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[PvP] Dear devs, do you consider us a lost cause?
ilhansk
Member Posts: 620 Arc User
It doesn't take a PhD in rocket science to understand that overseeing PvP in a game like this may be one of the tougher jobs in the gaming industry. It was in the PvP communities interest that the people in charge remain motivated; no one likes perpetual nagging coming from the sidelines, and for that I have been hesitant to overly and publicly criticize Cryptic and their staff. On the same note however, the PvP community exercised years of patience. And now I have the feeling that all 'credit of trust' has been spent. There is almost no one left in the PvP community willing to intercede in Cryptics behalf.
I'd like to highlight two posts by two different Cryptic employees, both PvP-related, yet very contrasting in nature:
How did we end up from a statement like above, to the following statement:
If we assume an automobile manufacturing company to release a car that is fraught with problems. Can you imagine a BMW or GM representative telling to customers "All they do is reinforce negativity, and paint themselves in a negative light overall"?
What happened with us, with you?
What went wrong?
Is your statement reflecting the companies values, or is it just private opinion?
Is there any chance for an honest and productive dialogue?
"Dear legendary Captain, your reputation preceeds you!" Entire PvE Borg and Undine fleets cannot withstand our firepower for even ten seconds. In the PvE storyline, we are exceptional. Any upgrade that serverely improves our overperformance even more does not impair our suspension of disbelief at all. Because it fits nicely into the narrative. Tricobalts one-shotting a Borg Cube, whats the problem?
Balance between abilities, traits, consoles carries little value in PvE. Why should a PvE player insist on a higher standard of balance, that ultimately is of little significance for his gaming experience? Is it really so inexplicable that a PvPer may hold you guys to higher standards? Does that make us evil?
PvP requires higher quality assurance on principle. So much interdependencies to consider. But then, so many experienced PvPers, some with degrees, programming and mathematical skills, willing to help you guys out for free....
PvP in shambles. I guess we already heard enough from the PvPers perspective, I really would like to hear a devs take on how it did come to this...
I'd like to highlight two posts by two different Cryptic employees, both PvP-related, yet very contrasting in nature:
Cryptic_Gozer wrote:Cryptic is a business and everything that makes up STO requires resources to develop, implement, and maintain. I think its pretty obvious that since the launch of STO that PVP has not had a fair share of those resources allocated to it. This fact is the primary reason PVP is in the state that its currently in.
Something has to be done, PVP cannot stay the way that it is now. We either have to try to save it, or take it out of the game completely. We have to allocate resources in order to save it and thats where I come into the picture.
Right this moment, Im the only resource PVP gets.
How did we end up from a statement like above, to the following statement:
borticuscryptic wrote: »Posting these types of threads into the echo chamber that is this isolated PvP community is likely to do nothing but stir up additional ire among the small number of players that come here.
...
These threads don't serve this portion of the community. All they do is reinforce negativity, and paint this sub-community in a negative light overall.
If we assume an automobile manufacturing company to release a car that is fraught with problems. Can you imagine a BMW or GM representative telling to customers "All they do is reinforce negativity, and paint themselves in a negative light overall"?
What happened with us, with you?
What went wrong?
Is your statement reflecting the companies values, or is it just private opinion?
Is there any chance for an honest and productive dialogue?
"Dear legendary Captain, your reputation preceeds you!" Entire PvE Borg and Undine fleets cannot withstand our firepower for even ten seconds. In the PvE storyline, we are exceptional. Any upgrade that serverely improves our overperformance even more does not impair our suspension of disbelief at all. Because it fits nicely into the narrative. Tricobalts one-shotting a Borg Cube, whats the problem?
Balance between abilities, traits, consoles carries little value in PvE. Why should a PvE player insist on a higher standard of balance, that ultimately is of little significance for his gaming experience? Is it really so inexplicable that a PvPer may hold you guys to higher standards? Does that make us evil?
PvP requires higher quality assurance on principle. So much interdependencies to consider. But then, so many experienced PvPers, some with degrees, programming and mathematical skills, willing to help you guys out for free....
PvP in shambles. I guess we already heard enough from the PvPers perspective, I really would like to hear a devs take on how it did come to this...
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
Yes, this type of thread really doesn't serve the community much. But it feels like even posting in the right places - Tribble Feedback etc. - has impact that is too little or too late. Posting in any place feels pointless at some level. I can understand frustration with the apparent attitude of the community.
