All I can say to people who actually DO think that Delta Rising is the best expansion ever and the players love it is.... Why did Tacofangs distance himself from this very comment?
We have no way of knowing anything about Cryptic's internal business model (note I say internal, given that we can obviously see how the company operates externally). All we know is that the game is still there, content is still being released, and there are plenty of Cryptic employees who are visible in the forum and elsewhere across the social media channels. Positive or negative business plan aside, the company is still alive to provide the STO service at this moment.
A good business model is not secret. It is something you broadcast to your customers.
I know this seems counter-intuitive because of things like trade secrets but trade secrets are the "how" of the model, not the "what". The "what" should absolutely be crystal clear, apparent to every member of the organization, broadcast transparently, and celebrated by the customer or it's a bad strategy.
All I can say to people who actually DO think that Delta Rising is the best expansion ever and the players love it is.... Why did Tacofangs distance himself from this very comment?
If those statements are gonna be like "Delta Rising is our greatest expansion ever. And the people love it!", then he need not bother, fas as I'm concerned.
Note that the "Most Successful Expansion Ever!" comment was something like a day after launch. And yes, at that moment, the day prior had been (at least one of) our biggest sales days ever. So yes, it was. Is it now, 6 weeks later? I don't know. But please stop trotting that line around as an example of "Cryptic Lying to us."
...duh.
When players are going to twist everything around with malice (it can be fun to twist it around in a jovial fashion as long as everybody is in on it); it's a wonder they reply in the least or say anything at all.
All I can say to people who actually DO think that Delta Rising is the best expansion ever and the players love it is.... Why did Tacofangs distance himself from this very comment?
Note that the "Most Successful Expansion Ever!" comment was something like a day after launch. And yes, at that moment, the day prior had been (at least one of) our biggest sales days ever. So yes, it was. Is it now, 6 weeks later? I don't know. But please stop trotting that line around as an example of "Cryptic Lying to us."
He makes it clear what the comment refers to, he says he doesn't know if it the comment is still true 6 weeks later.
That is what you refer to as "distancing" yourself from the comment?
If you took the comment "most succesful ever" as encompassing developments that haven't even happened yet.
(And I think it was certainly the most succesful launch ever Cryptic had. Do you remember the last time a major season update didn't lead to downtimes. Too bad they screwed it up with the next patch. But that doesn't make it the greatest expansion ever to me.)
Mustrum "When did virusdancer become a forum ninja" Ridcully
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
The game is nowhere near as broken, or failing, or dying as much as some forumgoers claim it to be (I do see you're not saying it's failing, but the analogy is harshly contrary). There are positives as well. The game is not perfect - I think very few people will cling to that sentiment. But I don't think the game is in such a poor state that the breaks are failing on the car.
The devs are making post-launch adjustments to several of the new game systems. It only makes sense that they could adjust things post-launch, after the live user data is available. Testing in the Tribble sandbox can only tell so much, even if they opened it to the wider playerbase - it's unlikely the casual player would try Tribble, so there'd still be a selection bias to the data.
If Cryptic had launched the expansion and left it at that, I'd be really concerned right now. But they haven't done that. Each weekly patch is adjusting systems, such as lowering starship mastery requirements and making the Winter Event an account unlock.
As an MMO, this is a live game that will continue to evolve every day it remains live. A car sales analogy is an apples-to-oranges situation. A car is a supposedly-finished product that is sold once and maintained to continue to function as-sold, until such a point as it becomes obsolete and requires full replacement. This game evolves and changes with each new season - major changes to the same single product - in order to continue to remain usable and add new functionality to the original product. Because changes go live immediately after implementation, there will often be a slow data gathering and rebalancing process that follows. That's the reality of a software product, where early adopters are often saddled with the initial bugs, but over time those bugs are ironed out.
All I can say to people who actually DO think that Delta Rising is the best expansion ever and the players love it is.... Why did Tacofangs distance himself from this very comment?
Probably because of signatures like yours. It's become an anti-Cryptic meme. Why would he ever want to cling to that quote again, after it's been used as a mockery tool?
The idea of having an expansion and then making players use your new content is not surprising or new to MMOs. Its well known people hate change, and will just grind on old stuff they already know if you let them.
I recently started playing Rift, and can see 2 expansions (level increases) they've made. When you get to their level 50, there is a huge variety of level 50 content available, the story also gets you to 50 well before the content runs dry. When the cap raised to 60, a new area was built and the xp increased about 3x, so playing old content made little sense. Similarly there is far more content than xp needed in that area. In the last increase to 65 another area was made, and the content got me right to 65 with no grinding, but the XP increase was about 3x again. The currencies tend to change in the new zones as well. They don't make you grind on one thing over and over, you can earn multiple items, and if you cap out on one move to another.
DR is a very different beast there, there is no content to get you to level 60, and you still earn dilithium best on old content.. from a design point its a disaster
DR is a very different beast there, there is no content to get you to level 60, and you still earn dilithium best on old content.. from a design point its a disaster
Fair points, but a lot of MMOs (and in general, games) release expansions to make your old stuff invalid and force you into buying the new stuff.
