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[Letter] Serious discussion on some big issues is long overdue.
snipey47a
Member Posts: 485 Media Corps
Greetings my fellow STO’ers,
I would like to put forth my thanks to you for reading of what can only be described as a massive wall of text. I make no apologies for this as I will explain my convictions in a moment but as first order of business I feel it is important to show that I am not delusional enough to think that the majority of people who will choose to read this will know who I am. Some people will know me well, another small section will know me as one of the co-hosts of The SHOW by Odenknight and there will be those who have seen some of my ramblings on the STO forums. However, the vast majority will have no idea who I am. Therefore, please excuse my conceit and allow me to devote one or two paragraphs to introduce myself.
My in-game @ handle is Snipey47a and I reside in one of the capital cities of Australia. I’m in my mid-30s and enjoy a highly successful career in the management team of Sales & Marketing for a large multi-national company. I have been playing Star Trek Online since October 2013 (1 month prior to the Dyson Sphere reputation release) and over that time it has become a very large part of my life. I have been a Star Trek fan for as long as I can remember being first introduced to it when Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home was released to VHS and I was still under 10 years of age. Since then I have pretty much absorbed all things Star Trek with the exception of about half of the DS9 series due to the love/hate relationship I had (and still have) with Captain Benjamin Sisko.
Although I have been an off & on gamer for many years, it was in the console world and involved much less than 50% of online play. That means that STO is my first MMO and first truly online gaming experience. We all have reasons why we chose to immerse ourselves in this type of entertainment and I’m sure they are very wide and varied but they are all personal to ourselves. Some who I have chosen to confide with know what brought to STO. I state this not to suggest I’m different but more so to acknowledge that we all have reasons but despite whatever brought us here there are many who have a passion for STO and have come to love it. We all cherish many of those whom we cross paths with in the STO Universe.
Please consider this as the fuel that provides me with the energy to write to not only the playing community, but also to Cryptic/Perfect World Entertainment because those two separate entities are both side of the same coin – what one does affects the other. It’s an inescapable truth and probably not as respected as it should be from either side.
Anyway, onto why I am writing this…..
I know that I have been the source of silly videos, rambling posts and a heap of in-game discussion regarding the state of the game. I don’t regret this because at the time it served to vent frustration although, I did realise it would not add any real substance to what is a very serious situation for both the business who owns the game and the customers who pay (in either time or with real world money) to use the service that they offer.
I would also like to acknowledge the Cryptic/Perfect World Entertainment IS a business and that they solely exist to make a profit and as much profit as they can produce – the core definition of any business. A business typically works to annual budgeting plans that intricately plot their costs and revenue for a specific financial year. The companies that are better at making profit are the ones who have a strong philosophy of who they are, the service they offer and how they go about offering that service.
Every company will say they have a philosophy but it is a sad fact that for many their only focus is how they are tracking Year to Date (YTD) & Year On Year (YoY) based on their annual budget plan and only dedicate real focus on achieving the plan for that year at the detriment of the following years. Working in the field that I do, I know that this is a viscous cycle that many companies struggle to get out of and often get left behind. The American car company General Motors immediately comes to my mind when I ponder this.
The highly successful companies are the ones that not only look at the annual budget but also consider how decisions made this year, will affect the years to come and it is all based on their core philosophy and sticking to that philosophy even if it costs the business in the short term. These highly successful companies truly value their revenue source (customers) not just say they do and a part of their strategy is engaging with their customers making them advocates for the brand. Advocates for the brand boost the profit of that company because the equation for the customer becomes slightly less financial and more emotional.
The two companies I know well and come to mind immediately are Toyota & Apple. Regarding Toyota, those who work or have worked with a Japanese company know how much focus goes into the annual financial plan and how closely budgets are watched by senior management, but Toyota were different and worked a plan that went beyond the yearly profit plan. In the early 1990s, they aspired to enter the luxury car arena using the US as the development benchmark and LEXUS was born. Today Lexus is a premium luxury car brand yet many don’t know that Lexus stands for Limited Edition eXport to the United States. It was an internal company product engineering code to put more sound deadening and equipment into a Toyota Camry and sell it for double the price in the United States. Even today’s Lexus models are basic Toyota production cars enhanced with the tinsel of luxury and although over the years the engineering differences have set them further apart from the standard Toyota line-up, essentially people are paying (at least in my country) $100,000 for a $40,000 Camry.
I could spend an hour explaining how they achieved this but essentially the customer was always put, or made like they were put first. They engaged with their revenue source instead of dictating and they made business decisions which in the isolation of a single financial year would look crazy but over a decade are considered genius in the business world. So today for many of us, Lexus is an aspirational brand with a loyal customer base.
So, what does all this have to do with Star Trek Online? Well…
Today (28th July 2015) is the 183rd day for what the many of us to consider to be the exposure of some serious flaws in the product offered to us, the playing community (their revenue source), that is called Star Trek Online. In reality, it is the 287th for me and some others (Delta Rising release) and recent revelations from Salami_Inferno about the latency issues caused by Attack Pattern Beta suggest that it is even longer and possibly even as far back as day number one.
What I am talking about here is a computer gaming environment that is offered and/or has been sold to customers that cannot handle what it was recently turned into. We can all speculate and throw stones as to the reasons but at this point the reasons are somewhat irrelevant. The fact of the matter is that company’s core philosophy of which their Terms of Service (http://www.arcgames.com/en/about/terms) can be included when evaluating said philosophy are very disturbing and in my experience is a model of the company that is stuck in a previous generation. It is companies like this that haven’t realised the power is now with the customer and not the corporation due to the advent of social media and the strength of word of mouth to name only a couple of examples.
