I think we have to face the fact that with Galors in Lockboxes we'll never see The Cardassian Union or the True Way as a playable faction. PWE will never authorize a way for players to earn a Galor through normal non-grinding play.
I'm just.. So disapointed with how the playerbase seems to have.. given up on fighting for the game. Like all the fire has gone out of them.
The Galor was a result of us begging for over a year...we thought it implied a coming Cardassian faction. Then after a week the hope wore off. I forget who, but someone said at the last con that it would be inevitable...but that may have been a simple diplomatic statement. If they publicly admit to having no intent on adding Cardassians I'm betting a lot of people would stop playing. Some of us (myself included) have played this game with the intent of being Dukat or Damar. We wanted them before the Romulans were added. Makes me sad to think they can't even admit Cardassians will never be an option.
My Old Blog about things that could and should have been added when I wrote it. Not sure what I want to do with it now. I'll just keep it available now that most of it is outdated.
Hehe... but seriously, carriers are fun. they make for a different playstyle beyond regular ships.
I never really gave a %#$@ about whether Carriers were fun, they're not Star Trek, that's reason enough for me to wish them zapped from the game. You want Carrier/Fighter go play a game based on Star Wars. Or Battlestar Galactica. Or Babylon 5.. Or really any other Sci-Fi IP because it's a ridiculously freaking over-used trope.
Original Join Date: January 2010. Ragequit Date: January 7th 2012. Return Date: October 23rd 2014.
I never really gave a %#$@ about whether Carriers were fun, they're not Star Trek, that's reason enough for me to wish them zapped from the game. You want Carrier/Fighter go play a game based on Star Wars. Or Battlestar Galactica. Or Babylon 5.. Or really any other Sci-Fi IP because it's a ridiculously freaking over-used trope.
you have absolutely no idea what a Kilrathi is do you?
Interesting assertation that Star Trek lacks Carriers though.... since we've seen SOME use of them in the TV shows.....
you have absolutely no idea what a Kilrathi is do you?
Interesting assertation that Star Trek lacks Carriers though.... since we've seen SOME use of them in the TV shows.....
Name one canon (seen in live action) Fighter-Carrier, not the Scimitar, which launched Scorpion Attack Flyers for Planetary Air Superiority (never launched them for the purposes of combat in space, not even when outnumbered 3 to 1 in the battle of Bassen Rift), not the Akira (which never launched fighters and was scaled down until it's hangar doors couldn't be hangar doors, and which was only a carrier according to the artist, not the writing or on screen evidence), not the frankenship from DS9 which was only listed as a carrier in non-canon RPGs, not the presumption that there had to be Fighter Carriers because Peregrine fighters exist (they're warp capable, converted civilian courier vessels, capable of independant operation without a mothership, just fyi), not the Kazon Carrier, which we never saw launch or utilize fighters in canon..
Go ahead, show me a live action canon carrier in Trek. I want video of a ship in live action trek launching fighters for the purpose of space combat.
Original Join Date: January 2010. Ragequit Date: January 7th 2012. Return Date: October 23rd 2014.
Random rage comment.
General display of impatience.
Tantrum leading to conclusion that the game will come to an end if things aren't fixed fast.
I would have typed it up properly but I think everyone knows exactly what i mean without elaborating.
Which is more harmful....what you typed as a generalization of the op's post? or....
Random attack on the OP
Another Apologist statement about the precious
Endless descent into a terrible title because apologists won't get on board about what's right and wrong.
hmmm I'd have to say that the fanboys and apologists are destroying this entire genre including this game because more you apologize for the developers not doing their jobs professionally, the more they'll be convinced they can get away with it the more it will happen not just in this title but in multiple titles.
Let me give you brief history since 2011. 2012 SWTOR the WOW clone was released touting doing everything differently brand new experience. It was discovered after millions spent money on it that it was the most blatant of wow clones ever created. It went f2p almost as fast as it sold it's first copies. When they made it F2P they tied progression directly into the F2P model so that people would indirectly have to spend money to stay ahead. Apologists said it was okay because it would only affect PVP. In 2012 GW2 was released, it too had a similar event. It got a previous Nexon employee as their main economist. A systematic nerfing of several money making systems directly tied to loot was implemented and 2 years of nerfing several farming spots in PVE open world was put into the game. Apologists said it was okay because it didn't happen to 100% of the playerbase even though thousands of posts on the forums proved that it was still happening to the majority. In 2013 Wildstar was released and was supposed to usher in a new era of nostalgia for players of the hardcore style where raiding was the focus and so were dungeons. The game was riddled with bugs for several months, some of which still exist in the game today that were from beta. The devs decided it wasn't important to fix these game breaking bugs and continued on making new content as if these bugs would just vanish on their own and despite several posts about in the forums for months. The Apologists said it was okay because the game was brand new and at least people didn't have to play with casuals. In 2014 a new sandbox game was released called Archeage here in the west. Trion monetized the hell out of that title making it basically require the player to have no choice buy to be a patron in order to progress with any kind of sensible progression time table. Apologists said it was okay because at least people didn't have to play a themepark to enjoy themselves.
