While it could well be a lost cause, one of things I hope to accomplish through a comprehensive review is to make the whole thing--bad and good--obvious for anyone, including the devs, to see, rather than just piecemeal praises and flames that I am not sure really accomplish much as they are so easily dismissed.
I also endeavor to do some root cause analysis to see if I can understand why things have gone wrong, and I even think I have a bit of an idea with Tribble. It is not acceptable, but perhaps if I can hit on the right root cause or close to it, it might make Cryptic actually see ways that solutions could be feasible.
I would be very interested to hear your thoughts on the (tribble server situation).
I should hopefully be posting tomorrow. I have had a TON of preparation to do for a business trip and I might be able to whip something up on the airplane.
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I must say this is a pretty detailed analysis, gulberat.
It kept me from sleeping. And despite me not having read all of what you wrote, I see logic in it.
I may disagree somewhat with your assessment of certain characters or DQ races, but at least I mostly see why.
So, thanks for this review and keep it up.
TOIVA, Toi Vaxx, Toia Vix, Toveg, T'vritha, To Vrax: Bring in the Allegiance class. Toi'Va, Ti'vath, Toivia, Ty'Vris, Tia Vex, Toi'Virth: Add Tier 6 KDF Carrier and Raider. Tae'Va, T'Vaya, To'Var, Tevra, T'Vira, To'Vrak: Give us Asylums for Romulans.
I think the fact you actually have to ask that question is the point.
If you want to do gray-on-gray morality well, you need to have a compelling argument for each participant that overshadows their immediate negative. Kobali ground had the seeds of that, but not the finished product. What the Kobali are doing ranges from morally questionable to anathema depending upon your mores and mindset, so the negative is there, but the argument for supporting them consists almost entirely of, "The Vaadwuar are jerkbags, have been through this whole mission arc, and the text above their heads is red."On the flipside, the Vaadwaur have a clear casus belli, but respond with genocide, are total jerkbags, and once again red = dead. The lack of an option to side with the Vaadwaur buries any sort of depth that might've been, reverting to the old formulaic "support these guys and kill these because WESAYSO."
Had Kobali ground been a faction war zone, it would've been the shining gem of DR. As is, it's decent, but represents one more missed opportunity passed over in favor of monetization and nostalgia-driven voice actors.
So far this is proving to be an interesting read, keep it up. I would be interested to see your take on the tribble issues, especially as someone who was in the thick of it with regards to the upgrade system, which I still say is completely unreasonable from a cost perspective.
Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head. - Euripides
I no longer do any Bug Hunting work for Cryptic. I may resume if a serious attempt to fix the game is made.
PART 2: QUALITY ASSURANCE, MECHANICS, AND PUBLIC RELATIONS
I would like to preface this section by noting that my objective here is to do a root cause analysis of sorts as to what went wrong on the back end and why. While I believe that some critical mistakes occurred and in some cases have been ongoing patterns with Cryptic/PWE, the object here is not to automatically assume malice. If anyone is looking for me to flame and personally accuse, they will need to find another thread. As many much more serious and famous failures IRL demonstrate, the road to hell has a tendency to be paved with good intentions, and when you take into account faulty business and process assumptions coupled with various types of logical and psychological fallacies, it is quite possible to mean well but do catastrophically poorly. The result in such cases tends to be a cascading systems failure that almost takes on a life of its own.
I would like to hope that it will be possible to slam the brakes on this particular derailing train before it goes completely over the edge, though by this point there is very likely to be a lot of strain on the sustainability of PWE's business model. By unpacking some of the dynamics and looking at some of the alternatives, perhaps it will still be possible to change things. If not...at least it will not be without having made a real effort at some honest and constructive criticism and suggestions.
Testing and QA
Probably the first forewarning I and many others had that something bad was coming down the pipeline for STO was the locking down of Tribble to prevent Silver members from testing. There are multiple theories about why this occurred, which I will delve into shortly, but the *appearance* it gave was that Cryptic was not at all interested in user input or at least only cared about a small segment of the overall game population.
Of course, despite receiving game-breaking bug reports (many of which remain unresolved to this day, in addition to the many other pre-DR bugs, some of them major, that have remained in game for years), and other very negative feedback about progression/leveling, costs, and other game mechanics, we know how buggy and economically and mechanically imbalanced DR launched. Clearly whatever may be behind it, the Tribble feedback did not count for anything whatsoever in the development and quality assurance process, representing a major control gap.
Now, besides the theory of Cryptic simply not caring about feedback and deliberately choosing not to listen, could there be other thought processes at work that could also lead to the same disastrous results? I do think there are a few possibilities, both of which could be in operation simultaneously, and I think those deserve to be explored rather than simply assuming malice.
Two of these would mainly be an issue before a major release takes place. One possibility is that is that either Cryptic misperceives Tribble to be a content preview server more than it is a test environment, or that Cryptic believes that we, the customers are using...or...well...exploiting Tribble in that manner. If Cryptic--whether founded or not--has acquired the idea that the majority of people do not contribute to the bug-hunting process and do not submit information that is "good enough," then they may have come into the mindset that going onto Tribble is for many players a form of freeloading that gains them nothing and therefore why bother letting very many people in if all they are going to do is get spoilers, post spoilers, and give nothing in return? Now, I do NOT believe this is true that people really do exploit Tribble in that manner, or if they do, they represent only a tiny portion of players...not enough to cause any sort of actual "damage" to Cryptic. But if Cryptic is operating under such a grave misperception then it could explain their behavior but would need to be addressed immediately in order to actually take proper advantage of Tribble and make the critically-needed quality improvements.
One meaningful step Cryptic could take for added assurance as to increasing the percentage of Tribble visitors who actually test and fill out bug reports is by increasing the Tribble-testing rewards significantly but requiring that in order to get the reward, you send in a bug/feedback survey within a certain timeframe (survey can either be in-game or emailed, and no, it must NOT be a Peanut Labs scam) in order to receive the reward. Many people are already very diligent about bug reporting and feedback but this could increase the percentage of visitors who are reporting.
Another pre-release problem may have to do with the timeframe Cryptic is allowing for the QA process and implementing changes based on feedback. In other words, by the time material is hitting Tribble, it already has a hard release date and Cryptic is being forced by PWE to ramrod whatever it is through by X date, damn the consequences.
This is its own psychological fallacy--the idea that a delay is so intolerable that it is somehow *worse* to release a severely problematic build into production. While a delay isn't great, it can be forgiven for quality. Unless delays happen SO often that it brings the software development life cycle to a complete grinding halt, I think most reasonable customers would rather be told straightforwardly that there has been a delay in order to ensure everything is up to a high enough quality standard, than to be handed something severely bugged and otherwise out of balance, and get piecemeal and often very incomplete fixes after the fact. Basically under this assumption, Cryptic is not allotting themselves sufficient time to properly vet each build, or to properly read, respond to, and enact changes based on customer feedback, so they just don't try and think they can fix it on the fly.
Post-release, especially after a major expansion as hotfixes start coming in, it may be that the Holodeck and Tribble code versions get out of whack enough with each other that the devs struggle seriously to keep up with what version of a particular section of code is where and the result is another quality assurance breakdown. Greater version control by Cryptic would be necessary to remedy that problem, instead of having so many competing versions out there that it becomes confusing and the risk of errors increases because the left hand doesn't know what the right hand has done about another part of code that is related to what the first person was working on. The existence of three to four simultaneous branches of code was mentioned by Borticus recently and seems to me like it has at least the possibility of being a contributing factor to testing and QA failures. How can you be assured of proper testing if what you are testing does not necessarily reflect in its entirety what is actually going to go into production?
Another potential documentation issue is one I have actually seen bite a multinational corporation with a legacy system, and I am aware it is quite widespread in other places. It may be as with many programs and systems that grew out of nothing in a relaxed environment that insufficient commenting of code and other forms of documentation exists as to how things are done and especially how the variables are interrelated. The problem becomes even worse as the people who first wrote the code move on to other jobs and take their knowledge with them.
The result of this is that changing one thing then changes something else no one ever thought to check before pushing the code to production. Especially with all of the new variables added in, and the level cap increase having widespread impacts on what higher-level can do, it is no wonder that a lack of centralized and up-to-date documentation on how everything fits together could potentially lead to a lot of gamebreakers. The sooner in-code comments and documentation policies and procedures can be beefed up, so that new Cryptic team members or those who are not familiar with a particular section of code can gain their best understanding of what the current build looks like (and what effects changes will have where), and will therefore be less likely to make changes with major unforeseen impacts or bugs, the better.
But none of this would help if it really is true that Cryptic has already made up its mind to release the code as-is, or does not permit itself enough time to make corrections, at the time that a build hits Tribble. Are they worried that a preview of content reduces spending? This would be a serious fallacy...bugs and major design and economics flaws do far worse. They are the reason *I* decided to stop spending and exit the dilithium to Zen economy. I will no longer pay my own money into the game or subsidize anyone else who pays.
I really think that there are some serious wrong assumptions throughout the design process, similarly to what I describe above, that causes Cryptic to make disastrously wrong decisions--because they almost irrationally fear the *least* of all evils and in avoiding what they *think* is their highest risk, they end up creating a situation far, far worse, and because of the anger they repeatedly ignite, they develop a perpetual bunker mentality that only makes the next cycle even worse.
And on that note...I will next be taking on the skill point and Japorigate fiascos, perhaps the ultimate illustration of this principle of warped priorities.
[Sorry for such a long wait! I was traveling out of the country and had a pretty bad Internet connection in one of the hotels.]
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I generally agree with what you say there, though what gets me is that you have issues like Tau Dewa Gate and the over 700 post long thread on the basic mathematical redundancies of the upgrade system and they didn't do squat about it.