Specifically I draw your attention to Section 29.1(a) which states:
(a) THE SERVICE, THE GAMES, THE WEBSITE AND ALL MATERIALS CONTAINED THEREIN ARE PROVIDED ON AN “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE” BASIS WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. PWE AND ITS SUBSIDIARIES, AFFILIATES, OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES, AGENTS, PARTNERS AND LICENSORS DISCLAIM ALL OTHER WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, PERFORMANCE OR SUITABILITY FOR YOUR INTENDED USE, TITLE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT AS TO THE SERVICE, THE GAME AND THE WEBSITE, INCLUDING ALL INFORMATION, CONTENT AND MATERIALS CONTAINED THEREIN. WITHOUT LIMITING THE FOREGOING, PWE DOES NOT REPRESENT OR WARRANT THAT THE SERVICE, THE GAMES, THE WEBSITE OR THE MATERIALS CONTAINED THEREIN ARE ACCURATE, COMPLETE, RELIABLE, AVAILABLE, CURRENT OR ERROR-FREE. PWE ALSO DOES NOT REPRESENT OR WARRANT THAT THE GAMES, THE WEBSITE OR ITS SERVERS ARE FREE OF VIRUSES, BUGS, ERRORS OR OTHER HARMFUL COMPONENTS OR DEFECTS, TRANSMIT DATA IN A SECURE MANNER, OR FUNCTION PROPERLY WITH THE SERVICE.
Next, I draw your attention to section 30.1
IN NO EVENT SHALL WE, PWE, ITS DIRECTORS, MEMBERS, AFFILIATES, SUBSIDIARIES, EMPLOYEES OR AGENTS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, SPECIAL, INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, OR ANY OTHER DAMAGES OF ANY KIND, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF USE, LOSS OF PROFITS OR LOSS OF DATA, WHETHER IN AN ACTION IN CONTRACT, TORT (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO NEGLIGENCE) OR OTHERWISE, ARISING OUT OF OR IN ANY WAY CONNECTED WITH THE USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE THE WEBSITE, THE SERVICE, THE GAMES OR ANY OF THE CONTENT OR THE MATERIALS CONTAINED IN OR ACCESSED THROUGH THE WEBSITE OR THE SERVICE, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION ANY DAMAGES CASED BY OR RESULTING FROM RELIANCE BY USER ON ANY INFORMATION OBTAINED FROM US OR PWE, OR THAT RESULT FROM MISTAKES, OMISSIONS, INTERRUPTIONS, DELETION OF FILES OR EMAIL, ERRORS, DEFECTS, VIRUSES, DELAYS IN OPERATION OR TRANSMISSION OR ANY FAILURE OF PERFORMANCE, WHETHER OR NOT RESULTING FROM ACTS OF GOD, COMMUNICATIONS FAILURE, THEFT, DESTRUCTION OR UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS TO PWE’S RECORDS, PROGRAMS OR SERVICES.
To summarise, they believe they are not breaching any consumer laws by saying if the Performance of the games isn’t good enough, they don’t really have to do anything to remedy it and aren’t liable to compensate for the faulty product to a player who has purchased a lifetime subscription or other financial transaction on an in-game product that was sold under false pretenses.
I am not familiar with the US consumer laws but I do know that despite them stating all that, what they are offering is illegal in Australia to those who have paid a lifetime subscription to the game. This has been in our consumer laws since 01/01/2011.
However, it took over 100 days for Cryptic to even acknowledge the game has problems and while there had been a small placating of the community by Developer acknowledgement with the promise of action it is clear that the annual budget plan of PWE is paramount. They may be fixing latency issues here and there but they are continually adding new abilities. This possibly guarantees achievement this financial year but puts at risk 2016/2017 and more so 2017/2018.
It is clear from Developer contact with the community that sins in coding of the past combined with the additional load put on the system since Delta Rising has caught up to Cryptic in a very big way and it is in moments like this that one can truly evaluate just who and what the company is and whether they genuinely care about the services they offer and how they truly see their customers.
I am not saying there isn’t passionate people who work for Cryptic – Trendy, Borticus & Salami (to name a few that I have had personal contact with) are clearly passionate about what they do and care about what they provide us but they are severely being let down by those at the wheel of the ship.
If we are honest, while the system latency issues have improved because of the addressing of some easy fixes (Command Ship Inspiration is an example) but each significant win now is going to be harder and harder to come by. However, instead of using this opportunity to show how they value us, their only revenue source, they have treated us poorly. They expect us to endure a defective product that many of us paid for with the expectation of it performing at a standard that is far from being achieved. Instead, their production schedule which is obviously tied to their revenue plans continues to go full steam ahead. They are adding more to a system that already can’t handle it instead of putting any additional enhancements on hold, coping the financial impost this year but getting the game back up to standard and recovering the profit over one or two future years.
Frankly, I would more than accept not getting a new fleet holding in exchange for a lag free and stable system. That will keep my wallet open but as of now I am joining what many others have already done and close it until I feel valued enough again to open it. Furthermore, my answer in the positive to the countless times I get asked if a Lifetime/Gold subscription is worth it will cease and in fact, will be warned against investing.