The negativity of the community, while certainly unproductive, is at least understandable. A lot of us have adopted the 'cranky old man' attitude. Many are just tired of having to repeatedly do what feels like it should be the devs' job in the first place - to make the game better. Feedback on what seems to be poorly-thought-out addition after addition makes us jaded and disillusioned about the direction the game is taking. Which results in the disaffected grumbling and occasional meltdown you see here.
Yes, it's just a game. But it could be so much better. Players care. But we find it difficult to see if the devs care, given the multitude of imperfect additions that only seem to drive PvP deeper into the abyss.
Borticus is one of the devs who at least has had made the effort to better balance some things, and fix some of the more egregious bugs plus inform about them - and I appreciate that.
What I don't appreciate is whoever is designing powers with such seeming lack of foresight concerning interactions, real-in-game conditions and bug-minimized implementations, and constantly closing the stable door after the horse has gone.
Does that mean you are working on a kickstarter campaign to make a STO-like space combat game?
It would be a shame without the franchise, but I think the general gameplay style of STO's space combat is interesting. Still hoping that Dreadnought will deliver some of that, but... I dunno.
A:Suggest it to others.
Q: What you do when you get a shet for your money and lack of respect?
A: Tell others about it.
So next time someone asks you about cryptic/pwe and/or about devs you know what to say depending if you liked it or not.
...
These threads don't serve this portion of the community. All they do is reinforce negativity, and paint this sub-community in a negative light overall.
Rock Solid Advice. That's what that is.
Members of this forum have done more to destroy community relations than anything Cryptic/PWE employees have done. Repeated and willful posting of threads and comments with disregard for the TOS. Threads containing flat out personal attacks on devs, moderators, and other players. Creation of troll alts with offensive names purely to taunt whatever person is up for attack that week. Good stuff!
How can that POSSIBLY in anyone's mind be considered productive, never mind adult behavior? Anyone that isn't appalled by the posts that some players make in this forum, I sincerely believe is part of the problem. Maybe we don't need a bunch of White Knights running around, but we certainly and absolutely don't need player apologists either.
And I think there's a few people left lurking in this forum with personal knowledge of how poorly employees were treated at the hands of some of the players. Believing that a company would continue to encourage employees to expose themselves to that is truly magical thinking.
Peace out.
Oh please how can players destroy a relationship that never really existed in the first place? Hell, all the STO PvP community ever received were promises that STO PvP hadn't been abandoned, and that the STO Dev team would get around to looking at an improving STO PvP.
^^^^
in the 4 years of development since they added ONE PvP ground map that's never happened. In fact many times we see Dev comments like
"PvP in STO is so underused, we could remove it entirely, and barely anyone would notice..."
(The above is a paraphrase but there have been statements made by the STO Devs stating they were thinking about just removing PvP all together from the game.)
Borticus has been pretty stand up lately - and willing to come and provide communication to the playerbase; BUT (IMO) his comment completely misses the mark with regard to the STO PvP community and the 'relationship' the STO Devs maintain with it. That 'relationship' is either posts claiming STO PvP is on the table top be removed; OR like the most recent post from Borticus of basically - "Please don't make waves."
Honestly, I would prefer Cryptic just come clean and up from say they don't have the resources to devote to improving the balance/state of STO PvP as it stands; OR actually DO something that demonstrates to the PvP community that PvP isn't the redheaded stepchild on the STO content development schedule.
At this point actions would speak louder then words and of late the STO Dev teams actions indicate PvP is off their radar and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
(And the funny thing is - honestly, I'm not that avid a PvPer in ANY MMO I play, but even so, I can see and sympathize with the more avid PvPers that the STO Dev team has driven away by their inaction/lack of attention to major STO PvP issues; as well as those who do still remain HOPING the STO Dev team will throw them an honest 'bone' and do something to fix/improve the teribble state that STO PvP is in, and has been in for YEARS.)