The only time we got a direct actioned response was when we posted a video and posted it everywhere detailing the flaws with the rep passive nerf, and that was only because it was so blatantly obvious from that how wrong they were.
Frankly it seems that unless they're made to look complete idiots they never do anything about it during the testing season.
Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head. - Euripides
I no longer do any Bug Hunting work for Cryptic. I may resume if a serious attempt to fix the game is made.
BTW, my next section will be delayed because I need time to observe the effects of the latest "effort" to address skill points--which may force a far harsher evaluation than what I was planning to write. I intend to hold off until I have a clear sense of the situation. My instincts are that they have made a bad situation immeasurably worse.
As of last night I had intended to write something closer to even-handed. But I am going to give just a little time to see what happens on the outside chance that this gets enough of an outcry to force the devs to change course, before I unleash the scathing write up that is now coming to mind.
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BTW, my next section will be delayed because I need time to observe the effects of the latest "effort" to address skill points--which may force a far harsher evaluation than what I was planning to write. I intend to hold off until I have a clear sense of the situation. My instincts are that they have made a bad situation immeasurably worse.
As of last night I had intended to write something closer to even-handed. But I am going to give just a little time to see what happens on the outside chance that this gets enough of an outcry to force the devs to change course, before I unleash the scathing write up that is now coming to mind.
The livestream tomorrow might make good entertainment, might even give a measure about how much they care not to talk about anything.
Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head. - Euripides
I no longer do any Bug Hunting work for Cryptic. I may resume if a serious attempt to fix the game is made.
I don't think I will be able to make it to that tomorrow because of work. But spoiler for a later segment: Communication requires content. And it requires listening and incorporating feedback, or else it is null and void.
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If you want to do gray-on-gray morality well, you need to have a compelling argument for each participant that overshadows their immediate negative. Kobali ground had the seeds of that, but not the finished product. What the Kobali are doing ranges from morally questionable to anathema depending upon your mores and mindset, so the negative is there, but the argument for supporting them consists almost entirely of, "The Vaadwuar are jerkbags, have been through this whole mission arc, and the text above their heads is red."On the flipside, the Vaadwaur have a clear casus belli, but respond with genocide, are total jerkbags, and once again red = dead. The lack of an option to side with the Vaadwaur buries any sort of depth that might've been, reverting to the old formulaic "support these guys and kill these because WESAYSO."
Had Kobali ground been a faction war zone, it would've been the shining gem of DR. As is, it's decent, but represents one more missed opportunity passed over in favor of monetization and nostalgia-driven voice actors.
I would say that the other argument in favor of the Kobali is that there are alternative arrangements that would allow them to continue forward with only small cultural modifications, as compared to the way they are getting corpses to reanimate right now.
Right off the bat the Ferengi came to mind as a potential voluntary supplier of remains, since they are already known to have monetized (sorry to use that word ) their corpses and many are accepting of the market and security risks inherent in such a transaction. The new model would be noticeably shorter than the old--but I think that would be a reasonable trade for them to get...well...
Certified Conflict-Free Corpses! (I can see the Ferengi Alliance's marketing angle already. )
A fair point, though I feel the mechanic would be rather hard to implement given the context of the story. Were the Vaaduar/Kobali conflict an isolated planetary conflict I could see them giving you a choice of who to side with. Hell, throwing in a minor rep reward system depending on that choice would have been great. However the Kobali conflict is but one facet of the overall Vaaduar campaign. Its an important facet to be sure and is the point when I personally started to wonder if there was more to them than just the Delta's big bad (and we would certainly see that was true down the road.)
But I think that there were some shades of grey introduced at all was good thing and brought a bit more nuance to the situation than say, the Breen/Deferi or the Remen/Tal Shiar conflict. The Vaaduar are certainly in the wrong trying to commit genocide, but the Kobali aren't completely innocent either and have a few unsettling implications themselves. It's something I don't think we see very often in STO, let alone Trek itself and opens up a lot of potential for further exploration of both sides in the future.
Pretty much how I felt about it.
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I generally agree with what you say there, though what gets me is that you have issues like Tau Dewa Gate and the over 700 post long thread on the basic mathematical redundancies of the upgrade system and they didn't do squat about it.
The only time we got a direct actioned response was when we posted a video and posted it everywhere detailing the flaws with the rep passive nerf, and that was only because it was so blatantly obvious from that how wrong they were.
Frankly it seems that unless they're made to look complete idiots they never do anything about it during the testing season.
And that's what I am afraid we are seeing repeat--and THIS time, after I had already written all of this up, we got a deliberate circumvention of Tribble.
The Warped Priorities Principle in action: For fear of what people might say if they allowed testing, it looks like, they skipped the process entirely.
I truly hope it is not the case of taking the exact opposite lesson out of it--to give up on testing altogether and just openly admit that they do not test and do not accept feedback.
If they really do feel that way...they should just be up front about it and let the consumer make an informed financial decision as to whether their risk appetite is high enough to withstand that. But to just run from the responsibility for one's actions and decisions, and the due diligence needed to make those actions the right ones...I do think now that the "don't care about feedback" theory has more weight to it now than it did when I wrote this.
Unless Cryptic can show that they ARE willing to make changes to BENEFIT players (and not take more from them), then it may be that we got the evidence needed today to conclude and take the theory from a hypothesis to a fact.
And that is a shame.
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OK...so we did get a response from Geko that, while initially getting off on the wrong foot with some ill-timed sarcastic humor--that I feel it is important to note he did apologize quickly and directly for when the possibility of it being taken in a mean way was pointed out--does provide an alternate take on the numbers on the SP.
So, maybe it is still too early to assume deliberate not-listening, though I think that allowing people a week to actually experience the new leveling to gain hard data before releasing it into Holodeck would have been a better move rather than letting the fear of criticism rule their decision-making process.
For those waiting for the next installment of this series I will definitely be holding off for a time, in order to gather sufficient observational data to determine what the current situation really is as far as the skill points go.
In the meantime, for easy navigation now that we are several posts in, I am providing a table of contents for those who would like to catch up on the series without wading through the discussion...though I really want to compliment the people who have read and replied, as there have generally been a lot of thoughtful and in-depth responses so far, and I do consider the discussion contributed here worth reading as well.
(In a few cases, one post contains multiple section headers, and clicking the second section header will take you to the same post as the prior header. This is not an error. This table of contents also corrects for an instance of a post accidentally written out of order.)
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I for one will not be logging into STO anytime soon since I feel that even logging to start the R&D dailies is a way of telling Cryptic I support or approve of their actions and the changes they have made.
However I will be keeping an eye on this thread so I can stay informed on the current state of the game.
You're welcome. I hope that by offering a complete perspective it might allow Cryptic to see--in a non-ranty and carefully thought out manner--which choices have succeeded, which were hampered by others, and what flat-out broke and drove people away, so that maybe, just maybe, it could point to a path to recovery before it is too late.
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And that's what I am afraid we are seeing repeat--and THIS time, after I had already written all of this up, we got a deliberate circumvention of Tribble.
The Warped Priorities Principle in action: For fear of what people might say if they allowed testing, it looks like, they skipped the process entirely.
I truly hope it is not the case of taking the exact opposite lesson out of it--to give up on testing altogether and just openly admit that they do not test and do not accept feedback.
If they really do feel that way...they should just be up front about it and let the consumer make an informed financial decision as to whether their risk appetite is high enough to withstand that. But to just run from the responsibility for one's actions and decisions, and the due diligence needed to make those actions the right ones...I do think now that the "don't care about feedback" theory has more weight to it now than it did when I wrote this.
Unless Cryptic can show that they ARE willing to make changes to BENEFIT players (and not take more from them), then it may be that we got the evidence needed today to conclude and take the theory from a hypothesis to a fact.
And that is a shame.
That circumventing really riled me up, because had they put it on there we'd have quickly pointed out the flaws that either still persist or came about because of that patch. I'm actually slowly putting a review together for STO and things like this just make it easier to add evidence to that.
Your other thread about communication was well written, just a shame the devs don't get it.
Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head. - Euripides
I no longer do any Bug Hunting work for Cryptic. I may resume if a serious attempt to fix the game is made.
It's a major shame, I agree. That should not have happened--period. Either Cryptic doesn't care or they are so afraid of egg on their faces that it drives them to actions that create the very worst case scenario that they fear. And because things always blow up in their faces when they act like that, the fear just magnifies and they do the same insane things over and over again...
So as a heads-up...I should have the next section out in a few days. I do want to warn right now that there WILL be controversial material in this one. Neither players not Cryptic do I expect to be completely happy with what I am going to say, though I want to make it clear I DO consider it Cryptic's responsibility to fix what has gone wrong.
So brace yourselves--and behave civilly please, because I don't want to get what has been a very constructive thread locked because of a few bad apples.
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And that's what I am afraid we are seeing repeat--and THIS time, after I had already written all of this up, we got a deliberate circumvention of Tribble.
The Warped Priorities Principle in action: For fear of what people might say if they allowed testing, it looks like, they skipped the process entirely.
I truly hope it is not the case of taking the exact opposite lesson out of it--to give up on testing altogether and just openly admit that they do not test and do not accept feedback.
Knowing Cryptic, it may well have honestly been that everyone or necessary people for patch deployment were about to go on a week long vacation for Thanksgiving and the concern may have been that if they didn't plug up progress while the staff was gone, they'd come back to work on December 1st to a bunch of max level players.
They rush patches out before weekends (when fewer people work) and holidays, when almost everyone may be out of the office for 10 days.
They do this sort of thing in part because of their corporate culture, some of which I really agree with. Basically, they often had points in the past where I think they had below average industry salary or pay furloughs. And so they developed what were designed to be a lot of intangible compensation benefits rather than direct financial incentive.
