But, again, this is a two-way street. Sometimes the Devs have to make a decision that the player base needs to either live with or go find another game to play. Instead of choosing not to play the game and send a message via their logged in time and purchases, a few people come onto the forums and start throwing tantrums like a five-year old with a potty mouth. They make the rest of us look bad.
People are passionate about this game, they want to continue playing. People should be free to voice their opinions, positive AND negative. How they voice them is important, too. However, you cannot just ignore negative opinions because "a few people" are a bit extreme in expressing their views, that's a cop-out.
Or let me put it a slightly different way. Let's say you bought a carton of buttermilk. You try it and you don't like it. Do you call your congressman and rant at him or her to do something about the carton in your fridge? No, that would be unrealistic. Do you keep buying the buttermilk anyway? That would be foolhardy. Maybe you should switch to 2% instead.
I never like analogies. Why jump all the way to calling your congressman? Why didn't I call or write a letter to the manufacturer or the store?
Forum negativity. Can't blame all that on the Devs not communicating because I see more of an effort to engage than I've ever seen before, in spite of a lot of hostility. There are some forum users I will not name whom I can count on to be negative and hostile no matter what the Devs do.
You've said it yourself, you know specific forum users that you can count on to be hostile. Do some threads or topics inevitably lead to trolling and/or flaming or is the flaming and/or trolling caused by these specific forum users? Discussion should not be closed due to the posts of a few forum users.
But don't think that excuses bad behavior. As someone who has been customer support in the past, the example of hanging up on an abusive customer resonates very strongly with me. You try to be courteous and professional, but some people just will not take no for an answer or make any effort to compromise toward a solution. They treat you like servant-slaves put on this Earth to be abused until they're happy. They're the customers who give every other customer a bad name and make CS a miserable job workers can't wait to get away from.
Can't blame anybody for "hanging up" on people like that.
I hope at some point you realize that many of these angry customer calls are misdirected anger. The customers are angry at the company, however, they cannot express their anger directly at the decision makers and you are the closest person that they can yell at. Sucks to be in that position, but you either learn to tone them out or you find a new job.
In closing, you may not have meant it, but it felt like to me that you were telling people that they should either put up with the changes or leave. You said it yourself that this is a MMO, changes should be expected. People voice their concerns so that things could be changed for the better.
Shifting blame to the players, for mistakes that you (as a company) have done, is never a good thing. For this reason alone, Stephen D'Angelo must be removed as Executive Producer for Star Trek Online. This, coupled with the overall silence from most developers (gone are the days of regular State of the Game posts, or "Engineering Reports"), replaced with virtually 100% silence.
Testing on Tribble is largely ignored, as patches are most often pushed live only a day after they've been to Tribble (leaving very little time for actual testing), which results in an overall buggy game, that has become ever more bugged since Delta Rising launched.
Animosity becomes prevalent, when your developers continually make changes to the game that hinder, or slow down the progress of the players, and where little to no feedback is given regarding said changes. The term "stealth change" comes to mind here, as it is more frequent to change things without notification, than there is to say "We're planning on doing this, what do you think?" forum posts.
Largely agreed...specially with the first part of your posting
Brace for impact...I know this is long and not all of you will want to read it. But I hope some of you will. And PLEASE go upthread and read what I had to say about Extra Life. I did the research on that one.
I am going to preface this by saying that I have been on both sides of the counter.
I know what it is like to be a customer receiving poor service or poor communication, sometimes in areas where it has more of an impact on what I am doing that anything that a game could possibly impact.
I also know what it is like to be on the other side of the counter, having an unreasonable level of abuse, personal accusations, threats, cursing, and vulgarity hurled at me or members of my team. Sometimes what set that person off in the first place was a legitimate problem and they were rightfully upset but let their anger carry them too far in their behavior. Other times the customer was making a mountain out of a molehill either because of some problem (such as a misunderstanding, or being emotionally on edge due to a situation like being in my store because they are doing funeral arrangements for a recently-deceased loved one), or they were very literally mentally disturbed.
I have seen and experienced both extremes: poor customer service, and poor customer behavior. They both exist and are both real problems and will have to be addressed to have any chance of fixing this situation. You may say our chances are zero, but I will say that the only way we can KNOW that for sure is by attempting to address both. If we do attempt to address both and then it fails--then we can't say it was for lack of giving the best effort.
We are clearly looking at a toxic dynamic between the devs and the community. This began with some severe missteps by the devs in both decision-making and communication, and on the dev end has continued to be exacerbated by some people losing control and posting things they should have thought through more carefully and professionally. I will say, though, that when members of the community resort to personal attacks, then the community is going too far.
I've twice in my career come into major climate/culture turnaround situations where there was a lot of destroyed goodwill, and had to be a part of turning that around. So, while the situations are not completely comparable I feel like it does give me some perspective on what's going on here.
In the most relevant instance, I actually onto the management team in a retail store that had a really horrible negative feedback loop going on, and one of the first things on my agenda was to start a one-person climate change in that place. At first it was very difficult because I was not getting full support from the rest of the management team, but it did get easier with time as some other staffing changes occurred. BUT--even in those early stages, those actions DID still make a difference.
Let me start first by defining the negative feedback loop the same way I defined it to my team and fellow managers, though I am going to be a little more blunt in describing it here than I was when I was actually speaking with my co-workers.
Some of the team at that store were tenured employees who had developed a bad attitude. The standards for quality and proper behavior towards customers were also lax at times and (though as you can imagine I could NOT say this to my fellow managers while they were still working in my store) other members of the management team including the store manager and a fellow assistant manager, quite simply did not give a damn.
Unfortunately there was another piece to what was going on, and a justification--however wrongheaded--that many of these people were using to justify themselves...some consciously, others subconsciously by absorbing it from other employees. And that was the fact...and it definitely was a fact...that we had one of the most cantankerous and oftentimes rude and unreasonable customer bases in the entire district. The level of TRIBBLE dished out onto the employees was beyond anything you'd have to deal with almost anywhere else. I know I had not believed the stories about how that store could be could possibly be true until I started working there and I saw it for myself.
BUT!
And here is the MAJOR thing that the employees were missing! Even at this store there were a lot of good customers, and others who had the potential to be good, if they felt like they were treated with respect.
Instead, some of my employees AND fellow managers were basically spoiling for a fight every time they went to the counter. We even had one guy who worked for us that was basically like this guy from the old Capital One commercials. He seemed to take a perverse pleasure in shooting customers down; you'd swear he was counting his score. (Had I actually had hiring/firing authority as opposed to just supervisory authority, I would have had that guy's butt out the door first thing on joining the management team.)
One of the key things I explained to the employees that I could get to listen (and later, as new managers came in, to the other managers) is that obviously we could not control the public's behavior. But we COULD control ourselves. And if we quit approaching each customer interaction looking for a fight, then we might well succeed in retraining some of the customers by showing them that they could have higher expectations of us than that, and that they could actually expect to be treated with dignity.
