you can wish, but if it would be answered is a whole story.
Probably, but perhaps it will be answered by their next potential employers. Over-milking a golden Star Trek cow while letting it starve to death grads the current staff and especially the guys at the helm unique qualifications which will make them stand out in the next set of job interviews.
Viva Las Vegas!
Post edited by peterconnorfirst on
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
Probably, but perhaps it will be answered by their next potential employers. Over-milking a golden Star Trek cow while letting it starve to death grads the current staff and especially the guys at the helm unique qualifications which will make them stand out in the next set of job interviews.
Probably, but perhaps it will be answered by their next potential employers. Over-milking a golden Star Trek cow while letting it starve to death grads the current staff and especially the guys at the helm unique qualifications which will make them stand out in the next set of job interviews.
I have bad news for you: Santa isnt real...
Never stopped anybody from getting presents or going home empty handed.
Abandoning of upgrade timers, another rearrangement in pve fail conditions after 8 moths, the armada system, no more new spec trees to grind since march, aside from the 1k xp thingies no still no grand nerf of the doff system, Delta Recruitment?
True, those are only very small indicators but they at least show that some lessons can be thought around here and snipey's way is the only way we have besides going home.
Post edited by peterconnorfirst on
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
(...)but back to cryptic and this "letter"? you can wish, but if it would be answered is a whole story.
Again, familiarize yourself with the concept of an "open letter". Seriously. Those (usually) don't get answered and aren't expected to, they still fulfill their purpose.
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
Some great comments their guys. Thank you for dropping by
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.
Agreed, and snipey47a you wrote that very well. I'm heavily inclined to add my own thoughts to this. Before I do though, I do want to say that this'll be a small part of my frustrations as to write about all the problems, big and small, with STO would result in a report going into the hundreds of pages, especially if you added all the evidence to it, mathematical or otherwise.
I've been playing STO for a long time now, since before rep systems and if I'm remembering right before fleets had really happened. In that time I've tested nearly every release on tribble certainly from when reps were being tested, and frankly it has always been horrendous in terms of interaction with the devs. The rule of thumb has changed somewhat since Delta Rising was released, that being the original rule of thumb was that if the issue in question benefited the players it got sorted quick and anything else was left to add to the bug list.
Now it seems even that rule doesn't work any more, queue Dewagate (or whatever phrase floats your boat for that one), OP embassy and research lab consoles, the original stance on R&D progression projects and the empty queues just to name a few and that's alongside the usual issues that'll likely not receive any attention any time soon. Very recently we were told the QA team consisted of a mere 5 people (also I heard one of them left recently), which is utterly pathetic but it also seems odd that issues they want fixed urgently get done but the other issues take forever. I can't help but see it as an unwillingness to fix the games issues unless they hurt their profit revenues.
I can't in good faith do testing any more, and have actually removed tribble from my computer. Delta Rising was the last straw as far as that went, as I simply couldn't justify continuing to test when our issues with incoming content were either outright ignored, glossed over or acted on purely as a profit retention/greed exercise. It also prompted me to write a damning review of where this game was heading, and while I still play to be with friends I've made on here I've abandoned all but one character, simply because only one character is worth my time any more.
It doesn't surprise me mind, I had suspicions long ago about the health of this game in multiple ways, DR's announcement simply confirmed what a good number of people I knew in the game suspected, and the game has paid the price for it. I'd like to think things could change around here, but truthfully I doubt it. PWE has a terrible reputation in the wider gaming sphere, and STO is just proving to be another case study of why.
Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head. - Euripides
I no longer do any Bug Hunting work for Cryptic. I may resume if a serious attempt to fix the game is made.
It doesn't surprise me mind, I had suspicions long ago
I saw all this coming 3 years ago... every smart player by that time could clearly see the direction this game and cryptic was headed. In each aspect of the game. I started to see why they kept ignoring bugs, why they kept focusing only in releasing rushed broken content, and nothing else, why the kept doing event after event without non stop (to keep players happy) and a lot of things that obsessed players will never be aware off. 3 years ago, that was the time i closed my wallet and said, haha, i dont think so..
I really have a lot of experience with videogames, and STO is by far the most messed up product ive ever seen in all my life. A shame, because a ip like star trek doesnt deserve this. But again, CBS is the only guilty here. For allow a company like cryptic/pwe to take what an amazing videogame could have been, to a mediocre bugged and broken product that doesnt deserve to be called a star trek videogame. But it is too late for having hopes. Sadly. The game will continue as it is right now until it becomes completely unplayable or the playerbase starts to drop, this time significantly (moment that cryptic will take to announce the closure of the servers).
Without our continued support to Cryptic both by playing and paying, and without this feedback to truly let them know we value a service that has somewhat more acceptable standards of quality for as many people as possible, the state of this game would no doubt be much worse off than it is now.
Getting locked out of the game because of severe directX crashes, rubberbanding during special events, persistent lag in certain STFs that lasted for months (command ship abilities that trickled through every instance crippling server capacity), tray lag that's persisted and irritates every second of gameplay since day 1 of playing (one point five Years ago), random game crashes SNRs and disconnects, User Interface FPS lag, excessive use of polygons and graphics effects diminishing FPS some more (delta rising missions) are some of the most severe of problems that I'd assume get prioritized for fixes and improvements.
To those saying this is normal for an aging code, please remember there are other MMORPGs and other MMOs out there, and while I don't have time to be playing others, my experiences with a small handful of them has never been so punishing as Star Trek Online has from 2014 to present.
Ow, you are so confused..... support?? are you kidding me?? it is precisely because all the money whales and rich kids giving cryptic money for nothing we have a videogame in such a terrible state. Dont you realize that the "tactic" of cryptic is, only working in new rushed broken content ignoring everything else, so they can earn a lot of money with minimum effort??? some of you didnt learn anything in all these years LOL!!.
Feedback?? hahahaha we have been doing that for years...
The solution is simple. DONT BUY. If you think the game will colapse if nobody buys anything, so be it. I PREFER to stop playing this game and give another decent company the opportunity to make a decent star trek game instead seeing how this product is getting worst by each month.
If you want to show cryptic your complain about bugs, quality control and other matters, the only way to do it is NOT BUYING anything. A shame so many people still dont understand this, sigh.
You need to show that you dont care anymore about broken rushed content, but you are not willing to buy anything until they implement a minimum quality control and start fixing things. Thats the only way. If people keep buying stuff, nothing will ever change. But anyways its too late for that , so.
About other mmoprgs, yes, i played about a dozen of em (i still play a couple of em) and i never encountered a product in such a messy state. In my entire life, not in any single videogame. Not to mention the massive ignored lag that seems to be something players dont care about either.
It’s acknowledged by the community and if this horribly broken game collapses we can at least say we tried all we could to save it.
What the community thinks or care about doesnt mean anything to cryptic lol. The only thing that cryptic is going to pay attention is money. Nothing you say here or on a letter will change anything. We just write here because at least we can find other players that are willing to make some sacrifices (not buy anything) to make cryptic realize they are doing a terrible job since years ago. Players have been playing the game for more than 5 years and the behaviour of the community never changed in more than 3 years. Its always the same, people complaining about one thing or another, but in the moment cryptic launches another fancy event, or some shiny ships, everybody is happy and all the problems and bugs are forgotten. This is happening since years ago. I said it a lot of times, players in this game dont care about some things like quality , stability or other things. They demonstrated it through the years. And i saw it. You will see so many posts about people buying this, others buying lifetime subs and so on. Well, until that stops, nothing changes.
