test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Listening and things done right.
feiqa
Member Posts: 2,410 Arc User
Okay naming a thread is not my strongest skill. But after reading a number of vitriolic threads and posts I thought some mention should go to the over looked items.
First some may be confusing listening with talking. Just because the developers do not respond does not mean they do not read and take note of posts. To whit.
STF difficulty: Players have been asking for more than a year for these to have three grades and be harder all around. And to turn those 'easier' levels into some level of instruction on how to do the subsequently harder versions. It was implemented, practically as requested.
More missions with writing and voice work: Requests and gripes came that while the feature episodes were great, the players wanted more missions like them. Enter Delta Rising and a string of missions with writing and voice acting. So again implemented as best as could be done.
Raising the level cap and getting to be a full admiral/general: Done and done, some argue that it took what was special about the top of the line lockbox ship, but honestly it was already feeling like they were level 55 ships on a cap of 50. Not they really are. And going forward there is now room for ships and gear that makes the old stuff look paler. The point is to give room for growth. If we all stayed at 50 no new release means anything as it is just a pretty box of same old same old. And really why buy it? The expansion means holding stagnation at bay.
All of the above were asked for and delivered. Please direct applause to the developers as they do listen.
Other areas done right:
How many of you noticed who our enemies are in this game? They are the one shot and forgotten enemies from the various Trek given some life and allowed to really haunt you. From the Devidians to the Elachi, Solanae and now the bug critters that had taken over SF command.
We know how to fight a Romulan or a Klingon. But that horror? That requires depth.
So again kudos for taking the smaller and often forgotten enemies and making them the foes we deserve to battle.
List your thoughts on what the Developers have done right here.
First some may be confusing listening with talking. Just because the developers do not respond does not mean they do not read and take note of posts. To whit.
STF difficulty: Players have been asking for more than a year for these to have three grades and be harder all around. And to turn those 'easier' levels into some level of instruction on how to do the subsequently harder versions. It was implemented, practically as requested.
More missions with writing and voice work: Requests and gripes came that while the feature episodes were great, the players wanted more missions like them. Enter Delta Rising and a string of missions with writing and voice acting. So again implemented as best as could be done.
Raising the level cap and getting to be a full admiral/general: Done and done, some argue that it took what was special about the top of the line lockbox ship, but honestly it was already feeling like they were level 55 ships on a cap of 50. Not they really are. And going forward there is now room for ships and gear that makes the old stuff look paler. The point is to give room for growth. If we all stayed at 50 no new release means anything as it is just a pretty box of same old same old. And really why buy it? The expansion means holding stagnation at bay.
All of the above were asked for and delivered. Please direct applause to the developers as they do listen.
Other areas done right:
How many of you noticed who our enemies are in this game? They are the one shot and forgotten enemies from the various Trek given some life and allowed to really haunt you. From the Devidians to the Elachi, Solanae and now the bug critters that had taken over SF command.
We know how to fight a Romulan or a Klingon. But that horror? That requires depth.
So again kudos for taking the smaller and often forgotten enemies and making them the foes we deserve to battle.
List your thoughts on what the Developers have done right here.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
Post edited by feiqa on
0
Comments
That was nicely put.
~CaptainSmirk
Dont care much about Devs...they are just employees like most of us. Management IS the problem. When someone makes an arbitrary decision to "draw a line in the sand" and for the lack of words PUNISH ALL the rest of the playerbase what do you think its going to happen?
And no worries most of those who protested are gone...you should have been here last week when every single post was vitreous and negative...those guys are gone and their voice is silenced since they walked out...who wins...not a matter of win/lose....all I can say this game wont be the same with those who left STO. Who is responsible...MANAGEMENT not devs (beyond their payscale)!
Space combat - easily the game's most attractive aspect. While not the best and in need of serious balance passes, it's still fun.
Story missions - I could think of some better plots for STO, but not many. As it stands, the game's story is fairly solid.
Continuity - They use it well.