On Oct 14, 2014 Delta Rising was released on Star Trek Online live servers, riddled with a high cost to progress (people in the test forums called it Dilithium Rising for a reason) and with several nerfs to much needed xp and dilithium rewards from simply playing the game normally in an already dilithium starved environment (ie Fleet Starbases still not being completed by many a fleet in 2014 because of the enormous cost of dilithium just to do that). Apologists are still saying it's okay because you don't actually have to play the game at all.
See how these things happen? It's a cascading affect when fanboys and apologists start minimizing legitimate concerns over where games are going and whether or not they are high quality management decisions about a title's direction during the creative process.
Name one canon (seen in live action) Fighter-Carrier, not the Scimitar, which launched Scorpion Attack Flyers for Planetary Air Superiority (never launched them for the purposes of combat in space, not even when outnumbered 3 to 1 in the battle of Bassen Rift), not the Akira (which never launched fighters and was scaled down until it's hangar doors couldn't be hangar doors, and which was only a carrier according to the artist, not the writing or on screen evidence), not the frankenship from DS9 which was only listed as a carrier in non-canon RPGs, not the presumption that there had to be Fighter Carriers because Peregrine fighters exist (they're warp capable, converted civilian courier vessels, capable of independant operation without a mothership, just fyi), not the Kazon Carrier, which we never saw launch or utilize fighters in canon..
Go ahead, show me a live action canon carrier in Trek. I want video of a ship in live action trek launching fighters for the purpose of space combat.
Okay, I had to laugh at this. Name one example! ...except for all these examples I'm disqualifying. Really?
Okay. Every single ship that had shuttlecraft/runabouts, which were used in combat when more specialized fighter craft weren't around (IE, the peregrine fighters mentioned up there). You'll say this doesn't count because well those weren't JUST carriers or the shuttlecraft/runabouts weren't JUST fighter craft, I know, I know.
Honestly, I'd find Star Trek not having carriers to be weirder. What, not one single alien species decided that might be useful? No one ever took the logical leap of 'hey this worked pretty well in naval combat, what about space?' ? Especially given Star Trek space combat is generally handled as 'like an ocean, but SPACE', why would this not exist?
And wait, so those peregrine fighters just never dock with a larger ship for repairs/refueling/pilot time off? So what if they're warp capable? Fighter craft in Wing Commander were capable of going through jump gates, that didn't make their carriers suddenly not count.
Okay, I had to laugh at this. Name one example! ...except for all these examples I'm disqualifying.
Yes, because none of those count, they're just things that one person or another once called a Carrier and now Carrier fanboys use to try and justify their desire for Trek Carriers.. Except none of them count, precisely for the reasons I listed.
I preferred to save everyone 3-4 posts back and forth of them using those (bad) attempts and me refuting them one by one.
I don't suppose you can link me to YouTube footage or DailyMotion or a snippet on Memory Alpha about a ship launching fighters for combat in space, can you?
Original Join Date: January 2010. Ragequit Date: January 7th 2012. Return Date: October 23rd 2014.
Yes, because none of those count, they're just things that one person or another once called a Carrier and now Carrier fanboys use to try and justify their desire for Trek Carriers.. Except none of them count, precisely for the reasons I listed.
I preferred to save everyone 3-4 posts back and forth of them using those (bad) attempts and me refuting them one by one.
I don't suppose you can link me to YouTube footage or DailyMotion or a snippet on Memory Alpha about a ship launching fighters for combat in space, can you?
Yes, they don't count because you say so (well we never DIRECTLY SAW this, so clearly it's absolutely against Star Trek for it to exist). That's why it was funny. Especially your point about the peregrine fighters.
Look up any clip of any of the shows wherein shuttles or runabouts were launched for fighting. You really don't need my help to do that. But since you insist, the first thing that comes to mind for me is that DS9 launched its runabouts in 'The Jem'Hadar' to support the Odyssey when going to try and find Commander Sisko. Yes, yes, the runabouts weren't launched from the Odyssey itself...but since the Odyssey was a Galaxy class ship, we're well aware it has shuttle bays entirely capable of doing so. Presumably if for some reason the Odyssey, Mekong and Orinoco were stuck in the Gamma quadrant for any significant amount of time, the runabouts would have had reason to dock and/or launch from the Odyssey itself, unless Captain Keogh was just like 'nope we can't do that, this is Star Trek!'.
Star Trek doesn't have any blatant examples of pure carriers because all of the big ships we've seen focused on are generally capable of supporting themselves without clouds of fighters (since they're mostly exploration vessels, this makes sense; you don't bring a squad of fighter pilots along when you're off to catalogue star systems). The peregrine fighters started with the Maquis and were clearly adapted for wide-spread use during the Dominion War, and were even used in the way you'd expect fighter craft to be used. Warp capable? Sure. But originally adapted for fighting within a pretty limited area (IE, the systems the Maquis were fighting for), and if I'm remembering the glimpse we got of the interior correctly, very VERY cramped for any kind of long term living for their tiny crew. It seems really stretching it to declare that they just drifted around on their own between battle without landing for repairs/refueling/whatever (requiring them to be manned at all times), rather than the far more practical idea of some sort of carrier or modified shuttle bay existing to service their needs, just because you don't like the idea of carriers in Star Trek.