Don't be so sure that he hasn't backed his words by closing his wallet.
I did the same a little less than a year ago; until then, I'd been a supporter of the game. I initially stopped out of reservations about the T5U/T6 announcement before DR, and when I saw what DR was liked, that turned into a permanent halt. Other than grinding dilithium to Zen to get my DOFF slots up to a livable number on my Delta Recruit, I have even stopped putting my dilithium into the exchange so that I do not help Cryptic maintain the economy for other F2P players. My dilithium now either gets spent on myself without becoming Zen (and feeding other people's habits), or goes to my fleet.
That is also why I display "Proudly F2P" in my signature: until I see evidence of change, I will be a taker of resources instead of a provider of them. As far as I am concerned, especially after nerfing my Vesta pets indiscriminately in an attempt to "fix" the damage they did when they jacked up the NPC hitpoints (because they claimed they couldn't fix one without impacting the other--don't think I believe that), intentional freeloading is the way that I will restore my dollar per unit of fun time ratio to something equitable. Unless Cryptic fixes things significantly, they will have to continue to cover the costs of my resource usage without any help from me. They know how to get money from me again. They haven't done enough so far to satisfy my requirements.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-) Proudly F2P.Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
It doesn't surprise me mind, I had suspicions long ago
I saw all this coming 3 years ago... every smart player by that time could clearly see the direction this game and cryptic was headed. In each aspect of the game. I started to see why they kept ignoring bugs, why they kept focusing only in releasing rushed broken content, and nothing else, why the kept doing event after event without non stop (to keep players happy) and a lot of things that obsessed players will never be aware off. 3 years ago, that was the time i closed my wallet and said, haha, i dont think so..
I really have a lot of experience with videogames, and STO is by far the most messed up product ive ever seen in all my life. A shame, because a ip like star trek doesnt deserve this. But again, CBS is the only guilty here. For allow a company like cryptic/pwe to take what an amazing videogame could have been, to a mediocre bugged and broken product that doesnt deserve to be called a star trek videogame. But it is too late for having hopes. Sadly. The game will continue as it is right now until it becomes completely unplayable or the playerbase starts to drop, this time significantly (moment that cryptic will take to announce the closure of the servers).
I think it's a little unfair to say quite then, I mean LoR was a pretty decent update and that's when reps came out. Fleets in fairness were badly balanced in terms of population vs resource requirements, but granted after that it was downhill from there more or less in small but telling ways, which was kind of why DR wasn't much of a surprise in the end, though the severity of it was more than I'd have expected in a single jump like that, and in fairness to most the playerbase, they don't get immersed in the gritty side of things like we do and probably never saw it coming.
I can't agree CBS is the only guilty party though. PWE has a bad reputation for doing this kind of thing to games, and I wouldn't trust Geko or pwgloverclevland (or however its spelt) to do the right thing either. There are good devs at Cryptic and all but PWE owns Cryptic, and frankly its well known that any game PWE gets hold of in some way becomes a grind fest. Just look at the uproar when it sounded like PWE was going to acquire Warframe (pretty sure that's the one), their playerbase knew the consequences if that went ahead.
Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head. - Euripides
I no longer do any Bug Hunting work for Cryptic. I may resume if a serious attempt to fix the game is made.
Cryptic only answers to PWE in the way "we provide you a product that generates money" but it is in the hands of cryptic to make the produc as they want, as long it generates profits. And you can do that in a lot of ways.. but cryptic never even tried.
It’s acknowledged by the community and if this horribly broken game collapses we can at least say we tried all we could to save it.
What the community thinks or care about doesnt mean anything to cryptic lol. The only thing that cryptic is going to pay attention is money. Nothing you say here or on a letter will change anything. We just write here because at least we can find other players that are willing to make some sacrifices (not buy anything) to make cryptic realize they are doing a terrible job since years ago. Players have been playing the game for more than 5 years and the behaviour of the community never changed in more than 3 years. Its always the same, people complaining about one thing or another, but in the moment cryptic launches another fancy event, or some shiny ships, everybody is happy and all the problems and bugs are forgotten. This is happening since years ago. I said it a lot of times, players in this game dont care about some things like quality , stability or other things. They demonstrated it through the years. And i saw it. You will see so many posts about people buying this, others buying lifetime subs and so on. Well, until that stops, nothing changes.
PvP behavior has changed quite a bit in the three years since F2P popped. Of course, the statement made a while ago about PvPers and their overall economic contribution seems to be quite true...
The other behavior I tend to see (and actually follow myself quite often) is that when the game starts getting too boring/buggy, the part that seems to work the best - single player missions - is where I'm going to go and what I'm going to do.
If I'm not in the mood to take alt X through Cardie Arc round whatever, and I've already gotten my freebie event thingie of the event, not even a dilithium weekend on my week's vacation from work will pull me in and "make me play" over finally tackling a bunch of play on WWE 13 for the 360...
The thing is, there's way too many people like me. Play the game for the new SP stuff and when the mood strikes - ignore the rest. The "profit driving metrics" aka player counts, unique logins per week, etc. etc., aren't being "whacked enough" to drive someone into doing something else than what we got right now...
Now to digress onto the other issue in this thread - the code base itself. "Modern" code, at least as I was taught it when learning to code back in the late 80s, is supposed to be "object oriented" - aka extremely modular. The "main" program itself isn't supposed to do anything but call forth all sorts of functions that perform the dirty work - so if one function fails, that module gets replaced and the remainder of the program continues on...
Is our current combat calculations function (module) so overburdened by calculations (I can see the need to figure in 240 different calculations in a round easily - with but 5 cruisers... (8 weapons per, tripled via BFaW to 24, doubled again because of weapon base calculations and plasma-console generated DoTs to 48, actually applying the 5 players here = 240)
Is this too much for the engine to handle? Pets compounding the issue? Especially Elite Mesh Weavers? Can the code be optimized and/or broken down so that each of the 240+ calculations per combat are reduced to a much smaller handful of variables - and implemented via the replacement of a module or three?
Without in-depth knowledge of the Cryptic engine, I can't say whether I'm even barking up the right tree. However, there's more than one way to look at an "issue"...
Detecting big-time "anti-old-school" bias here. NX? Lobi. TOS/TMP Connie? Super-promotion-box. (aka the two hardest ways to get ships) Excelsior & all 3 TNG "big hero" ships? C-Store. Please Equalize...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
You don't need to know in-dept the cryptic engine or how the code itself is written, there is a universal rule about programming and it is, you cant work on lousy degraded bad written code over the years without cleaning it first, because things will get a thousand times worst over the years. That is the first rule. And the second universal rule is, you cant write broken and bad written code over bad-written code. That is even worst. And cryptic do that all the time, in almost everything they release in a rush.
And the terrible thing about this is, there is a moment you have so much bad written code that it is almost impossible to track and modify the necessary lines/routines to do it. Also because it is badwritten code and probably there will be no labels and commentaries anywhere in the code.. a complete mess.
And all of this applies to any languaje it doesnt matter if it is object oriented or not.
We will have new ships here, but they will have the masteries broken or something else. They probably will fix it the next week, but the problem is, they also need to fix more bugs from the previous week and the next week they will need to fix more bugs as well that they will "move" to the next patch.. and so on....
You CANT do that. And any single coder knows it. But it seems that in the cryptic programming department this is tabu.
(...) so yeah, this thread has lost its meaning now.