Yoga, guitar lessons, free cupcakes once a week, a negotiated discount on comic book and gaming supplies, extended unpaid time off, more weekends and holidays off than competitors, lots of unpaid sick leave, an open door policy towards rehire. All of these are things that cost Cryptic very little and are built on the (I believe true) principle that monetary incentive has diminishing returns. But also on the fact that Cryptic couldn't always afford the best industry pay and even their executives were drive beat-up cars five years ago.
So things shut down for much of Thanksgiving week either through coordinated holiday or people taking leave en masse.
That's okay. Except... One thing you see a lot of Cryptic ramming ill-thought things through the game late in the week or just before a 10-ish day break when it can't be addressed or fixed. And due to things like this and other reasons, patch deployment days are often determined before what goes in the patch is determined.
So there will be a patch on December 4th. It's happening. There will be no patch this week shy of catastrophic mechanical failure or a major concerted effort. They have windows when they can ot cannot deploy a patch. If they can't, they sit on fixes. If they can, they may push things into a build because they view it that they may be unable to push anything else live for 2, 4, maybe 6 weeks shy of emergency. This is probably (I'm guessing) because elements of their system architecture team are probably not on STO, may not be Cryptic employees, and may even be outsourced labor at some firm that handles patch deployments on a contract basis. (And in any case ARC will probably give them more control over patch deployment than the infrastructure behind the Cryptic launcher while reducing costs, which is probably why that change is a mandatory goal.)
I think you may be misunderstanding...I was mainly referring to last week's apparent XP nerf which seems to have been intentionally ramrodded through without allowing previewing or testing. I was gravely disappointed in that and consider it a major step backwards that risks invalidating Cryptic's increased communication up to this point.
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gulberat, I just wanted to thank you for this thread. This game has always been something special and unique (along with being a fantastic escape into the Star Trek universe) and my biggest fear is that the recent unrest and dissatisfaction will lead to it shutting down. Threads like yours that present reasoned debates and suggestions are what will be what save this thing we all love. Thank you again...
Excellent review, gulberat, I agree wholeheartedly, although I've gotta admit that I still can't stand Neelix and Harry Kim is like my perfect little adventure buddy.
gulberat, I just wanted to thank you for this thread. This game has always been something special and unique (along with being a fantastic escape into the Star Trek universe) and my biggest fear is that the recent unrest and dissatisfaction will lead to it shutting down. Threads like yours that present reasoned debates and suggestions are what will be what save this thing we all love. Thank you again...
Cap'n Mal
Thanks for reading. "Save this thing we love" may be right. While it will take watching for a few more days to see if the trend holds, Steam Charts just began reflecting tonight what *might* be he beginnings of a precipitous tailspin in player numbers. This means one of two things: if it causes sufficient alarm with Cryptic they might finally be moved to take *substantive* steps to respond to player complaints and meaningfully fix the broken economics, or this could be the beginning of the end if they are unable to recoup what I think we have logical reason to believe was a significant and possibly even unprecedented level of financial investment into Delta Rising.
As such I am going to try to accelerate my posting schedule because it may be this (and others' views) are more urgently needed.
Excellent review, gulberat, I agree wholeheartedly, although I've gotta admit that I still can't stand Neelix and Harry Kim is like my perfect little adventure buddy.
Personal preference there, I guess.
Thanks for continuing to read.
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WARNING: What follows may quite possibly be the most controversial thing that I will be writing in this review series.
CIVILITY IS CRUCIAL TO KEEP THIS THREAD OPEN.
DO NOT flame, name-call, or in ANY way attack because you may not agree with what I am saying. I realize there are multiple views on this subject and there are A LOT of hurt feelings that all of us, myself included, have about what has taken place in this area.
I want to continue to see the same high level of discourse that we have had so far, that has allowed this series to go on with the success that it has had up to this point, and the only way we stand a chance of at least one comprehensive full review of Delta Rising getting completed and maybe even getting a dev read or two if we are lucky, is by making sure that there is NO reason for this thread to be closed prematurely or otherwise cluttered up with junk so as to make the posts and discussion here look irrelevant.
Please help me in this cause by being civil even when you might not agree!
Progression--The Mechanics Side and SpecGate/SPGate
Those of you who have been following this review series to this point are aware that I have already discussed the effect of the drastically slowed progression rate on the experience of the story, and that overall I concluded that it severely weakened all of the work that the dev team put into Delta Rising. You'll also remember my conclusion that if the current progression rate were to be maintained, that we had material enough only to justifiably raise the level cap to 55 at most.
Today I am going to be looking at the other side of the progression problem--from the behind-the-scenes perspective, or at least as much as I can determine and...yes...sometimes conjecture, as to what is going on.
Some of the things I'm going to speak on, I am fully aware that I have no way to prove, and I know that things could be different. Still, this is as close as I can come to understanding the situation and how it came about, and my hope is to present a balanced viewpoint that might allow for some kind of understanding as to how we got here, and what might be done to fix it.
So...for something this extensive, I think the easiest way to go about it is going to be chronologically, and follow this up to the date of posting (24/25 November 2014).
Before Delta Rising
I'll admit it.
I was one of those who, before Delta Rising, was in favor of a slowdown on leveling.
And had it been properly implemented, as in not so extreme, and with sufficient new mission content to progress on the whole time I was moving into the new level cap, I would have been happy about it.
Here's the situation I found myself in, each time I started an alt. I realize that not everyone DOFFs as heavily as I do, but what would happen is that I would start on a toon and once the DOFF system opened I would start that and end up clearing levels so quickly that by the time I'd hit 50, my in-game finances hadn't approached anywhere near the level I needed to get geared up in a reasonable time frame for the level I had now found myself in. Sure...I could buy my way to the top immediately, but as someone who before all of this preferred to put in more reasonable amounts of money, I generally had to accept the situation as it was.
And it really wasn't the best...had I had to level through both story and DOFFing, without the DOFFing resulting in massive, rapid power-leveling, it might have helped the starting endgame gear situation on an alt.
The other thing that I used to wonder about pre-DR, and that wasn't necessarily such a misstep in concept, is the idea that even after you've hit level cap, all of the work you're doing is still going somewhere. For that, I do like the idea of the specialization trees...and if things can be turned around successfully, I would be able to get behind it even more.
So, Cryptic has me up to the point where we both agree/d that a slowdown on leveling of some sort was necessary and good, and that it is a nice reward to have work after level cap go somewhere productive, somewhere more than just repetitions with no results.
Where we don't agree is in the execution--and by that I mean both the mechanics and extreme lengths to which it was taken, and the customer relations aspects of what has happened and is still unfolding with the skill point / spec point progression.
Which takes us to the release of Delta Rising.
The Launch and Japorigate
We've discussed how the Delta Rising expansion released with either a) too high of a level cap for the available material or b) not enough material for the desired level cap. Adding to this was the fact that in-game dialogue specifically called out repeating patrols as the most expedient means to level in what Cryptic had to be fully aware was a dearth of content, or they would not have made that kind of suggestion in the first place. Second to this is something that I will be discussing in greater depth in a later section--which is the fact that in my honest opinion, what we were promised in the PvE queues was not what was actually delivered, and in many ways very directly contradicted what we were led to believe. That effectively scrubbed another alternative for leveling.
Now, I want to make clear that I come from the perspective of having not been doing the Tau Dewa patrols (unless you realllllllly want to count doing my Nimbus storyline missions on my main for the first time, just because they happen to be in the same sector, and that's stretching it). And I was also pretty low in the spec point pecking order when all hell broke loose, so my one toon was unaffected by anything that happened. I'd decided already how I was going to level, and it didn't involve repeating patrols. (It was more like, "Get reacquainted with the Foundry" time.) So I didn't have as much skin in that game as some people. But that doesn't mean that these observations are necessarily irrelevant.
This meant people were on the lookout for ways to level--and it is, in my opinion, human nature that especially when from a content standpoint the situation is honestly painful, people are going to seek the quickest, most painless way to get it overwith. And from testing on Tribble, and observing some very high SP returns, people knew that was going to be the Tau Dewa sector patrols, especially Japori. I was not allowed to be in Tribble testing because we Silver members were told our input was not wanted--but I trust that what I've read is true and that Cryptic was made well aware of the leveling that was possible in Tau Dewa before Delta Rising ever launched. So up to that point, I agree with the players who feel that Cryptic had enough forewarning that something was going to happen in Tau Dewa, before it did.
Where I don't agree with many of angry players is the idea that no exploit ever occurred.
The incredibly unfortunate thing is that, had D'Angelo's and the devs' communications been better on this point--especially had they not hid behind Q, vague statements, and the reactionary closing of a sector without sufficient explanation--I think this likely truth would have come out and that the situation would not have gotten so far out of hand.
Let me make sure this point does not get lost.
I am not saying that the exploit was using Tau Dewa.
And truth be told...I still to this day do not believe that was what D'Angelo was saying either, even though it seems that the patrols there were bugged.
Part of the reason I feel strongly about this...yeah. It's hearsay and I realize that doesn't constitute hard evidence. But it would also be against game TOS for me to dig further into it to try to confirm that what I heard in Tau Dewa Zone Chat had occurred to cause the shutdown, actually occurred as described. And if I did get confirmation, I would not be able to discuss it.
What I WILL say is this, and I think this is safe enough. What I heard in Tau Dewa aligned with the description D'Angelo would give later, after the forum exploded with the first part of the rage that has now turned into a sustained storm, of the exploit situation. The sort of thing I heard about was not the majority of Tau Dewa players. And if what I heard about was indeed occurring, then it could easily account for leveling 17 times what was expected. And the thing described to me...it is not right and not attainable by any normal rapid-leveling practices. Even with the bugged sector. And it is an exploit and IMO the few players that did it deserved to get consequences for it, if things did actually happen as I was told.