(And maybe cut us some slack and not go completely off the rails when...as unfortunately will still happen no matter what...something goes wrong.)
That part obviously is something I think Cryptic could learn from. I suspect that some of the employees at Cryptic--in addition to maybe not having public relations training (except perhaps a few)--have reached the point where they now come onto the forums expecting a fight. By rising above that and behaving professionally...even when some people in the community are being anything but...Cryptic has a chance to restart that relationship. The only ones they can really, fully control are themselves.
To people from Cryptic, I would say that if something has genuinely upset you, maybe you need to get someone else who is not as emotionally involved to post. This is the equivalent of someone working at the counter getting another employee to help rather than risking going off in the face of someone they have been at loggerheads with for a while.
Personally, I think Smirk was honest to God upset by a previous thread where he and the Cryptic team were accused of using the charity drive for underhanded purposes to milk the players, basically. Smirk's upset was visible in both posts he made about the matter. I also do think that having just gotten back from vacation and come into a crisis, he and Trendy really ARE swamped to the point where they cannot do anything else.
However--do I think what he said in the second (official) thread could have been phrased better? Yes. Definitely.
BUT...I made a decision given an overall picture of the circumstances, that a different response on my end was called for, rather than flying off the handle. And that in fact attempting a constructive response was going to be better.
I do think that since each of us in the community can control ourselves, we can each do a small part as well. We should not make gratuitous, personal attacks against Cryptic's employees. That does not mean withholding constructive criticism, suggestions, etc.
It does mean NOT taking shots that are below the belt. It also means IMO allowing for the possibility that someone is having a bad day and that we do not know all that is going on in a dev's personal life.
Let me give you an example involving Dan Stahl. Some of you may remember when, during the "Great STF Dilithium Nerf" during a previous season's release, he posted a thread about getting fleets to come together and create Harlem Shake videos.
As soon as I saw that post come up I tried to warn him that the timing was off and that this was not a good idea to do while people were so angry. So yeah, he HAD made a mistake, one I was hoping I could catch and maybe get him to step back, think about, and recall before it got out of hand.
Unfortunately by the time Dan got back to the thread people were basically frothing at the mouth, posted some nasty things, and Dan got angry and snapped back at them. Obviously this did not make things better.
However...I also had the sense that something else was going on, something that didn't have anything to do with the game. I couldn't really put my finger on it but I distinctly felt like something was wrong with Dan. Come to find out the next day when he posted, I was right. The reason his nerves were so frayed was that when he was posting that, he was up very, very late at night trying to comfort his sick, crying child.
While that doesn't erase any of the words he said, and I wish he had thought more carefully before posting that thread in the first place, this does illustrate that the devs are human, and we don't always know what might be going on that we cannot see, that could also be behind a snarky or snappish response. And in that case...I felt it was time to forgive him for that and move on.
I kind of feel the same way about Smirk's recent upset post. Maybe it wasn't the right thing to say or the right way to say what he meant. I get that. But at the same time I have this distinct feeling (correct me if I'm wrong Smirk) that when he saw the thread before that with the nasty insinuations about Cryptic's work with Extra Life, he felt like he'd been punched in the gut. It was a low blow and I think he was genuinely disgusted and upset by what he had just read. I think that had to have still been lingering when he made the announcement that because of the Delta Rising crisis, that the devs were unable to give time to the charity drive (and I do suspect that to be true). So I know that there are others here who are upset about that bit, and I also agree that objectively it was not a good thing to say. I do forgive him that one, though.
That does get to one other thing that I think we need to bear in mind. Communicating badly or with poor timing or level of detail cannot automatically be equated to lying. I think sometimes Cryptic HAS given some severe mixed messages and has changed their messages sometimes, and that is a problem.
On the other hand, I do not think it is right to assume that everything they do is due to deliberate malicious intent and I do not think it is right for me to personally treat any dev...hell, even Stephen...as if I believe that.
I mean...the thing is, I do believe Cryptic is very likely telling the truth about the nature of the exploit and the numbers involved. Without getting into details that should not be on the forum, and as I have said before I will not discuss by PM either, I did hear things in Zone chat before Stephen's explanation that lined up with what he said. There are things that were very likely going on that went WAY beyond simply doing a patrol with some bugged enemy scaling, and I can think of some things offhand that could produce the kind of extreme leveling he described, that darned well ARE against the TOS and those who engaged in them should be sanctioned for them.
I think the devs made a terrible mistake in the solution they chose to address the problem and the way thy communicated it. But, I do not think that gives me sufficient evidence to make an accusation of malicious lying.
Overall, I think Cryptic has got to reform its behavior and I DO think that they have the greatest power to change the tone. Communicate better, make better decisions.
At the same time, I would like the community to demonstrate fully that we can be civil. Should Cryptic continue on exactly the same course then we will have our answer on what is going on, but let's not provide any excuses or flat-out push people to the breaking point just because we're on the Internet or because we're a customer and we think that gives us the right to not just complain but hurl abuse.
I was serious and remain so, even after having made and posted the decision to halt contributions to the Zen economy, about my willingness to sit down and speak with any dev who is willing to talk with me about the state of the game and what meaningful things Cryptic could do to try to make this situation right. That does not mean I am going to agree with everything that is said, or that I will refrain from criticism. I am, however, going to refrain from abusive language or always assuming the worst about every aspect of this mess. It seems STOLeviathan feels the same way, and I am sure there are others.
That does not make me a Cryptic defender. I know very well that they have erred, and badly. But, I am not going to shut down communications on my side. And as I said in a prior post...should someone want to talk, my ready room door, for one, is open. I am willing to rationally explain why I am a dissatisfied customer, LISTEN in a two-sided conversation, and try to see if there is any sort of way to rectify the problems and move forward.
So, though it may be unpopular, I do have to agree that STOLeviathan is right that Cryptic has got to take some serious steps to fix this, and needs to listen to the players--AND also agree that even with Cryptic bearing more of the burden, it IS a two-way street and we need to make sure, even for those who are furious with them, to at the VERY least be civil to avoid giving even the slightest excuse. Or, at best, to show that at least some of us are willing to participate in a two-way conversation.
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We can start by becoming a community that people WANT to interact with.
- Nobody has a secret ability to define what a person REALLY means, beyond our ability to actually read what they have written..
Exactly! So, maybe D'Angelo shouldn't have *assumed* malice then, when he spoke of "(...) a very small number of players who decided to take advantage of the bugs in excess."
If the community can manage these simple things, THEN the devs might actually chose to spend time conversing with the community. If you phone a call center and hurl abuse at them, they hang up on you. If you hurl abuse on a forum, you get ignored..
Funny, as some of the more vile posts I've seen of late have been coming from your own hand. Physician, heal thyself.