EDIT: You know, I'm just rambling. The bottom line is we didn't see things like carriers in the shows because the shows usually weren't showing things in which carriers/fighter craft would make any sense. That sort of thing exists purely for fighting; most of Star Trek dealt with exploration vessels that, while heavily armed, weren't designed for the primary purpose of war. When we did see occasions in which such things would make sense (IE, the Dominion War) we saw things like peregrine fighters that may or may not be attached to a ship serving as a carrier, but in which there was never any point whatsoever in designing an entirely new ship just to show carriers existing for the sake of nerds arguing on the internet (remember that up until the mid-point or so of DS9, all ships seen onscreen were physical models, not computer generated, and even the switch to computer generated ships meant a significant investment of time and money in what got shown (hence why they'd sometimes, ahem, recycle bits of combat footage). Showing a carrier would have been silly unless the episode was focused on it for some reason. Showing the peregrine fighters (which at least already had a design and model), worked just fine for 'waves of small fighter craft shooting at bigger ships'.
Essentially, this is about as silly as insisting that ships meant for exploration and scientific discovery don't exist in Star Wars because all we saw were dogfighting X-Wings and big lumbering capital ships.
Star Trek doesn't have any blatant examples of pure carriers because all of the big ships we've seen focused on are generally capable of supporting themselves without clouds of fighters
.....
who cares, we seriously got off track here with this pointless argument.
Back on topic:
The QA issue is critical in STO, and it can drive potential new players from the game. In these past few months I recruited over 20 new players into my fleet, and only 1 or 2 stayed. Many stating that the game is beautiful & flying ships is awesome but the constant bugs was a no go.
Is STO in its Death Woes? I wouldn't go that far to cast down the DOOM Nuke, but the constant bugs definitely does not help the game.
Regarding power skills disappearing:
A DEV, yes a Dev, asking for it's player base to provide reports for them. Check it out on the Bug segment of the forums. It is sad when players have to assist the Devs with their Q&A issues, something that should be tested and researched before implementing it in the game. I am referring to loadout issues and the missing powers from the power skill bar. It is "NOT" a new Bug, that one is an old one resurfacing from a few months ago, perhaps a yr ago.
Selling buggy loadouts for 500 zen, sometyhing that was not necessary, but implemented half@assed
who cares, we seriously got off track here with this pointless argument.
Back on topic:
The QA issue is critical in STO, and it can drive potential new players from the game. In these past few months I recruited over 20 new players into my fleet, and only 1 or 2 stayed. Many stating that the game is beautiful & flying ships is awesome but the constant bugs was a no go.
Is STO in its Death Woes? I wouldn't go that far to cast down the DOOM Nuke, but the constant bugs definitely does not help the game.
Regarding power skills disappearing:
A DEV, yes a Dev, asking for it's player base to provide reports for them. Check it out on the Bug segment of the forums. It is sad when players have to assist the Devs with their Q&A issues, something that should be tested and researched before implementing it in the game. I am referring to loadout issues and the missing powers from the power skill bar. It is "NOT" a new Bug, that one is an old one resurfacing from a few months ago, perhaps a yr ago.
Selling buggy loadouts for 500 zen, sometyhing that was not necessary, but implemented half@assed
Entirely true, I just found that insistence funnier to comment on than the never-changing pains of a buggy MMO. To be fair (?), devs asking their players for bug reports regarding long-standing issues that should have been caught during internal playtesting (ahahaha--err, sorry) is not remotely limited to STO. I'd agree this is a management issue; most game developers I've seen hate releasing a buggy product as much as their playerbase hates having to deal with it. But sadly, the guy most concerned with the immediate bottom line is the guy who decides what gets pushed live and what gets sacrificed in the name of MONEY NAOW (that is, product quality and bug fixing. Fixing bugs doesn't bring in the big bucks, after all, even if it's absolutely essential to keeping your playerbase. These guys don't look at the long-term health of a game, and many of them don't have any reason to care).
I have smelled the stink of death upon this universe since DR arrived. It came with two terrible insults: First, the devs calling us exploiters for using content they left in place. Second, the obscene upgrade system designed to drain all our resources and willpower. At each turn, it feels like the people running this game are telling us to f**k off.
I'd love to disagree here but I cant....sadly.
I don't think they are intentionally trying to ruin the game...but these changes certainly will not inspire new players to plow their way to endgame. For those of us who were already playing...ton's of busywork and timegates designed to frustrate us into spending money.
I spend money on fun stuff, not a blatant attempt to test my patience.
You know, the carrier vs noCarrier discussion is great. I'd just rather it happen in the context of a game that has basic working functionality.
The very basic nature of these bugs is ... scary. This is kind of similar to how it was in Earth & Beyond. I remember one bug, there was a non-repeatable quest that required you to tractor a random drop capsule and return it. However, it was easy to mistakenly get more than one capsule in your inventory, and absolutely no way to get rid if it. People played the game for YEARS with unusable inventory spots. As far as I know, the game ended with bugged capsules taking up space in their inventories. The only way to get rid of them was to delete your char.
thx for the posts guys, my wallet is voting a bit. I'll probably buy a few more game cards here and there, but I think I'm done wanting after lobi gear and using them to open lockboxes and thinking I upgrade a ton more stuff. You know, last week I was thinking I would open a bunch of those (lockboxes), now, not so much. Maybe I will eventually, I don't know, probably, maybe. But today, I did lawn chores instead of going to buy game cards or play.