The free-to-play matrix - easily the best in the market. Not too restricting to free players, while still giving subs some bonus (though, a case could be made that it needs more).
DOffing - Not horrible grind, not mandatory, and very fun. Easy to manage but still very complex.
Ship design - With possibly the sole exception of the Guardian and qIb, every ship released in the last few years has been visually stunning.
The Delta Lock Box - Compelling to open without being contrived TRIBBLE.
Hiring Smirk, Trendy, and BranFlakes - The community managers are always brilliant. Definitely better than other games.
TALKING TO PLAYERS - some game devs don't do this enough. Extra kudos to The Almighty Taco, Patron Saint of the forums, for this.
Never was it requested "Make it harder by adding more HP/shields to NPCs". Adding more stuff to shoot at was fine. Heck, adding more random stuff like what happened in the CE event (GWs and Tykens and black goo) would have been a step up also, but what we ended up was making it harder by making it a DPS arms race instead of actually improving on the AI which has been a complaint for a good while.
And there goes my post. Next one in 5 minutes per new rules.
Additional difficulty was added, you are correct. However "Advanced" is not what the old "Elite" used to be. Before Delta Rising, the most often suggestion by players, was to reduce the old Elite to Advanced difficulty, and add a new Elite difficulty. The increased difficulty was suggested should involve new mechanics, and not solely an increase in HP/Damage.
What we got, was an Advanced difficulty that made the old optional objectives, non-optional. Increased mob health/damage, and reduced the overall rewards. Additionally, Advanced difficulty was designed to scale players UP to level 60. Players who are in the 51-60 range, and nowhere near geared enough for the difficulty (save for the few, who are able to dish out extraordinary amounts of damage). No new mechanics of any kind, just additional Health, and Damage, making fights take far longer, and become a lot more tedious. With a much greater chance at failure, especially in a PUG (pick up group, or random PVE queued team).
If the Delta Rising "Advanced" was a copy-paste of the pre-Delta Rising "Elite", with the option of scaling players DOWN to 50. That would be a great start. Reward have been slashed by 50% compared to pre-Delta Rising, making the new STFs both tedious, overly difficult, and less rewarding.
Episodes have previously been one of STO's stronger points. Voice Acting is nice and all, but should not outweigh the actual writing of the episode. While I haven't finished the Delta Rising storyline, the episodes I have run through have been mediocre at best, to downright canon-contradictory at worst. Starfleet is not, I repeat, IS NOT a military organisation. My first briefing by Captain Kim on Kobali Prime, suggested he was Starfleet's MILITARY liaison in the Delta Quadrant. Which doesn't make a whole lot of sense, if you look to his past on Voyager as an Operations officer. If you wanted an officer in a "military" liaison role, who was previously a crew member on Voyager, why didn't you choose Tuvok?
I also have an issue both with COMMANDER Burgess ordering us (Vice Admirals and above) around, as well as Tuvok (who is a Rear Admiral) both ordering us around, AND being ordered around by Burgess. And lastly, the episodes thus far that I've played, have included a lot of running around doing various tasks, that could've easily been suited for our Duty Officers to perform. And in between every episode, we are greeted with a "Patrol x starsystems" type mission, which is tantamount to the dreaded "Kill 5-rats" quests of other larger MMOs.
I don't think a whole lot of people asked for a level cap increase. And to be perfectly honest, a level cap increase was not needed IN ADDITION TO the Captain Specialization system that they ALSO added in Delta Rising. They could've kept the cap at Level 50, and still add the Captain Specializations. Thou in total honesty, I think they need to CONDENSE the number of skill-systems in the game, as it is confusing both to me (as a Veteran), and probably exceedingly confusing to a NEW player. We have the Skill Point system (which acts similar to Talent Trees in other MMOs), but now only valid for levels 1-50. We have the Reputation system, which grants both Passive and Active Traits. The Trait System itself, which is similar to the new and shiny Captain Specialization system.