From early on, Cryptic made it clear that DR would invalidate little - if any - of your old stuff or the older content. So the objective was to make it a slow increase to level 60, and to create a set of systems that would slowly increase the player's overall levels (captain, ships, gear, and so on) so as not to make anything in the game obsolete on day 1.
Being level 60, or having a Tier 6 ship, was not supposed to be an instant-win scenario. As such, getting up to level 60 and getting all the new goodies was not supposed to be an instant-achievement either. With systems such as upgrades and captain specializations, DR is about long-term evolutions to the players' toons. The interviews in the past two weeks of Priority One have laid that out fairly clearly.
I think that's probably the reason why I haven't been annoyed with many of the new systems. I read that sentiment in the dev blogs early on, and went into DR knowing that it was set up for long-term play.
Fair points, but a lot of MMOs (and in general, games) release expansions to make your old stuff invalid and force you into buying the new stuff.
From early on, Cryptic made it clear that DR would invalidate little - if any - of your old stuff or the older content. So the objective was to make it a slow increase to level 60, and to create a set of systems that would slowly increase the player's overall levels (captain, ships, gear, and so on) so as not to make anything in the game obsolete on day 1.
Being level 60, or having a Tier 6 ship, was not supposed to be an instant-win scenario. As such, getting up to level 60 and getting all the new goodies was not supposed to be an instant-achievement either. With systems such as upgrades and captain specializations, DR is about long-term evolutions to the players' toons. The interviews in the past two weeks of Priority One have laid that out fairly clearly.
I think that's probably the reason why I haven't been annoyed with many of the new systems. I read that sentiment in the dev blogs early on, and went into DR knowing that it was set up for long-term play.
Most every MMO expansion I'm aware of followed a pattern. And we even had someone who talked about their experience as an MMO dev who confirmed this.
The pattern is that you typically set XP gains based around the content you have providing more than enough XP to hit the new level cap.
The amount of content XP provides is an arbitrary value but Cryptic absolutely could have:
- Scaled XP per mission/patrol such that it was two missions to a level on initial playthrough.
- Scaled replay XP and required XP per spec point such that it makes up for this.
- Also scaled it such that bar progress is more visible.
Really all they had to do was make it so that filling the bar provided a Specialization Commendation Token.
Run a once a week project using a SCT to receive a spec point.
OR
Run a daily project using a SCT to receive dilithium or choice of marks or maybe even something like a (bind-on-pickup) Master Key.
There you go. Continuous progress. A reasonable spec point gain per week could be doable for a casual player and overperformers would find their excess effort converted into some other reward, which would have still gated rate of spec gain.
Fair points, but a lot of MMOs (and in general, games) release expansions to make your old stuff invalid and force you into buying the new stuff.
From early on, Cryptic made it clear that DR would invalidate little - if any - of your old stuff or the older content. So the objective was to make it a slow increase to level 60, and to create a set of systems that would slowly increase the player's overall levels (captain, ships, gear, and so on) so as not to make anything in the game obsolete on day 1.
Being level 60, or having a Tier 6 ship, was not supposed to be an instant-win scenario. As such, getting up to level 60 and getting all the new goodies was not supposed to be an instant-achievement either. With systems such as upgrades and captain specializations, DR is about long-term evolutions to the players' toons. The interviews in the past two weeks of Priority One have laid that out fairly clearly.
I think that's probably the reason why I haven't been annoyed with many of the new systems. I read that sentiment in the dev blogs early on, and went into DR knowing that it was set up for long-term play.
well said, i realised this before DR even launched, sadly most of the players expected to be done with all that DR added to the game within a week so they could go back to moaning about the lack of content or ways to progress.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
Yes I bought some ships too, and I spend a lot on the game, but once I realised what was happening I stopped spending, I now have £200 waiting that I would normally have spent on Zen. This is a first for me, and I would expect others feel similarly, this withholding of funds will take time to trickle through but you will notice it first in the Dil exchange, as less Zen is bought it will cost increasingly more Dilithium to buy, so I am keeping my eye on the that as my own metric.
I have money sat here that I would normally have spent, and I have refined dil sat here that I would normally have spent.
Oversimplified analogy, yes, but valid for the point. And I fail to see how I overreacted, I simply presented a potential outcome that may or may not happen. There was no reaction nor emotional involvement on my part in the analogy I made.
The game is nowhere near as broken, or failing, or dying as much as some forumgoers claim it to be (I do see you're not saying it's failing, but the analogy is harshly contrary). There are positives as well. The game is not perfect - I think very few people will cling to that sentiment. But I don't think the game is in such a poor state that the breaks are failing on the car.
As someone who's been playing this game since the summer 2011, I can tell you that this game has never been in a more broken state than it is now or at least a week or two ago. Granted, I might have been lucky in the past and I know I haven't been hit with issues some of my friends had before, but for me personally Delta Rising came with an avalanche of bugs and broken things. I don't remember myself struggling so much to make the game bearable/playable ever before.