I check this forum, and the bugs area, I see that many people can't stay connected today. That's insane in a game this far along in a development cycle. Crazy.
After spending money on the Delta Pack, pre release, I'm now totally drained by the terribly poor state of the game, and really suffering from buyers remorse. Although riddled with many wee bugs and issues, I, like many others, have merrily thrown time and money at the game in the hope things would improve. Delta Rising should have been that opportunity! Visually I think it is stunning, I enjoyed the story line (not the inbetween grind) and even the hard core haters have to admit, there are some great ability tweaks and ideas.. But, that in my opinion is the issue, its all lip service and looks, with no substance or integrity. It isnt just a big let down to the player base, I also feel sorry for anyone working hard under any management, or business model, that would allow a product to be shipped in the state DR was.
Entirely true, I just found that insistence funnier to comment on than the never-changing pains of a buggy MMO. To be fair (?), devs asking their players for bug reports regarding long-standing issues that should have been caught during internal playtesting (ahahaha--err, sorry) is not remotely limited to STO. I'd agree this is a management issue; most game developers I've seen hate releasing a buggy product as much as their playerbase hates having to deal with it. But sadly, the guy most concerned with the immediate bottom line is the guy who decides what gets pushed live and what gets sacrificed in the name of MONEY NAOW (that is, product quality and bug fixing. Fixing bugs doesn't bring in the big bucks, after all, even if it's absolutely essential to keeping your playerbase. These guys don't look at the long-term health of a game, and many of them don't have any reason to care).
Anyone that has done programming knows that bugs can take 5 minutes to months to fix. Fixing a text bug like the recent Talaxian Female bug is easy to fix. Fixing more complex bugs can take weeks or months of going through the code to figure out where the problem is. There is also the problem that some bugs only exist for certain players due to different hardware configurations and software conflicts. Therefore, due to time and resource constraints, Cryptic has to prioritize which bugs to fix.
Just fixing bugs is worse than ignoring bugs. Content is what keeps the players here and spending money on the game. It requires a balance between fixing bugs and introducing new content for the long-term health of the game. If a MMO is not developing new content, then it is on life support.
Anyone that has done programming knows that bugs can take 5 minutes to months to fix. Fixing a text bug like the recent Talaxian Female bug is easy to fix. Fixing more complex bugs can take weeks or months of going through the code to figure out where the problem is. There is also the problem that some bugs only exist for certain players due to different hardware configurations and software conflicts. Therefore, due to time and resource constraints, Cryptic has to prioritize which bugs to fix.
Just fixing bugs is worse than ignoring bugs. Content is what keeps the players here and spending money on the game. It requires a balance between fixing bugs and introducing new content for the long-term health of the game. If a MMO is not developing new content, then it is on life support.
The problem is is that they keep "tweaking" the reward part and introducing new monetization methods. The monetization methods are not bad if they are done correctly. IN STO's case...no. They need to keep focus that this is an Alt friendly environment and the money comes from an alt friendly environment. They currently took that away with what they did with DR, the crafting grind, and xp "fixes" It's fu**ing sad when Doff missions are borderline better than real missions.
I have no doubt that the numbers playing are "fine" but I think they are feeling the pinch right now because the whales and below have slowed the zen purchases because of the lack of quality. PWE will learn the hard way that while Westerners will TRIBBLE away money on TRIBBLE, they need to feel it is worthwhile to do so. When it is not worthwhile, they will TRIBBLE away that money elsewhere.
who cares, we seriously got off track here with this pointless argument.
Back on topic:
The QA issue is critical in STO, and it can drive potential new players from the game. In these past few months I recruited over 20 new players into my fleet, and only 1 or 2 stayed. Many stating that the game is beautiful & flying ships is awesome but the constant bugs was a no go.
Is STO in its Death Woes? I wouldn't go that far to cast down the DOOM Nuke, but the constant bugs definitely does not help the game.
Regarding power skills disappearing:
A DEV, yes a Dev, asking for it's player base to provide reports for them. Check it out on the Bug segment of the forums. It is sad when players have to assist the Devs with their Q&A issues, something that should be tested and researched before implementing it in the game. I am referring to loadout issues and the missing powers from the power skill bar. It is "NOT" a new Bug, that one is an old one resurfacing from a few months ago, perhaps a yr ago.
Selling buggy loadouts for 500 zen, sometyhing that was not necessary, but implemented half@assed
As someone who has spent years doing modding work.... Bug fixing is a seemingly never ending task. It's easy to say "why don't you double check your work?"... the reality is that if I missed it the first time there's a high chance I'll miss it the second time. And playtesting everything myself... yeah right. proper playtesting takes hundreds of hours. and that's just to find the bugs. figuring out why they exist may or may not be easy.... Some are simply typos, others.... can be extremely frustrating.