Then we have the lack of any sort of quality control in their production gate system. Although I am tempted to criticise some of their coding team, I won’t because I don’t know enough of the facts. However, this is an inescapable fact. See image:
This is the result of the new science consoles from the Research Lab fleet holding. In my opinion, having this end up in the Tribble/Beta shard is questionable at best because I believe it should have been caught at the Alpha stage on their build shard. But, for this to make it onto the Live shard suggests either very poor senior Dev oversight, flawed QA and/or UAT processes, a system architecture knowledge deficit at the coders level and the list can go on. Heck, it could be all of the above. If this was an isolated or infrequent incident, I wouldn’t even mention it but their rapid release of new content has allowed seeing something that apparently has been par for the course albeit over a longer period of time with wider content release gaps. This particular bug had a chance of severely disrupting this game. If it wasn’t for me and the other DPS admins and moderators (from DPS-10,000 to DPS-75,000 channel) who immediately emailed Borticus at midnight on a Sunday night it might not have been caught before this week’s patch and there would have been hundreds or even thousands of players receiving AFK/Leaver penalties due to 1 or 2 players in the team who can shoot down a shield gateway in 4 shots or some other example like that. There are those who believe that Cryptic did know about it 3 weeks ago from people’s experience on the Tribble shard. If that turns out to be the case, that makes this issue even more serious.
The other thing that makes me feel less valued as a customer is their lack of communication and false and misleading official game issues. The list of bugs as per the last set of release notes dated 24th July reads as:
Known Issues:
Some players are not able to reclaim the Breen Chel Grett and the Dyson Science Destroyer.
The Vault Shuttle Event is not available.
The trait “Salvage Specialist” does not work for Bridge Officers.
Personally, I find this level of communication on the issues of the game insulting. Communication on positive aspects of the game as well as the negative is valued by the playing community. Although we would prefer everything to be working, it shows us that you have it on the radar AND that you are being transparent with us. You should see how long the list of "Outstanding Issues" I've compiled and it has nothing to do with uniform clipping. If they are trying to hide the issues of the game or those who haven’t played it yet and are visiting the forums, it doesn’t take too many mouse clicks for people to see what’s going on and this would reflect poorly on Cryptic.
Will all this stop me from logging into Star Trek Online? Absolutely not. The friendships I’ve made are too important to me to lose but will I care about anything new they release that I can’t get with forking over money for zen? Not in the slightest. If a new ship or ability is worth it, I will save up the dilithium to convert back to zen or Energy Credits to spend on the Exchange to secure it.
In closing, I’m not writing this as a rally cry to members to boycott Cryptic and follow my example. I am simply expressing my opinion and will continue to do so on the STO forums as well as Reddit forums and other MMO forums, in the various communities I am in, on Social Media and as co-host on The SHOW. You guys make whatever decision you want but ask yourself this question first, “Does this company truly deserve my hard earned cash when they won’t even guarantee any level of acceptable service or don’t make me feel valued in any way, shape or form?” I can’t imagine anyone saying yes to that question although I know there will be those out there that say they don’t care and that’s fine and dandy. After reading this wall of text, you now know that I am someone who is saying they don’t deserve anymore of m y money and I care that I don’t feel like a valued customer despite my lifetime subscription purchase.
Thank you for your time and I welcome and constructive comments the playing community and Cryptic may have on anything that I have said.
Snipey47a
A concerned STO Lifetime Subscriber.
I would like to put forth my thanks to you for reading of what can only be described as a massive wall of text. I make no apologies for this as I will explain my convictions in a moment but as first order of business I feel it is important to show that I am not delusional enough to think that the majority of people who will choose to read this will know who I am. Some people will know me well, another small section will know me as one of the co-hosts of The SHOW by Odenknight and there will be those who have seen some of my ramblings on the STO forums. However, the vast majority will have no idea who I am. Therefore, please excuse my conceit and allow me to devote one or two paragraphs to introduce myself.
My in-game @ handle is Snipey47a and I reside in one of the capital cities of Australia. I’m in my mid-30s and enjoy a highly successful career in the management team of Sales & Marketing for a large multi-national company. I have been playing Star Trek Online since October 2013 (1 month prior to the Dyson Sphere reputation release) and over that time it has become a very large part of my life. I have been a Star Trek fan for as long as I can remember being first introduced to it when Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home was released to VHS and I was still under 10 years of age. Since then I have pretty much absorbed all things Star Trek with the exception of about half of the DS9 series due to the love/hate relationship I had (and still have) with Captain Benjamin Sisko.
Although I have been an off & on gamer for many years, it was in the console world and involved much less than 50% of online play. That means that STO is my first MMO and first truly online gaming experience. We all have reasons why we chose to immerse ourselves in this type of entertainment and I’m sure they are very wide and varied but they are all personal to ourselves. Some who I have chosen to confide with know what brought to STO. I state this not to suggest I’m different but more so to acknowledge that we all have reasons but despite whatever brought us here there are many who have a passion for STO and have come to love it. We all cherish many of those whom we cross paths with in the STO Universe.
Please consider this as the fuel that provides me with the energy to write to not only the playing community, but also to Cryptic/Perfect World Entertainment because those two separate entities are both side of the same coin – what one does affects the other. It’s an inescapable truth and probably not as respected as it should be from either side.
Anyway, onto why I am writing this…..
I know that I have been the source of silly videos, rambling posts and a heap of in-game discussion regarding the state of the game. I don’t regret this because at the time it served to vent frustration although, I did realise it would not add any real substance to what is a very serious situation for both the business who owns the game and the customers who pay (in either time or with real world money) to use the service that they offer.
I would also like to acknowledge the Cryptic/Perfect World Entertainment IS a business and that they solely exist to make a profit and as much profit as they can produce – the core definition of any business. A business typically works to annual budgeting plans that intricately plot their costs and revenue for a specific financial year. The companies that are better at making profit are the ones who have a strong philosophy of who they are, the service they offer and how they go about offering that service.