(As I have said before on all other occasions when I have alluded to this: I will not answer by forum OR by private forum or in-game messaging as to what I believe occurred. So please do not ask OR derail this thread by putting out theories as to what it was. I am sorry to have to ask that no discussion occur around a particular detail in my review, but I am afraid I must. Still, I had to say what little I did in order to provide the necessary context.)
I am not sure how I would have felt about D'Angelo's second post if I had not heard what I did before he made that post, that lined up with what he would later go on to say. But because it did...I have to be brutally honest here. As far as his words in those posts go, I do not believe that Stephen D'Angelo ever meant to accuse every person who leveled fast, or every person that did a Tau Dewa patrol, of cheating. I still don't, even with everything else that's gone on since. And I do think that misperception has contributed to the feedback loop that is in my opinion continuing to worsen the situation between Cryptic and the players. Some people I think have wondered how it is that I am not as angry and that I am not flaming...and that difference is one of the reasons why, I think.
But here's what did go terribly wrong, and why D'Angelo and the dev team as a whole wound up with a massive credibility gap on this subject that, had I not accidentally come across outside "nonadmissible evidence" that appears to corroborate them on that count, I might have been on the other side of myself.
What went wrong was the fact that Cryptic responded to whatever was taking place--the Exploit That Shall Not Be Named--by shutting down the entire sector, not making it clear from the start that it was NOT the vast majority of players at fault, and that it was only a tiny subset who were doing something that really needed to be dealt with.
And then on top of that--Cryptic opted instead of trying to root out what was later described as an estimated 200-300 cases of inappropriate behavior out of the entire player population, to use what we have sufficient grounds to assume was a quick, wide-dragnet heuristics-based approach to enact a mass rollback. A method that hit a VERY large, probably statistically unacceptable number of false positives. In my personal opinion, either Cryptic should not have used a heuristics-based approach at all, if unable to fine tune it to a sufficient degree, and investigated other means of detecting the anomalous behavior and zeroing in on the intended target, OR if there was still a way to get the heuristics to do the right thing, to make the test far, far less sensitive to only catch the most egregious sorts of behavior. The sorts of things that would be literally impossible for any player to accomplish under normal conditions--even under the normal sector conditions, taking into account the fact that Cryptic released DR with the sector rewarding a higher-than-normal amount of XP.
But when they hit that many false positives...well...sadly, it was no wonder that D'Angelo got interpreted the way he did on his second post as well as his first. And the reason for that is, his company's actions, even if as I suspect by accident or by bad judgment, did not match his intended message and unless there is additional information in play for someone, as there was for me, then it is simply human nature that when the words and the actions do not line up, to only pay attention to the actions and to completely discount the words.
Again. Maybe I would have been in that same position had I not heard additional information. So I understand why others have different viewpoints. But I feel that it is only right of me to attempt to explain the viewpoint that I do have.
Balance Passes Gone Wild
I think that had that been all that occurred...we could have survived that incident, bad as it was. I really do.
But since this initial disaster, which understandably set the tone for everything XP-related going forward regardless of what may have actually taken place behind the scenes where we the players can't see and know for sure, there have been two further attempts at balance passes on XP. I will not be discussing them in that much detail, because by now I'll admit, it's all run together in my head, and it's actually rather emotionally exhausting, but what I will say is that Cryptic has lost a lot of credibility on this issue and that they need to understand very quickly that this is a MAJOR, MAJOR pain point for players.
Doing anything to mess with the XP needs to be handled with the UTMOST CARE in both quality assurance and customer relations, to ensure that players are treated with respect in both words and in actions. This does not appear to be happening at this point. We are getting a bit more communication than we did before, and that's a start, but the message and the actions that we are getting, which seem to be delivering little or worse than before, and showing no understanding on Cryptic's part that the pace that they want us to level at does not work with the lack of available material and that it is actively discouraging players.
The only direction XP/SP should EVER go, from this point, is up. And releases that promise an increase must be offered up for extensive player testing, and any feedback that the increase is NOT occurring as promised must be dealt with ASAP prior to release. If it does not, Cryptic's only chance to remedy the situation will be an immediate hotfix upon being alerted to the problem, in the player's favor.
Anything else may very well spell disaster, and I believe that hurts us all as a community. It hurts the players, it hurts the game, and it will hurt Cryptic and potentially its employees too. And I know some people have been out for blood but I am not kidding--I am wholly sincere--when I say I do not want that for anyone, Cryptic included, if there is a way for them to help us and help themselves, to get out of this mess and help STO to rise from the ashes.
There was a problem with leveling, before Delta Rising.
But this has gone too far, and this is one of the three aspects that I truly believe is capable of killing Star Trek: Online as a game altogether, and this is probably the deadliest one of all, even when the other two (which I will discuss later) are taken into account.
I do not want to see that happen.
NEXT POST: The Golden Ratio--Time/Investment Versus Reward. The next post will cover the two more of the potential "Four Horsemen of STO" (if things are not turned around): the PvE Queue rewards versus difficulty increases, and the upgrade system.
I will also reply to unanswered comments before proceeding to the next post.
AGAIN--PLEASE KEEP THIS CIVIL! I want to keep this thread open and keep it productive all the way to the end!
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Great post. I had similar observations re: Tau Dewa but the blanket actions did seem to imply they considered all fast levelers to be exploiters.
I've said the same thing, regarding tuning the existing content to levels 50-55 and letting new content be 55-60 and allowing 55-60 to be straight grind until that happens.
There's even precedent for that with crafting, where "content" dries up at 15 while the system allows you to get to 55.
I'll also contend that fast leveling seen in LOR was partly established to cover the relative lack of content KDF and Romulan side.
There was once a time when Klingons could only be unlocked by having a level 20 Fed character. Klingons often complained that this artificially dwindled their faction numbers, resulting in less support. It became a significant priority to create a leveling path so that Klingons were an option at level 1. This was accomplished by inflating Klingon skillpoint gains to make up for lack of content. Klingons initially didn't even really have enough content for 20-50 until Featured Episodes debuted.
The initial approach to this did fascinate me somewhat (and could be useful again): Cryptic created wrapper missions for Klingons. These were simple at the time and included things like "Destroy 100 enemy ships"" such that Klingons could be SIMULTANEOUSLY working on two missions at once. The approach was perhaps sloppy but the idea has stuck with me because it reflects Star Trek story construction.
A typical Star Trek story has a number of features as well-established script elements. A funny thing is that many of these features tend to get tossed aside in comics, novels, and games but are well known among screenwriters, to a point where I hear writers on other TV properties describe techniques they're using as Star Trek techniques. (Dan Harmon has done quite a bit of this on his show Community.)
One of these approaches is often called "A plot plus B plot equals C plot." Which is like completing two missions at once. I've always thought this could be a powerful system for STO as I've seen open world MMOs make use of it.
In particular WoW. Cryptic plots going back to City of Heroes were linear. WoW plots tend to have a couple of large plotlines per zone, many smaller ones, and the plots all diverge and feed back together, allowing elements to happen simultaneously or out of order depending on your progress. And a WoW story arc typically has two climaxes: one in solo questing (which is often saving a local person or town or killing a villain) and the second in a dungeon. I've never seen anyone else point this out but WoW plots are often structurally interesting in that there's a well rehearsed pattern to them. People who have picked up on some elements of the pattern joke about it but I find it narratively interesting.
In a typical WoW story cycle, you arrive in a town as a wanderer, exploring hero, or mercenary (never really as a soldier, despite the game's name emphasizing war). The region is usually suffering a blight, plague, or some corruption. You trace the corruption through multiple concurrent plot threads ranging from silly pop culture references (often Star Trek, CSI, Rambo, etc. influenced and anachronistic even by the standards of a steampunk fantasy game) to deeply human interest arcs which have you dealing with people's personal problems (widows, orphans, sick people with no income, robbery victims, separated lovers). You're often doing 5-6 minor plots at a time, never sure which is the main one. But ultimately, a villain emerges. The villain is usually a failed hero figure who either represents an outside influence (they are the hero of an outside group) or a failed local hero who snapped under the pressures of the job. Typically at this point, you either learn some of their motivations (if they're a hero of another empire -- and "hero" may mean "champion of a bloodthirsty, life-hating demonic force") or suffer a betrayal. Either way, this ties to a corruption/blight/plague/shortage in the land. You kill the summoner/ally/chief victim of the corruption in solo play. Then you have a multiplayer dungeon which represents the full manifestation of the corruption in the region. (In some cases, the solo villain limped away and recovered to become the dungeon boss.)
It's a cycle that works and is arguably fairly Trek.
If it had been applied to STO, I could see the Kobali Temple, Vaadwaur Prime, etc. as dungeons. Or a queued event at the heart of each patrol. One possibility there even would be to make final success failable (encouraging replay of the event) and pegging story progression/completion to completion of queued content optionals.
I will add: City of Heroes plots tended to wind around a central idea for a zone, in particular Croatoa. But they were typically A to B to C like STO as opposed to throwing you into two dueling plotlines at once that would resolve one another or resolve together through a common thread.
And STO plots, I think, could benefit from some of that in the form of wrappers that represent second "collection" plots that advance a side story.
For example:
Scan 50 anomalies in the X patrol. (Scanning anomalies suddenly becomes an XP generator on patrol.)
Talk to a contact, who relates this to the plot.
Kill 50 enemies on X patrol.
Talk to a contact, who relates this to the plot.
etc. Maybe surprise spawns that emerge based on quest progression.
May be even better if you tie this to a percentage completion and surprise the player by how much or what qualifies for completion in the patrol.