You have to familiarize yourself with the concept of an "open letter".
its a rant thread with elements of entitlement the rest is a wall of death text that makes no difference to the actual point. its no more important then your opinion or my opinion or anyone elses. it wont be acknowledged.
Actually... that's just it... the OP claims he wants to have a "serious discussion" but then starts throwing around hyperbole...
Now to digress onto the other issue in this thread - the code base itself. "Modern" code, at least as I was taught it when learning to code back in the late 80s, is supposed to be "object oriented" - aka extremely modular. The "main" program itself isn't supposed to do anything but call forth all sorts of functions that perform the dirty work - so if one function fails, that module gets replaced and the remainder of the program continues on...
Is our current combat calculations function (module) so overburdened by calculations (I can see the need to figure in 240 different calculations in a round easily - with but 5 cruisers... (8 weapons per, tripled via BFaW to 24, doubled again because of weapon base calculations and plasma-console generated DoTs to 48, actually applying the 5 players here = 240)
Is this too much for the engine to handle? Pets compounding the issue? Especially Elite Mesh Weavers? Can the code be optimized and/or broken down so that each of the 240+ calculations per combat are reduced to a much smaller handful of variables - and implemented via the replacement of a module or three?
Without in-depth knowledge of the Cryptic engine, I can't say whether I'm even barking up the right tree. However, there's more than one way to look at an "issue"...
My best guess, is that the issue they mentioned with powers causing lag is in many cases due to modules that call other modules. Sure it's not inherently a bad thing, but eventually it starts to eat up processor power like crazy.
It's also the sort of thing that in-house testing can't find, since it only happens when you have heavy combat.
@mattjohnsonva , Sadly, I would not be surprised if this is pretty close to the truth. Sometimes I get the impression--though I can't prove it--that our latest EP means well and tries to eke out what victories he can rather than just going along with the party line with no protest. But I think he is getting pinched from on high. If I saw one or two key terminations that are not him, I would feel a little more confident that maybe things can change, but it does make me wonder if there's some internal politics going on whereby he may not have as much pull as some of the more tenured members of the staff. Now, some staff, like tacofangs, can pull all they want and I'd be happy with that. (Especially if it eventually nets us a DS9 revamp. ) But there are a few where that isn't the case, unfortunately.
But it really concerns me when I see key members of the team find greener pastures. Thing is, in many companies with this kind of trouble, there's a significant part of the employee base that really wants to do a good job and cares about their work, no matter what kind of garbage they're being handed from above. These people tend to be smart, talented, and know that they can get a job elsewhere (and may even have been actively headhunted). But they also have to know that if they wait too long, their portfolios will be tainted in a sort of guilt by association, even if they did everything they could to change things on their own.
I have been in that situation myself, in a different industry, where I attempted to address some serious problems in my area with no top support from management, and sometimes outright destructive policies and actions from those above me. I managed some partial successes, but never had the chance to show my full potential, and I burned out. In the end I chose not only to leave, but to completely hide the fact that I was looking for a job until the instant I dropped my two weeks' notice on my boss's desk. (That and I don't believe in half-@ssing my job even when I hate it, and part of half-@ssing is coming to work with a visible bad attitude.) My boss never figured out I was looking for other work, which they almost always were able to tell with other employees, and it shocked the heck out of her when I gave notice. I knew very well that this would inconvenience my employer because I was in a key position, but I'd given them so much leeway and so many second chances that I was not prepared to allow another one to be abused.
And unfortunately, as that demonstrates, an employee who has truly had enough and has had their goodwill abused is not going to cut any slack, which means the departure will often be to maximum inconveniencing effect. Which, in a customer service job, means that the customer will suffer and the revenue will suffer, and it will just add to the death spiral the product is in.
While I hate to think about the real misery for those who will lose their jobs in the event of a closure, who don't deserve to be canned, in the end it is on the people above them to get their act together and it is their business failure and moral failure towards their own people that will cause all that misery. Not the customer.
If my read is correct, there are some good people trying to stave this off as long as possible. The modest improvements we have seen in customer responsiveness from Mr. Ricossa may have kicked the can down the road a bit. But, his job, and that of any employee who wants to do a good job, is getting harder and harder the more and more broken product is released.
Post edited by gulberat on
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-) Proudly F2P.Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
Without our continued support to Cryptic both by playing and paying, and without this feedback to truly let them know we value a service that has somewhat more acceptable standards of quality for as many people as possible, the state of this game would no doubt be much worse off than it is now.
Getting locked out of the game because of severe directX crashes, rubberbanding during special events, persistent lag in certain STFs that lasted for months (command ship abilities that trickled through every instance crippling server capacity), tray lag that's persisted and irritates every second of gameplay since day 1 of playing (one point five Years ago), random game crashes SNRs and disconnects, User Interface FPS lag, excessive use of polygons and graphics effects diminishing FPS some more (delta rising missions) are some of the most severe of problems that I'd assume get prioritized for fixes and improvements.
To those saying this is normal for an aging code, please remember there are other MMORPGs and other MMOs out there, and while I don't have time to be playing others, my experiences with a small handful of them has never been so punishing as Star Trek Online has from 2014 to present.
Ow, you are so confused..... support?? are you kidding me?? it is precisely because all the money whales and rich kids giving cryptic money for nothing we have a videogame in such a terrible state. Dont you realize that the "tactic" of cryptic is, only working in new rushed broken content ignoring everything else, so they can earn a lot of money with minimum effort??? some of you didnt learn anything in all these years LOL!!.
Feedback?? hahahaha we have been doing that for years...
The solution is simple. DONT BUY. If you think the game will colapse if nobody buys anything, so be it. I PREFER to stop playing this game and give another decent company the opportunity to make a decent star trek game instead seeing how this product is getting worst by each month.
If you want to show cryptic your complain about bugs, quality control and other matters, the only way to do it is NOT BUYING anything. A shame so many people still dont understand this, sigh.
You need to show that you dont care anymore about broken rushed content, but you are not willing to buy anything until they implement a minimum quality control and start fixing things. Thats the only way. If people keep buying stuff, nothing will ever change. But anyways its too late for that , so.
About other mmoprgs, yes, i played about a dozen of em (i still play a couple of em) and i never encountered a product in such a messy state. In my entire life, not in any single videogame. Not to mention the massive ignored lag that seems to be something players dont care about either.
I 200% agree with you. I noticed the downturn many years ago and when I mentioned it I was labeled a troll and favorly was suspended a few times. STO is simply rushed content for people who throw money at Cryptic ignoring the obvious problem with the game. Additionally, some people who play space barbie ignoring the game state or knowing how bad it is.
nice to meet you snipey , i agree with you about the low quality of this game and it's services , i cant give you a feedback , related to laws and economy . I am a architect , and i see the changing in bad with the new grafic content they release . Two years ago this game had nice graphics , nice ship models , nice interiors , all NORMAL nothing „ pimped”. But things got worse , they introduced in game cheap design with a bad quality , forced, rushed, with disrespect for art. There are a few exceptions but the ICONIANS are destroying any form of art and beauty . Anything related to iconians makes my eyes bleed.
Now related to PWE and their politics ... You actualy think they care about this game ? You think they are Star Trek fans ? Their purpose is to drain the money as much as possible , when its dried they will make another game and throw STO in shadow , like they did with other games. You see STO like a permanent business , they dont ... it their way ...
A lot of this stuff is pretty sad. I stopped playing at DR, the pattern was clear then, the direction, highly unlikely to be reversed, now all this time later I still check in, and I see not only has it continued but gotten far worse, logging in is a terrible experience.