At what point, will Cryptic consider revamping how skills, abilities, passives/actives etc work?
Unable to comply with your request. This post may be seen as whiny, or negative, but I frankly couldn't care. Delta Rising certainly has potential to be a good addition to the game, but it is far from being that at current.
I do not believe developers have taken Star Trek canon into much consideration for Delta Rising, both in terms of the look of the "Delta Quadrant", and the overall storytelling. 30 years may have gone by since 'Endgame', but I'm pretty sure entire Starsystems do not move thousands of lightyears in that time. The devs have condensed Voyager's 7-year journey across the quadrant (including several multi-thousand lightyear jumps) into a matter of 2 sector blocks, each consisting of 3 sectors with a dozen or so systems.
North-to-south, these systems don't line up in any way with what we saw in the series, and if the systems are supposed to be spread out over a distance of around 30k lightyears, why do we need the Solanae/Jenolan spheres? We could probably hop the other 40k lightyears with our Quantum Slipstream drive in a matter of minutes.
True, but they took the lazy aproach by incrising the HP of the NPC instead of improbing the AI of the NPCs. Now if you dont have DPS, you can not play.
Yes, hiding in a tedius and boring lvl grind, and even if the story of the missions is ok, the combat part is so boring that TRIBBLE the missions. Kill the 10/10 wave of NPCs with 500k HP is not fun for all.
Agree, some demanded to lvl cap. What no one asked was the really bad upgrade system! When they rise the lvl cap to 40 to 50, the loots drop, and you can obtain them on other ways. Now you need MILLIONS of resources and that is the only way to obtain them.
Division Hispana
www.divisionhispana.com
Asked for by...???
The community is not of a single mind. For everything that you may feel the devs listened to and delivered on in some fashion, there are going to be the folks that feel the devs did not listen.
It is one thing for you to say you feel the devs listened and delivered...thus, you want to offer them some applause.
But suggesting that anybody else do that...is simply idiotic and asinine.
People need to gtfot and stop speaking for anybody but themselves, whether they're complaining or they're complimenting...
When you go to a restaurant with a friend or group of friends, and everybody places their orders...if the waitress/waiter brings everybody what you asked for instead of what they asked for - do you tell your friends to thank the waiter/waitress?
Seriously, this thread is a waste of bandwidth/database space/and a 300s post delay timer...
edit: I mean, seriously, what's so difficult about just telling the devs thank you for what you thought they did without turning it into the confrontational nonsense that the original post is? Smirk shouldn't have replied to the thread, he should have closed it down for trolling...
edit2: I mean, seriously, if there's something the devs did that you like - let them know...but as some form of reactionary pat on the back it's okay, there-there thing because of other folks sharing things they didn't like? I just don't get it...doesn't seem genuine in the least.
You know I agree with the OPs post almost totaly except for this part right here. Otherwise I think the OP is correct, as far as he goes. Well actually two points, but we'll get to the second point.
First not everyone was asking for harder. Only a very small minority of players were asking for harder. Everyone else was enjoying the level of difficulty as it was. But I'm glad they added that third level. But then they went ahead and made Advanced harder too. But they didn't really make it harder, they just added an obnoxious amount of HPs to the mobs, without changing the AI because chaning the AI was "too hard to do" and that players wouldn't respond well to the increased AI difficulty level.
So they raised the difficulty, but didn't want to raise the difficulty because it wouldn't have been accepted well. To this day I still don't fully understand that reasoning.
And that there is kind of the second issue. They listen sure, but they have a strange way sometimes of listening to their playerbase.... and they listen but they don't communicate.
Now before you think I'm bashing Smirk or Trendy or any of the others I'm not. They can only really talk about what they're told their allowed to talk about, and only in certain ways. Otherwise they're somewhat restricted from saying what they can say, even if they want to.
It's not like you're ever going to hear Smirk or Trendy come out and not give the party PR spin line. They can't not without loosing their job. So they have to tow the line.