Well in my humble opinion, with the way they stuporously cobbled together this Delta Rising thingy and with all the things that went on since then, Cryptic went one step too far and they can't arrange it by just "patching it back to good". There's been too much damage made.
For a real change, the heads of the responsibles need to roll and people need to be employed who have a clue about customer tie and the right way to deal with their customers without just starring at the next quarterly closing of their accounts.
One thing Cryptic doesn't seem to know yet: not in any subtile way you need to force (or let's say "manipulate") your customers to spend their hard earned money in the game. If the gamer gets the feeling to get an equivalent value for his spendings, he will do it willingly. But for that it needs more than frequently repeated flat discount offers or to give a T6 ship minor improvement just to justify it's higher price. What it needs I think was said in the forums over and over again already, be it further development of existing planets, improvement of the ships' interior, a more dynamic mission system or playable races people have been asking for already. Some of those have been announced but never put into practice. The most things don't seem to come to their minds by themselves though. And for the ones who have a say at Cryptic obviuosly have as much of a clue about customer service as a Vulcan has about emotions, things won't change significantly as long as these folks are allowed to mess around with STO.
Maybe they should try to embrace a saying I once read in another game: "Never forget, behind every avatar you touch the soul of a human being".
~ Don't blame the clown for being a clown, blame yourself for going to the circus ~
Anyone that has done programming knows that bugs can take 5 minutes to months to fix.
Fine. Except many of the bugs have been there for years. Defera City Hard mission, missing V'ger (or double) in Red Alerts, unresponsive UI, the Exchange, Tricobalt/cluster torpedo/Bioneural/etc just failing to launch but going into cooldown anyway, and so on.
there is no room for carriers in trek. not in the way you would get from starwars or bluewater navies.
simple reason being, ~150meter raider/escort ships are teh fighters of startrek.
would you would get are ships capable of being auxiliary logistical platforms able to repair the auxiliary support craft without the need to the round trip to a starbase.
galaxies with their competitively massive docking bay could do this for runabouts. but simply, the survival rates for anything smaller than a brel/defiant is going to be no more than the time taken to get a firing solution.
I've never seen such a pretty deeply developed game with so many persisting basic problems, and I mean basic problems, core functions. UI, mail, server uptime, exchange/auction, itemization, etc. That's not even getting into balance & content.
Their metrics tell them those issues won't increase profits.
Well in my humble opinion, with the way they stuporously cobbled together this Delta Rising thingy and with all the things that went on since then, Cryptic went one step too far and they can't arrange it by just "patching it back to good". There's been too much damage made.
For a real change, the heads of the responsibles need to roll and people need to be employed who have a clue about customer tie and the right way to deal with their customers without just starring at the next quarterly closing of their accounts.
One thing Cryptic doesn't seem to know yet: not in any subtile way you need to force (or let's say "manipulate") your customers to spend their hard earned money in the game. If the gamer gets the feeling to get an equivalent value for his spendings, he will do it willingly. But for that it needs more than frequently repeated flat discount offers or to give a T6 ship minor improvement just to justify it's higher price. What it needs I think was said in the forums over and over again already, be it further development of existing planets, improvement of the ships' interior, a more dynamic mission system or playable races people have been asking for already. Some of those have been announced but never put into practice. The most things don't seem to come to their minds by themselves though. And for the ones who have a say at Cryptic obviuosly have as much of a clue about customer service as a Vulcan has about emotions, things won't change significantly as long as these folks are allowed to mess around with STO.
Maybe they should try to embrace a saying I once read in another game: "Never forget, behind every avatar you touch the soul of a human being".
You seem to be missing the key point here, and this is that ALL PWE GAMES ARE THIS WAY. PWE does this stuff intentionally. They're not going to change it, because it's exactly how they want it to be. They give precisely zero ****s whether you like it or not. You do not even begin to factor into the equation. Whatever PWE does is not to make a better game, it's to make more money, so you can bet that if something still persists, it's because they're making money on it.
So, STO is still around after all this time, because they're still making a profit on it. It's as simple as that.
very sure.
regardless of the plot armour thrown around like confetti in ds9.(tbh, about all i remember of that episode is ezri in leather:rolleyes:)
The "plot armor" as you call it... was simply that the giant Negvar had difficulty hitting something as small as the ship they were flying. It was extremely maneuverable, and the Negvar was pretty much a space station with nacelles.
You seem to be missing the key point here, and this is that ALL PWE GAMES ARE THIS WAY. PWE does this stuff intentionally. They're not going to change it, because it's exactly how they want it to be. They give precisely zero ****s whether you like it or not. You do not even begin to factor into the equation. Whatever PWE does is not to make a better game, it's to make more money, so you can bet that if something still persists, it's because they're making money on it.
So, STO is still around after all this time, because they're still making a profit on it. It's as simple as that.
*points at sig* Of course money is the bottom line. Otherwise PWE has no reason to run the game.
Fine. Except many of the bugs have been there for years. Defera City Hard mission, missing V'ger (or double) in Red Alerts, unresponsive UI, the Exchange, Tricobalt/cluster torpedo/Bioneural/etc just failing to launch but going into cooldown anyway, and so on.