You also seem to be confusing genuine anger with abuse.
so you people are responsible for them timegating us on the forums...
sigh...
why did you have to go and make them act even more childish?
Please show me where it says anywhere that this thread and its participants caused the timer increase. Source, please.
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Trying to use these forums to communicate with the Devs is pointless,they burned that bridge a long time ago.And in the last 2 years they seem more keen on using social media like facebook and twitter to communicate to (potential) players,rather than communicate with the players.
Sadly,even now with the forums burning they still refuse to communicate with the players...
Just stating on these forums how displeased we are with the current state of the game doesn't do us any good,they refuse to listen...I say we take it to facebook and twitter,and see if they are willing to talk when a lot more people see what's going on here.
The PWE/Cryptic sweatshop...not where the game is made,but where the game is played!
Take back your home,end the grind!
Volunteer moderators policing the forums is like a mall cop trying to solve a murder.
Great post, read the whole thing, and agree with everything you wrote.
I am a fellow player who has been generally happy with Cryptic's management of STO, and prepared to defend past decisions they've made, and even having told people in the past, "If there's a workaround to a bug, then do it!" on the basis that at least the game's fun and Cryptic appeared to at least be trying to make the game better.
Questioning the timing of the charity event was below the belt. Likewise, some of the comments made by Cryptic's employees about their customers - us.
To such things I'd say, "not every thought bubble should be expressed".
Now over the past couple of weeks, I've gone from being slightly annoyed about game changes, to upset at failure to address game-breaking bugs, to angry at the handling of retro-nerfing, to outraged at Cryptic's "press on" silence over what has clearly been very badly mismanaged.
When people who used to be your supporters are saying that they feel they can't trust you over your handling of something, you've got a problem and no amount of tokenism will make that problem go away, if it's an underlying issue or cultural matter.
To Cryptic, I'd like to very strongly recommend that you find, and engage, a Crisis Management Consultant from a reputable Public Relations firm to advise you on how to handle problems like what's occurred over the past week and put some policy and procedures into place so that they don't happen again.
You might even go one step further and draft some sort of announcement over this that's not a bureaucratic, pronouncement-style "From on High" Statement, but something more person-to-person and heartfelt.
You've annoyed people, and your continuing silence is making it worse, not better. Do something about it.
The forum software needs to change, to make it more difficult for trolls to evade accountability. I'm told that a software change coming, but I don't know when or how effective it's going to be to shut down the trolls.
Repression is rarely a viable solution. It usually only makes people more determined in their desire to speak out.
I think we all need to acknowledge that Tribble is not fulfilling the function of a public test server very well. Issues get reported, but because there is no real time lag between when Tribble gets an update and that update is pushed out to Holodeck that there's not enough time to fix anything before it goes live. I realize that MMO's live or die on their update cadence, but they really need to solicit more community feedback on the things they do before they do them while there's still time to make major adjustments.
Thank you for your acknowledgement of this! I say a LOT of the frustration on the this forum is due to people feeling Cryptic doesn't care. Ignoring feedback from Tribble plays a big part in it. In fact, I'd go so far as to say 'Specgate' could have been avoided, in its entirety, if Cryptic had only listened to various people telling them, upfront and repeatedly, that there was a situation going on in Tau Dewa that needed looking into.
Don't like bugs? Can't accept changes you don't like? Probably shouldn't be playing an MMO, then.
Not liking this one, though. Can't say it's a particularly healthy attitude to have for a company, either. Imagine Apple saying that to its customers!
Or let me put it a slightly different way. Let's say you bought a carton of buttermilk. You try it and you don't like it. Do you call your congressman and rant at him or her to do something about the carton in your fridge? No, that would be unrealistic. Do you keep buying the buttermilk anyway? That would be foolhardy. Maybe you should switch to 2% instead.
Yeah, except there's nowhere else to go, Star Trek wise.
Forum negativity. Can't blame all that on the Devs not communicating because I see more of an effort to engage than I've ever seen before, in spite of a lot of hostility.
Remember how relieved people were when D'Angelo finally spoke?! People didn't agree per se; but people want to be heard. To parahrase Glengarry Glen Ross, ALWAYS BE COMMUNICATING.
Venting is an opportunity to show customers that a company is able to be responsive to concerns and communicate a desire to solve the problem. Cryptic doesn't do that very consistently.
Thank you for acknowledging this too!
As someone who has been customer support in the past, the example of hanging up on an abusive customer resonates very strongly with me. You try to be courteous and professional, but some people just will not take no for an answer or make any effort to compromise toward a solution. They treat you like servant-slaves put on this Earth to be abused until they're happy. They're the customers who give every other customer a bad name and make CS a miserable job workers can't wait to get away from.
And then there are Customer Service departments, like that of PWE, that are generally considered effectively non-existent. Either they don't reply at all, or just refer you back to the forums. A good Customer Service should be like a lightning rod, pulling away anger from the forums, and directed towards the place where people's issues are best handled to begin with: at Customer Support. In absentia of a responsive CS, naturally (right or wrong) people will take it to the forums. People just really want to be heard (see above).
Rests me to thank you again for your overall pretty even-handed outline of the situation.
Discussions going on forum are here because as most don't know where else to turn too. For the help we all need here and sure some go overboard with the comments too.
I am here to play the game, but the past week was rough one. Don't see why everyone on the forum is going after the developers. They do they're assign task daily and come and go. They shouldn't be answering player questions. Let upper management come on here to do that. Talk to the players see where things could be. I feel strongly that the CEO should come forward and tells us what he really wants to happen with players how things weren't handled correctly.
CEO does need to make some sort of statement to us? I am sure he plays STO and if he does? He must be aware of the glitches and serious bugs in his product. I do my best to post the bugs in the level 59 mission called Take-down from Delta Rising. Their is no accuse for that to be released with such major bug at the end. I had started playing at 11 pm to 6 am during that time I ran into two major glitches and the 3rd one make it next to impossible to finish the mission.
I've worked for many corporate companies, their CEO does make the effort to address business need and such. Even with a statement could get everyone back into this game. But don't blame all players because that going to effect them in some matter. Same goes for employees too. Sure HR can handle those task, but here we do need spoke person from executive point of view here.
Cryptic need not necessarily even pay for PR advice, though with things having gone so seriously wrong, it would be a good idea.
I and a few others have posted some good advice--granted, not paid professional stuff (best I can offer myself resume-wise is a business education and customer relations experience...not actual PR firm experience). Stuff that I think would be enough to at least stop some of the bleeding and at least give Cryptic some good ideas about how to actually resolve the current crisis and ideas on how to avoid that sort of thing again in the future.
BTW--just to be clear, as far as I am aware, Bluegeek is a volunteer and not a paid Cryptic employee. I don't think Bluegeek, askray, etc. have any more ability to change the direction of the game or the devs than you or I do.