But when you hear D'Anglo say "We didn't know we had to tell the players what was going on" is kind of a wierd thing to hear them say. What do you mean you didn't now you didn't have to tell us what was going on, when you do something that literally effects every single player out there and you do it in such a manner that people simply can't play all the content with little or no warning.
Then you get the things like they listen "we want harder content" but then fail to realize that not everyone is flying 30k dps ships and want or even care to have harder content, but give it to us anyway.
Or the often miscontrued "Advanced is similiar to the old elite" and "you can be competative with your old T5 ships and gear without needing to upgrade" but then you have podcasts where the devs admit they made the new content balanced around mk XIII gear and T5U ships, meaning you can't be competative with the old gear, you need to upgrade, and since they upgraded the content to be harder, with more mandatory objectives and such, that they never thought that the community may actually say that the new advanced isn't similiar to the old elite.
And that's the second issue, they listen, but they communicate so very poorly about it. You say at the end just because they don't aknowledge us, doesn't mean they're not listening. But when you get people being called expoiters because they're doing content that has been in place for a year and been bugged report so many times in the past and never aknowledged or fixed, then suddenly called an exploit... the whole thing would have been easier to swallow had they aknowledged us.
See communication is a two way street. I can listen all I want, but if you don't know I'm listening, the speaker can get frustrated very quickly and feel ignored. And you can't just give us communication, but give us MEANINGFUL communication.
And sometimes they do that well, but when they don't, that's when the issues start to crop up.
Yes we have but nobody asked cryptic ever to remove available contend and replace it. An optional harder difficulty would truly have been a remarkable feature on three year old maps.
However, removing the basics for filled queue lists is not.
I hope that was nicely put as well.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
Is a game fun or not. That is the question. If you enjoy it, keep playing. If not, don't. What some other game screwed up or didn't has no bearing on anything.
Just my two cents.
Some vocal people on forums did, like what, a 30-40 people? Hardly everybody.
This could have been delivered by a new "Nightmare mode" for these people, without buggering up normal and old elite.
But no, you had to do it the wrong way, and nerf rewards hard, so I'll rage with Math at my side.
I can not applaud the work as an overall, because nothing is all good as nothing is all bad, and in my personal opinion what DR brought of bad really casts a shade on it's good.
To me the story is great, new stuff to do, new items, new content is a good thing, and for that indeed they deserve credit. Also for the character creator/editor additions as well.
But my DR experience is not good from a personal gameplay perspective. I had long periods of doing the same thing over and over just to progress with the story, I went from someone who did Elite fairly easy to not being able to do Advanced because I like my ships to be a certain way, which means I miss out on stuff I could easily get. Do you want me to applaud that?
And suddenly I can see what KDF-only players are getting at.
This would have been precisely the point (using DS9 as a justification) for having the Klingon Defense Force at the forefront of Kobali Prime, maybe even opening up the opportunity for some real KDF/Starfleet "How can we work together, now that we're meant to not be fighting each other?" scenarios as Starfleet try to get to the bottom of the issue, and constantly have Prime Directive constraints, whilst the Klingon commander in charge of Kobali defenses just wants to get on with the job.
Anyway, some things I appreciate about this game:
~ I can design a Captain that looks like me, put him into the Star Trek universe, and do Star Trek-y things. This is the closest manifestation of the game I dreamed of as a kid for Star Trek I've seen so far.
~ The combat in this game is fun and can be challenging.
~ There are both long- and short-term projects to complete.
~ You can roll with the heavy hitters in elite content, take a break and RP with a group of folks, or just solo whatever you want, however much you want.
~ It treats the IP pretty well and continues to tell Star Trek stories in the relative drought we're experiencing.
Can't wait to log on later today and play!
The problem is, that currently it's very difficult to state something done well, without also at least acknowledging the great big problem connected to it that detracts from whatever's done well.