And all of these bugs could require months to fix or only affect a small portion of the players. Does Cryptic fix a bug that affects only 500 players and takes a month to fix or do they fix bugs that affect 90% of the players. Cryptic has to balance their time since they can't fix everything.
Comments
General display of impatience.
Tantrum leading to conclusion that the game will come to an end if things aren't fixed fast.
I would have typed it up properly but I think everyone knows exactly what i mean without elaborating.
The Galor was a result of us begging for over a year...we thought it implied a coming Cardassian faction. Then after a week the hope wore off. I forget who, but someone said at the last con that it would be inevitable...but that may have been a simple diplomatic statement. If they publicly admit to having no intent on adding Cardassians I'm betting a lot of people would stop playing. Some of us (myself included) have played this game with the intent of being Dukat or Damar. We wanted them before the Romulans were added. Makes me sad to think they can't even admit Cardassians will never be an option.
I never really gave a %#$@ about whether Carriers were fun, they're not Star Trek, that's reason enough for me to wish them zapped from the game. You want Carrier/Fighter go play a game based on Star Wars. Or Battlestar Galactica. Or Babylon 5.. Or really any other Sci-Fi IP because it's a ridiculously freaking over-used trope.
Almost called it.
Interesting assertation that Star Trek lacks Carriers though.... since we've seen SOME use of them in the TV shows.....
My character Tsin'xing
Name one canon (seen in live action) Fighter-Carrier, not the Scimitar, which launched Scorpion Attack Flyers for Planetary Air Superiority (never launched them for the purposes of combat in space, not even when outnumbered 3 to 1 in the battle of Bassen Rift), not the Akira (which never launched fighters and was scaled down until it's hangar doors couldn't be hangar doors, and which was only a carrier according to the artist, not the writing or on screen evidence), not the frankenship from DS9 which was only listed as a carrier in non-canon RPGs, not the presumption that there had to be Fighter Carriers because Peregrine fighters exist (they're warp capable, converted civilian courier vessels, capable of independant operation without a mothership, just fyi), not the Kazon Carrier, which we never saw launch or utilize fighters in canon..
Go ahead, show me a live action canon carrier in Trek. I want video of a ship in live action trek launching fighters for the purpose of space combat.
Almost called it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9W2cnN6mFi0
Which is more harmful....what you typed as a generalization of the op's post? or....
Random attack on the OP
Another Apologist statement about the precious
Endless descent into a terrible title because apologists won't get on board about what's right and wrong.
hmmm I'd have to say that the fanboys and apologists are destroying this entire genre including this game because more you apologize for the developers not doing their jobs professionally, the more they'll be convinced they can get away with it the more it will happen not just in this title but in multiple titles.
Let me give you brief history since 2011. 2012 SWTOR the WOW clone was released touting doing everything differently brand new experience. It was discovered after millions spent money on it that it was the most blatant of wow clones ever created. It went f2p almost as fast as it sold it's first copies. When they made it F2P they tied progression directly into the F2P model so that people would indirectly have to spend money to stay ahead. Apologists said it was okay because it would only affect PVP. In 2012 GW2 was released, it too had a similar event. It got a previous Nexon employee as their main economist. A systematic nerfing of several money making systems directly tied to loot was implemented and 2 years of nerfing several farming spots in PVE open world was put into the game. Apologists said it was okay because it didn't happen to 100% of the playerbase even though thousands of posts on the forums proved that it was still happening to the majority. In 2013 Wildstar was released and was supposed to usher in a new era of nostalgia for players of the hardcore style where raiding was the focus and so were dungeons. The game was riddled with bugs for several months, some of which still exist in the game today that were from beta. The devs decided it wasn't important to fix these game breaking bugs and continued on making new content as if these bugs would just vanish on their own and despite several posts about in the forums for months. The Apologists said it was okay because the game was brand new and at least people didn't have to play with casuals. In 2014 a new sandbox game was released called Archeage here in the west. Trion monetized the hell out of that title making it basically require the player to have no choice buy to be a patron in order to progress with any kind of sensible progression time table. Apologists said it was okay because at least people didn't have to play a themepark to enjoy themselves.
On Oct 14, 2014 Delta Rising was released on Star Trek Online live servers, riddled with a high cost to progress (people in the test forums called it Dilithium Rising for a reason) and with several nerfs to much needed xp and dilithium rewards from simply playing the game normally in an already dilithium starved environment (ie Fleet Starbases still not being completed by many a fleet in 2014 because of the enormous cost of dilithium just to do that). Apologists are still saying it's okay because you don't actually have to play the game at all.
See how these things happen? It's a cascading affect when fanboys and apologists start minimizing legitimate concerns over where games are going and whether or not they are high quality management decisions about a title's direction during the creative process.
But I know I know, I'm a whiner right?
Okay, I had to laugh at this. Name one example! ...except for all these examples I'm disqualifying. Really?
Okay. Every single ship that had shuttlecraft/runabouts, which were used in combat when more specialized fighter craft weren't around (IE, the peregrine fighters mentioned up there). You'll say this doesn't count because well those weren't JUST carriers or the shuttlecraft/runabouts weren't JUST fighter craft, I know, I know.