Until you reveal something new that underlies the patrol and leads into a singular mission that makes sense of what's happening on the patrol.
Then get a new queued event based on the patrol's hidden story.
I have a much more advanced idea for something like this. But this is a proven formula.
Hmm...wrapper missions of some sort could represent a temporary fix as could lowering the level on the existing missions so that "What's Left Behind" ends at 55 would be another solution. That said, I think that since STO fans have an expectation that story should be able to take them all the way (yes, even though there have been other types of issues with that in the past), it was a severe miscalculation on Cryptic's part to raise the level cap this far without the material to support it. I suspect many people would either have been happier with a raise to 55, OR with a significantly delayed Delta Rising release (we're talking several months) to allow for more content and better-developed systems and testing.
JHeinig recently alluded in a different thread to the R&D system being released in an unfinished state. It is very clear the content also came out unfinished. There is a huge difference between releasing ESD without Club 47 and releasing major systems short of content, full of bugs, and without all components operational or economic factors tested for some basic sanity.
As you know, I believe "Mindscape" could have bought Cryptic another three months minimum--and it actually would have served the episode better plot-wise and greatly reduced the appearance of a rushed ending to the Undine and Tuvok/Cooperdine plotlines and let the episode be more fully appreciated. Not going that route, and taking that delay, could turn out to be Cryptic's second biggest mistake, second to not responding to customer feedback appropriately.
Sometimes I think as I alluded to a month or two ago, on the customer service side, Cryptic thinks they can solve a people crisis with systems instead of dealing with the people. I kind of get the feeling that was one of the factors that played into the spec points decision. It is as though they were blind to how their actions would be perceived if--as actually occurred, they generated and punished a large number of false positives. Couple that with the Warped Priorities Principle I have observed as well--where they seem to let fear of one bad outcome drive them right into something worse (fearing open communication so being vague or noncommunicative until player speculations and anger are perhaps irrevocably beyond control at this point) and you have a recipe for disaster.
That's why...albeit kind of jokingly, the SP and the next three items are kind of going to form the potential Four Horsemen of STO. I'm not calling doom quite yet because I do think there is still a window of opportunity to fix these things, but I think it may be shrinking fast now that progression appears according to some to have taken a serious hit again.
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(In a few cases, one post contains multiple section headers, and clicking the second section header will take you to the same post as the prior header. This is not an error. This table of contents also corrects for an instance of a post accidentally written out of order.)
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gulberat, thanks for a very interesting piece of analysis. Good to see someone taking Cryptic as an organisation of human beings not a 2D monster.
To go back to your original post, as a hardcore KDF player (3 L60 Klingons, plus one L55 Fed-Klingon) DR did nothing but extend the existing trend of dropping KDF PCs into Federation missions. "Surface Tension" and "Sphere of Influence" were both refreshingly even handed but now seem to be the exception. The frustration here is that the Klingon arc which accompanied Legacy of Romulus was excellent - I suspect you found it disgusting for the same reasons that (I believe) it worked in that it pulled no punches over how brutal the Klingons are as a culture. However in the context of STO I agree with your other proposition - it is better to be loathed than forgettable. The point is that the Klingon missions do provide a radical alternative to "standard" gameplay and it's a shame that was not explored more in DR, allowing the player to take options which Starfleet never would; my hopes were briefly raised by the Intel officer announcement which noted that KDF officers would tend to shoot their way out rather than using subterfuge or diplomacy, alas this was never realised!
Anyway, back OT; I do wonder how much Cryptic's behaviour is dictated by externally (ie, PWE) imposed performance measures. Otherwise, so much of it seems wilfully self-defeating. Things like the focus on daily tasks, which have crept in over the years, but seem to serve no function except to encourage players to log in daily rather than focussing into fewer, longer sessions. I wonder if one of their performance measures is the number of players logging in each day, with the changes being a ham-fisted way of influencing the numbers? The same seems true with the focus on replaying DR patrols and missions for XP. Again, this feels like a blunt implement to be able to say, "look how many players are rerunning the new content! It must be a success!". A more balanced approach, IMO, would have allowed players to level (at least SP) by running older patrols.
Comments
I would be very interested to hear your thoughts on the (tribble server situation).
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It kept me from sleeping. And despite me not having read all of what you wrote, I see logic in it.
I may disagree somewhat with your assessment of certain characters or DQ races, but at least I mostly see why.
So, thanks for this review and keep it up.
Toi'Va, Ti'vath, Toivia, Ty'Vris, Tia Vex, Toi'Virth: Add Tier 6 KDF Carrier and Raider.
Tae'Va, T'Vaya, To'Var, Tevra, T'Vira, To'Vrak: Give us Asylums for Romulans.
Don't make ARC mandatory! Keep it optional only!
If you want to do gray-on-gray morality well, you need to have a compelling argument for each participant that overshadows their immediate negative. Kobali ground had the seeds of that, but not the finished product. What the Kobali are doing ranges from morally questionable to anathema depending upon your mores and mindset, so the negative is there, but the argument for supporting them consists almost entirely of, "The Vaadwuar are jerkbags, have been through this whole mission arc, and the text above their heads is red."On the flipside, the Vaadwaur have a clear casus belli, but respond with genocide, are total jerkbags, and once again red = dead. The lack of an option to side with the Vaadwaur buries any sort of depth that might've been, reverting to the old formulaic "support these guys and kill these because WESAYSO."
Had Kobali ground been a faction war zone, it would've been the shining gem of DR. As is, it's decent, but represents one more missed opportunity passed over in favor of monetization and nostalgia-driven voice actors.
PART 2: QUALITY ASSURANCE, MECHANICS, AND PUBLIC RELATIONS
I would like to preface this section by noting that my objective here is to do a root cause analysis of sorts as to what went wrong on the back end and why. While I believe that some critical mistakes occurred and in some cases have been ongoing patterns with Cryptic/PWE, the object here is not to automatically assume malice. If anyone is looking for me to flame and personally accuse, they will need to find another thread. As many much more serious and famous failures IRL demonstrate, the road to hell has a tendency to be paved with good intentions, and when you take into account faulty business and process assumptions coupled with various types of logical and psychological fallacies, it is quite possible to mean well but do catastrophically poorly. The result in such cases tends to be a cascading systems failure that almost takes on a life of its own.
I would like to hope that it will be possible to slam the brakes on this particular derailing train before it goes completely over the edge, though by this point there is very likely to be a lot of strain on the sustainability of PWE's business model. By unpacking some of the dynamics and looking at some of the alternatives, perhaps it will still be possible to change things. If not...at least it will not be without having made a real effort at some honest and constructive criticism and suggestions.
Testing and QA
Probably the first forewarning I and many others had that something bad was coming down the pipeline for STO was the locking down of Tribble to prevent Silver members from testing. There are multiple theories about why this occurred, which I will delve into shortly, but the *appearance* it gave was that Cryptic was not at all interested in user input or at least only cared about a small segment of the overall game population.
Of course, despite receiving game-breaking bug reports (many of which remain unresolved to this day, in addition to the many other pre-DR bugs, some of them major, that have remained in game for years), and other very negative feedback about progression/leveling, costs, and other game mechanics, we know how buggy and economically and mechanically imbalanced DR launched. Clearly whatever may be behind it, the Tribble feedback did not count for anything whatsoever in the development and quality assurance process, representing a major control gap.
Now, besides the theory of Cryptic simply not caring about feedback and deliberately choosing not to listen, could there be other thought processes at work that could also lead to the same disastrous results? I do think there are a few possibilities, both of which could be in operation simultaneously, and I think those deserve to be explored rather than simply assuming malice.
Two of these would mainly be an issue before a major release takes place. One possibility is that is that either Cryptic misperceives Tribble to be a content preview server more than it is a test environment, or that Cryptic believes that we, the customers are using...or...well...exploiting Tribble in that manner. If Cryptic--whether founded or not--has acquired the idea that the majority of people do not contribute to the bug-hunting process and do not submit information that is "good enough," then they may have come into the mindset that going onto Tribble is for many players a form of freeloading that gains them nothing and therefore why bother letting very many people in if all they are going to do is get spoilers, post spoilers, and give nothing in return? Now, I do NOT believe this is true that people really do exploit Tribble in that manner, or if they do, they represent only a tiny portion of players...not enough to cause any sort of actual "damage" to Cryptic. But if Cryptic is operating under such a grave misperception then it could explain their behavior but would need to be addressed immediately in order to actually take proper advantage of Tribble and make the critically-needed quality improvements.
One meaningful step Cryptic could take for added assurance as to increasing the percentage of Tribble visitors who actually test and fill out bug reports is by increasing the Tribble-testing rewards significantly but requiring that in order to get the reward, you send in a bug/feedback survey within a certain timeframe (survey can either be in-game or emailed, and no, it must NOT be a Peanut Labs scam) in order to receive the reward. Many people are already very diligent about bug reporting and feedback but this could increase the percentage of visitors who are reporting.
Another pre-release problem may have to do with the timeframe Cryptic is allowing for the QA process and implementing changes based on feedback. In other words, by the time material is hitting Tribble, it already has a hard release date and Cryptic is being forced by PWE to ramrod whatever it is through by X date, damn the consequences.
This is its own psychological fallacy--the idea that a delay is so intolerable that it is somehow *worse* to release a severely problematic build into production. While a delay isn't great, it can be forgiven for quality. Unless delays happen SO often that it brings the software development life cycle to a complete grinding halt, I think most reasonable customers would rather be told straightforwardly that there has been a delay in order to ensure everything is up to a high enough quality standard, than to be handed something severely bugged and otherwise out of balance, and get piecemeal and often very incomplete fixes after the fact. Basically under this assumption, Cryptic is not allotting themselves sufficient time to properly vet each build, or to properly read, respond to, and enact changes based on customer feedback, so they just don't try and think they can fix it on the fly.