And again it was just an analogy as to the "best revenue day". Don't take it so literally, that's why it's called an "analogy". But for many people since the launch the "brakes were failing", metaphorically speaking. Just ask Mac users. Or Intel graphics users. Or everyone that kept crashing for weeks. Or people that are missing items from the "Deta Pack". Or the ones that got empty trays on each instance switch.
Heck, I myself couldn't play the game a week after launch and I played with "squeezed graphics" for 2 weeks, with my ship UI in total mess.
I'm not expecting perfect. If I was, I'd never be here in the first place - this game is a broken mess currently and it still is in better shape than it used to be.
So yeah, it's nowhere near life threatening as brakes failing on a car, but at a certain point one has to ask themself - why should I bother?
The devs are making post-launch adjustments to several of the new game systems. It only makes sense that they could adjust things post-launch, after the live user data is available. Testing in the Tribble sandbox can only tell so much, even if they opened it to the wider playerbase - it's unlikely the casual player would try Tribble, so there'd still be a selection bias to the data.
See, this is where you're basically wrong. It's good that they're making adjustments and you can see that my response to their actions in those threads has been overwhelmingly positive. However, there's a reason everyone I know who plays STO mockingly referrs to Holodeck as the "test server".
And I'm sorry, but no, it doesn't make any sense at all. Having some things like issues and bugs slip through is one thing, having a "test server" that has no purpose and having the content go live in the same format it went live on the test server is just stupid and lazy. Having some, let's say, 20-30% of 'Tribble' issues going live can be understandable, having every single 'Tribble' issue go live is inexcusable and shows a huge lack of interest about the quality of the final product your consumers are receiving.
Furthermore, they closed Tribble for F2P themselves this time, for the first time! So it's not the "casuals" fault because not trying to test, it's the company's fault for locking it down.
If Cryptic had launched the expansion and left it at that, I'd be really concerned right now. But they haven't done that. Each weekly patch is adjusting systems, such as lowering starship mastery requirements and making the Winter Event an account unlock.
As an MMO, this is a live game that will continue to evolve every day it remains live. A car sales analogy is an apples-to-oranges situation. A car is a supposedly-finished product that is sold once and maintained to continue to function as-sold, until such a point as it becomes obsolete and requires full replacement. This game evolves and changes with each new season - major changes to the same single product - in order to continue to remain usable and add new functionality to the original product. Because changes go live immediately after implementation, there will often be a slow data gathering and rebalancing process that follows. That's the reality of a software product, where early adopters are often saddled with the initial bugs, but over time those bugs are ironed out.
Still doesn't change that 'Delta Rising' is the worst expansion I've ever seen in a game personally. When 'Legacy of Romulus' was released I praised it from the top of my lungs, but the level of quantity and quality is not comparable with DR.
Like I said, I only used the analogy to portray another outcome and repercussions from the "best revenue day ever". Thankfully MMOs are live games that can be changed, which is why many of us are actually here and complaining about issues in the first place - in hopes that in a live game things can be changed and improved in case someone listens.
Like another player said a while ago: "The biggest "whiners" on these boards love or at a certain point loved this game"
Since you can't measure fun... What would you measure?
Oh,but I disagree,you can measure fun....it's the feedback on the forums.And yes,yes....we have heard all the 'arguments' how it doesn't represent all the players,and that it's only the most vocal player posting here yada yada yada...but like with reading metrics,you need to know how to read the forums.
Players will always complain about something,that's a given....but what counts is what they are complaining about,and how many players complain about the same thing.
When players are generally happy with the game.....you won't hear them,except for minor things,requests,and the occasional idea from the mentally challenged.Silence on the forums is a good thing.
When players are generally unhappy with the game,they all complain about the same thing(s) and even players who hardly,if ever,post on the forums chip in....it's time to pay attention,there is something really wrong here.
Like so many F2P games STO charges people for 'convenience',which is totally fine.But we all know what Cryptic tried to do here with DR,they raised the 'uncomfort level' so high that you have to spend real money to elleviate it.The exorbitant dilithium costs throughout the game are no accident,they don't want you to trade your dilithium for Zen,because that's you not spending money!
"Well,the dilithium for Zen exchange is a closed,player driven system.Without players trading their dilithium for Zen the system will crash...."
That's BS....do you really think Cryptic hasn't added dilithium to the exchange?You don't get to see who you are buying from,and on top of that....it doesn't cost Cryptic anything to put dilithium on there,they can just make it appear by a single keystroke,as much as they want.
"Well,people are spending money on monthly and lifetime subscriptions.."
Look at DR,and then look at these subs.....what benefit do these subs give you with DR?
- Do you get more dilithium? Nope!
- Ha,you earn more XP!? Nope!
- You get discounts on dilithium/Zen/ec costs? BWHAHAHAHA!....Nope!
- You get a free T6 ship? Not even close!
Cryptic's message is clear....you are nothing more than a wallet for them to pick clean,and they will try to get it by any means neccesary.
The PWE/Cryptic sweatshop...not where the game is made,but where the game is played!
Take back your home,end the grind!
Volunteer moderators policing the forums is like a mall cop trying to solve a murder.