Honestly, I'd find Star Trek not having carriers to be weirder. What, not one single alien species decided that might be useful? No one ever took the logical leap of 'hey this worked pretty well in naval combat, what about space?' ? Especially given Star Trek space combat is generally handled as 'like an ocean, but SPACE', why would this not exist?
And wait, so those peregrine fighters just never dock with a larger ship for repairs/refueling/pilot time off? So what if they're warp capable? Fighter craft in Wing Commander were capable of going through jump gates, that didn't make their carriers suddenly not count.
Of all the things to get worked up over
Yes, because none of those count, they're just things that one person or another once called a Carrier and now Carrier fanboys use to try and justify their desire for Trek Carriers.. Except none of them count, precisely for the reasons I listed.
I preferred to save everyone 3-4 posts back and forth of them using those (bad) attempts and me refuting them one by one.
I don't suppose you can link me to YouTube footage or DailyMotion or a snippet on Memory Alpha about a ship launching fighters for combat in space, can you?
Almost called it.
Yes, they don't count because you say so (well we never DIRECTLY SAW this, so clearly it's absolutely against Star Trek for it to exist). That's why it was funny. Especially your point about the peregrine fighters.
Look up any clip of any of the shows wherein shuttles or runabouts were launched for fighting. You really don't need my help to do that. But since you insist, the first thing that comes to mind for me is that DS9 launched its runabouts in 'The Jem'Hadar' to support the Odyssey when going to try and find Commander Sisko. Yes, yes, the runabouts weren't launched from the Odyssey itself...but since the Odyssey was a Galaxy class ship, we're well aware it has shuttle bays entirely capable of doing so. Presumably if for some reason the Odyssey, Mekong and Orinoco were stuck in the Gamma quadrant for any significant amount of time, the runabouts would have had reason to dock and/or launch from the Odyssey itself, unless Captain Keogh was just like 'nope we can't do that, this is Star Trek!'.
Star Trek doesn't have any blatant examples of pure carriers because all of the big ships we've seen focused on are generally capable of supporting themselves without clouds of fighters (since they're mostly exploration vessels, this makes sense; you don't bring a squad of fighter pilots along when you're off to catalogue star systems). The peregrine fighters started with the Maquis and were clearly adapted for wide-spread use during the Dominion War, and were even used in the way you'd expect fighter craft to be used. Warp capable? Sure. But originally adapted for fighting within a pretty limited area (IE, the systems the Maquis were fighting for), and if I'm remembering the glimpse we got of the interior correctly, very VERY cramped for any kind of long term living for their tiny crew. It seems really stretching it to declare that they just drifted around on their own between battle without landing for repairs/refueling/whatever (requiring them to be manned at all times), rather than the far more practical idea of some sort of carrier or modified shuttle bay existing to service their needs, just because you don't like the idea of carriers in Star Trek.
EDIT: You know, I'm just rambling. The bottom line is we didn't see things like carriers in the shows because the shows usually weren't showing things in which carriers/fighter craft would make any sense. That sort of thing exists purely for fighting; most of Star Trek dealt with exploration vessels that, while heavily armed, weren't designed for the primary purpose of war. When we did see occasions in which such things would make sense (IE, the Dominion War) we saw things like peregrine fighters that may or may not be attached to a ship serving as a carrier, but in which there was never any point whatsoever in designing an entirely new ship just to show carriers existing for the sake of nerds arguing on the internet (remember that up until the mid-point or so of DS9, all ships seen onscreen were physical models, not computer generated, and even the switch to computer generated ships meant a significant investment of time and money in what got shown (hence why they'd sometimes, ahem, recycle bits of combat footage). Showing a carrier would have been silly unless the episode was focused on it for some reason. Showing the peregrine fighters (which at least already had a design and model), worked just fine for 'waves of small fighter craft shooting at bigger ships'.
Essentially, this is about as silly as insisting that ships meant for exploration and scientific discovery don't exist in Star Wars because all we saw were dogfighting X-Wings and big lumbering capital ships.
who cares, we seriously got off track here with this pointless argument.
Back on topic:
The QA issue is critical in STO, and it can drive potential new players from the game. In these past few months I recruited over 20 new players into my fleet, and only 1 or 2 stayed. Many stating that the game is beautiful & flying ships is awesome but the constant bugs was a no go.
Is STO in its Death Woes? I wouldn't go that far to cast down the DOOM Nuke, but the constant bugs definitely does not help the game.
Regarding power skills disappearing:
A DEV, yes a Dev, asking for it's player base to provide reports for them. Check it out on the Bug segment of the forums. It is sad when players have to assist the Devs with their Q&A issues, something that should be tested and researched before implementing it in the game. I am referring to loadout issues and the missing powers from the power skill bar. It is "NOT" a new Bug, that one is an old one resurfacing from a few months ago, perhaps a yr ago.
Selling buggy loadouts for 500 zen, sometyhing that was not necessary, but implemented half@assed
Entirely true, I just found that insistence funnier to comment on than the never-changing pains of a buggy MMO. To be fair (?), devs asking their players for bug reports regarding long-standing issues that should have been caught during internal playtesting (ahahaha--err, sorry) is not remotely limited to STO. I'd agree this is a management issue; most game developers I've seen hate releasing a buggy product as much as their playerbase hates having to deal with it. But sadly, the guy most concerned with the immediate bottom line is the guy who decides what gets pushed live and what gets sacrificed in the name of MONEY NAOW (that is, product quality and bug fixing. Fixing bugs doesn't bring in the big bucks, after all, even if it's absolutely essential to keeping your playerbase. These guys don't look at the long-term health of a game, and many of them don't have any reason to care).