Every company will say they have a philosophy but it is a sad fact that for many their only focus is how they are tracking Year to Date (YTD) & Year On Year (YoY) based on their annual budget plan and only dedicate real focus on achieving the plan for that year at the detriment of the following years. Working in the field that I do, I know that this is a viscous cycle that many companies struggle to get out of and often get left behind. The American car company General Motors immediately comes to my mind when I ponder this.
The highly successful companies are the ones that not only look at the annual budget but also consider how decisions made this year, will affect the years to come and it is all based on their core philosophy and sticking to that philosophy even if it costs the business in the short term. These highly successful companies truly value their revenue source (customers) not just say they do and a part of their strategy is engaging with their customers making them advocates for the brand. Advocates for the brand boost the profit of that company because the equation for the customer becomes slightly less financial and more emotional.
The two companies I know well and come to mind immediately are Toyota & Apple. Regarding Toyota, those who work or have worked with a Japanese company know how much focus goes into the annual financial plan and how closely budgets are watched by senior management, but Toyota were different and worked a plan that went beyond the yearly profit plan. In the early 1990s, they aspired to enter the luxury car arena using the US as the development benchmark and LEXUS was born. Today Lexus is a premium luxury car brand yet many don’t know that Lexus stands for Limited Edition eXport to the United States. It was an internal company product engineering code to put more sound deadening and equipment into a Toyota Camry and sell it for double the price in the United States. Even today’s Lexus models are basic Toyota production cars enhanced with the tinsel of luxury and although over the years the engineering differences have set them further apart from the standard Toyota line-up, essentially people are paying (at least in my country) $100,000 for a $40,000 Camry.
I could spend an hour explaining how they achieved this but essentially the customer was always put, or made like they were put first. They engaged with their revenue source instead of dictating and they made business decisions which in the isolation of a single financial year would look crazy but over a decade are considered genius in the business world. So today for many of us, Lexus is an aspirational brand with a loyal customer base.
So, what does all this have to do with Star Trek Online? Well…
Today (28th July 2015) is the 183rd day for what the many of us to consider to be the exposure of some serious flaws in the product offered to us, the playing community (their revenue source), that is called Star Trek Online. In reality, it is the 287th for me and some others (Delta Rising release) and recent revelations from Salami_Inferno about the latency issues caused by Attack Pattern Beta suggest that it is even longer and possibly even as far back as day number one.
What I am talking about here is a computer gaming environment that is offered and/or has been sold to customers that cannot handle what it was recently turned into. We can all speculate and throw stones as to the reasons but at this point the reasons are somewhat irrelevant. The fact of the matter is that company’s core philosophy of which their Terms of Service (http://www.arcgames.com/en/about/terms) can be included when evaluating said philosophy are very disturbing and in my experience is a model of the company that is stuck in a previous generation. It is companies like this that haven’t realised the power is now with the customer and not the corporation due to the advent of social media and the strength of word of mouth to name only a couple of examples.
Specifically I draw your attention to Section 29.1(a) which states:
(a) THE SERVICE, THE GAMES, THE WEBSITE AND ALL MATERIALS CONTAINED THEREIN ARE PROVIDED ON AN “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE” BASIS WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. PWE AND ITS SUBSIDIARIES, AFFILIATES, OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES, AGENTS, PARTNERS AND LICENSORS DISCLAIM ALL OTHER WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, PERFORMANCE OR SUITABILITY FOR YOUR INTENDED USE, TITLE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT AS TO THE SERVICE, THE GAME AND THE WEBSITE, INCLUDING ALL INFORMATION, CONTENT AND MATERIALS CONTAINED THEREIN. WITHOUT LIMITING THE FOREGOING, PWE DOES NOT REPRESENT OR WARRANT THAT THE SERVICE, THE GAMES, THE WEBSITE OR THE MATERIALS CONTAINED THEREIN ARE ACCURATE, COMPLETE, RELIABLE, AVAILABLE, CURRENT OR ERROR-FREE. PWE ALSO DOES NOT REPRESENT OR WARRANT THAT THE GAMES, THE WEBSITE OR ITS SERVERS ARE FREE OF VIRUSES, BUGS, ERRORS OR OTHER HARMFUL COMPONENTS OR DEFECTS, TRANSMIT DATA IN A SECURE MANNER, OR FUNCTION PROPERLY WITH THE SERVICE.
Next, I draw your attention to section 30.1
IN NO EVENT SHALL WE, PWE, ITS DIRECTORS, MEMBERS, AFFILIATES, SUBSIDIARIES, EMPLOYEES OR AGENTS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, SPECIAL, INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, OR ANY OTHER DAMAGES OF ANY KIND, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF USE, LOSS OF PROFITS OR LOSS OF DATA, WHETHER IN AN ACTION IN CONTRACT, TORT (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO NEGLIGENCE) OR OTHERWISE, ARISING OUT OF OR IN ANY WAY CONNECTED WITH THE USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE THE WEBSITE, THE SERVICE, THE GAMES OR ANY OF THE CONTENT OR THE MATERIALS CONTAINED IN OR ACCESSED THROUGH THE WEBSITE OR THE SERVICE, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION ANY DAMAGES CASED BY OR RESULTING FROM RELIANCE BY USER ON ANY INFORMATION OBTAINED FROM US OR PWE, OR THAT RESULT FROM MISTAKES, OMISSIONS, INTERRUPTIONS, DELETION OF FILES OR EMAIL, ERRORS, DEFECTS, VIRUSES, DELAYS IN OPERATION OR TRANSMISSION OR ANY FAILURE OF PERFORMANCE, WHETHER OR NOT RESULTING FROM ACTS OF GOD, COMMUNICATIONS FAILURE, THEFT, DESTRUCTION OR UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS TO PWE’S RECORDS, PROGRAMS OR SERVICES.