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
the toxicity did not come from nowhere, it is entirely cryptic manufactured. a lake cannot become toxic without an evil corporation dumping chemicals in it first. the community wouldn't be toxic if for over 4 years every single content update didn't measurably make the meaningful pvp experience worse.
im all for adding to the game, got to keep it fresh, but its just absolutely amazing to me that every single content update comes with tuning so poor or short sighted, that it detracts from the experience it tries to improve. basically everything they added, if our feedback was actually followed prerelease, could have been an overall improvement to pvp.
on about half of the real stinkers out there, as much as 6 months later we might get a fairly meaningful correction, or NERF as the pve knuckle dragers like to call it, which has the effect of slightly undamageing the pvp experience, but also increases the ire of pvpers among the rest of the sto community. thats why we don't leave our echo chamber, we aren't welcome elsewhere, mention pvp somewhere else and you get venomous threads that a mod has to lock. there are even pve scum that come here and trash talk, and then go all victom complex as soon as they are rebuffed for it.
the other half of the real stinkers? over time they get marginalized by even more powerful introductions, so they stop being anomalies and start being closer to par. its pretty sad when thats all we can really hope for when some new broken thing gets released, and it becomes clear how WAI it is. how could that foster anything but animosity?
the toxcicity is 100% cause and effect, this is the pvp community cryptic cultivated with their actions, turning otherwise very pleasant, comraderious folks into the most biter, salty, jaded people on the forum.
Let's be realistic: Any MP/PvP game has negative part of community on forums that will point out or complain about certain powers, gear, weapon, map, balance etc. That's natural. It can't all be positive feedback.
Problem with STO is that after Delta Rising, 2 new reputations, 5 new specializations, numerous new ship traits and ship sets and of course Pure Grind Overpower Creep Dilithum Gravity Sink AKA R&D system there is nothing positive to say about STO gaming aspect from either PvP o PvE standpoint. Even Fleet building and faction roleplaying is completely discouraged and unrewarding.
Cryptic has on every occasion removed that little GAMING challenge which was present in STO and replaced it with challenge of Who-can-grind-more or Who-can-care-less-and-play-it-anyway.
It all boils down to this:
Cryptic has no gaming developer integrity or gaming vision.
They have on every occasion dumbed down challenges PvE side to cater to super casual non-gamers/farmers/completionists and recently to DPS easy mode community for which every recent expensive ship trait and gear is made.
Without any pardon or etiquette I can say freely: **** any game in which i can obliterate toughest enemies and finish hardest missions by spamming one single button.
Skill requirement and learning curve in STO, right now, is close to zero.
You can copy/paste a build and master the game. To win anything you just need to be willing to spend time doing the mission.
Instant gratification is shortsited and absolutely counterproductive. You absolutely can't dumb down "ELITE" content so anyone can finish it even with best gear.
By doing that you remove challenge.
By removing challenge you remove feeling of accomplishment.
By removing that all you are left with is instant gratification for completionist/collector types.
And that's it.
No win feels like a win, there is no satisfaction in GAMING part of STO.
Is that PvP "community" or few PvP individuals fault?
Who can say yes to that with a straight face?
Super SpecialStar Trek Online Review
SpecialTemporal PUG 100K DPS Build
We are Travelers
Why bother spending the time and resources dedicated to give us even the basic features we were promised years ago when A) there's not enough of us to take advantage of them
Does that mean I'll stop campaigning for it? Absolutely not. We deserve fair treatment, after all this time.
What I do want, more than anything, is a clean cut answer as to why we were ignored and given false promises from the get go. Why not start off with a solid foundation from the start? You know PvP is a cash cow. And even if you didn't intend on any development ever, why not stay silent about it instead of consistently stringing us along with false promises?
I present you L33T STO DPS gaming keyboard http://abload.de/img/startrekonlinedpskeybn3k90.png
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We are Travelers
:eek:
They dont give a damm about PvP.. like the last 4-5 Years. Thats the real Problem here.
Regarts
*** R.I.P. ***
Everything gets nerfed because of PvPers.
Everything is too hard because of DPSers.
(As an aside, it's a tripgasm to read those with Slamek's voice.)
You have a dev post a single reply to something toward a concern of either of those, next thing you know the masses have grabbed their pitchforks...
We have issues with op PvE grind toys. Be it with the first UR doffs, lockbox only gear etc.
we lack balancing and matchmaking. We lack goals rewards.
With delta recruits we see server wide stat tracking. Would it really break the manhour bank to use this for a permanent territory light kind of game?
Hilbert's matchmaking wasn't t perfect, but based on his work can a team of professional game programmers and designers, not make something that makes for better team balancing?