Its funny seeing all the fanboys during DR turn into ranters now, as it was the fanboys pre-DR be the ranters after. The cycle will continue I guess.
The game is not going to get better, some people to get a dose of reality. I want it to come back too, but it won't.
PWE is like any faceless corporation, they set a % increase in revenue over the previous term. There is no reason, logic or thought into it, they just demand growth.
When STO went FTP they hit a formula that increased revenue greatly, this was a problem. Great for bonuses to execs, bad for long term stability. Instead of getting steady growth we got an explosion, then they demand growth based on that explosion, it wasn't realistic, they don't care that it wasn't. It'll be a write off soon, a cheap excuse for not meeting stock holder expectations.
When you understand how execs get their bonuses, and start to see who was incharge when STO was raking it in, and who bailed when stuff hit the fan, its easy to see the real cause. An EP focused on too much profit, nearly zero diversification of revenue, and ignoring ongoing issues years ago put you where you are today.
Log in numbers are showing a decline to record lows, maybe a sharp downturn would have had a chance to display proof of dislike of a particular change, but its been slow and steady. The fanbase has never been united, just a bunch of greedy grown up children that want everything their way. The downward trend will be blamed on someone, and the game be shoved onto maintenance mode, likely within a year.
It really is a shame, the game felt like home, other games don't.
nice to meet you snipey , i agree with you about the low quality of this game and it's services , i cant give you a feedback , related to laws and economy . I am a architect , and i see the changing in bad with the new grafic content they release . Two years ago this game had nice graphics , nice ship models , nice interiors , all NORMAL nothing „ pimped”. But things got worse , they introduced in game cheap design with a bad quality , forced, rushed, with disrespect for art. There are a few exceptions but the ICONIANS are destroying any form of art and beauty . Anything related to iconians makes my eyes bleed.
The only area related to the Iconians where I would agree with you is the Herald interiors. That yellow-purple scheme is eye-bleeding; had it been me, I would've stuck to a modified Solanae interior, which is much prettier and easier on the eyes. On that one area I agree. However, the rest I don't think is bad.
The only other major art misstep I can think of is Seven of Nine.
Otherwise, I think the art has been the one fairly consistent bright spot in the game.
As far as whether or not they care? My suspicion is some really do, but they are caught in a chokehold by upper management.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-) Proudly F2P.Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
Almost everything else I'd have to add would reflect my discontent with aspects of STO, which at its heart is a good game, and those specific issues could likely be gleaned from other posts I've bothered to make (Vanilla's "Arc or re-authenticate every damn time" thing has led to me disconnecting from the community to some extent, so I post less lately; "Customer Support Hell" was funny, though). What's left is a hope that things do improve, and that positive trends continue. The cross-faction packs, for example, have led me to get ships I might not have otherwise. I picked up the one where the KDF ship isn't missing capabilities due to lack of prior offerings, getting a Fed ship I would never have acquired otherwise, and I actually got the pack itself because it was a pack (otherwise, I don't know if I'd have gotten any of them individually).
There has been some good amongst the bad of late, and the reason I still check in is that I still hold out hope for improvement despite a growing sense of ennui.
With each passing day I wonder if I stepped into an alternate reality. The Cubs win the world series. Donald Trump is President. Britain leaves the EU. STO gets a dedicated PvP season. Engineers are "out of control" in STO.
First, I wouldn't characterize this as a rant thread. The OP was respectful and continues to be. He's a customer with complaints about the service and some constructive criticism telling them what they should do if they want his business. What's wrong with that?
I no longer kick money into this game month after month because of diminishing returns and because of some loose rules I've established for myself to get the most out of playing.
Freebies aren't free if they're tied to something I don't want to do.
I keep each character on the episode timeline and do not normally depart from it to play missions out of order. If that means some characters miss out on time-limited goodies, oh well. Awful missions in the progression that are not fun to play inhibit my desire to advance characters and thus to spend any money on said characters.
Each character can only really fly one ship at a time and realistically does not fly most of the ships in their slots with any regularity. Also, I can only use so many gimmick consoles at a time on each ship. So it's not worth it to buy every single ship that comes out... I only buy the ones I know I'm going to use and usually only when they're on sale.
If STO doesn't feel fun to play on any given day, there's always Minecraft, Netflix, or reading an eBook. If the game is too glitchy to play on any given day, there's always Minecraft, Netflix, or reading an eBook.
I practice Caveat Emptor. If Cryptic releases something to buy that turns out to be glitchy, I don't buy any more of that kind of thing until they fix that other thing I bought. I didn't buy any costume slots for a long time because of unusable slots on my KDF.
I think I'm more than reasonably patient with Cryptic and STO's flaws. I don't expect everybody else to be patient.
I get the realities of business and development cycles. I notice when Cryptic abuses them, and I notice when they make an effort to fix what they broke. I notice when they make changes based on player feedback, which is more often than they are sometimes given credit for but it tends to take a long time to come to fruit. My understanding of dev aside, I don't believe Cryptic does enough QA and don't always agree with their priorities. They have released shockingly buggy things on more than one occasion and they should be willing to endure some delay to get things right. They have done a few deplorable things over the years that I felt were not fair to their customers and over time they have made good on some of them. I may have forgiven, but I have not forgotten the good or the bad.
Someday I may get fed up with the service enough to stop playing altogether. That day is not today. But I'm watching closely to see what they do. I hope they take threads like this seriously enough to keep improving the product and increasing goodwill from their customers.
I'll admit I too am losing faith in Cryptic's ability to fix/prevent bugs. I'm still waiting for Deadly Intent to be fixed for the Adapted M.A.C.O. rifle, an issue that was verified and on the 'known issues' list for a while, but silently was removed after a few weeks with no fix...
I'm also somewhat disappointed with the 'alt unfriendliness' of the Spec system, but I've brought that issue up in a seperate thread.
Unlike the OP, I'm not going to write a book about all the issues/bugs/dispicableness in STO. I will, however, be taking more time and consideration as to whether or not I want to purchase the next new shiny that Cryptic releases in the C-Store.
I'm not going to stop playing STO or even discontinue making C-Store purchases, I'm just going to think about it more carefully.
I actually got disconnected this morning while replaying "Broken Circle", which actually surprised me since I typically have a ping time of 100-130 ms... I guess the server problems aren't fixed either.
nice to meet you snipey , i agree with you about the low quality of this game and it's services , i cant give you a feedback , related to laws and economy . I am a architect , and i see the changing in bad with the new grafic content they release . Two years ago this game had nice graphics , nice ship models , nice interiors , all NORMAL nothing „ pimped”. But things got worse , they introduced in game cheap design with a bad quality , forced, rushed, with disrespect for art. There are a few exceptions but the ICONIANS are destroying any form of art and beauty . Anything related to iconians makes my eyes bleed.
Now related to PWE and their politics ... You actualy think they care about this game ? You think they are Star Trek fans ? Their purpose is to drain the money as much as possible , when its dried they will make another game and throw STO in shadow , like they did with other games. You see STO like a permanent business , they dont ... it their way ...
Hi there,
I simply stated about my local laws for a point of interest only and what spurred me a little to write this. Cryptic/PWE isn't subject to my local laws anyhow.