Me too. Actually I havent done any DQ on any of my toons yet.
Need to get to lvl 60 first.
Need all 5 reps first. (or is it 6 reps, I forget)
Need R&D SCI/ENG lvl 15 first.
Someone said I don't need Mk XIV weapons for DQ, but why would cryptic design an upgrade system and not FORCE everyone to use it ???
I'm actually surprised that people think Cryptic really HAS loads of "metrics" for everything.
Don't you remember how they found out about Japori? It wasn't "metrics" - it was someone bragging in the forums followed by a Dev asking people in the game how fast they were leveling, how much dilithium they were getting and how they were doing it.
They didn't spot it in any "metrics" or sense a disturbance in the force.
Yes I bought some ships too, and I spend a lot on the game, but once I realised what was happening I stopped spending, I now have £200 waiting that I would normally have spent on Zen. This is a first for me, and I would expect others feel similarly, this withholding of funds will take time to trickle through but you will notice it first in the Dil exchange, as less Zen is bought it will cost increasingly more Dilithium to buy, so I am keeping my eye on the that as my own metric.
I've just fired £35 at the ED Mercenary pack. Thats £35 that would normally have been ploughed into STO for Zen.
Can wait to get home tonight and get to grips with the Solo flight trainer
Metrics or player perception aside, there's several facts about DR.
1. Quoting Geko from the PD1 podcast, DR was designed to take as long as leveling to 50. In his words, they are within their pre-set targets, since 1-50 takes 35 hours and 50-60 takes around 45 hours, but that was before the patrol XP boost to Delta patrols. So... they designed an expansion that should last as much as the rest of the game. That sounds pretty solid. The caveat is that the content that should take the player from 50-60 is at most the one tenth of the content that takes the player from 1-50. All the while, post-release, they are doing everything in their power to prevent players from using the old content to progress. One has to wonder why. Why would anyone try to invalidate older content ? Why would it be preferable to force players to repeat any content for a hundred times instead of allowing them to pad the grinding with older content as well. Especially when there are systems in place that provide adequate level scaling for older content. It just boggles the mind. The most obvious reason is "bad design". There's quite a few other insidious reasons I can come up with, but wouldn't want to go into unfounded conspiracy theories. The fact however remains: they are actively "cornering" players into repetitive content - that fact alone makes up for "bad design".
2. Which brings me to the second fact. Metrics or not, there's only 3 or 4 STFs that are worth playing. No matter what those fantastic metrics that invalidate what players see with their own eyes and queue times say, there is no metric in the world that can convince anyone that people are playing STFs that are a) broken, not bugged but simply broken and either unbeatable or very hard to complete, b) offer nothing worthwhile to anyone that can complete them. Those who can actually complete advanced and elite STFs do not need the rewards from them and those who need them just can't do them by themselves. Before DR, I would complete any elite STF pugging with a success rate of over 90%. After DR, I just don't bother, except for fleet runs on Azure Advanced for that juicy argonite or CCA or Rhiho Station - which is beatable only because of the TR-116B proliferation. I am guessing what Geko means by "the queues are working" is that people are running normal queues until they realize they are a dead-end, xp wise and reward wise. Why content would be invalidated in such a way, is beyond me, but the fact remains, there is no use for all the shiny toys DR brought. Again, bad design.
3. This is an MMO, which means that the modern "release now, patch later" philosophy is prevalent, but just take a look at the gameplay bug subforum. There's no system old or new that has not been adversely affected by DR and there is simply a staggering amount of bugs - if not outright broken systems. That alone should be an indication of the quality of the work that has been done behind the scenes in order to release DR.
4. Communication from Cryptic to the playerbase has been non-existent. Apart from a few promoting and highly commercialized blogs and announcements there's been no in-depth official news release of any kind, concerning what the designers' goals for DR were - and are or the reasoning behind the choices made - apart from dogmatic one liners. There's also been no post-release communication, apart from knee-jerk reactions to "exploits", unexplained nerfs and insulting statements such as "DR has been a success, we made so much money".
5. DR - well, it was released some time before, in preparation for DR - brought us the most astoundingly idiotic crafting system I have seen in an MMO. Don't get me wrong, I like the upgrade system, but a system where the only way to progress is to wait it out for 4 or 5 months is just ridiculous. A crafting system where actually crafting stuff will get you nowhere is defeating it's own purpose of existence. A system where the "finish now" buttons lead to an exorbitant expenditure of dilithium for absolutely no gain while they are conveniently missing a confirmation dialog... is simply put, insulting. And very transparent as far as it's "raison d'etre" goes. I won't even go in to the costs. Getting an item to MkXIV is cheap, gaining rarity is disproportionately and fraudulently inflated. Funny how there's no other real end-game (that DR brought) than getting your weapons to gold, huh ?