Post-release, especially after a major expansion as hotfixes start coming in, it may be that the Holodeck and Tribble code versions get out of whack enough with each other that the devs struggle seriously to keep up with what version of a particular section of code is where and the result is another quality assurance breakdown. Greater version control by Cryptic would be necessary to remedy that problem, instead of having so many competing versions out there that it becomes confusing and the risk of errors increases because the left hand doesn't know what the right hand has done about another part of code that is related to what the first person was working on. The existence of three to four simultaneous branches of code was mentioned by Borticus recently and seems to me like it has at least the possibility of being a contributing factor to testing and QA failures. How can you be assured of proper testing if what you are testing does not necessarily reflect in its entirety what is actually going to go into production?
Another potential documentation issue is one I have actually seen bite a multinational corporation with a legacy system, and I am aware it is quite widespread in other places. It may be as with many programs and systems that grew out of nothing in a relaxed environment that insufficient commenting of code and other forms of documentation exists as to how things are done and especially how the variables are interrelated. The problem becomes even worse as the people who first wrote the code move on to other jobs and take their knowledge with them.
The result of this is that changing one thing then changes something else no one ever thought to check before pushing the code to production. Especially with all of the new variables added in, and the level cap increase having widespread impacts on what higher-level can do, it is no wonder that a lack of centralized and up-to-date documentation on how everything fits together could potentially lead to a lot of gamebreakers. The sooner in-code comments and documentation policies and procedures can be beefed up, so that new Cryptic team members or those who are not familiar with a particular section of code can gain their best understanding of what the current build looks like (and what effects changes will have where), and will therefore be less likely to make changes with major unforeseen impacts or bugs, the better.
But none of this would help if it really is true that Cryptic has already made up its mind to release the code as-is, or does not permit itself enough time to make corrections, at the time that a build hits Tribble. Are they worried that a preview of content reduces spending? This would be a serious fallacy...bugs and major design and economics flaws do far worse. They are the reason *I* decided to stop spending and exit the dilithium to Zen economy. I will no longer pay my own money into the game or subsidize anyone else who pays.
I really think that there are some serious wrong assumptions throughout the design process, similarly to what I describe above, that causes Cryptic to make disastrously wrong decisions--because they almost irrationally fear the *least* of all evils and in avoiding what they *think* is their highest risk, they end up creating a situation far, far worse, and because of the anger they repeatedly ignite, they develop a perpetual bunker mentality that only makes the next cycle even worse.
And on that note...I will next be taking on the skill point and Japorigate fiascos, perhaps the ultimate illustration of this principle of warped priorities.
[Sorry for such a long wait! I was traveling out of the country and had a pretty bad Internet connection in one of the hotels.]
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The only time we got a direct actioned response was when we posted a video and posted it everywhere detailing the flaws with the rep passive nerf, and that was only because it was so blatantly obvious from that how wrong they were.
Frankly it seems that unless they're made to look complete idiots they never do anything about it during the testing season.
As of last night I had intended to write something closer to even-handed. But I am going to give just a little time to see what happens on the outside chance that this gets enough of an outcry to force the devs to change course, before I unleash the scathing write up that is now coming to mind.
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The livestream tomorrow might make good entertainment, might even give a measure about how much they care not to talk about anything.
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I would say that the other argument in favor of the Kobali is that there are alternative arrangements that would allow them to continue forward with only small cultural modifications, as compared to the way they are getting corpses to reanimate right now.
Right off the bat the Ferengi came to mind as a potential voluntary supplier of remains, since they are already known to have monetized (sorry to use that word
Certified Conflict-Free Corpses! (I can see the Ferengi Alliance's marketing angle already.
Pretty much how I felt about it.
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And that's what I am afraid we are seeing repeat--and THIS time, after I had already written all of this up, we got a deliberate circumvention of Tribble.
The Warped Priorities Principle in action: For fear of what people might say if they allowed testing, it looks like, they skipped the process entirely.
I truly hope it is not the case of taking the exact opposite lesson out of it--to give up on testing altogether and just openly admit that they do not test and do not accept feedback.
If they really do feel that way...they should just be up front about it and let the consumer make an informed financial decision as to whether their risk appetite is high enough to withstand that. But to just run from the responsibility for one's actions and decisions, and the due diligence needed to make those actions the right ones...I do think now that the "don't care about feedback" theory has more weight to it now than it did when I wrote this.
Unless Cryptic can show that they ARE willing to make changes to BENEFIT players (and not take more from them), then it may be that we got the evidence needed today to conclude and take the theory from a hypothesis to a fact.
And that is a shame.
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So, maybe it is still too early to assume deliberate not-listening, though I think that allowing people a week to actually experience the new leveling to gain hard data before releasing it into Holodeck would have been a better move rather than letting the fear of criticism rule their decision-making process.
For those waiting for the next installment of this series I will definitely be holding off for a time, in order to gather sufficient observational data to determine what the current situation really is as far as the skill points go.
In the meantime, for easy navigation now that we are several posts in, I am providing a table of contents for those who would like to catch up on the series without wading through the discussion...though I really want to compliment the people who have read and replied, as there have generally been a lot of thoughtful and in-depth responses so far, and I do consider the discussion contributed here worth reading as well.
Delta Rising: Reanimate? (Y/N)--A Review Miniseries
TABLE OF CONTENTS
(In a few cases, one post contains multiple section headers, and clicking the second section header will take you to the same post as the prior header. This is not an error. This table of contents also corrects for an instance of a post accidentally written out of order.)
INTRODUCTION
THE STORY
Disclaimer
Background
The Space Mission Arc
The Space Patrols
The Kobali Ground Arc
Character Development
Story Progression and Verdict
QUALITY ASSURANCE, MECHANICS, AND CUSTOMER RELATIONS
Testing and QA
(And more to come!)
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I for one will not be logging into STO anytime soon since I feel that even logging to start the R&D dailies is a way of telling Cryptic I support or approve of their actions and the changes they have made.
However I will be keeping an eye on this thread so I can stay informed on the current state of the game.
Excellent work you have done here.
Again Thank You,
Glass
Would you recommend STO to a friend?
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Would you recommend STO to a friend?
That circumventing really riled me up, because had they put it on there we'd have quickly pointed out the flaws that either still persist or came about because of that patch. I'm actually slowly putting a review together for STO and things like this just make it easier to add evidence to that.
Your other thread about communication was well written, just a shame the devs don't get it.
So as a heads-up...I should have the next section out in a few days. I do want to warn right now that there WILL be controversial material in this one. Neither players not Cryptic do I expect to be completely happy with what I am going to say, though I want to make it clear I DO consider it Cryptic's responsibility to fix what has gone wrong.
So brace yourselves--and behave civilly please, because I don't want to get what has been a very constructive thread locked because of a few bad apples.
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Knowing Cryptic, it may well have honestly been that everyone or necessary people for patch deployment were about to go on a week long vacation for Thanksgiving and the concern may have been that if they didn't plug up progress while the staff was gone, they'd come back to work on December 1st to a bunch of max level players.
They rush patches out before weekends (when fewer people work) and holidays, when almost everyone may be out of the office for 10 days.
They do this sort of thing in part because of their corporate culture, some of which I really agree with. Basically, they often had points in the past where I think they had below average industry salary or pay furloughs. And so they developed what were designed to be a lot of intangible compensation benefits rather than direct financial incentive.
Yoga, guitar lessons, free cupcakes once a week, a negotiated discount on comic book and gaming supplies, extended unpaid time off, more weekends and holidays off than competitors, lots of unpaid sick leave, an open door policy towards rehire. All of these are things that cost Cryptic very little and are built on the (I believe true) principle that monetary incentive has diminishing returns. But also on the fact that Cryptic couldn't always afford the best industry pay and even their executives were drive beat-up cars five years ago.
So things shut down for much of Thanksgiving week either through coordinated holiday or people taking leave en masse.
That's okay. Except... One thing you see a lot of Cryptic ramming ill-thought things through the game late in the week or just before a 10-ish day break when it can't be addressed or fixed. And due to things like this and other reasons, patch deployment days are often determined before what goes in the patch is determined.
So there will be a patch on December 4th. It's happening. There will be no patch this week shy of catastrophic mechanical failure or a major concerted effort. They have windows when they can ot cannot deploy a patch. If they can't, they sit on fixes. If they can, they may push things into a build because they view it that they may be unable to push anything else live for 2, 4, maybe 6 weeks shy of emergency. This is probably (I'm guessing) because elements of their system architecture team are probably not on STO, may not be Cryptic employees, and may even be outsourced labor at some firm that handles patch deployments on a contract basis. (And in any case ARC will probably give them more control over patch deployment than the infrastructure behind the Cryptic launcher while reducing costs, which is probably why that change is a mandatory goal.)
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Cap'n Mal
Personal preference there, I guess.
Thanks for reading. "Save this thing we love" may be right. While it will take watching for a few more days to see if the trend holds, Steam Charts just began reflecting tonight what *might* be he beginnings of a precipitous tailspin in player numbers. This means one of two things: if it causes sufficient alarm with Cryptic they might finally be moved to take *substantive* steps to respond to player complaints and meaningfully fix the broken economics, or this could be the beginning of the end if they are unable to recoup what I think we have logical reason to believe was a significant and possibly even unprecedented level of financial investment into Delta Rising.
As such I am going to try to accelerate my posting schedule because it may be this (and others' views) are more urgently needed.
Thanks for continuing to read.
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CIVILITY IS CRUCIAL TO KEEP THIS THREAD OPEN.