For those who maybe interested in the other Known Issues I have been collecting. Here there are and if you have any extra please feel free to add it:
They aren’t even honest enough to tell us what is wrong with the game. Let me add a few more that I know off – I am calling this the Outstanding Issues List:
Severely degraded system performance which can be broken up into 2 distinct categories – processing load and graphics engine stalls
System Load:- When Buff/Debuff flags exceeds a total of 130 for all players/npcs latency increases significantly – 2 months ago this was 110 so there has been a slight improvement. Lag is particularly worse when a single team member in a team of 5 is using the Command Tree and/or Command bridge officer abilities
System Load: Reduced UI Tray polling change made recently see a large disparity between client countdown and server countdown
Numerous graphics engine (PhysX and Shader) errors and failures in all parts of the game
High amount of FPS stalls (as per fpsgraph) when using abilities such as Kemocite (I have a GTX 970 so it shouldn’t be a problem
Embassy Consoles with Plasma Explosion has a critical chance bug when using the Fire at Will ability OR they are not crit’ing with any other beam or cannon bridge officer ability. Not sure since Borticus only said “crit bug”. Damage is not reduced by distance unlike other energy attacks
The additional passive 10% Critical Severity on all Dual Heavy Cannons is deactivated when activating any Cannon bridge officer ability
Periodically, the extra shield penetration damage granted by Intense Focus is applied to you (Credit: Vel)
Category 2 Damage Buff granted by Tactical Fleet II & III is reduced by your own damage resist at the time of activation.
Super Weapon Ingenuity is handling Dual Beam Banks and Beam Arrays/Omni’s differently.
Accuracy Overflow not converting to critical chance/severity on the random targets of Fire at Will and Cannon Scatter Volleys
Torpedo Spread is guaranteed to hit your target even if that target moves out of weapons range even at 70km away (tested myself) – at this distance the graphic won’t hit you but you still register the damage
Pilot Team or Tactical Team does not counter Attack Pattern Lambda. Currently there is no counter for Attack Pattern Lambda. This is obviously a game balance issue.
Attack Pattern Lambda allows the detection of enemy players at distances of up to 26km even when Aux 2 Battery is active
Hanger pets will detect and target when a cloaked target is within the carriers weapon range enabling you to be detected despite high aux and stealth stats
Amazingly, it is possible for a single player to have 42 seconds of immunity every 60 seconds. This is only possible with Pilot ships
The overthrottle used when performing a Rock n Roll when Hold Together is active results in a 100% hull heal
No additional drain when being affected by two Aceton assimilators instead of one
Tholian Thermionic Torpedo does not reliably activate its energy drain when in High Yield mode and when it does the drain isn’t sustained for the duration if the target has a moderate to high EPS power transfer rate
Exotic damage abilities buffed by category 2 tactical bridge officer and captain abilities meaning you are better off with science abilities on your tactical captain instead of your science captain.
A player using feedback pulse is able to benefit for having two critical chance buffs applied. One from the enemy who shot the weapon and then a critical is applied again to the pulse itself. Furthermore, pre-resist damage is being returned even though the player being shot at is benefiting from the reduced damage due to his/her resist
Physical damage benefitting from high particle generators and auxiliary power. This may not be a bug and if not an explanation from the developers of why physical damage is benefits from this would be nice. This opens up physical damage benefiting from part gens and tactical category 2 damage buffs and another example of a science ability (Destabilising Res beam) working better on a tactical captain rather than the career it was intended for
High Yield Destructible Torpedo potentially not utilising the player’s accuracy overflow resulting in a 50-60% miss rate on a stationary player with 22% defense.
Nukara shield proc will be active on your main ship even if it is fitted to your shuttle craft
The protonic damage on Protonic Polaron weapons are not being increased when upgrading from Mark 12 to Mark 14 and random modifiers are being applied upon achieving Ultra Rare quality
Hold Together bridge officer ability does not reliably proc the new Research Lab Consoles
Vulnerability Exploiters that are supposed to increase the damage of Quantum Torpedos does not boost Quantum Torpedo (including the Neutronic Torp) past Mark 12.
First, I wouldn't characterize this as a rant thread. The OP was respectful and continues to be. He's a customer with complaints about the service and some constructive criticism telling them what they should do if they want his business. What's wrong with that?
I no longer kick money into this game month after month because of diminishing returns and because of some loose rules I've established for myself to get the most out of playing.
Freebies aren't free if they're tied to something I don't want to do.
I keep each character on the episode timeline and do not normally depart from it to play missions out of order. If that means some characters miss out on time-limited goodies, oh well. Awful missions in the progression that are not fun to play inhibit my desire to advance characters and thus to spend any money on said characters.
Each character can only really fly one ship at a time and realistically does not fly most of the ships in their slots with any regularity. Also, I can only use so many gimmick consoles at a time on each ship. So it's not worth it to buy every single ship that comes out... I only buy the ones I know I'm going to use and usually only when they're on sale.
If STO doesn't feel fun to play on any given day, there's always Minecraft, Netflix, or reading an eBook. If the game is too glitchy to play on any given day, there's always Minecraft, Netflix, or reading an eBook.
I practice Caveat Emptor. If Cryptic releases something to buy that turns out to be glitchy, I don't buy any more of that kind of thing until they fix that other thing I bought. I didn't buy any costume slots for a long time because of unusable slots on my KDF.
I think I'm more than reasonably patient with Cryptic and STO's flaws. I don't expect everybody else to be patient.
I get the realities of business and development cycles. I notice when Cryptic abuses them, and I notice when they make an effort to fix what they broke. I notice when they make changes based on player feedback, which is more often than they are sometimes given credit for but it tends to take a long time to come to fruit. My understanding of dev aside, I don't believe Cryptic does enough QA and don't always agree with their priorities. They have released shockingly buggy things on more than one occasion and they should be willing to endure some delay to get things right. They have done a few deplorable things over the years that I felt were not fair to their customers and over time they have made good on some of them. I may have forgiven, but I have not forgotten the good or the bad.
Someday I may get fed up with the service enough to stop playing altogether. That day is not today. But I'm watching closely to see what they do. I hope they take threads like this seriously enough to keep improving the product and increasing goodwill from their customers
It would be...interesting to see what would happen if we all put our heads together and compiled the TRUE Known Issues list, and put it all in one place.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-) Proudly F2P.Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
For those who maybe interested in the other Known Issues I have been collecting. Here there are and if you have any extra please feel free to add it:
They aren’t even honest enough to tell us what is wrong with the game. Let me add a few more that I know off – I am calling this the Outstanding Issues List:
Severely degraded system performance which can be broken up into 2 distinct categories – processing load and graphics engine stalls
System Load:- When Buff/Debuff flags exceeds a total of 130 for all players/npcs latency increases significantly – 2 months ago this was 110 so there has been a slight improvement. Lag is particularly worse when a single team member in a team of 5 is using the Command Tree and/or Command bridge officer abilities
System Load: Reduced UI Tray polling change made recently see a large disparity between client countdown and server countdown
Numerous graphics engine (PhysX and Shader) errors and failures in all parts of the game
High amount of FPS stalls (as per fpsgraph) when using abilities such as Kemocite (I have a GTX 970 so it shouldn’t be a problem
Embassy Consoles with Plasma Explosion has a critical chance bug when using the Fire at Will ability OR they are not crit’ing with any other beam or cannon bridge officer ability. Not sure since Borticus only said “crit bug”. Damage is not reduced by distance unlike other energy attacks
The additional passive 10% Critical Severity on all Dual Heavy Cannons is deactivated when activating any Cannon bridge officer ability
Periodically, the extra shield penetration damage granted by Intense Focus is applied to you (Credit: Vel)
Category 2 Damage Buff granted by Tactical Fleet II & III is reduced by your own damage resist at the time of activation.