6. End game was rather limited before DR. But at least it was somewhat fun. People would make a new alt, progress the toon and finish up with getting end-game equipment - possibly from a different rep than the last time - kit out a different ship for this toon, do some STFs and then repeat. Guess what happened with DR. There's no way to kit out one's alts. The needs for dilithium are just too high and make it such a prolonged endeavor - during which there's NOTHING to do - that people just gave up on it. On their main, they just log in to refine their dilithium, switch to alts to harvest their dilithium, do a couple of CCAs while upgrades are being "cooked" and log out, because you know, nobody is going to pay thousands of zen to upgrade one weapon to gold. They will just wait it out.
Objective or subjective data, metrics, accounting data, etc etc cannot simply change those facts. And those facts can only mean that DR was not a good expansion.
Oh,but I disagree,you can measure fun....it's the feedback on the forums.And yes,yes....we have heard all the 'arguments' how it doesn't represent all the players,and that it's only the most vocal player posting here yada yada yada...but like with reading metrics,you need to know how to read the forums..
The most important argument is... The game is still around. Despite the feedback of the forums always containing lots of negativity.
I think the forums are useful for one thing - getting qualitiative feedback, in the sense of "Ah, people don't like the game because it's too hard / it takes too long to level". I don't think that there are many "Hidden" issues witht he game that no one knows about but is secretly draining players.
But it can't tell you if you actually have to do something. Because every change has repercussions - it could be that you fix a common complaint, but actually break something that people really liked, and suddenly they come to the forums and complain - and you find the problems are at cross-purppose.
For a long time I've seen complains that the game is too easy. That is why we got Elite content and the changes to Advanced content. But there are people that are now bothered by the changes to this content, and find it too hard.
Likewise, people always said that leveling is very fast in STO, too fast for the taste of some. Now it's no longer that fast. Guess what - there are people that actually liked it.
And there are also wishes that are simply at cross-purpose with the game's business model itself. If people want things cheaper, that directly lowers the revenue unless volume rises in kind - if it doesn't they can't get cheaper.
The skill point conundrum has several facets, and one is - I don't want to "grind" to get to the new missions. But there is a solid business reason for Cryptic wanting that - people that are "forced" to play the game to experience the content have a lot of opportunities to either spend money or cooperate with players in game, via Exchange (Dilithium or regular) or queued content or fleets. They have a reason to want more than one ship. People that join only for one mission don't. So, in brief, people that spend time in the game because they want to unlock content are good for business - unless this "unlock" process actually loses them more players elsewhere than they gain.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Funnily enough it was so obvious to me that they were trying to manipulate players to make them play the new content that I just stopped going to the Delta Quadrant completely, weeks ago.
Good job, Cryptic.
Hell, I just stopped playing altogether. I'm just lurking every now and then to check changes and make an occasional comment.
My guess is "hope" keeps people not playing but posting on the forums. For others, its a path of sad realization and closure. Grieving takes time. The worst "haters" here love the game, or did at some point.
My guess is "hope" keeps people not playing but posting on the forums. For others, its a path of sad realization and closure. Grieving takes time. The worst "haters" here love the game, or did at some point.
My guess is "hope" keeps people not playing but posting on the forums. For others, its a path of sad realization and closure. Grieving takes time. The worst "haters" here love the game, or did at some point.
Comments
Free Tibet!
A good business model is not secret. It is something you broadcast to your customers.
I know this seems counter-intuitive because of things like trade secrets but trade secrets are the "how" of the model, not the "what". The "what" should absolutely be crystal clear, apparent to every member of the organization, broadcast transparently, and celebrated by the customer or it's a bad strategy.
Well, the thing is...
...duh.
When players are going to twist everything around with malice (it can be fun to twist it around in a jovial fashion as long as everybody is in on it); it's a wonder they reply in the least or say anything at all.
He makes it clear what the comment refers to, he says he doesn't know if it the comment is still true 6 weeks later.
That is what you refer to as "distancing" yourself from the comment?
If you took the comment "most succesful ever" as encompassing developments that haven't even happened yet.
(And I think it was certainly the most succesful launch ever Cryptic had. Do you remember the last time a major season update didn't lead to downtimes. Too bad they screwed it up with the next patch. But that doesn't make it the greatest expansion ever to me.)
Mustrum "When did virusdancer become a forum ninja" Ridcully
Oversimplified, and overreacted.
The game is nowhere near as broken, or failing, or dying as much as some forumgoers claim it to be (I do see you're not saying it's failing, but the analogy is harshly contrary). There are positives as well. The game is not perfect - I think very few people will cling to that sentiment. But I don't think the game is in such a poor state that the breaks are failing on the car.
The devs are making post-launch adjustments to several of the new game systems. It only makes sense that they could adjust things post-launch, after the live user data is available. Testing in the Tribble sandbox can only tell so much, even if they opened it to the wider playerbase - it's unlikely the casual player would try Tribble, so there'd still be a selection bias to the data.
If Cryptic had launched the expansion and left it at that, I'd be really concerned right now. But they haven't done that. Each weekly patch is adjusting systems, such as lowering starship mastery requirements and making the Winter Event an account unlock.