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Repression is rarely a viable solution. It usually only makes people more determined in their desire to speak out.
Thank you for your acknowledgement of this! I say a LOT of the frustration on the this forum is due to people feeling Cryptic doesn't care. Ignoring feedback from Tribble plays a big part in it. In fact, I'd go so far as to say 'Specgate' could have been avoided, in its entirety, if Cryptic had only listened to various people telling them, upfront and repeatedly, that there was a situation going on in Tau Dewa that needed looking into.
Not liking this one, though. Can't say it's a particularly healthy attitude to have for a company, either. Imagine Apple saying that to its customers!
Yeah, except there's nowhere else to go, Star Trek wise.
Remember how relieved people were when D'Angelo finally spoke?! People didn't agree per se; but people want to be heard. To parahrase Glengarry Glen Ross, ALWAYS BE COMMUNICATING.
Thank you for acknowledging this too!
And then there are Customer Service departments, like that of PWE, that are generally considered effectively non-existent. Either they don't reply at all, or just refer you back to the forums. A good Customer Service should be like a lightning rod, pulling away anger from the forums, and directed towards the place where people's issues are best handled to begin with: at Customer Support. In absentia of a responsive CS, naturally (right or wrong) people will take it to the forums. People just really want to be heard (see above).
Rests me to thank you again for your overall pretty even-handed outline of the situation.
I agree with all of this. I would, however, advise that Tribble be available for Silver players as well as gold - Cryptic, by limiting the server and only testing right before release, turned an invaluable tool for adapting to the community's reaction to a new release into a paywall-gated preview gimmick.
Now over the past couple of weeks, I've gone from being slightly annoyed about game changes, to upset at failure to address game-breaking bugs, to angry at the handling of retro-nerfing, to outraged at Cryptic's "press on" silence over what has clearly been very
I just want to say that this is very much where I am, I was one of a very few who made a Harlem Shake video, and I am very pleased at the level of care, thought, and concern I see in this thread on the whole.
I know there are some of you at Cryptic who get annoyed when I (or anybody else) try to deconstruct Cryptic's culture but I promise you it's because we see you as human, we don't want to see you as bad people, and we see a problem, sincerely and unselfishly, as a bigger deal than you do. If you don't see these forum meltdowns as being a customer breakdown Cryptic could do more to avoid, respectfully, THAT is exactly the problem thinking some of us have spent five or even ten years trying to talk you through as concerned outsiders.
Stephen D'Angelo first run as Executive Producer for Star Trek Online was a failure, and he should be fired. He pissed off the players then as well. Geko (nno idea what his real name is) should also be fired. Ignores tribble tester's feedback because he saw nothing useful? The testers were giving him boatloads of good feedback like the Tau Dewa sector "exploit". It went live and these clowns called every player exploiters cause they don't have the balls to admit they made a mistake.
Cryptic/Community interaction disappeared when D'Angelo became EP.
I hope Blizzard or some other company with a good MMO reputation gets the Star Trek IP. Cryptic is a failure.
Anyone remember when EA released Spore and it contained ill thought out hideous invasive persistent copy protection software? Remember the boondoggle that became? EA's reputation has never recovered. They repaired a little of the damage by slightly changing their position, but they lost a huge amount of sales. The game was copied anyway, and many of the upset customers downloaded the TRIBBLE copies instead of buying the game.
WHile it's not directly applicable (very little is) the moral of the story is don't treat your customers like they are the hooker-bots and you are the pimp-bot. Because the reality is the company is the hooker-bot and the customers can always leave. I don't know if it's still true but in the old days they taught that one happy customer told two friends, one unhappy customer told something like 26.
To use another hooker-bot analogy if you aren't fluffing your customers a lot more than you are bending them over the computer desk your company is not heading in a good direction. Can cryptic take away stuff, squlech free speech, make the game painful to play? of course they can they own the equipment and service, all we own is the temporary use of some art files and computer code. SHOULD THEY? Most decidedly not, the only way a company can survive is to make their customers happy, and have them happily forking over dollars.
Know what SWTOR is doing for their new content which costs 1/6th of the DR expansion, All subscribers are getting 12.75 times normal experience from class missions until the actual full release day. Contrast that to the "Tau Dew incident". Then think which MMO is likely to survive based on the way they are treating their customers.
Space the final frontier. These are the voyages of [your name here] on a five year mission to gain one level after the delta rising xp nerf.
Interesting. I read about how appallingly EA treated its customers on its latest SimCity release and decided immediately on hearing about that scandal, to basically not buy anything from EA. To be blunt, big companies forget they're not the only ones doing this stuff, and personally I'd sooner buy Indie software which some tiny business slaved over and really cares about if I have to make do with "warts and all" software.
Interesting. I read about how appallingly EA treated its customers on its latest SimCity release and decided immediately on hearing about that scandal, to basically not buy anything from EA. To be blunt, big companies forget they're not the only ones doing this stuff, and personally I'd sooner buy Indie software which some tiny business slaved over and really cares about if I have to make do with "warts and all" software.
looks like their upper management has forgotten, AGAIN, and will have to learn again.
Space the final frontier. These are the voyages of [your name here] on a five year mission to gain one level after the delta rising xp nerf.
I am saying that the devs should not be using a charity to shame players. And I would WELCOME a two way conversation, on or off the record, on here, on Facebook, on the phone, or in this thread. I'm not being unreasonable or getting in the way of a dialogue.
i keep hearing about a charity, not sure where this came from. but if someone or a company decides to give or not its their own affair...whats relevant here is the game. i posted on another thread about an idea i had for fixing things a bit, the exploring one in 10forward. have a read of my idea there to at least break the ice a bit, dialogue will be possible, i think we should have gotten all our misgivings out of our system now enough from both sides to begin to come back to the table, if all of us are willing to....then the next move will be theirs!
D'Angelo is condescending, and loves silence. He's the reason the F2P transition was almost disastrous. With every post he DID make, the news got WORSE, not better. When he did post to the forums that time, he treated us to polite condescension. I don't like to be talked down to. It's really hard to be civil when that happens towards me.
Geko is a terrible developer. I'm sorry, but I can't put it any more politely than that. When he was developing the gimmicks, they would ALWAYS be horribly overpowered when released to production. Add to that what he said about those who were providing USEFUL negative feedback during the DR testing, and you get the sense that he's as apathetic as he is incompetent.
If Cryptic wants to restore good customer relations, getting rid of these two would go a LONG way in doing that, in my eyes.
I like all of the other team members, and have no quarrel with them.
Mind you, I don't say this on a whim, or as if these events just happened: I say this through pure observation and experience.
D'Angelo is condescending, and loves silence. He's the reason the F2P transition was almost disastrous. With every post he DID make, the news got WORSE, not better. When he did post to the forums that time, he treated us to polite condescension. I don't like to be talked down to. It's really hard to be civil when that happens towards me.