Super Weapon Ingenuity is handling Dual Beam Banks and Beam Arrays/Omni’s differently.
Accuracy Overflow not converting to critical chance/severity on the random targets of Fire at Will and Cannon Scatter Volleys
Torpedo Spread is guaranteed to hit your target even if that target moves out of weapons range even at 70km away (tested myself) – at this distance the graphic won’t hit you but you still register the damage
Pilot Team or Tactical Team does not counter Attack Pattern Lambda. Currently there is no counter for Attack Pattern Lambda. This is obviously a game balance issue.
Attack Pattern Lambda allows the detection of enemy players at distances of up to 26km even when Aux 2 Battery is active
Hanger pets will detect and target when a cloaked target is within the carriers weapon range enabling you to be detected despite high aux and stealth stats
Amazingly, it is possible for a single player to have 42 seconds of immunity every 60 seconds. This is only possible with Pilot ships
The overthrottle used when performing a Rock n Roll when Hold Together is active results in a 100% hull heal
No additional drain when being affected by two Aceton assimilators instead of one
Tholian Thermionic Torpedo does not reliably activate its energy drain when in High Yield mode and when it does the drain isn’t sustained for the duration if the target has a moderate to high EPS power transfer rate
Exotic damage abilities buffed by category 2 tactical bridge officer and captain abilities meaning you are better off with science abilities on your tactical captain instead of your science captain.
A player using feedback pulse is able to benefit for having two critical chance buffs applied. One from the enemy who shot the weapon and then a critical is applied again to the pulse itself. Furthermore, pre-resist damage is being returned even though the player being shot at is benefiting from the reduced damage due to his/her resist
Physical damage benefitting from high particle generators and auxiliary power. This may not be a bug and if not an explanation from the developers of why physical damage is benefits from this would be nice. This opens up physical damage benefiting from part gens and tactical category 2 damage buffs and another example of a science ability (Destabilising Res beam) working better on a tactical captain rather than the career it was intended for
High Yield Destructible Torpedo potentially not utilising the player’s accuracy overflow resulting in a 50-60% miss rate on a stationary player with 22% defense.
Nukara shield proc will be active on your main ship even if it is fitted to your shuttle craft
The protonic damage on Protonic Polaron weapons are not being increased when upgrading from Mark 12 to Mark 14 and random modifiers are being applied upon achieving Ultra Rare quality
Hold Together bridge officer ability does not reliably proc the new Research Lab Consoles
Vulnerability Exploiters that are supposed to increase the damage of Quantum Torpedos does not boost Quantum Torpedo (including the Neutronic Torp) past Mark 12.
Great post!
A lot of these bugs have been around for a long time but there's a few there I didn't know about. I really hope you get some traction on this but cryptic is way understaffed in this department (2 opening I think). Just with fixing these alone would help this game greatly.
For me, it's simple,... Yes they NEED to fix the bugs and overhaul the system... BUT I believe, in the meantime, it could be remedied with LESS GRINDING. I mean I bet I wouldn't even notice most of the issues if I wasn't doing the same damn content over and over and over and over and over and over. Between that and them milking us like cows instead of treating us as people it comes as a shock to me that they are still going the way they are. I have pretty much forgone this game since Delta Rising. The level cap increase and new starship Tier might have been long overdue but it was too late. SOOOO many people went on and on in the forums on how starships in-game are like real-life cars. I'm sorry but my Fleet T5 Galaxy X is still the same as it was when I got it. It's just no longer worth what I ground and spent for it. It seems they are rendering one thing after another obsolete every 2-3 months now. I'm sick of it.... My wallet will remain closed until they fully make amends. On a good note I have seen some great things!.... the delta recruit event was THE BEST thing I have ever participated in, in the game. I also think the upgrade system is cool (although it costs too many resources and time). Now I can have my Connie blue phasers at mk XIV . However, the "weekly rewards" for featured missions is a mixed blessing since its only 1 tech upgrade or spec point per account per week which doesn't give us anything when put into perspective. So, all-in-all, Cryptic/PWE has got to get their act together soon because I fear for the worst but am hopeful for the best.
Comments
Probably, but perhaps it will be answered by their next potential employers. Over-milking a golden Star Trek cow while letting it starve to death grads the current staff and especially the guys at the helm unique qualifications which will make them stand out in the next set of job interviews.
Viva Las Vegas!
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
I have bad news for you: Santa isnt real...
Never stopped anybody from getting presents or going home empty handed.
Abandoning of upgrade timers, another rearrangement in pve fail conditions after 8 moths, the armada system, no more new spec trees to grind since march, aside from the 1k xp thingies no still no grand nerf of the doff system, Delta Recruitment?
True, those are only very small indicators but they at least show that some lessons can be thought around here and snipey's way is the only way we have besides going home.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
Again, familiarize yourself with the concept of an "open letter". Seriously. Those (usually) don't get answered and aren't expected to, they still fulfill their purpose.
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
Agreed, and snipey47a you wrote that very well. I'm heavily inclined to add my own thoughts to this. Before I do though, I do want to say that this'll be a small part of my frustrations as to write about all the problems, big and small, with STO would result in a report going into the hundreds of pages, especially if you added all the evidence to it, mathematical or otherwise.
I've been playing STO for a long time now, since before rep systems and if I'm remembering right before fleets had really happened. In that time I've tested nearly every release on tribble certainly from when reps were being tested, and frankly it has always been horrendous in terms of interaction with the devs. The rule of thumb has changed somewhat since Delta Rising was released, that being the original rule of thumb was that if the issue in question benefited the players it got sorted quick and anything else was left to add to the bug list.
Now it seems even that rule doesn't work any more, queue Dewagate (or whatever phrase floats your boat for that one), OP embassy and research lab consoles, the original stance on R&D progression projects and the empty queues just to name a few and that's alongside the usual issues that'll likely not receive any attention any time soon. Very recently we were told the QA team consisted of a mere 5 people (also I heard one of them left recently), which is utterly pathetic but it also seems odd that issues they want fixed urgently get done but the other issues take forever. I can't help but see it as an unwillingness to fix the games issues unless they hurt their profit revenues.
I can't in good faith do testing any more, and have actually removed tribble from my computer. Delta Rising was the last straw as far as that went, as I simply couldn't justify continuing to test when our issues with incoming content were either outright ignored, glossed over or acted on purely as a profit retention/greed exercise. It also prompted me to write a damning review of where this game was heading, and while I still play to be with friends I've made on here I've abandoned all but one character, simply because only one character is worth my time any more.
It doesn't surprise me mind, I had suspicions long ago about the health of this game in multiple ways, DR's announcement simply confirmed what a good number of people I knew in the game suspected, and the game has paid the price for it. I'd like to think things could change around here, but truthfully I doubt it. PWE has a terrible reputation in the wider gaming sphere, and STO is just proving to be another case study of why.
I saw all this coming 3 years ago... every smart player by that time could clearly see the direction this game and cryptic was headed. In each aspect of the game. I started to see why they kept ignoring bugs, why they kept focusing only in releasing rushed broken content, and nothing else, why the kept doing event after event without non stop (to keep players happy) and a lot of things that obsessed players will never be aware off. 3 years ago, that was the time i closed my wallet and said, haha, i dont think so..