DO NOT flame, name-call, or in ANY way attack because you may not agree with what I am saying. I realize there are multiple views on this subject and there are A LOT of hurt feelings that all of us, myself included, have about what has taken place in this area.
I want to continue to see the same high level of discourse that we have had so far, that has allowed this series to go on with the success that it has had up to this point, and the only way we stand a chance of at least one comprehensive full review of Delta Rising getting completed and maybe even getting a dev read or two if we are lucky, is by making sure that there is NO reason for this thread to be closed prematurely or otherwise cluttered up with junk so as to make the posts and discussion here look irrelevant.
Please help me in this cause by being civil even when you might not agree!
Progression--The Mechanics Side and SpecGate/SPGate
Those of you who have been following this review series to this point are aware that I have already discussed the effect of the drastically slowed progression rate on the experience of the story, and that overall I concluded that it severely weakened all of the work that the dev team put into Delta Rising. You'll also remember my conclusion that if the current progression rate were to be maintained, that we had material enough only to justifiably raise the level cap to 55 at most.
Today I am going to be looking at the other side of the progression problem--from the behind-the-scenes perspective, or at least as much as I can determine and...yes...sometimes conjecture, as to what is going on.
Some of the things I'm going to speak on, I am fully aware that I have no way to prove, and I know that things could be different. Still, this is as close as I can come to understanding the situation and how it came about, and my hope is to present a balanced viewpoint that might allow for some kind of understanding as to how we got here, and what might be done to fix it.
So...for something this extensive, I think the easiest way to go about it is going to be chronologically, and follow this up to the date of posting (24/25 November 2014).
Before Delta Rising
I'll admit it.
I was one of those who, before Delta Rising, was in favor of a slowdown on leveling.
And had it been properly implemented, as in not so extreme, and with sufficient new mission content to progress on the whole time I was moving into the new level cap, I would have been happy about it.
Here's the situation I found myself in, each time I started an alt. I realize that not everyone DOFFs as heavily as I do, but what would happen is that I would start on a toon and once the DOFF system opened I would start that and end up clearing levels so quickly that by the time I'd hit 50, my in-game finances hadn't approached anywhere near the level I needed to get geared up in a reasonable time frame for the level I had now found myself in. Sure...I could buy my way to the top immediately, but as someone who before all of this preferred to put in more reasonable amounts of money, I generally had to accept the situation as it was.
And it really wasn't the best...had I had to level through both story and DOFFing, without the DOFFing resulting in massive, rapid power-leveling, it might have helped the starting endgame gear situation on an alt.
The other thing that I used to wonder about pre-DR, and that wasn't necessarily such a misstep in concept, is the idea that even after you've hit level cap, all of the work you're doing is still going somewhere. For that, I do like the idea of the specialization trees...and if things can be turned around successfully, I would be able to get behind it even more.
So, Cryptic has me up to the point where we both agree/d that a slowdown on leveling of some sort was necessary and good, and that it is a nice reward to have work after level cap go somewhere productive, somewhere more than just repetitions with no results.
Where we don't agree is in the execution--and by that I mean both the mechanics and extreme lengths to which it was taken, and the customer relations aspects of what has happened and is still unfolding with the skill point / spec point progression.
Which takes us to the release of Delta Rising.
The Launch and Japorigate
We've discussed how the Delta Rising expansion released with either a) too high of a level cap for the available material or b) not enough material for the desired level cap. Adding to this was the fact that in-game dialogue specifically called out repeating patrols as the most expedient means to level in what Cryptic had to be fully aware was a dearth of content, or they would not have made that kind of suggestion in the first place. Second to this is something that I will be discussing in greater depth in a later section--which is the fact that in my honest opinion, what we were promised in the PvE queues was not what was actually delivered, and in many ways very directly contradicted what we were led to believe. That effectively scrubbed another alternative for leveling.
Now, I want to make clear that I come from the perspective of having not been doing the Tau Dewa patrols (unless you realllllllly want to count doing my Nimbus storyline missions on my main for the first time, just because they happen to be in the same sector, and that's stretching it). And I was also pretty low in the spec point pecking order when all hell broke loose, so my one toon was unaffected by anything that happened. I'd decided already how I was going to level, and it didn't involve repeating patrols. (It was more like, "Get reacquainted with the Foundry" time.) So I didn't have as much skin in that game as some people. But that doesn't mean that these observations are necessarily irrelevant.
This meant people were on the lookout for ways to level--and it is, in my opinion, human nature that especially when from a content standpoint the situation is honestly painful, people are going to seek the quickest, most painless way to get it overwith. And from testing on Tribble, and observing some very high SP returns, people knew that was going to be the Tau Dewa sector patrols, especially Japori. I was not allowed to be in Tribble testing because we Silver members were told our input was not wanted--but I trust that what I've read is true and that Cryptic was made well aware of the leveling that was possible in Tau Dewa before Delta Rising ever launched. So up to that point, I agree with the players who feel that Cryptic had enough forewarning that something was going to happen in Tau Dewa, before it did.
Where I don't agree with many of angry players is the idea that no exploit ever occurred.
The incredibly unfortunate thing is that, had D'Angelo's and the devs' communications been better on this point--especially had they not hid behind Q, vague statements, and the reactionary closing of a sector without sufficient explanation--I think this likely truth would have come out and that the situation would not have gotten so far out of hand.
Let me make sure this point does not get lost.
I am not saying that the exploit was using Tau Dewa.
And truth be told...I still to this day do not believe that was what D'Angelo was saying either, even though it seems that the patrols there were bugged.
Part of the reason I feel strongly about this...yeah. It's hearsay and I realize that doesn't constitute hard evidence. But it would also be against game TOS for me to dig further into it to try to confirm that what I heard in Tau Dewa Zone Chat had occurred to cause the shutdown, actually occurred as described. And if I did get confirmation, I would not be able to discuss it.
What I WILL say is this, and I think this is safe enough. What I heard in Tau Dewa aligned with the description D'Angelo would give later, after the forum exploded with the first part of the rage that has now turned into a sustained storm, of the exploit situation. The sort of thing I heard about was not the majority of Tau Dewa players. And if what I heard about was indeed occurring, then it could easily account for leveling 17 times what was expected. And the thing described to me...it is not right and not attainable by any normal rapid-leveling practices. Even with the bugged sector. And it is an exploit and IMO the few players that did it deserved to get consequences for it, if things did actually happen as I was told.
(As I have said before on all other occasions when I have alluded to this: I will not answer by forum OR by private forum or in-game messaging as to what I believe occurred. So please do not ask OR derail this thread by putting out theories as to what it was. I am sorry to have to ask that no discussion occur around a particular detail in my review, but I am afraid I must. Still, I had to say what little I did in order to provide the necessary context.)
I am not sure how I would have felt about D'Angelo's second post if I had not heard what I did before he made that post, that lined up with what he would later go on to say. But because it did...I have to be brutally honest here. As far as his words in those posts go, I do not believe that Stephen D'Angelo ever meant to accuse every person who leveled fast, or every person that did a Tau Dewa patrol, of cheating. I still don't, even with everything else that's gone on since. And I do think that misperception has contributed to the feedback loop that is in my opinion continuing to worsen the situation between Cryptic and the players. Some people I think have wondered how it is that I am not as angry and that I am not flaming...and that difference is one of the reasons why, I think.
But here's what did go terribly wrong, and why D'Angelo and the dev team as a whole wound up with a massive credibility gap on this subject that, had I not accidentally come across outside "nonadmissible evidence" that appears to corroborate them on that count, I might have been on the other side of myself.
What went wrong was the fact that Cryptic responded to whatever was taking place--the Exploit That Shall Not Be Named--by shutting down the entire sector, not making it clear from the start that it was NOT the vast majority of players at fault, and that it was only a tiny subset who were doing something that really needed to be dealt with.
And then on top of that--Cryptic opted instead of trying to root out what was later described as an estimated 200-300 cases of inappropriate behavior out of the entire player population, to use what we have sufficient grounds to assume was a quick, wide-dragnet heuristics-based approach to enact a mass rollback. A method that hit a VERY large, probably statistically unacceptable number of false positives. In my personal opinion, either Cryptic should not have used a heuristics-based approach at all, if unable to fine tune it to a sufficient degree, and investigated other means of detecting the anomalous behavior and zeroing in on the intended target, OR if there was still a way to get the heuristics to do the right thing, to make the test far, far less sensitive to only catch the most egregious sorts of behavior. The sorts of things that would be literally impossible for any player to accomplish under normal conditions--even under the normal sector conditions, taking into account the fact that Cryptic released DR with the sector rewarding a higher-than-normal amount of XP.
But when they hit that many false positives...well...sadly, it was no wonder that D'Angelo got interpreted the way he did on his second post as well as his first. And the reason for that is, his company's actions, even if as I suspect by accident or by bad judgment, did not match his intended message and unless there is additional information in play for someone, as there was for me, then it is simply human nature that when the words and the actions do not line up, to only pay attention to the actions and to completely discount the words.
Again. Maybe I would have been in that same position had I not heard additional information. So I understand why others have different viewpoints. But I feel that it is only right of me to attempt to explain the viewpoint that I do have.
Balance Passes Gone Wild
I think that had that been all that occurred...we could have survived that incident, bad as it was. I really do.
But since this initial disaster, which understandably set the tone for everything XP-related going forward regardless of what may have actually taken place behind the scenes where we the players can't see and know for sure, there have been two further attempts at balance passes on XP. I will not be discussing them in that much detail, because by now I'll admit, it's all run together in my head, and it's actually rather emotionally exhausting, but what I will say is that Cryptic has lost a lot of credibility on this issue and that they need to understand very quickly that this is a MAJOR, MAJOR pain point for players.