Geko is a terrible developer. I'm sorry, but I can't put it any more politely than that. When he was developing the gimmicks, they would ALWAYS be horribly overpowered when released to production. Add to that what he said about those who were providing USEFUL negative feedback during the DR testing, and you get the sense that he's as apathetic as he is incompetent.
If Cryptic wants to restore good customer relations, getting rid of these two would go a LONG way in doing that, in my eyes.
I like all of the other team members, and have no quarrel with them.
Mind you, I don't say this on a whim, or as if these events just happened: I say this through pure observation and experience.
it could also be a form of reverse physiology to turn failure at us, marketing execs use the same playbook as politicians, i didnt bring that up before to push politics i was recognizing the mind games. if something is introduced that is too good or bad, then we complain or or something they can change certain aspects of it in order to make it worst so that the sale is still made and we all look like whiners and nothing is resolved, we are left with a nerfed or glitched purchase and a ruined reputation from the mockery that belittles our position....just a thought
edit: u remember the process of having game systems repaired, they give u the run around and if u are persistant enough to keep asking they tell u to send it to the factory for repair/get a new one/etc and u never see it again, because they come back later and say something like, we dont refund/repair/replace...
it could also be a form of reverse physiology to turn failure at us, marketing execs use the same playbook as politicians, i didnt bring that up before to push politics i was recognizing the mind games. if something is introduced that is too good or bad, then we complain or or something they can change certain aspects of it in order to make it worst so that the sale is still made and we all look like whiners and nothing is resolved, we are left with a nerfed or glitched purchase and a ruined reputation from the mockery that belittles our position....just a thought
Actually, that's not a bad thought. I still want those 2 to resign or be canned, though.
Actually, that's not a bad thought. I still want those 2 to resign or be canned, though.
I've read about those two enough now... it will make a good "review" point: once both of them are gone, then I'll review my position and think about reopening my wallet to STO. Till then, "No soup for you!" Cryptic.
I've read about those two enough now... it will make a good "review" point: once both of them are gone, then I'll review my position and think about reopening my wallet to STO. Till then, "No soup for you!" Cryptic.
But I'm an LTS a, they've already got my money, so it doesn't really matter one way or another.
For me it still matters, Im also a lifetime subscriber and the way Cryptic & PWE acts decides if I continue to spend time and money on this game. Because of an entirely removed endgame contend as in former elite queues I have stopped paying money 2 weeks ago and my in game time is reducing each passing day. The fact that I voice my opinion here in forums is just my credit to their past accomplishments and to help them understand what "could" have went wrong instead of going quietly like 9 out of 10 other players I know would do. Im not that upset because for me its just a game. I do not care that much about apologies or statements or correspondence with them here in forums. All I care about are their actions and I can quiet assure everybody at Cryptic & PWE that Im not the only one in game heaving the same stated issue. Im also quiet sure that they are reading all of this.
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Gamers are some of the most childish and hateful people on the planet.
I have seen this on dozens of forums and its always the same its never...
"im not happy with this change and here is why" it is this...
" im not happy with this, you developers are idiots, what were you thinking you should be fired" etc.
How can we expect them to interact with us when all we do is behave like children.
Now i am not defending Cryptic nor do i think they are blameless, but if you want them or any developers of a game to continue to interact with there Fanbase try talking to them like human beings and not like trash.
"It appears we have lost our sex appeal, captain."- Tuvok
D'Angelo is condescending, and loves silence. He's the reason the F2P transition was almost disastrous. With every post he DID make, the news got WORSE, not better. When he did post to the forums that time, he treated us to polite condescension. I don't like to be talked down to. It's really hard to be civil when that happens towards me.
Geko is a terrible developer. I'm sorry, but I can't put it any more politely than that. When he was developing the gimmicks, they would ALWAYS be horribly overpowered when released to production. Add to that what he said about those who were providing USEFUL negative feedback during the DR testing, and you get the sense that he's as apathetic as he is incompetent.
If Cryptic wants to restore good customer relations, getting rid of these two would go a LONG way in doing that, in my eyes.
I like all of the other team members, and have no quarrel with them.
Mind you, I don't say this on a whim, or as if these events just happened: I say this through pure observation and experience.
Do we miss D Stahl already? How can they changed managment after this fiasco...dont think there is a sign of turning from where it its now...so sorry for STO :mad:
The easiest solution for everyone is to leave and not support korean grinders.
Most western publishers have games like this on a "red" list. As in, warning this game is designed to milk you. There are TONS of F2P games that do it right, where each purchase is FUN and REWARDING, not NECESARY and endless.
The community has become even more divided by Cryptics handling of recent changes, to the point where everyone is attacking each other. Basically this game is on its way out.
WHICH WE SHOULD BE REJOICING. It makes way for a competant game company (of which there are many) to get a hold of this IP and do it RIGHT.
As long the playerbase here keeps accepting the conversion to korean grinder, and even paying for it, the worse it will get until its finally shut down, wasting months or even years that a good version could have been in development.
Sometimes you just gotta know when the horse has been broken, and need to be put down.
Gamers are some of the most childish and hateful people on the planet.
I have seen this on dozens of forums and its always the same its never...
"im not happy with this change and here is why" it is this...
" im not happy with this, you developers are idiots, what were you thinking you should be fired" etc.
How can we expect them to interact with us when all we do is behave like children.
Now i am not defending Cryptic nor do i think they are blameless, but if you want them or any developers of a game to continue to interact with there Fanbase try talking to them like human beings and not like trash.
It is usually both although it seems like if a quarter of half the complaints do the second one, people who do the first one get lumped in with them.
Comments
People are passionate about this game, they want to continue playing. People should be free to voice their opinions, positive AND negative. How they voice them is important, too. However, you cannot just ignore negative opinions because "a few people" are a bit extreme in expressing their views, that's a cop-out.
I never like analogies. Why jump all the way to calling your congressman? Why didn't I call or write a letter to the manufacturer or the store?
You've said it yourself, you know specific forum users that you can count on to be hostile. Do some threads or topics inevitably lead to trolling and/or flaming or is the flaming and/or trolling caused by these specific forum users? Discussion should not be closed due to the posts of a few forum users.
I hope at some point you realize that many of these angry customer calls are misdirected anger. The customers are angry at the company, however, they cannot express their anger directly at the decision makers and you are the closest person that they can yell at. Sucks to be in that position, but you either learn to tone them out or you find a new job.
In closing, you may not have meant it, but it felt like to me that you were telling people that they should either put up with the changes or leave. You said it yourself that this is a MMO, changes should be expected. People voice their concerns so that things could be changed for the better.
Largely agreed...specially with the first part of your posting
I am going to preface this by saying that I have been on both sides of the counter.
I know what it is like to be a customer receiving poor service or poor communication, sometimes in areas where it has more of an impact on what I am doing that anything that a game could possibly impact.