I really have a lot of experience with videogames, and STO is by far the most messed up product ive ever seen in all my life. A shame, because a ip like star trek doesnt deserve this. But again, CBS is the only guilty here. For allow a company like cryptic/pwe to take what an amazing videogame could have been, to a mediocre bugged and broken product that doesnt deserve to be called a star trek videogame. But it is too late for having hopes. Sadly. The game will continue as it is right now until it becomes completely unplayable or the playerbase starts to drop, this time significantly (moment that cryptic will take to announce the closure of the servers).
Ow, you are so confused..... support?? are you kidding me?? it is precisely because all the money whales and rich kids giving cryptic money for nothing we have a videogame in such a terrible state. Dont you realize that the "tactic" of cryptic is, only working in new rushed broken content ignoring everything else, so they can earn a lot of money with minimum effort??? some of you didnt learn anything in all these years LOL!!.
Feedback?? hahahaha we have been doing that for years...
The solution is simple. DONT BUY. If you think the game will colapse if nobody buys anything, so be it. I PREFER to stop playing this game and give another decent company the opportunity to make a decent star trek game instead seeing how this product is getting worst by each month.
If you want to show cryptic your complain about bugs, quality control and other matters, the only way to do it is NOT BUYING anything. A shame so many people still dont understand this, sigh.
You need to show that you dont care anymore about broken rushed content, but you are not willing to buy anything until they implement a minimum quality control and start fixing things. Thats the only way. If people keep buying stuff, nothing will ever change. But anyways its too late for that , so.
About other mmoprgs, yes, i played about a dozen of em (i still play a couple of em) and i never encountered a product in such a messy state. In my entire life, not in any single videogame. Not to mention the massive ignored lag that seems to be something players dont care about either.
What the community thinks or care about doesnt mean anything to cryptic lol. The only thing that cryptic is going to pay attention is money. Nothing you say here or on a letter will change anything. We just write here because at least we can find other players that are willing to make some sacrifices (not buy anything) to make cryptic realize they are doing a terrible job since years ago. Players have been playing the game for more than 5 years and the behaviour of the community never changed in more than 3 years. Its always the same, people complaining about one thing or another, but in the moment cryptic launches another fancy event, or some shiny ships, everybody is happy and all the problems and bugs are forgotten. This is happening since years ago. I said it a lot of times, players in this game dont care about some things like quality , stability or other things. They demonstrated it through the years. And i saw it. You will see so many posts about people buying this, others buying lifetime subs and so on. Well, until that stops, nothing changes.
I did the same a little less than a year ago; until then, I'd been a supporter of the game. I initially stopped out of reservations about the T5U/T6 announcement before DR, and when I saw what DR was liked, that turned into a permanent halt. Other than grinding dilithium to Zen to get my DOFF slots up to a livable number on my Delta Recruit, I have even stopped putting my dilithium into the exchange so that I do not help Cryptic maintain the economy for other F2P players. My dilithium now either gets spent on myself without becoming Zen (and feeding other people's habits), or goes to my fleet.
That is also why I display "Proudly F2P" in my signature: until I see evidence of change, I will be a taker of resources instead of a provider of them. As far as I am concerned, especially after nerfing my Vesta pets indiscriminately in an attempt to "fix" the damage they did when they jacked up the NPC hitpoints (because they claimed they couldn't fix one without impacting the other--don't think I believe that), intentional freeloading is the way that I will restore my dollar per unit of fun time ratio to something equitable. Unless Cryptic fixes things significantly, they will have to continue to cover the costs of my resource usage without any help from me. They know how to get money from me again. They haven't done enough so far to satisfy my requirements.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-)
Proudly F2P. Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
I think it's a little unfair to say quite then, I mean LoR was a pretty decent update and that's when reps came out. Fleets in fairness were badly balanced in terms of population vs resource requirements, but granted after that it was downhill from there more or less in small but telling ways, which was kind of why DR wasn't much of a surprise in the end, though the severity of it was more than I'd have expected in a single jump like that, and in fairness to most the playerbase, they don't get immersed in the gritty side of things like we do and probably never saw it coming.
I can't agree CBS is the only guilty party though. PWE has a bad reputation for doing this kind of thing to games, and I wouldn't trust Geko or pwgloverclevland (or however its spelt) to do the right thing either. There are good devs at Cryptic and all but PWE owns Cryptic, and frankly its well known that any game PWE gets hold of in some way becomes a grind fest. Just look at the uproar when it sounded like PWE was going to acquire Warframe (pretty sure that's the one), their playerbase knew the consequences if that went ahead.
PvP behavior has changed quite a bit in the three years since F2P popped. Of course, the statement made a while ago about PvPers and their overall economic contribution seems to be quite true...
The other behavior I tend to see (and actually follow myself quite often) is that when the game starts getting too boring/buggy, the part that seems to work the best - single player missions - is where I'm going to go and what I'm going to do.
If I'm not in the mood to take alt X through Cardie Arc round whatever, and I've already gotten my freebie event thingie of the event, not even a dilithium weekend on my week's vacation from work will pull me in and "make me play" over finally tackling a bunch of play on WWE 13 for the 360...
The thing is, there's way too many people like me. Play the game for the new SP stuff and when the mood strikes - ignore the rest. The "profit driving metrics" aka player counts, unique logins per week, etc. etc., aren't being "whacked enough" to drive someone into doing something else than what we got right now...
Now to digress onto the other issue in this thread - the code base itself. "Modern" code, at least as I was taught it when learning to code back in the late 80s, is supposed to be "object oriented" - aka extremely modular. The "main" program itself isn't supposed to do anything but call forth all sorts of functions that perform the dirty work - so if one function fails, that module gets replaced and the remainder of the program continues on...
Is our current combat calculations function (module) so overburdened by calculations (I can see the need to figure in 240 different calculations in a round easily - with but 5 cruisers... (8 weapons per, tripled via BFaW to 24, doubled again because of weapon base calculations and plasma-console generated DoTs to 48, actually applying the 5 players here = 240)
Is this too much for the engine to handle? Pets compounding the issue? Especially Elite Mesh Weavers? Can the code be optimized and/or broken down so that each of the 240+ calculations per combat are reduced to a much smaller handful of variables - and implemented via the replacement of a module or three?
Without in-depth knowledge of the Cryptic engine, I can't say whether I'm even barking up the right tree. However, there's more than one way to look at an "issue"...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
...says the guy that has "free jkname" in his sig.
And the terrible thing about this is, there is a moment you have so much bad written code that it is almost impossible to track and modify the necessary lines/routines to do it. Also because it is badwritten code and probably there will be no labels and commentaries anywhere in the code.. a complete mess.
And all of this applies to any languaje it doesnt matter if it is object oriented or not.
We will have new ships here, but they will have the masteries broken or something else. They probably will fix it the next week, but the problem is, they also need to fix more bugs from the previous week and the next week they will need to fix more bugs as well that they will "move" to the next patch.. and so on....
You CANT do that. And any single coder knows it. But it seems that in the cryptic programming department this is tabu.
It's also the sort of thing that in-house testing can't find, since it only happens when you have heavy combat.
My character Tsin'xing
But it really concerns me when I see key members of the team find greener pastures. Thing is, in many companies with this kind of trouble, there's a significant part of the employee base that really wants to do a good job and cares about their work, no matter what kind of garbage they're being handed from above. These people tend to be smart, talented, and know that they can get a job elsewhere (and may even have been actively headhunted). But they also have to know that if they wait too long, their portfolios will be tainted in a sort of guilt by association, even if they did everything they could to change things on their own.