I'd love to disagree here but I cant....sadly.
I don't think they are intentionally trying to ruin the game...but these changes certainly will not inspire new players to plow their way to endgame. For those of us who were already playing...ton's of busywork and timegates designed to frustrate us into spending money.
I spend money on fun stuff, not a blatant attempt to test my patience.
The very basic nature of these bugs is ... scary. This is kind of similar to how it was in Earth & Beyond. I remember one bug, there was a non-repeatable quest that required you to tractor a random drop capsule and return it. However, it was easy to mistakenly get more than one capsule in your inventory, and absolutely no way to get rid if it. People played the game for YEARS with unusable inventory spots. As far as I know, the game ended with bugged capsules taking up space in their inventories. The only way to get rid of them was to delete your char.
thx for the posts guys, my wallet is voting a bit. I'll probably buy a few more game cards here and there, but I think I'm done wanting after lobi gear and using them to open lockboxes and thinking I upgrade a ton more stuff. You know, last week I was thinking I would open a bunch of those (lockboxes), now, not so much. Maybe I will eventually, I don't know, probably, maybe. But today, I did lawn chores instead of going to buy game cards or play.
I check this forum, and the bugs area, I see that many people can't stay connected today. That's insane in a game this far along in a development cycle. Crazy.
Like I said, man, something is wrong.
Anyone that has done programming knows that bugs can take 5 minutes to months to fix. Fixing a text bug like the recent Talaxian Female bug is easy to fix. Fixing more complex bugs can take weeks or months of going through the code to figure out where the problem is. There is also the problem that some bugs only exist for certain players due to different hardware configurations and software conflicts. Therefore, due to time and resource constraints, Cryptic has to prioritize which bugs to fix.
Just fixing bugs is worse than ignoring bugs. Content is what keeps the players here and spending money on the game. It requires a balance between fixing bugs and introducing new content for the long-term health of the game. If a MMO is not developing new content, then it is on life support.
The problem is is that they keep "tweaking" the reward part and introducing new monetization methods. The monetization methods are not bad if they are done correctly. IN STO's case...no. They need to keep focus that this is an Alt friendly environment and the money comes from an alt friendly environment. They currently took that away with what they did with DR, the crafting grind, and xp "fixes" It's fu**ing sad when Doff missions are borderline better than real missions.
I have no doubt that the numbers playing are "fine" but I think they are feeling the pinch right now because the whales and below have slowed the zen purchases because of the lack of quality. PWE will learn the hard way that while Westerners will TRIBBLE away money on TRIBBLE, they need to feel it is worthwhile to do so. When it is not worthwhile, they will TRIBBLE away that money elsewhere.
My character Tsin'xing
For a real change, the heads of the responsibles need to roll and people need to be employed who have a clue about customer tie and the right way to deal with their customers without just starring at the next quarterly closing of their accounts.
One thing Cryptic doesn't seem to know yet: not in any subtile way you need to force (or let's say "manipulate") your customers to spend their hard earned money in the game. If the gamer gets the feeling to get an equivalent value for his spendings, he will do it willingly. But for that it needs more than frequently repeated flat discount offers or to give a T6 ship minor improvement just to justify it's higher price. What it needs I think was said in the forums over and over again already, be it further development of existing planets, improvement of the ships' interior, a more dynamic mission system or playable races people have been asking for already. Some of those have been announced but never put into practice. The most things don't seem to come to their minds by themselves though. And for the ones who have a say at Cryptic obviuosly have as much of a clue about customer service as a Vulcan has about emotions, things won't change significantly as long as these folks are allowed to mess around with STO.
Maybe they should try to embrace a saying I once read in another game: "Never forget, behind every avatar you touch the soul of a human being".
Fine. Except many of the bugs have been there for years. Defera City Hard mission, missing V'ger (or double) in Red Alerts, unresponsive UI, the Exchange, Tricobalt/cluster torpedo/Bioneural/etc just failing to launch but going into cooldown anyway, and so on.
Are you sure? :P
My character Tsin'xing
Their metrics tell them those issues won't increase profits.
I wish I was joking.
You seem to be missing the key point here, and this is that ALL PWE GAMES ARE THIS WAY. PWE does this stuff intentionally. They're not going to change it, because it's exactly how they want it to be. They give precisely zero ****s whether you like it or not. You do not even begin to factor into the equation. Whatever PWE does is not to make a better game, it's to make more money, so you can bet that if something still persists, it's because they're making money on it.
So, STO is still around after all this time, because they're still making a profit on it. It's as simple as that.
My character Tsin'xing
And all of these bugs could require months to fix or only affect a small portion of the players. Does Cryptic fix a bug that affects only 500 players and takes a month to fix or do they fix bugs that affect 90% of the players. Cryptic has to balance their time since they can't fix everything.