I also know what it is like to be on the other side of the counter, having an unreasonable level of abuse, personal accusations, threats, cursing, and vulgarity hurled at me or members of my team. Sometimes what set that person off in the first place was a legitimate problem and they were rightfully upset but let their anger carry them too far in their behavior. Other times the customer was making a mountain out of a molehill either because of some problem (such as a misunderstanding, or being emotionally on edge due to a situation like being in my store because they are doing funeral arrangements for a recently-deceased loved one), or they were very literally mentally disturbed.
I have seen and experienced both extremes: poor customer service, and poor customer behavior. They both exist and are both real problems and will have to be addressed to have any chance of fixing this situation. You may say our chances are zero, but I will say that the only way we can KNOW that for sure is by attempting to address both. If we do attempt to address both and then it fails--then we can't say it was for lack of giving the best effort.
We are clearly looking at a toxic dynamic between the devs and the community. This began with some severe missteps by the devs in both decision-making and communication, and on the dev end has continued to be exacerbated by some people losing control and posting things they should have thought through more carefully and professionally. I will say, though, that when members of the community resort to personal attacks, then the community is going too far.
I've twice in my career come into major climate/culture turnaround situations where there was a lot of destroyed goodwill, and had to be a part of turning that around. So, while the situations are not completely comparable I feel like it does give me some perspective on what's going on here.
In the most relevant instance, I actually onto the management team in a retail store that had a really horrible negative feedback loop going on, and one of the first things on my agenda was to start a one-person climate change in that place. At first it was very difficult because I was not getting full support from the rest of the management team, but it did get easier with time as some other staffing changes occurred. BUT--even in those early stages, those actions DID still make a difference.
Let me start first by defining the negative feedback loop the same way I defined it to my team and fellow managers, though I am going to be a little more blunt in describing it here than I was when I was actually speaking with my co-workers.
Some of the team at that store were tenured employees who had developed a bad attitude. The standards for quality and proper behavior towards customers were also lax at times and (though as you can imagine I could NOT say this to my fellow managers while they were still working in my store) other members of the management team including the store manager and a fellow assistant manager, quite simply did not give a damn.
Unfortunately there was another piece to what was going on, and a justification--however wrongheaded--that many of these people were using to justify themselves...some consciously, others subconsciously by absorbing it from other employees. And that was the fact...and it definitely was a fact...that we had one of the most cantankerous and oftentimes rude and unreasonable customer bases in the entire district. The level of TRIBBLE dished out onto the employees was beyond anything you'd have to deal with almost anywhere else. I know I had not believed the stories about how that store could be could possibly be true until I started working there and I saw it for myself.
BUT!
And here is the MAJOR thing that the employees were missing! Even at this store there were a lot of good customers, and others who had the potential to be good, if they felt like they were treated with respect.
Instead, some of my employees AND fellow managers were basically spoiling for a fight every time they went to the counter. We even had one guy who worked for us that was basically like this guy from the old Capital One commercials. He seemed to take a perverse pleasure in shooting customers down; you'd swear he was counting his score. (Had I actually had hiring/firing authority as opposed to just supervisory authority, I would have had that guy's butt out the door first thing on joining the management team.)
One of the key things I explained to the employees that I could get to listen (and later, as new managers came in, to the other managers) is that obviously we could not control the public's behavior. But we COULD control ourselves. And if we quit approaching each customer interaction looking for a fight, then we might well succeed in retraining some of the customers by showing them that they could have higher expectations of us than that, and that they could actually expect to be treated with dignity.
(And maybe cut us some slack and not go completely off the rails when...as unfortunately will still happen no matter what...something goes wrong.)
That part obviously is something I think Cryptic could learn from. I suspect that some of the employees at Cryptic--in addition to maybe not having public relations training (except perhaps a few)--have reached the point where they now come onto the forums expecting a fight. By rising above that and behaving professionally...even when some people in the community are being anything but...Cryptic has a chance to restart that relationship. The only ones they can really, fully control are themselves.
To people from Cryptic, I would say that if something has genuinely upset you, maybe you need to get someone else who is not as emotionally involved to post. This is the equivalent of someone working at the counter getting another employee to help rather than risking going off in the face of someone they have been at loggerheads with for a while.
Personally, I think Smirk was honest to God upset by a previous thread where he and the Cryptic team were accused of using the charity drive for underhanded purposes to milk the players, basically. Smirk's upset was visible in both posts he made about the matter. I also do think that having just gotten back from vacation and come into a crisis, he and Trendy really ARE swamped to the point where they cannot do anything else.
However--do I think what he said in the second (official) thread could have been phrased better? Yes. Definitely.
BUT...I made a decision given an overall picture of the circumstances, that a different response on my end was called for, rather than flying off the handle. And that in fact attempting a constructive response was going to be better.
I do think that since each of us in the community can control ourselves, we can each do a small part as well. We should not make gratuitous, personal attacks against Cryptic's employees. That does not mean withholding constructive criticism, suggestions, etc.
It does mean NOT taking shots that are below the belt. It also means IMO allowing for the possibility that someone is having a bad day and that we do not know all that is going on in a dev's personal life.
Let me give you an example involving Dan Stahl. Some of you may remember when, during the "Great STF Dilithium Nerf" during a previous season's release, he posted a thread about getting fleets to come together and create Harlem Shake videos.
As soon as I saw that post come up I tried to warn him that the timing was off and that this was not a good idea to do while people were so angry. So yeah, he HAD made a mistake, one I was hoping I could catch and maybe get him to step back, think about, and recall before it got out of hand.
Unfortunately by the time Dan got back to the thread people were basically frothing at the mouth, posted some nasty things, and Dan got angry and snapped back at them. Obviously this did not make things better.
However...I also had the sense that something else was going on, something that didn't have anything to do with the game. I couldn't really put my finger on it but I distinctly felt like something was wrong with Dan. Come to find out the next day when he posted, I was right. The reason his nerves were so frayed was that when he was posting that, he was up very, very late at night trying to comfort his sick, crying child.
While that doesn't erase any of the words he said, and I wish he had thought more carefully before posting that thread in the first place, this does illustrate that the devs are human, and we don't always know what might be going on that we cannot see, that could also be behind a snarky or snappish response. And in that case...I felt it was time to forgive him for that and move on.
I kind of feel the same way about Smirk's recent upset post. Maybe it wasn't the right thing to say or the right way to say what he meant. I get that. But at the same time I have this distinct feeling (correct me if I'm wrong Smirk) that when he saw the thread before that with the nasty insinuations about Cryptic's work with Extra Life, he felt like he'd been punched in the gut. It was a low blow and I think he was genuinely disgusted and upset by what he had just read. I think that had to have still been lingering when he made the announcement that because of the Delta Rising crisis, that the devs were unable to give time to the charity drive (and I do suspect that to be true). So I know that there are others here who are upset about that bit, and I also agree that objectively it was not a good thing to say. I do forgive him that one, though.