To summarise, they believe they are not breaching any consumer laws by saying if the Performance of the games isn’t good enough, they don’t really have to do anything to remedy it and aren’t liable to compensate for the faulty product to a player who has purchased a lifetime subscription or other financial transaction on an in-game product that was sold under false pretenses.
I am not familiar with the US consumer laws but I do know that despite them stating all that, what they are offering is illegal in Australia to those who have paid a lifetime subscription to the game. This has been in our consumer laws since 01/01/2011.
However, it took over 100 days for Cryptic to even acknowledge the game has problems and while there had been a small placating of the community by Developer acknowledgement with the promise of action it is clear that the annual budget plan of PWE is paramount. They may be fixing latency issues here and there but they are continually adding new abilities. This possibly guarantees achievement this financial year but puts at risk 2016/2017 and more so 2017/2018.
It is clear from Developer contact with the community that sins in coding of the past combined with the additional load put on the system since Delta Rising has caught up to Cryptic in a very big way and it is in moments like this that one can truly evaluate just who and what the company is and whether they genuinely care about the services they offer and how they truly see their customers.
I am not saying there isn’t passionate people who work for Cryptic – Trendy, Borticus & Salami (to name a few that I have had personal contact with) are clearly passionate about what they do and care about what they provide us but they are severely being let down by those at the wheel of the ship.
If we are honest, while the system latency issues have improved because of the addressing of some easy fixes (Command Ship Inspiration is an example) but each significant win now is going to be harder and harder to come by. However, instead of using this opportunity to show how they value us, their only revenue source, they have treated us poorly. They expect us to endure a defective product that many of us paid for with the expectation of it performing at a standard that is far from being achieved. Instead, their production schedule which is obviously tied to their revenue plans continues to go full steam ahead. They are adding more to a system that already can’t handle it instead of putting any additional enhancements on hold, coping the financial impost this year but getting the game back up to standard and recovering the profit over one or two future years.
Frankly, I would more than accept not getting a new fleet holding in exchange for a lag free and stable system. That will keep my wallet open but as of now I am joining what many others have already done and close it until I feel valued enough again to open it. Furthermore, my answer in the positive to the countless times I get asked if a Lifetime/Gold subscription is worth it will cease and in fact, will be warned against investing.
Then we have the lack of any sort of quality control in their production gate system. Although I am tempted to criticise some of their coding team, I won’t because I don’t know enough of the facts. However, this is an inescapable fact. See image:
This is the result of the new science consoles from the Research Lab fleet holding. In my opinion, having this end up in the Tribble/Beta shard is questionable at best because I believe it should have been caught at the Alpha stage on their build shard. But, for this to make it onto the Live shard suggests either very poor senior Dev oversight, flawed QA and/or UAT processes, a system architecture knowledge deficit at the coders level and the list can go on. Heck, it could be all of the above. If this was an isolated or infrequent incident, I wouldn’t even mention it but their rapid release of new content has allowed seeing something that apparently has been par for the course albeit over a longer period of time with wider content release gaps. This particular bug had a chance of severely disrupting this game. If it wasn’t for me and the other DPS admins and moderators (from DPS-10,000 to DPS-75,000 channel) who immediately emailed Borticus at midnight on a Sunday night it might not have been caught before this week’s patch and there would have been hundreds or even thousands of players receiving AFK/Leaver penalties due to 1 or 2 players in the team who can shoot down a shield gateway in 4 shots or some other example like that. There are those who believe that Cryptic did know about it 3 weeks ago from people’s experience on the Tribble shard. If that turns out to be the case, that makes this issue even more serious.
The other thing that makes me feel less valued as a customer is their lack of communication and false and misleading official game issues. The list of bugs as per the last set of release notes dated 24th July reads as:
Known Issues:
Some players are not able to reclaim the Breen Chel Grett and the Dyson Science Destroyer.
The Vault Shuttle Event is not available.
The trait “Salvage Specialist” does not work for Bridge Officers.
Personally, I find this level of communication on the issues of the game insulting. Communication on positive aspects of the game as well as the negative is valued by the playing community. Although we would prefer everything to be working, it shows us that you have it on the radar AND that you are being transparent with us. You should see how long the list of "Outstanding Issues" I've compiled and it has nothing to do with uniform clipping. If they are trying to hide the issues of the game or those who haven’t played it yet and are visiting the forums, it doesn’t take too many mouse clicks for people to see what’s going on and this would reflect poorly on Cryptic.
Will all this stop me from logging into Star Trek Online? Absolutely not. The friendships I’ve made are too important to me to lose but will I care about anything new they release that I can’t get with forking over money for zen? Not in the slightest. If a new ship or ability is worth it, I will save up the dilithium to convert back to zen or Energy Credits to spend on the Exchange to secure it.
In closing, I’m not writing this as a rally cry to members to boycott Cryptic and follow my example. I am simply expressing my opinion and will continue to do so on the STO forums as well as Reddit forums and other MMO forums, in the various communities I am in, on Social Media and as co-host on The SHOW. You guys make whatever decision you want but ask yourself this question first, “Does this company truly deserve my hard earned cash when they won’t even guarantee any level of acceptable service or don’t make me feel valued in any way, shape or form?” I can’t imagine anyone saying yes to that question although I know there will be those out there that say they don’t care and that’s fine and dandy. After reading this wall of text, you now know that I am someone who is saying they don’t deserve anymore of m y money and I care that I don’t feel like a valued customer despite my lifetime subscription purchase.