As an MMO, this is a live game that will continue to evolve every day it remains live. A car sales analogy is an apples-to-oranges situation. A car is a supposedly-finished product that is sold once and maintained to continue to function as-sold, until such a point as it becomes obsolete and requires full replacement. This game evolves and changes with each new season - major changes to the same single product - in order to continue to remain usable and add new functionality to the original product. Because changes go live immediately after implementation, there will often be a slow data gathering and rebalancing process that follows. That's the reality of a software product, where early adopters are often saddled with the initial bugs, but over time those bugs are ironed out.
Probably because of signatures like yours. It's become an anti-Cryptic meme. Why would he ever want to cling to that quote again, after it's been used as a mockery tool?
I recently started playing Rift, and can see 2 expansions (level increases) they've made. When you get to their level 50, there is a huge variety of level 50 content available, the story also gets you to 50 well before the content runs dry. When the cap raised to 60, a new area was built and the xp increased about 3x, so playing old content made little sense. Similarly there is far more content than xp needed in that area. In the last increase to 65 another area was made, and the content got me right to 65 with no grinding, but the XP increase was about 3x again. The currencies tend to change in the new zones as well. They don't make you grind on one thing over and over, you can earn multiple items, and if you cap out on one move to another.
DR is a very different beast there, there is no content to get you to level 60, and you still earn dilithium best on old content.. from a design point its a disaster
Completed Starbase, Embassy, Mine, Spire and No Win Scenario
Nothing to do anymore.
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Fair points, but a lot of MMOs (and in general, games) release expansions to make your old stuff invalid and force you into buying the new stuff.
From early on, Cryptic made it clear that DR would invalidate little - if any - of your old stuff or the older content. So the objective was to make it a slow increase to level 60, and to create a set of systems that would slowly increase the player's overall levels (captain, ships, gear, and so on) so as not to make anything in the game obsolete on day 1.
Being level 60, or having a Tier 6 ship, was not supposed to be an instant-win scenario. As such, getting up to level 60 and getting all the new goodies was not supposed to be an instant-achievement either. With systems such as upgrades and captain specializations, DR is about long-term evolutions to the players' toons. The interviews in the past two weeks of Priority One have laid that out fairly clearly.
I think that's probably the reason why I haven't been annoyed with many of the new systems. I read that sentiment in the dev blogs early on, and went into DR knowing that it was set up for long-term play.
Most every MMO expansion I'm aware of followed a pattern. And we even had someone who talked about their experience as an MMO dev who confirmed this.
The pattern is that you typically set XP gains based around the content you have providing more than enough XP to hit the new level cap.
The amount of content XP provides is an arbitrary value but Cryptic absolutely could have:
- Scaled XP per mission/patrol such that it was two missions to a level on initial playthrough.
- Scaled replay XP and required XP per spec point such that it makes up for this.
- Also scaled it such that bar progress is more visible.
Really all they had to do was make it so that filling the bar provided a Specialization Commendation Token.
Run a once a week project using a SCT to receive a spec point.
OR
Run a daily project using a SCT to receive dilithium or choice of marks or maybe even something like a (bind-on-pickup) Master Key.
There you go. Continuous progress. A reasonable spec point gain per week could be doable for a casual player and overperformers would find their excess effort converted into some other reward, which would have still gated rate of spec gain.
well said, i realised this before DR even launched, sadly most of the players expected to be done with all that DR added to the game within a week so they could go back to moaning about the lack of content or ways to progress.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
I have money sat here that I would normally have spent, and I have refined dil sat here that I would normally have spent.
It's such a shame.
Free Tibet!
Oversimplified analogy, yes, but valid for the point. And I fail to see how I overreacted, I simply presented a potential outcome that may or may not happen. There was no reaction nor emotional involvement on my part in the analogy I made.
As someone who's been playing this game since the summer 2011, I can tell you that this game has never been in a more broken state than it is now or at least a week or two ago. Granted, I might have been lucky in the past and I know I haven't been hit with issues some of my friends had before, but for me personally Delta Rising came with an avalanche of bugs and broken things. I don't remember myself struggling so much to make the game bearable/playable ever before.
And again it was just an analogy as to the "best revenue day". Don't take it so literally, that's why it's called an "analogy". But for many people since the launch the "brakes were failing", metaphorically speaking. Just ask Mac users. Or Intel graphics users. Or everyone that kept crashing for weeks. Or people that are missing items from the "Deta Pack". Or the ones that got empty trays on each instance switch.
Heck, I myself couldn't play the game a week after launch and I played with "squeezed graphics" for 2 weeks, with my ship UI in total mess.
I'm not expecting perfect. If I was, I'd never be here in the first place - this game is a broken mess currently and it still is in better shape than it used to be.
So yeah, it's nowhere near life threatening as brakes failing on a car, but at a certain point one has to ask themself - why should I bother?
See, this is where you're basically wrong. It's good that they're making adjustments and you can see that my response to their actions in those threads has been overwhelmingly positive. However, there's a reason everyone I know who plays STO mockingly referrs to Holodeck as the "test server".