Doing anything to mess with the XP needs to be handled with the UTMOST CARE in both quality assurance and customer relations, to ensure that players are treated with respect in both words and in actions. This does not appear to be happening at this point. We are getting a bit more communication than we did before, and that's a start, but the message and the actions that we are getting, which seem to be delivering little or worse than before, and showing no understanding on Cryptic's part that the pace that they want us to level at does not work with the lack of available material and that it is actively discouraging players.
The only direction XP/SP should EVER go, from this point, is up. And releases that promise an increase must be offered up for extensive player testing, and any feedback that the increase is NOT occurring as promised must be dealt with ASAP prior to release. If it does not, Cryptic's only chance to remedy the situation will be an immediate hotfix upon being alerted to the problem, in the player's favor.
Anything else may very well spell disaster, and I believe that hurts us all as a community. It hurts the players, it hurts the game, and it will hurt Cryptic and potentially its employees too. And I know some people have been out for blood but I am not kidding--I am wholly sincere--when I say I do not want that for anyone, Cryptic included, if there is a way for them to help us and help themselves, to get out of this mess and help STO to rise from the ashes.
There was a problem with leveling, before Delta Rising.
But this has gone too far, and this is one of the three aspects that I truly believe is capable of killing Star Trek: Online as a game altogether, and this is probably the deadliest one of all, even when the other two (which I will discuss later) are taken into account.
I do not want to see that happen.
NEXT POST: The Golden Ratio--Time/Investment Versus Reward. The next post will cover the two more of the potential "Four Horsemen of STO" (if things are not turned around): the PvE Queue rewards versus difficulty increases, and the upgrade system.
I will also reply to unanswered comments before proceeding to the next post.
AGAIN--PLEASE KEEP THIS CIVIL! I want to keep this thread open and keep it productive all the way to the end!
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I've said the same thing, regarding tuning the existing content to levels 50-55 and letting new content be 55-60 and allowing 55-60 to be straight grind until that happens.
There's even precedent for that with crafting, where "content" dries up at 15 while the system allows you to get to 55.
I'll also contend that fast leveling seen in LOR was partly established to cover the relative lack of content KDF and Romulan side.
There was once a time when Klingons could only be unlocked by having a level 20 Fed character. Klingons often complained that this artificially dwindled their faction numbers, resulting in less support. It became a significant priority to create a leveling path so that Klingons were an option at level 1. This was accomplished by inflating Klingon skillpoint gains to make up for lack of content. Klingons initially didn't even really have enough content for 20-50 until Featured Episodes debuted.
The initial approach to this did fascinate me somewhat (and could be useful again): Cryptic created wrapper missions for Klingons. These were simple at the time and included things like "Destroy 100 enemy ships"" such that Klingons could be SIMULTANEOUSLY working on two missions at once. The approach was perhaps sloppy but the idea has stuck with me because it reflects Star Trek story construction.
A typical Star Trek story has a number of features as well-established script elements. A funny thing is that many of these features tend to get tossed aside in comics, novels, and games but are well known among screenwriters, to a point where I hear writers on other TV properties describe techniques they're using as Star Trek techniques. (Dan Harmon has done quite a bit of this on his show Community.)
One of these approaches is often called "A plot plus B plot equals C plot." Which is like completing two missions at once. I've always thought this could be a powerful system for STO as I've seen open world MMOs make use of it.
In particular WoW. Cryptic plots going back to City of Heroes were linear. WoW plots tend to have a couple of large plotlines per zone, many smaller ones, and the plots all diverge and feed back together, allowing elements to happen simultaneously or out of order depending on your progress. And a WoW story arc typically has two climaxes: one in solo questing (which is often saving a local person or town or killing a villain) and the second in a dungeon. I've never seen anyone else point this out but WoW plots are often structurally interesting in that there's a well rehearsed pattern to them. People who have picked up on some elements of the pattern joke about it but I find it narratively interesting.
In a typical WoW story cycle, you arrive in a town as a wanderer, exploring hero, or mercenary (never really as a soldier, despite the game's name emphasizing war). The region is usually suffering a blight, plague, or some corruption. You trace the corruption through multiple concurrent plot threads ranging from silly pop culture references (often Star Trek, CSI, Rambo, etc. influenced and anachronistic even by the standards of a steampunk fantasy game) to deeply human interest arcs which have you dealing with people's personal problems (widows, orphans, sick people with no income, robbery victims, separated lovers). You're often doing 5-6 minor plots at a time, never sure which is the main one. But ultimately, a villain emerges. The villain is usually a failed hero figure who either represents an outside influence (they are the hero of an outside group) or a failed local hero who snapped under the pressures of the job. Typically at this point, you either learn some of their motivations (if they're a hero of another empire -- and "hero" may mean "champion of a bloodthirsty, life-hating demonic force") or suffer a betrayal. Either way, this ties to a corruption/blight/plague/shortage in the land. You kill the summoner/ally/chief victim of the corruption in solo play. Then you have a multiplayer dungeon which represents the full manifestation of the corruption in the region. (In some cases, the solo villain limped away and recovered to become the dungeon boss.)
It's a cycle that works and is arguably fairly Trek.
If it had been applied to STO, I could see the Kobali Temple, Vaadwaur Prime, etc. as dungeons. Or a queued event at the heart of each patrol. One possibility there even would be to make final success failable (encouraging replay of the event) and pegging story progression/completion to completion of queued content optionals.
And STO plots, I think, could benefit from some of that in the form of wrappers that represent second "collection" plots that advance a side story.
For example:
Scan 50 anomalies in the X patrol. (Scanning anomalies suddenly becomes an XP generator on patrol.)
Talk to a contact, who relates this to the plot.
Kill 50 enemies on X patrol.
Talk to a contact, who relates this to the plot.
etc. Maybe surprise spawns that emerge based on quest progression.
May be even better if you tie this to a percentage completion and surprise the player by how much or what qualifies for completion in the patrol.
Until you reveal something new that underlies the patrol and leads into a singular mission that makes sense of what's happening on the patrol.
Then get a new queued event based on the patrol's hidden story.
I have a much more advanced idea for something like this. But this is a proven formula.
JHeinig recently alluded in a different thread to the R&D system being released in an unfinished state. It is very clear the content also came out unfinished. There is a huge difference between releasing ESD without Club 47 and releasing major systems short of content, full of bugs, and without all components operational or economic factors tested for some basic sanity.
As you know, I believe "Mindscape" could have bought Cryptic another three months minimum--and it actually would have served the episode better plot-wise and greatly reduced the appearance of a rushed ending to the Undine and Tuvok/Cooperdine plotlines and let the episode be more fully appreciated. Not going that route, and taking that delay, could turn out to be Cryptic's second biggest mistake, second to not responding to customer feedback appropriately.
Sometimes I think as I alluded to a month or two ago, on the customer service side, Cryptic thinks they can solve a people crisis with systems instead of dealing with the people. I kind of get the feeling that was one of the factors that played into the spec points decision. It is as though they were blind to how their actions would be perceived if--as actually occurred, they generated and punished a large number of false positives. Couple that with the Warped Priorities Principle I have observed as well--where they seem to let fear of one bad outcome drive them right into something worse (fearing open communication so being vague or noncommunicative until player speculations and anger are perhaps irrevocably beyond control at this point) and you have a recipe for disaster.
That's why...albeit kind of jokingly, the SP and the next three items are kind of going to form the potential Four Horsemen of STO. I'm not calling doom quite yet because I do think there is still a window of opportunity to fix these things, but I think it may be shrinking fast now that progression appears according to some to have taken a serious hit again.
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Delta Rising: Reanimate? (Y/N)--A Review Miniseries
TABLE OF CONTENTS
(In a few cases, one post contains multiple section headers, and clicking the second section header will take you to the same post as the prior header. This is not an error. This table of contents also corrects for an instance of a post accidentally written out of order.)
INTRODUCTION
THE STORY
Disclaimer
Background
The Space Mission Arc
The Space Patrols
The Kobali Ground Arc
Character Development
Story Progression and Verdict
QUALITY ASSURANCE, MECHANICS, AND CUSTOMER RELATIONS
Testing and QA
Progression--The Mechanics Side, SpecGate/SPGate
(And more to come!)
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-)
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To go back to your original post, as a hardcore KDF player (3 L60 Klingons, plus one L55 Fed-Klingon) DR did nothing but extend the existing trend of dropping KDF PCs into Federation missions. "Surface Tension" and "Sphere of Influence" were both refreshingly even handed but now seem to be the exception. The frustration here is that the Klingon arc which accompanied Legacy of Romulus was excellent - I suspect you found it disgusting for the same reasons that (I believe) it worked in that it pulled no punches over how brutal the Klingons are as a culture. However in the context of STO I agree with your other proposition - it is better to be loathed than forgettable. The point is that the Klingon missions do provide a radical alternative to "standard" gameplay and it's a shame that was not explored more in DR, allowing the player to take options which Starfleet never would; my hopes were briefly raised by the Intel officer announcement which noted that KDF officers would tend to shoot their way out rather than using subterfuge or diplomacy, alas this was never realised!
Anyway, back OT; I do wonder how much Cryptic's behaviour is dictated by externally (ie, PWE) imposed performance measures. Otherwise, so much of it seems wilfully self-defeating. Things like the focus on daily tasks, which have crept in over the years, but seem to serve no function except to encourage players to log in daily rather than focussing into fewer, longer sessions. I wonder if one of their performance measures is the number of players logging in each day, with the changes being a ham-fisted way of influencing the numbers? The same seems true with the focus on replaying DR patrols and missions for XP. Again, this feels like a blunt implement to be able to say, "look how many players are rerunning the new content! It must be a success!". A more balanced approach, IMO, would have allowed players to level (at least SP) by running older patrols.