case they bumped into a high ranking instance so they down get steam rolled by NPCs 20-40 levels higher than them.
That existed since the game launch, if it is an exploit, is the exploit with the longest duration in gamming history lol
A feature to reward dedicated players turns out to be too good to be true. Not surprising really.
The least they could have done was just reduce it to 1000 Dil or so, but I guess Cryptic really, really doesn't want people to gain enough Dil to upgrade things and to convert into Zen.
(That is not a snide thread...honestly I think it would avoid a lot trouble and heartaches on everybody's behalf, yours included.)
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-) Proudly F2P.Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
Where are they? I'd like to read the whole thing but don't see them in the patch notes forum.
Off the STO Twitter tweet.
Anything that happens, happens. Anything that in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen. Anything that in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again.
It doesn't necessarily do it in chronological order though.
That existed since the game launch, if it is an exploit, is the exploit with the longest duration in gamming history lol
Even longer. It is part of the engine and was built into champions from the ground up. So it predates the first development on sto.
Also side kicking is very much intended for both up and down leveling players, its one of the more casual friendly tools so cryptic games have much less of the "I can't team with you noon my stuff is too hard and your stuff sucks" as most other MMOs. There is gated content, but a max level player can join a new friend and not have it be a terrible experience, like in wow where one is not contributing in the slightest.
Tau Dewa was locked down becuase some people were running the patrol mission on Elite after teaming with a low level player, making them team leader, and then side kicking down to their level, and then killing all the now weaker NPCs which are also more numerous from the teaming up with likely very little effort and a decent amount of XP.
Okay, how is this not an exploit? Because I don't think they actually intended the sidekick system to level down players,
If they are themselves scaled down in level too, alongside the NPC's, where is the exploit? If the system has me fight at lv 10, you bet I'd want lv 10 NPC's too! I only see an exploit if they could continue to play at their 50+ level vs. severely leveled-down NPC's.
Cryptic: Hey everyone! We know that there can be a level gap slowing the story down so we encourage you to go out and play patrols to gain that xp! Go go gi gi!
Players: Wheeeee!
Cryptic: Wait, you're going too fast... no that not what we meant... wait! You know what, we're calling that an exploit now. Yeah, you did EXACTLY what we told you to do but we didn't know you'd ALL do it so... NERF! There, done. that's what you get for not playing the way we want you to, even if you're following the rules we set.
Sorry, *I* call it like it is.
You basically said the same thing I did.
If the people that run something, like an MMO, don't want you to do something in that particular thing, they have every right to stop you from doing it. It's in the TOS, ffs.
Comments
I'm shocked. Shocked I say!
/sarcasm
Mine Trap Supporter
I've always liked Dan Stahl. I've never been nostalgic, because he did make some decisions which he did have to own up to. And I have never forgotten them.
But in the end I think the culprit is STO's Publisher, not its Developer. I find it hard to believe the masterminds behind City of Heroes and City of Villains devised these things by themselves.
Especially when there are so many other game assets which are almost uniformly taken from other PW business models in terms of f2p games.
And PWE wants to keep that illusion going. They have reason to.
And I agree with you, in turn.
Seriously, I had some issues with Stahl too, but I always felt that he genuinely cared for the game, beyond it being a money-maker for them. With Geko I don't have that at all: he's monetized the game to the degree that he even begrudges people their small Tau Dewa rewards. And that is sad, on an epic [gold] level.
Agree with this so much.
Its great refreshing the forums atm, its like watching a crash in slow motion... :rolleyes:
Geko has been here the entire time. I like Al Rivera too. I don't care what other people say about him, I like that he's willing to give uncomfortable truths instead of comforting lies. He has no problems admitting faults or past mistakes, but keeps an eye to the future.
My emphasis is still on PWE. They're the ones who tell Cryptic what to do, and give 'advice' on how to do it. They intervene when they want to because they are the ones giving money to Cryptic.
Cryptic has no reason to agree with me or confirm any of my suspicions. You don't bite the hand that feeds you.
But when I see a lot of these gated things in STO which had never existed in a Cryptic game before PWE bought them, and these are the same things I see in other Perfect World games?
Namely the things that TRIBBLE a lot of players off? I have a hard time honestly convincing myself the buck stops with D'Angelo.
It's the people who put the pressure on him to do it.
That's definitely the long term goal no doubt about it. But it takes time to nerf and delete everything, so far 2 years and counting.
They getting close now they almost entirely stripped the game from fun right down to being pitiful enough to nerf vendor trash.
Ideally, they want all the battery hens on the assembly line to be 100% controlled and quantifiable.
So that they decide how much you play, when you do it, what you spend, what you buy etc.
When everyone fits into their little metrics and the projection of profits more or less fits the bill then the game is where they want it to be.
One certified way to make sure you control what people play is deleting all our forms of gameplay which is exactly what we've seen and exactly what is going on right now.
Don't want people getting free materials inside clusters? Delete
Don't want people earning EC for the tour? Delete
It insults me royally on general principle alone
The Skill Points and Expertise rewarded for defeating NPCs below the players current level have been updated.
They now correctly scale starting at one level below the player.
After earning all 60 Captain Specialization points, Dilithium is no longer rewarded when filling the Skill Points bar.
All Patrols and Deep Space Encounters in the Tau Dewa Sector now spawn NPCs at the correct level.
Map loading screens have been updated.