And I'm sorry, but no, it doesn't make any sense at all. Having some things like issues and bugs slip through is one thing, having a "test server" that has no purpose and having the content go live in the same format it went live on the test server is just stupid and lazy. Having some, let's say, 20-30% of 'Tribble' issues going live can be understandable, having every single 'Tribble' issue go live is inexcusable and shows a huge lack of interest about the quality of the final product your consumers are receiving.
Furthermore, they closed Tribble for F2P themselves this time, for the first time! So it's not the "casuals" fault because not trying to test, it's the company's fault for locking it down.
Still doesn't change that 'Delta Rising' is the worst expansion I've ever seen in a game personally. When 'Legacy of Romulus' was released I praised it from the top of my lungs, but the level of quantity and quality is not comparable with DR.
Like I said, I only used the analogy to portray another outcome and repercussions from the "best revenue day ever". Thankfully MMOs are live games that can be changed, which is why many of us are actually here and complaining about issues in the first place - in hopes that in a live game things can be changed and improved in case someone listens.
Like another player said a while ago: "The biggest "whiners" on these boards love or at a certain point loved this game"
Oh,but I disagree,you can measure fun....it's the feedback on the forums.And yes,yes....we have heard all the 'arguments' how it doesn't represent all the players,and that it's only the most vocal player posting here yada yada yada...but like with reading metrics,you need to know how to read the forums.
Players will always complain about something,that's a given....but what counts is what they are complaining about,and how many players complain about the same thing.
When players are generally happy with the game.....you won't hear them,except for minor things,requests,and the occasional idea from the mentally challenged.Silence on the forums is a good thing.
When players are generally unhappy with the game,they all complain about the same thing(s) and even players who hardly,if ever,post on the forums chip in....it's time to pay attention,there is something really wrong here.
Like so many F2P games STO charges people for 'convenience',which is totally fine.But we all know what Cryptic tried to do here with DR,they raised the 'uncomfort level' so high that you have to spend real money to elleviate it.The exorbitant dilithium costs throughout the game are no accident,they don't want you to trade your dilithium for Zen,because that's you not spending money!
"Well,the dilithium for Zen exchange is a closed,player driven system.Without players trading their dilithium for Zen the system will crash...."
That's BS....do you really think Cryptic hasn't added dilithium to the exchange?You don't get to see who you are buying from,and on top of that....it doesn't cost Cryptic anything to put dilithium on there,they can just make it appear by a single keystroke,as much as they want.
"Well,people are spending money on monthly and lifetime subscriptions.."
Look at DR,and then look at these subs.....what benefit do these subs give you with DR?
- Do you get more dilithium? Nope!
- Ha,you earn more XP!? Nope!
- You get discounts on dilithium/Zen/ec costs? BWHAHAHAHA!....Nope!
- You get a free T6 ship? Not even close!
Cryptic's message is clear....you are nothing more than a wallet for them to pick clean,and they will try to get it by any means neccesary.
Take back your home,end the grind!
Volunteer moderators policing the forums is like a mall cop trying to solve a murder.
Me too. Actually I havent done any DQ on any of my toons yet.
Need to get to lvl 60 first.
Need all 5 reps first. (or is it 6 reps, I forget)
Need R&D SCI/ENG lvl 15 first.
Someone said I don't need Mk XIV weapons for DQ, but why would cryptic design an upgrade system and not FORCE everyone to use it ???
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
Don't you remember how they found out about Japori? It wasn't "metrics" - it was someone bragging in the forums followed by a Dev asking people in the game how fast they were leveling, how much dilithium they were getting and how they were doing it.
They didn't spot it in any "metrics" or sense a disturbance in the force.
They just read it here.
Free Tibet!
I've just fired £35 at the ED Mercenary pack. Thats £35 that would normally have been ploughed into STO for Zen.
Can wait to get home tonight and get to grips with the Solo flight trainer
1. Quoting Geko from the PD1 podcast, DR was designed to take as long as leveling to 50. In his words, they are within their pre-set targets, since 1-50 takes 35 hours and 50-60 takes around 45 hours, but that was before the patrol XP boost to Delta patrols. So... they designed an expansion that should last as much as the rest of the game. That sounds pretty solid. The caveat is that the content that should take the player from 50-60 is at most the one tenth of the content that takes the player from 1-50. All the while, post-release, they are doing everything in their power to prevent players from using the old content to progress. One has to wonder why. Why would anyone try to invalidate older content ? Why would it be preferable to force players to repeat any content for a hundred times instead of allowing them to pad the grinding with older content as well. Especially when there are systems in place that provide adequate level scaling for older content. It just boggles the mind. The most obvious reason is "bad design". There's quite a few other insidious reasons I can come up with, but wouldn't want to go into unfounded conspiracy theories. The fact however remains: they are actively "cornering" players into repetitive content - that fact alone makes up for "bad design".