That does get to one other thing that I think we need to bear in mind. Communicating badly or with poor timing or level of detail cannot automatically be equated to lying. I think sometimes Cryptic HAS given some severe mixed messages and has changed their messages sometimes, and that is a problem.
On the other hand, I do not think it is right to assume that everything they do is due to deliberate malicious intent and I do not think it is right for me to personally treat any dev...hell, even Stephen...as if I believe that.
I mean...the thing is, I do believe Cryptic is very likely telling the truth about the nature of the exploit and the numbers involved. Without getting into details that should not be on the forum, and as I have said before I will not discuss by PM either, I did hear things in Zone chat before Stephen's explanation that lined up with what he said. There are things that were very likely going on that went WAY beyond simply doing a patrol with some bugged enemy scaling, and I can think of some things offhand that could produce the kind of extreme leveling he described, that darned well ARE against the TOS and those who engaged in them should be sanctioned for them.
I think the devs made a terrible mistake in the solution they chose to address the problem and the way thy communicated it. But, I do not think that gives me sufficient evidence to make an accusation of malicious lying.
Overall, I think Cryptic has got to reform its behavior and I DO think that they have the greatest power to change the tone. Communicate better, make better decisions.
At the same time, I would like the community to demonstrate fully that we can be civil. Should Cryptic continue on exactly the same course then we will have our answer on what is going on, but let's not provide any excuses or flat-out push people to the breaking point just because we're on the Internet or because we're a customer and we think that gives us the right to not just complain but hurl abuse.
I was serious and remain so, even after having made and posted the decision to halt contributions to the Zen economy, about my willingness to sit down and speak with any dev who is willing to talk with me about the state of the game and what meaningful things Cryptic could do to try to make this situation right. That does not mean I am going to agree with everything that is said, or that I will refrain from criticism. I am, however, going to refrain from abusive language or always assuming the worst about every aspect of this mess. It seems STOLeviathan feels the same way, and I am sure there are others.
That does not make me a Cryptic defender. I know very well that they have erred, and badly. But, I am not going to shut down communications on my side. And as I said in a prior post...should someone want to talk, my ready room door, for one, is open. I am willing to rationally explain why I am a dissatisfied customer, LISTEN in a two-sided conversation, and try to see if there is any sort of way to rectify the problems and move forward.
So, though it may be unpopular, I do have to agree that STOLeviathan is right that Cryptic has got to take some serious steps to fix this, and needs to listen to the players--AND also agree that even with Cryptic bearing more of the burden, it IS a two-way street and we need to make sure, even for those who are furious with them, to at the VERY least be civil to avoid giving even the slightest excuse. Or, at best, to show that at least some of us are willing to participate in a two-way conversation.
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Exactly! So, maybe D'Angelo shouldn't have *assumed* malice then, when he spoke of "(...) a very small number of players who decided to take advantage of the bugs in excess."
Funny, as some of the more vile posts I've seen of late have been coming from your own hand. Physician, heal thyself.
You also seem to be confusing genuine anger with abuse.
sigh...
why did you have to go and make them act even more childish?
Please show me where it says anywhere that this thread and its participants caused the timer increase. Source, please.
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Sadly,even now with the forums burning they still refuse to communicate with the players...
Just stating on these forums how displeased we are with the current state of the game doesn't do us any good,they refuse to listen...I say we take it to facebook and twitter,and see if they are willing to talk when a lot more people see what's going on here.
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Volunteer moderators policing the forums is like a mall cop trying to solve a murder.
Great post, read the whole thing, and agree with everything you wrote.
I am a fellow player who has been generally happy with Cryptic's management of STO, and prepared to defend past decisions they've made, and even having told people in the past, "If there's a workaround to a bug, then do it!" on the basis that at least the game's fun and Cryptic appeared to at least be trying to make the game better.
Questioning the timing of the charity event was below the belt. Likewise, some of the comments made by Cryptic's employees about their customers - us.
To such things I'd say, "not every thought bubble should be expressed".
Now over the past couple of weeks, I've gone from being slightly annoyed about game changes, to upset at failure to address game-breaking bugs, to angry at the handling of retro-nerfing, to outraged at Cryptic's "press on" silence over what has clearly been very badly mismanaged.
When people who used to be your supporters are saying that they feel they can't trust you over your handling of something, you've got a problem and no amount of tokenism will make that problem go away, if it's an underlying issue or cultural matter.
To Cryptic, I'd like to very strongly recommend that you find, and engage, a Crisis Management Consultant from a reputable Public Relations firm to advise you on how to handle problems like what's occurred over the past week and put some policy and procedures into place so that they don't happen again.
You might even go one step further and draft some sort of announcement over this that's not a bureaucratic, pronouncement-style "From on High" Statement, but something more person-to-person and heartfelt.
You've annoyed people, and your continuing silence is making it worse, not better. Do something about it.
Good overall post.
Repression is rarely a viable solution. It usually only makes people more determined in their desire to speak out.
Thank you for your acknowledgement of this! I say a LOT of the frustration on the this forum is due to people feeling Cryptic doesn't care. Ignoring feedback from Tribble plays a big part in it. In fact, I'd go so far as to say 'Specgate' could have been avoided, in its entirety, if Cryptic had only listened to various people telling them, upfront and repeatedly, that there was a situation going on in Tau Dewa that needed looking into.
Not liking this one, though. Can't say it's a particularly healthy attitude to have for a company, either. Imagine Apple saying that to its customers!
Yeah, except there's nowhere else to go, Star Trek wise.
Remember how relieved people were when D'Angelo finally spoke?! People didn't agree per se; but people want to be heard. To parahrase Glengarry Glen Ross, ALWAYS BE COMMUNICATING.
Thank you for acknowledging this too!
And then there are Customer Service departments, like that of PWE, that are generally considered effectively non-existent. Either they don't reply at all, or just refer you back to the forums. A good Customer Service should be like a lightning rod, pulling away anger from the forums, and directed towards the place where people's issues are best handled to begin with: at Customer Support. In absentia of a responsive CS, naturally (right or wrong) people will take it to the forums. People just really want to be heard (see above).
Rests me to thank you again for your overall pretty even-handed outline of the situation.
I am here to play the game, but the past week was rough one. Don't see why everyone on the forum is going after the developers. They do they're assign task daily and come and go. They shouldn't be answering player questions. Let upper management come on here to do that. Talk to the players see where things could be. I feel strongly that the CEO should come forward and tells us what he really wants to happen with players how things weren't handled correctly.
CEO does need to make some sort of statement to us? I am sure he plays STO and if he does? He must be aware of the glitches and serious bugs in his product. I do my best to post the bugs in the level 59 mission called Take-down from Delta Rising. Their is no accuse for that to be released with such major bug at the end. I had started playing at 11 pm to 6 am during that time I ran into two major glitches and the 3rd one make it next to impossible to finish the mission.