Finally, give us a PvP mode for level 40. All gear auto reverts to mk x VR. Mk Xi set gear becomes the mk x base item ( eg MACO shield would be resilient mk x capx3, etc.) uni consoles are disabled (there are fancier solutions via loadots) all that's left would be special doffs again after 5 years disabling certain doffs for PvP has to be about the same workload the redesigning the skill tree or UI for the 5th time.
So while it's a complete waste to wait or hope for these changes. I just don t see how they would be impossible to implement to give those that prefer this team oriented type of playing the option to do so. Keep an all gear enabled lvl60 que as is.
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
Of course it is fixable. Of course they could add territory control if they wanted to. (even EA/BIO in TOR added territory control to its pve)
The question isn't could... or even that it would take a crazy amount of man hours. Because we all know it wouldn't.
Its lack of will. For some reason the person in charge over at Cryptic doesn't want PvP in there game.
Honestly its sad for all of us that we still bother typing on there forums. Clearly they are not a company that wants our money. I really don't understand why so many of us bother trying to change there minds (including myself) There are plenty of other developers more then happy and capable of building games with quality PvP... I guess it comes down to that stupid licence. I blame CBS in the end... the cheap sons of somethings that didn't just find a proper developer and draw up a new contract when Perpetual went under. Darn them.
You left out the F key . :P
... don't leave home / earth without it ...
Considering that that's the same issue that the D'Kyr has, it might take a couple of years .
... or never ...
Selling something to a segment of your costumer base, is still better then selling nothing. It's up to them to show us how character customisation which they are so proud of in there titles, can create revenue for PvP on top of the sheer fact that more players active in-game means better metrics.
I just don't see how they loose money. DPS gonna DPS, crafters gonna craft, nothing else changes , with a vanilla queue.
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
I also recall DStahl mentioning the removal of Kerrat once or twice .
So not everything a Dev says actually happened ... -- but looking at Kerrat, that can be seen as a good thing .
As for PVP in general , I'm not sure the Devs themselves know what they want to do with it .
Look back 3 years and what do you see ?
Both PVP and the Foundry as orphans in STO .
So what changed there ?
Well there was a supposed Dev assigned to the Foundry some time ago (who was quite mysterious and didn't interact with the fans) -- but more to the point , I noted two ... developments:
Some Devs started to do stuff for the Foundry when they could ( not sure if this was on company hours or personal time) .
But more importantly , Cryptic got a vauge notion of what they wanted to do with the Foundry .
And believe it or not, that's a big deal .
Sure, they kinda stole the idea from themselves (Never Winter) , but from an equally red headed stepchild , Cryptic slowly made something of the Foundry .
How is that important to PVP ?
By looking at the ways Cryptic tried to "do something" with PVP .
Their latest shot came (I'm guessing here) under the justification "we'll sell more shuttles" .
That's not a plan for PVP , that's a plan to make money off items that may not be selling , but Cryptic keeps on making .
Unlike Mancom, I do see a future for PVP in STO .
What I don't see is a future for it in its current state, with powers being piled into the game by the bucket load .
VPVP (cookie cutter builds) could be done .
A PVE mission with a PVP finish) could be done (with possibly us beaming up into cookie cutter "monster play" ships to PVP with) .
I've heard of at least one such PVE +PVP mission in Never Winter ( no monster play in it tho) -- so such gameplay is not out of the realm of possibility .
Looking at all the manpower Cryptic is throwing at the revamping of the game , story arc by story arc, I think that that parallel effort to regular game making may be where PVP will get it's time investment (once the Cardassian story arc is done) .
... there are still options left, but they may be explored only at the tail end or after the Iconian story line runs its course . The key element is getting Cryptic to WANT to do something with PVP , and one card that could be played for a PVE + PVP combo STF is that ppl are getting tired of one more STF queue for one more Reputation . This could spice things up and lead to more PVP stand alone content if successful ...
Well he had said it needed to be removed and REPLACED. When they decided to not rebuild it they just forgot about it.
Which is exactly how we got to where we are now ... , and that's not a good place to be in .
The alternative to that is to provide basic "modules" (what you know as ships) with cookie cutter stats (2-3 for each profession for starters) , which come with a couple of basic "skins" .
The rest of the skins would be for sale .
... and this way, the newest ships would be "sellable" to both Pve and PVP ... , although hopefully the skins alone would cost less then a full ship or you'd get a discount if you purchase the same ship in Pve ...