Resolved an issue that caused some female Human and Caitian captains to have invisible legs while wearing skirts.
The Small XP Boost in the C-Store has been reverted to its previous value of 1,000 Bonus Skill Points.
Gonna get next to nothing xp from now on!
You're invoking the "No True Scotsman" fallacy here. It was an exploit, plain and simple.
Sorry, but I call it like it is.
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On the other hand, they reduced exp needed for ship mastery and even are giving mastery buffs for exp already earned. So clearly is was the captain exp that they thought was too fast.
Where are they? I'd like to read the whole thing but don't see them in the patch notes forum.
Cryptic: Hey everyone! We know that there can be a level gap slowing the story down so we encourage you to go out and play patrols to gain that xp! Go go gi gi!
Players: Wheeeee!
Cryptic: Wait, you're going too fast... no that not what we meant... wait! You know what, we're calling that an exploit now. Yeah, you did EXACTLY what we told you to do but we didn't know you'd ALL do it so... NERF! There, done. that's what you get for not playing the way we want you to, even if you're following the rules we set.
Sorry, *I* call it like it is.
Oh, so they fixed it? Well, they forgot to turn the maps back on.
Sarah Knightly - Co-leader; Frontier Explorers - U.S.S. Witchblade
Rias Gremory - Leader; Frontier Marauders - I.K.S. B'ullwinkle
They'll turn them back on with the patch.
http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/9001443-release-notes%3A-october-23rd%2C-2014
Guess they use Arc more than their own forums.....
Here's the forum version.
Formatting mass patch notes takes a while.
Tau Dewa was locked down becuase some people were running the patrol mission on Elite after teaming with a low level player, making them team leader, and then side kicking down to their level, and then killing all the now weaker NPCs which are also more numerous from the teaming up with likely very little effort and a decent amount of XP.
Okay, how is this not an exploit? Because I don't think they actually intended the sidekick system to level down players, just level them up in case they bumped into a high ranking instance so they down get steam rolled by NPCs 20-40 levels higher than them.
And no I don't think using basically the same defense for the old one click foundry missions people used to use to farm the foundry daily is a good one.
as far all this about gecko, well its no secret that im not a fan of him. but, without sounding petty or anything, the big difference between stahl and gecko (not that they held different positions at cryptic lol). was stahl always wanted a good all around star trek game.. he got excited about what other people thought star trek online should be..
gecko wants to make his game, with all the thngs "he" wants. it is very apparent by his interviews.. and that is not a good person to be leading a game. (even though Deangelo runs it, it seems that gecko has had more than a foot in the door since stahl left. )
as a musician, when my band plays a wedding, we don't play all the songs we want to play, we play what our customer wants played.
the community has been (for the most part) trying to tell cryptic what they want on the forums, in chat, in other forums, on twitter, whatever.. some people give good indepth feedback that others get behind (example: we wanted harder content... what we said pretty much as a whole was that we wanted more challenging mechanics, more challenging boss fights, we even said that we didn't want just npc buffs and mobs increased. what did we get, exactly what most people said they didn't want.. and then cryptic had the gaul to say, "well, more difficulty is what you asked for" lol... )
lately, the actions of cryptic employees, cryptic itself, and pwe, shows me that they are disconnecting from the players. I have played a lot of games,(and I mean a lot for a long time). I have never felt so ignored, or unhappy about a gaming company and how it runs its game ever. as a player, each content release, sure, we get some cool things, but we pay a price everytime, (weather in real money, or in something we didn't want to lose).
like I have said in other threads over the last year, I have a friend who does 3d rendering for a few gaming companies, and when he brought up cryptic, he got a chuckle out of most of the emplyees from other gaming companies.
it is what it is, but cryptic/pwe as a whole needs to shape up....
and I want stahl back... lol
That existed since the game launch, if it is an exploit, is the exploit with the longest duration in gamming history lol
Vin Naftero@playhard88 - FED Sciencie
K'tan@playhard88 - KDF Tactical
Argento@playhard88 - RRF Tactical (FED)
The least they could have done was just reduce it to 1000 Dil or so, but I guess Cryptic really, really doesn't want people to gain enough Dil to upgrade things and to convert into Zen.
And that part is understandable...however, the lead-up to those notes could have been handled in a better way for us and for you guys too...
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1267611
(That is not a snide thread...honestly I think it would avoid a lot trouble and heartaches on everybody's behalf, yours included.)
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-)
Proudly F2P. Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
though its more misses than hits.. true story..
Off the STO Twitter tweet.
are we really surprised by cryptic for taking 4 yrs to fix anything
Even longer. It is part of the engine and was built into champions from the ground up. So it predates the first development on sto.
Also side kicking is very much intended for both up and down leveling players, its one of the more casual friendly tools so cryptic games have much less of the "I can't team with you noon my stuff is too hard and your stuff sucks" as most other MMOs. There is gated content, but a max level player can join a new friend and not have it be a terrible experience, like in wow where one is not contributing in the slightest.
If they are themselves scaled down in level too, alongside the NPC's, where is the exploit? If the system has me fight at lv 10, you bet I'd want lv 10 NPC's too! I only see an exploit if they could continue to play at their 50+ level vs. severely leveled-down NPC's.
If the people that run something, like an MMO, don't want you to do something in that particular thing, they have every right to stop you from doing it. It's in the TOS, ffs.
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