Thank you for your time and I welcome and constructive comments the playing community and Cryptic may have on anything that I have said.
Snipey47a
A concerned STO Lifetime Subscriber.
0
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
I just wonder if anybody (who could actually do something) will really be listening.
I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born!
Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
When I told my friend about STO he was hooked when he heard the name but within the first few missions he got stuck in a door, was annoyed by the silly ground AI and shocked by all the little things that seemed to be kinda broken (like opening his overflow worked only after closing the client and reopening it and it contained his new shiny ship!).
I've accustomed myself to the - sometimes - apparent b-movie style of this game but I also had a good laugh that some of the bugs I've seen at release are still there.
Then again, most of these bugs are not the end of the world.
The good news is that I think they killed off a lot of whales with DR, and we know whales are very important to keep around. They've been catering pretty hard to dps guys, because that's where the money is at. Y'all might have enough influence to encourage more dialogue.
Story appears to be receiving too much money and unneeded vocal talent to fill out a vision that I and my wallet don't share. And it's being done at the cost of stability, good diversity, and playability.
They need more player input. Especially from guys that are here every day. The lack of QA (and that's top to bottom devs and testers) shows that on a personal and/or professional level, there is not enough incentive to get it right.
so much more to say
I have to agree.
I'm really put off by how completely 'hands off' Cryptic is with any facet of this game that isn't designed to generate revenue directly. For example, we have a console in the game that lets players do literally millions of points of damage, it's so bad that they can one shot a creature designed to take on a team of 10 players.. and this gets through testing? It's hard to believe anything was tested at all. The game is completely unmoderated, all zone chat is full of the most unreal hateful dialogue you can imagine. Reporting does nothing, no one cares. No one tests anything, no one runs or maintains the game..
But we get new ship releases like clockwork!
There might be a ton of game breaking bugs, but fear not because we're getting ships left and right. It really gives the impression that they are just trying to squeeze those last few pennies from this game before they finally abandon it completely.
What is sad is that they could be so much more profitable if they improved things but what is going reeks of budget going into tinsel rather than substance or foundation.
Was a long read, but well worth it. I think that most of the people that are frustrated with the state of the game let themselves get too emotional. That leads to posts that get misconstrued as doom and gloom. If players play this game and take the time to post on the forums they either love star trek, this game, or both.
They obviously don't listen to us and only care about new customer acquisition for revenue generation rather than the older player base that statistically should be more profitable for them since they already have us.
I think the other issue is that since we only talk about it in here that it is contained in here. This isn't the case as my post has gone onto Reddit and several other MMORPG websites as well as Facebook, Twitter and when I get around to it other social media also.
It is getting old that we constantly are getting kicked from the game,rubber banding,setting off the wrong projects in R&D because the school tabs don't switch when clicked,failed map transfers,broken pvp,also the super horrible lagging in missions to the point of being unplayable, etc.
Tons of us players like Star Trek and this game and keep playing because there is no alternative Star Trek MMO. I could see a huge chunk of players walking away from the game no matter how many years they have played and money spent if a better Trek game came out.
We just want it fixed so we can enjoy the game the way it was meant to be.
Fleet Admiral GRIZZ
U.S.S. Chicago NCC 1833-C
Sector 31 ANTKB
ANTKB Gaming Community
In addition, many corporations are structured so that the people at the top know about business and profit in general, and the people at the bottom know about this business specifically (and how to take care of its customers). Unfortunately, the people at the top do not listen to, nor trust, the people at the bottom. This is corporate life with an ongoing service.
Are there exceptions? Certainly. But I can assure you that any publicly-traded company that has a reputation of putting customers first is spinning that reputation into furtherance of profit. Your example of GM vs. Toyota is perfect, because at some point in the last decade, upper management at Toyota was tired of being the second largest car manufacturer in the world, so they intentionally took some cues from the largest manufacturer: GM. What happened after that resulted in my car being recalled about five times. Quality suffered for the sake of growth. Ka-Boom.
But one thing is for sure. STO’s space combat has reached a point for me to be not playable anymore with massive efforts I put into my builds all wasted.
For the time being ground remains somewhat doable but gets boring rather quickly.
Peeps are turning their back on the game right and left of me almost every week. I can’t blame them. I really hope Cryptic wakes up on this and acts soon.
The game experience I got the past months and especially weeks have me lost my interest in buying pixel starships so I may sit back and watch for a while longer. It is simply sad.
Anyway, good letter snipey.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
It is difficult to listen to this "community" when every thread that does have an actual value and describes a real issue flat out drowns between gems like "there are millions of epileptics waiting to die thanks to cryptics reckless new fx! REMOVE NAO! STAHP TEH GENOZAID!" and all the other baseless whining and complaining. It just drowns out.
Edit: sorry for the mobile version; I'm posting this from my phone.
no Thought goes into "will this work for the lower spec players " it seems .What they need is more robust systems team to really get the game to "work as intended" rather than "sometimes works well depending on your setup"
Other than that, a statement like that was long overdue.
I believe this is standard legal boilerplate that companies include in contracts to cover their derrieres in all conceivable circumstances regardless of whether or not it will stand up in court. If you strip out the legal verbiage, most of these contracts basically say, "We can do whatever we want, we don't owe you anything, and you can't sue us." If one clause is struck down in court, they'll find another clause that says, "We can do whatever we want, we don't owe you anything, and you can't sue us."