I've worked for many corporate companies, their CEO does make the effort to address business need and such. Even with a statement could get everyone back into this game. But don't blame all players because that going to effect them in some matter. Same goes for employees too. Sure HR can handle those task, but here we do need spoke person from executive point of view here.
Time will only tell!
I and a few others have posted some good advice--granted, not paid professional stuff (best I can offer myself resume-wise is a business education and customer relations experience...not actual PR firm experience). Stuff that I think would be enough to at least stop some of the bleeding and at least give Cryptic some good ideas about how to actually resolve the current crisis and ideas on how to avoid that sort of thing again in the future.
BTW--just to be clear, as far as I am aware, Bluegeek is a volunteer and not a paid Cryptic employee. I don't think Bluegeek, askray, etc. have any more ability to change the direction of the game or the devs than you or I do.
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I agree with all of this. I would, however, advise that Tribble be available for Silver players as well as gold - Cryptic, by limiting the server and only testing right before release, turned an invaluable tool for adapting to the community's reaction to a new release into a paywall-gated preview gimmick.
Not a smart long-term move, IMO.
I just want to say that this is very much where I am, I was one of a very few who made a Harlem Shake video, and I am very pleased at the level of care, thought, and concern I see in this thread on the whole.
I know there are some of you at Cryptic who get annoyed when I (or anybody else) try to deconstruct Cryptic's culture but I promise you it's because we see you as human, we don't want to see you as bad people, and we see a problem, sincerely and unselfishly, as a bigger deal than you do. If you don't see these forum meltdowns as being a customer breakdown Cryptic could do more to avoid, respectfully, THAT is exactly the problem thinking some of us have spent five or even ten years trying to talk you through as concerned outsiders.
Cryptic/Community interaction disappeared when D'Angelo became EP.
I hope Blizzard or some other company with a good MMO reputation gets the Star Trek IP. Cryptic is a failure.
WHile it's not directly applicable (very little is) the moral of the story is don't treat your customers like they are the hooker-bots and you are the pimp-bot. Because the reality is the company is the hooker-bot and the customers can always leave. I don't know if it's still true but in the old days they taught that one happy customer told two friends, one unhappy customer told something like 26.
To use another hooker-bot analogy if you aren't fluffing your customers a lot more than you are bending them over the computer desk your company is not heading in a good direction. Can cryptic take away stuff, squlech free speech, make the game painful to play? of course they can they own the equipment and service, all we own is the temporary use of some art files and computer code. SHOULD THEY? Most decidedly not, the only way a company can survive is to make their customers happy, and have them happily forking over dollars.
Know what SWTOR is doing for their new content which costs 1/6th of the DR expansion, All subscribers are getting 12.75 times normal experience from class missions until the actual full release day. Contrast that to the "Tau Dew incident". Then think which MMO is likely to survive based on the way they are treating their customers.
Interesting. I read about how appallingly EA treated its customers on its latest SimCity release and decided immediately on hearing about that scandal, to basically not buy anything from EA. To be blunt, big companies forget they're not the only ones doing this stuff, and personally I'd sooner buy Indie software which some tiny business slaved over and really cares about if I have to make do with "warts and all" software.
looks like their upper management has forgotten, AGAIN, and will have to learn again.
i keep hearing about a charity, not sure where this came from. but if someone or a company decides to give or not its their own affair...whats relevant here is the game. i posted on another thread about an idea i had for fixing things a bit, the exploring one in 10forward. have a read of my idea there to at least break the ice a bit, dialogue will be possible, i think we should have gotten all our misgivings out of our system now enough from both sides to begin to come back to the table, if all of us are willing to....then the next move will be theirs!
Geko is a terrible developer. I'm sorry, but I can't put it any more politely than that. When he was developing the gimmicks, they would ALWAYS be horribly overpowered when released to production. Add to that what he said about those who were providing USEFUL negative feedback during the DR testing, and you get the sense that he's as apathetic as he is incompetent.
If Cryptic wants to restore good customer relations, getting rid of these two would go a LONG way in doing that, in my eyes.
I like all of the other team members, and have no quarrel with them.
Mind you, I don't say this on a whim, or as if these events just happened: I say this through pure observation and experience.
it could also be a form of reverse physiology to turn failure at us, marketing execs use the same playbook as politicians, i didnt bring that up before to push politics i was recognizing the mind games. if something is introduced that is too good or bad, then we complain or or something they can change certain aspects of it in order to make it worst so that the sale is still made and we all look like whiners and nothing is resolved, we are left with a nerfed or glitched purchase and a ruined reputation from the mockery that belittles our position....just a thought
edit: u remember the process of having game systems repaired, they give u the run around and if u are persistant enough to keep asking they tell u to send it to the factory for repair/get a new one/etc and u never see it again, because they come back later and say something like, we dont refund/repair/replace...
Actually, that's not a bad thought. I still want those 2 to resign or be canned, though.
I've read about those two enough now... it will make a good "review" point: once both of them are gone, then I'll review my position and think about reopening my wallet to STO. Till then, "No soup for you!" Cryptic.
I like it!
For me it still matters, Im also a lifetime subscriber and the way Cryptic & PWE acts decides if I continue to spend time and money on this game. Because of an entirely removed endgame contend as in former elite queues I have stopped paying money 2 weeks ago and my in game time is reducing each passing day. The fact that I voice my opinion here in forums is just my credit to their past accomplishments and to help them understand what "could" have went wrong instead of going quietly like 9 out of 10 other players I know would do. Im not that upset because for me its just a game. I do not care that much about apologies or statements or correspondence with them here in forums. All I care about are their actions and I can quiet assure everybody at Cryptic & PWE that Im not the only one in game heaving the same stated issue. Im also quiet sure that they are reading all of this.
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Gamers are some of the most childish and hateful people on the planet.
I have seen this on dozens of forums and its always the same its never...
"im not happy with this change and here is why" it is this...
" im not happy with this, you developers are idiots, what were you thinking you should be fired" etc.
How can we expect them to interact with us when all we do is behave like children.
Now i am not defending Cryptic nor do i think they are blameless, but if you want them or any developers of a game to continue to interact with there Fanbase try talking to them like human beings and not like trash.
"It appears we have lost our sex appeal, captain."- Tuvok
Do we miss D Stahl already? How can they changed managment after this fiasco...dont think there is a sign of turning from where it its now...so sorry for STO :mad:
This 100% No more needs to be said.
That's money not going to STO right there. That'll teach them taking away my 3 specialisation points.
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It is a peculiar phenomenon that we can imagine events that defy the laws of the universe.
It is usually both although it seems like if a quarter of half the complaints do the second one, people who do the first one get lumped in with them.