2. Which brings me to the second fact. Metrics or not, there's only 3 or 4 STFs that are worth playing. No matter what those fantastic metrics that invalidate what players see with their own eyes and queue times say, there is no metric in the world that can convince anyone that people are playing STFs that are a) broken, not bugged but simply broken and either unbeatable or very hard to complete, b) offer nothing worthwhile to anyone that can complete them. Those who can actually complete advanced and elite STFs do not need the rewards from them and those who need them just can't do them by themselves. Before DR, I would complete any elite STF pugging with a success rate of over 90%. After DR, I just don't bother, except for fleet runs on Azure Advanced for that juicy argonite or CCA or Rhiho Station - which is beatable only because of the TR-116B proliferation. I am guessing what Geko means by "the queues are working" is that people are running normal queues until they realize they are a dead-end, xp wise and reward wise. Why content would be invalidated in such a way, is beyond me, but the fact remains, there is no use for all the shiny toys DR brought. Again, bad design.
3. This is an MMO, which means that the modern "release now, patch later" philosophy is prevalent, but just take a look at the gameplay bug subforum. There's no system old or new that has not been adversely affected by DR and there is simply a staggering amount of bugs - if not outright broken systems. That alone should be an indication of the quality of the work that has been done behind the scenes in order to release DR.
4. Communication from Cryptic to the playerbase has been non-existent. Apart from a few promoting and highly commercialized blogs and announcements there's been no in-depth official news release of any kind, concerning what the designers' goals for DR were - and are or the reasoning behind the choices made - apart from dogmatic one liners. There's also been no post-release communication, apart from knee-jerk reactions to "exploits", unexplained nerfs and insulting statements such as "DR has been a success, we made so much money".
5. DR - well, it was released some time before, in preparation for DR - brought us the most astoundingly idiotic crafting system I have seen in an MMO. Don't get me wrong, I like the upgrade system, but a system where the only way to progress is to wait it out for 4 or 5 months is just ridiculous. A crafting system where actually crafting stuff will get you nowhere is defeating it's own purpose of existence. A system where the "finish now" buttons lead to an exorbitant expenditure of dilithium for absolutely no gain while they are conveniently missing a confirmation dialog... is simply put, insulting. And very transparent as far as it's "raison d'etre" goes. I won't even go in to the costs. Getting an item to MkXIV is cheap, gaining rarity is disproportionately and fraudulently inflated. Funny how there's no other real end-game (that DR brought) than getting your weapons to gold, huh ?
6. End game was rather limited before DR. But at least it was somewhat fun. People would make a new alt, progress the toon and finish up with getting end-game equipment - possibly from a different rep than the last time - kit out a different ship for this toon, do some STFs and then repeat. Guess what happened with DR. There's no way to kit out one's alts. The needs for dilithium are just too high and make it such a prolonged endeavor - during which there's NOTHING to do - that people just gave up on it. On their main, they just log in to refine their dilithium, switch to alts to harvest their dilithium, do a couple of CCAs while upgrades are being "cooked" and log out, because you know, nobody is going to pay thousands of zen to upgrade one weapon to gold. They will just wait it out.
Objective or subjective data, metrics, accounting data, etc etc cannot simply change those facts. And those facts can only mean that DR was not a good expansion.
The most important argument is... The game is still around. Despite the feedback of the forums always containing lots of negativity.
I think the forums are useful for one thing - getting qualitiative feedback, in the sense of "Ah, people don't like the game because it's too hard / it takes too long to level". I don't think that there are many "Hidden" issues witht he game that no one knows about but is secretly draining players.
But it can't tell you if you actually have to do something. Because every change has repercussions - it could be that you fix a common complaint, but actually break something that people really liked, and suddenly they come to the forums and complain - and you find the problems are at cross-purppose.
For a long time I've seen complains that the game is too easy. That is why we got Elite content and the changes to Advanced content. But there are people that are now bothered by the changes to this content, and find it too hard.
Likewise, people always said that leveling is very fast in STO, too fast for the taste of some. Now it's no longer that fast. Guess what - there are people that actually liked it.
And there are also wishes that are simply at cross-purpose with the game's business model itself. If people want things cheaper, that directly lowers the revenue unless volume rises in kind - if it doesn't they can't get cheaper.
The skill point conundrum has several facets, and one is - I don't want to "grind" to get to the new missions. But there is a solid business reason for Cryptic wanting that - people that are "forced" to play the game to experience the content have a lot of opportunities to either spend money or cooperate with players in game, via Exchange (Dilithium or regular) or queued content or fleets. They have a reason to want more than one ship. People that join only for one mission don't. So, in brief, people that spend time in the game because they want to unlock content are good for business - unless this "unlock" process actually loses them more players elsewhere than they gain.
Hell, I just stopped playing altogether. I'm just lurking every now and then to check changes and make an occasional comment.
I'm surprised they haven't just dumped AdSense into the forums to monetize the amount of time players are now spending here rather than ingame.
You could say that anyone smart enough to see through their money grabbing scheme would have an ad blocker.
What game are YOU playing?
The game is the playerbase. It doesn't exist without players. This is not an offline game.
I don't know what the hell game you've been playing, to say the game is still around. It's deader than EVER.
Of course you can! One unit of fun (fn) is approximately one square inch and covered in chocolate.
There are people here who still voluntarily do the PeanutLabs stuff. 'Nuff said.
Also, remember that the first two letters in fun are F and U. Makes good sense to me.