I have long complained about the lack of quality control at Cryptic, and I'm not the only one. From what I can see, they do not allocate enough time to finish all the work they plan for each release. As a result, people rush their work and turn it in without properly reviewing or testing it. The result is more bugs than QA can possibly catch before release. (Crypticfrost once said that the STO QA team consists of only five people.) Even if you supplement QA with player testing, they don't have enough time to fix all the bugs that players report. Thus, Cryptic has two choices: delay the release until they fix the bugs or let the bugs go live and hope that players don't complain too much. It's clear from release after release that they choose the latter.
I have never understood the purpose of that list. It's not a list of the most serious bugs, and it's not a list of the bugs that they plan to fix soon. Minor bugs have been included in the list when there were more serious bugs that they clearly knew about. And some bugs have remained on that list for months. I can discern no principle behind how they choose which bugs to include in the list of "known issues".
Essentially it's that but it's well worded enough to serve as a general community statement, so well done
I feel the biggest problem of all is that Cryptic basically completely ended most efforts to communicate with the playerbase directly. It is odd that some things that are clearly not working as intented make it to the live server despite player feedback, but maybe we could understand it better if there was some communication explaining that things are tough right or, basically anything.
But the communication ceased because people on the forums gave too much flak and it seems that the devs, in addition to very restrictive NDA-policies since PWE took over, just decided that they get flak whatever they do, so they don't go through the trouble of communicating.
While I can understand that a human being doesn't want to listen to harsh critique all the time and while it is obvious that some members of the community really lost track of reality and word their critique in an immature and inexcusable way, I still feel retreating behind a wall of silence does cause more damage than it does help. After all, there are always members not knowing how to behave. This is inherent to a public community and this shouldn't be a reason to discontinue the good dev-player relation. Also, as game developers and artists, critique is part of the business. You cannot and you shouldn't try to please everybody but you also shouldn't tear everything down because some people annoy you.
I think if players continue to feel "ignored" and feel alienated fromt he studio that, once upon a time, really gave the impression of player inclusion and active communication some individuals will also continue to roughen their tone and feel "desperate" about the state of the game.
In the end, all the people on the forums are here because they still like the game. Otherwise they just would leave. And I know I criticize a lot, but I am still here and I still like the game enough to care about it's development.
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Just one thing I want to grab up as there was right yesterday on sto reddit an article about games QA linked (http://www.reddit.com/r/sto/comments/3etw1l/a_bit_offtopic_but_heres_a_good_article_on_how_qa/).
Let me fix that for you:
Its a general misconception to expect QA/testing to increase quality. They dont, they cant. They can find your bugs and bottlenecks but they cant fix them.
The reports go back to the devs and their manager has the choice between finishing the all new Akira (which will generate some money) or fixing some consoles (which cant be sold at all). The results of that decision are laid out in your article already.
This isn't a criticism really, but gamers in general see their games with rose tinted glasses. We do have a habit of investing emotionally into our games since to us they are more than merely animated pixels jumping around a screen. It depends on the gamer of course, and to a degree the game in question, it can be anything from a harmless casual hobby to a lifestyle or artistic expression.
I believe however that major gaming publishers, those that lead the market, think very differently.
They are like Hollywood or major pop record labels. They aren't interested in innovation or creativity. They are interested in making a consumable product to be sold. Hence these games are shallow experiences, all style and no substance. They sink their effort into the advertising campaigns and build up the hype as much as they can. Once it's out of the door it's already forgotten, the next even better sequel is being worked on ready for when everyone is bored of the current titles.
Alpha access and pre-orders? Expansions and DLC? The seemingly accepted practice of releasing games in broken or buggy states? Even kickstarter or crowdfunding. I hate all of these practices honestly because they don't even need to offer a finished product anymore. Apparently we are happy to pay for whatever scraps they can waggle in front of our noses.
It won't change until everyone decides to take those glasses off.
Agile Scrum principles say the idea number of developers on a team is between 4 and 7. (QA counts as developers under Agile.) A great deal of back-end testing should be done by automation rather than humans; five seems about right for checking the UI. Nothing to see here--move along.
Well, you're welcome to your opinion, but let's have some numbers. How many times have you seen this sort of thing? Once is an event, twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern--and so far, you've shown me one incident.
I've been on development teams (not at Cryptic, mind you) since 1986, and I've been overseeing a development team for the last 10 years. The core product has code that goes back to 2002, and believe me, there are still some bugs lurking in there. (They're generally masked by scenario-specific code that isn't buggy--but once in awhile in edge or corner cases a fallback to the base class code will highlight a defect. I usually walk the code base every year looking for these defects, but fixing them is costly because of the amount of regression testing that's required to prove them out.) I don't know how much programming the OP does, but if the OP has more than five years experience then the issues should be obvious. For those of you that don't write code, let me help by stating some principles.
Point: Any code base older than six years should be rewritten from the bottom up.
Counterpoint: A complete re-write almost always costs more than the benefit to be gained. At the very least it's a tough sell to management. It gets even tougher if the company has stock holders. Cryptic probably doesn't have an R&D budget, and it's difficult (read: "nigh impossible") in a free-to-play environment to come up with the capital to do a rewrite.
Point: The more modifications are made to a code base, the faster it ages. Sometimes you only get three years before it's time to start over.