For example:
I can play the Delta Quadrant voiced by Voyager crew with a new enemy... but not till I grind huge amounts of XP to do so
I can experience a range of new ships with a brand new range of "Intel" based crew skills... but can't train them in T3 Intel skills until I grind even more massive amounts of XP to get the top Specialization system rank.
It's a shame really... it simply wasn't necessary to build in a bunch of detractors and negatives into the game simply to introduce the new positives.
I agree to most but this no I can not. People were asking for harder level but what they got was not even close lol. What we got was normal which they made alittle harder no one asked for that and advance which is even harder than before. We were told that the advance was going to be like the old elite maybe a LITTLE harder. But that is not what we got. What happened to normal,advance and elite? Normal (mk10) Advance (mk12) Elite (mk14) is the way it should be to me. The way it is now there is no progression for lower level players in stfs. The old way the stf were setup before rep and LOR. You had to do the mission to get the gear to do higher level mission. But now you have to get BNP to get that gear and you only get that from advance. So how are they suppose to get it if they can't do mission and that is the main problem.
HAHAHAHAHAHAAAA good one
WHO requested that we g4t LESS loot fore MORE work?
proove pls!
Not convincing enough to get me to shell out for a LTS yet; there are still way too many bugs left ignored on the bug report forums for too long to convince me that Cryptic really cares about product quality. If Smirk were to post a list as long as yesterday's with legacy bugs that have been fixed, I could finally justify the LTS. Come on dev's, don't stop now! :cool:
Savik - Vulcan Fed Temporal Sci
Dahar Masters Fleet: Alphal'Fa - Alien KDF Engineer Qun'pau - Rom/KDF Engineer D'nesh - Orion KDF Scientist Ghen'khan - Liberated KDF Tac
Welcome to StarBug Online - to boldly Bug where no bug has been before!
STO player since November 2013
Aside from that, I think that the recent story content has been fantastic and the T6 ships perform much better than I was expecting. They are a lot of fun. However, there has been a lot done lately that wrongs others perhaps more than myself, but presents frustration either way.
Removing skill points felt like a cheap move. I was not impacted, but several of my fleet mates were, and they spend large quantities of both time and money on this game- far more than I could ever manage. The majority of them had never even set foot in Tau Dewa after finishing the New Romulus rep, with the exception of passing through the Dyson spheres. regardless of whether or not players were exploiting something knowingly, there was no Dev message acknowledging that what they were doing was in fact an exploit and something that was not to be done. You cannot ask us to play a game by an "honor" system. We're gamers, some of us are min/maxers, and we are going to take whatever edge we can get, especially when our goal is to reach the top level and acquire the best gear. A warning with the promise of skill point removal for those exploiting the system after a current date would have been sufficient to curb the exploitation and keep the community less hostile.
In terms of the STFs, what we wanted was more of a challenge, but we wanted that challenge to be optional. I will say, I love what you've done with the normal queues, with exception to short changing our XP and rewards across all difficulties. If you would but extend the advanced rewards to normal, the elite to advanced, and create a new set of rewards for elite, I think you would find most folks satisfied. We will topple the difficulty with time, but only if you make it worth our while to play in the first place. As it stands, new players have little hope of completing the numerous reputation systems that have been implemented over the past couple of years. This, while an inconvenience to us veterans, is unfair to the newer generation. If they cannot acquire the gear they need, they can never hope to experience the advanced and elite difficulty settings that you have worked so hard on.
While communication is still my greatest gripe with this game, even more so than the bugs that have dogged me since closed beta (we tried to warn you, Cryptic!), it has improved over the past few years, at least on the forums. I wish we could return to the ask Cryptic routine, it was fantastic and a great way to assure us that the players' voices were being heard. I believe that that is more important than ever right now. Congratulations on getting things closer to being back on track, but you still have a long way to go.
Delta Rising has been a solid expansion, much more stable than I was expecting, but you have much work to do. Again, congratulations, and I'm not joking about the Constitution Class. Tell CBS you would make bucket loads of cash and not sink their ship.
STO Beta Test and Launch Veteran