Counterpoint: None--that's the biz. It doesn't matter how well the original code was designed--subsequent demand for upgrades and amendments will cause the design to be bent. "Future-proof" is a marketing term with very little basis in physical reality. No matter how much one tried to decouple elements of the design from other elements, over time dependencies evolve. The more pressure there is on the delivery, the more likely it is to happen. Once it happens, it's tough to reverse.
Point: The older and more modified a code base is, the more bug fixes tend to cause other bugs. As Dr. Banzai once remarked to Dr. Zweibel: "No, no, no, don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to." It becomes a feedback loop. Sometimes it's just better to leave well enough alone.
Counterpoint: None--that's the biz.
Now, some points having nothing to do with programming.
Point: you've misinterpreted the word "performance." In that context, it doesn't mean "does it go 'zoom zoom,'" it means "does the solution perform its intended function," which it does (it's an online, multi-player game painted to look like Star Trek). You agreed, explicitly and implicitly, to the Terms of Service when you joined the game. No doubt there's some Australian consumer law written that protects you from abdicating what you perceive as rights in a contract--but I think I'd reread that law before I went about making blanket statements.
Counterpoint: write one.
Point: you bought a license to use a service. You didn't buy a product. STO isn't a tangible thing, and you have no rights of ownership any more than you would if you leased one of those Lexus automobiles you mentioned. Do those consumer protection laws you mentioned treat services differently from products? Again, I think I'd reread that law before I went about making blanket statements.
Counterpoint: write one.
Point: At least under the jurisprudence of the United States of America, one has to be able to show actual damages in order to make a claim. It's a great stretch of the imagination to believe that you could in any way show damages from any defect in the game. No blood means no foul, I'm afraid. You pays your money and you takes your chances, as has been said.
Counterpoint: write one.
I hold an STO lifetime sub going back to day one. At no point have I ever thought I wasn't getting my money's worth. While I run into a few head-scratchers once in awhile, there's nothing in the game that I see on a daily basis that tells me the STO code base is any worse off than any other code base of its age. (And believe me, I've seen worse--lots worse. I've seen code from long-time professionals [again, outside of STO and Cryptic, whose code I have never seen] that made me question whether they'd ever had any proper education in programming at all.) Yes, there are days when I think I'd like to sell my services in a consulting role to Cryptic, just to get fresh eyes on the code base and maybe root out a few unfortunate dependencies, but I thought the same thing about City of Heroes and any number of other games. (I wrote some commercially-available games in the 1990s. I have some idea what this is like.)
That you found a defect on a beta server doesn't shock me. That's the point of beta servers. You can rant all you like about how it ought to have been caught on the build/alpha server, but even with automated testing there's no convergence on a bug-free outcome. One writes a test to validate the code, but what or who validates that test? And what or who validates the validation of that test? (It's a very real problem, and one that's been studied for over forty years now. Fred L. Brooks published "The Mythical Man-Month," a book about software engineering, in 1975, the same year I first set fingers to keyboard to write programs. He addressed that problem and lots of others--and we still have them. Agile Scrum tries to mitigate them, but reality is tough.) It's nice that you have an opinion, but unless you can show me at least five years--and more like ten years--experience with developing a large code base, I'm going to stick with mine. (Point of order: the bug was found and they're likely fixing it as I write this.)
No, STO isn't perfect. It's never going to be perfect. (There is no single definition of "perfect.") Would we like fewer bugs? Yes. Would we like more content? Yes. Do bug fixes lead to customer retention? Maybe. Does more content lead to customer retention? Definitely. Which way would you vote? [Note to the correspondent in other postings who wrote "New ships aren't content:" yeah, they are. Get over it.]
There are very few companies in which ownership and management don't trump engineering. I fight that battle every day. I'm never going to win. I want to do more code reviews, but I'm told that the schedule and the budget don't support the level of review that I think would be best. That's how it goes. We do the best we can with what we have.
As for the "voice of the consumer," well, no. It's one thing when one talks about luxury car buyers, but completely different when one talks about gamers, particularly those in F2P games. What F2P gamers want is a clown and a pony at the party, and two cakes. And they want every day to be their birthday. Beyond that, it's anarchy. It's not sustainable. Honestly, I pay it no heed, and I wouldn't even if I was running STO.
I just hope that someone at Cryptic (at PWE?) is listening and will do the game and its fans justice.
I do congratulate you on writing on this ongoing problem so clearly, but the fact is you're not the first to do so and you'll not be the last. The only reply players can give is: "you're right and I hope Cryptic is listening". The thing is they are not listening and nothing will change. In the years I've played this game things have gotten worse and nothing I see gives me hope that things will improve.
That is why I only barely play a few times per month.
What do you think about the widespread server lag ? Is it something which happens on other ftp MMOs ? Is it likely going to be fixed by Cryptic ? How long would it take in your opinion?
But players just proof month after month that they dont care about the quality of this game and a minimum bug fixing duty, so my advise is, without reading your post that either you stop playing for good.. or get used to see thousands of bugs everywhere that you know they will probably never fixed. Get used to low performance in some maps no matter what pc you using (in some cases). Get used to incredible lag month after month and getting worst.
The lag is totally terrible. I am about to stop playing as well because it is stupid to play a game of this style with so much lag everywhere. Cant believe people "enjoy" trying to activate abilities when they go off when they try to avoid all the rubberbanding, cannons not firing, my torps going awl, and a huge etc. Well, players enjoy that, so welcome to the game, and sadly dont expect things to change.. ever (not until people realizes that if you keep giving em money nothing will change but why i even bother at this point lol).
Also dont try to compare cryptic/pwe with other videogames companies.. there is so much difference... specially in quality control. They have nothing in common with cryptic/pwe, unfortunately.