I have been in that situation myself, in a different industry, where I attempted to address some serious problems in my area with no top support from management, and sometimes outright destructive policies and actions from those above me. I managed some partial successes, but never had the chance to show my full potential, and I burned out. In the end I chose not only to leave, but to completely hide the fact that I was looking for a job until the instant I dropped my two weeks' notice on my boss's desk. (That and I don't believe in half-@ssing my job even when I hate it, and part of half-@ssing is coming to work with a visible bad attitude.) My boss never figured out I was looking for other work, which they almost always were able to tell with other employees, and it shocked the heck out of her when I gave notice. I knew very well that this would inconvenience my employer because I was in a key position, but I'd given them so much leeway and so many second chances that I was not prepared to allow another one to be abused.
And unfortunately, as that demonstrates, an employee who has truly had enough and has had their goodwill abused is not going to cut any slack, which means the departure will often be to maximum inconveniencing effect. Which, in a customer service job, means that the customer will suffer and the revenue will suffer, and it will just add to the death spiral the product is in.
While I hate to think about the real misery for those who will lose their jobs in the event of a closure, who don't deserve to be canned, in the end it is on the people above them to get their act together and it is their business failure and moral failure towards their own people that will cause all that misery.
If my read is correct, there are some good people trying to stave this off as long as possible. The modest improvements we have seen in customer responsiveness from Mr. Ricossa may have kicked the can down the road a bit. But, his job, and that of any employee who wants to do a good job, is getting harder and harder the more and more broken product is released.
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I 200% agree with you. I noticed the downturn many years ago and when I mentioned it I was labeled a troll and favorly was suspended a few times. STO is simply rushed content for people who throw money at Cryptic ignoring the obvious problem with the game. Additionally, some people who play space barbie ignoring the game state or knowing how bad it is.
Oh. Well.
Now related to PWE and their politics ... You actualy think they care about this game ? You think they are Star Trek fans ? Their purpose is to drain the money as much as possible , when its dried they will make another game and throw STO in shadow , like they did with other games. You see STO like a permanent business , they dont ... it their way ...
Its funny seeing all the fanboys during DR turn into ranters now, as it was the fanboys pre-DR be the ranters after. The cycle will continue I guess.
The game is not going to get better, some people to get a dose of reality. I want it to come back too, but it won't.
PWE is like any faceless corporation, they set a % increase in revenue over the previous term. There is no reason, logic or thought into it, they just demand growth.
When STO went FTP they hit a formula that increased revenue greatly, this was a problem. Great for bonuses to execs, bad for long term stability. Instead of getting steady growth we got an explosion, then they demand growth based on that explosion, it wasn't realistic, they don't care that it wasn't. It'll be a write off soon, a cheap excuse for not meeting stock holder expectations.
When you understand how execs get their bonuses, and start to see who was incharge when STO was raking it in, and who bailed when stuff hit the fan, its easy to see the real cause. An EP focused on too much profit, nearly zero diversification of revenue, and ignoring ongoing issues years ago put you where you are today.
Log in numbers are showing a decline to record lows, maybe a sharp downturn would have had a chance to display proof of dislike of a particular change, but its been slow and steady. The fanbase has never been united, just a bunch of greedy grown up children that want everything their way. The downward trend will be blamed on someone, and the game be shoved onto maintenance mode, likely within a year.
It really is a shame, the game felt like home, other games don't.
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The only area related to the Iconians where I would agree with you is the Herald interiors. That yellow-purple scheme is eye-bleeding; had it been me, I would've stuck to a modified Solanae interior, which is much prettier and easier on the eyes. On that one area I agree. However, the rest I don't think is bad.
The only other major art misstep I can think of is Seven of Nine.
Otherwise, I think the art has been the one fairly consistent bright spot in the game.
As far as whether or not they care? My suspicion is some really do, but they are caught in a chokehold by upper management.
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Almost everything else I'd have to add would reflect my discontent with aspects of STO, which at its heart is a good game, and those specific issues could likely be gleaned from other posts I've bothered to make (Vanilla's "Arc or re-authenticate every damn time" thing has led to me disconnecting from the community to some extent, so I post less lately; "Customer Support Hell" was funny, though). What's left is a hope that things do improve, and that positive trends continue. The cross-faction packs, for example, have led me to get ships I might not have otherwise. I picked up the one where the KDF ship isn't missing capabilities due to lack of prior offerings, getting a Fed ship I would never have acquired otherwise, and I actually got the pack itself because it was a pack (otherwise, I don't know if I'd have gotten any of them individually).
There has been some good amongst the bad of late, and the reason I still check in is that I still hold out hope for improvement despite a growing sense of ennui.
I no longer kick money into this game month after month because of diminishing returns and because of some loose rules I've established for myself to get the most out of playing.
Freebies aren't free if they're tied to something I don't want to do.
I keep each character on the episode timeline and do not normally depart from it to play missions out of order. If that means some characters miss out on time-limited goodies, oh well. Awful missions in the progression that are not fun to play inhibit my desire to advance characters and thus to spend any money on said characters.
Each character can only really fly one ship at a time and realistically does not fly most of the ships in their slots with any regularity. Also, I can only use so many gimmick consoles at a time on each ship. So it's not worth it to buy every single ship that comes out... I only buy the ones I know I'm going to use and usually only when they're on sale.
If STO doesn't feel fun to play on any given day, there's always Minecraft, Netflix, or reading an eBook. If the game is too glitchy to play on any given day, there's always Minecraft, Netflix, or reading an eBook.
I practice Caveat Emptor. If Cryptic releases something to buy that turns out to be glitchy, I don't buy any more of that kind of thing until they fix that other thing I bought. I didn't buy any costume slots for a long time because of unusable slots on my KDF.
I think I'm more than reasonably patient with Cryptic and STO's flaws. I don't expect everybody else to be patient.
I get the realities of business and development cycles. I notice when Cryptic abuses them, and I notice when they make an effort to fix what they broke. I notice when they make changes based on player feedback, which is more often than they are sometimes given credit for but it tends to take a long time to come to fruit. My understanding of dev aside, I don't believe Cryptic does enough QA and don't always agree with their priorities. They have released shockingly buggy things on more than one occasion and they should be willing to endure some delay to get things right. They have done a few deplorable things over the years that I felt were not fair to their customers and over time they have made good on some of them. I may have forgiven, but I have not forgotten the good or the bad.
Someday I may get fed up with the service enough to stop playing altogether. That day is not today. But I'm watching closely to see what they do. I hope they take threads like this seriously enough to keep improving the product and increasing goodwill from their customers.
I'm also somewhat disappointed with the 'alt unfriendliness' of the Spec system, but I've brought that issue up in a seperate thread.
Unlike the OP, I'm not going to write a book about all the issues/bugs/dispicableness in STO. I will, however, be taking more time and consideration as to whether or not I want to purchase the next new shiny that Cryptic releases in the C-Store.
I'm not going to stop playing STO or even discontinue making C-Store purchases, I'm just going to think about it more carefully.
I actually got disconnected this morning while replaying "Broken Circle", which actually surprised me since I typically have a ping time of 100-130 ms... I guess the server problems aren't fixed either.
Hi there,
I simply stated about my local laws for a point of interest only and what spurred me a little to write this. Cryptic/PWE isn't subject to my local laws anyhow.
They aren’t even honest enough to tell us what is wrong with the game. Let me add a few more that I know off – I am calling this the Outstanding Issues List:
Thank you for your support, Bluegeek.
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Great post!
A lot of these bugs have been around for a long time but there's a few there I didn't know about. I really hope you get some traction on this but cryptic is way understaffed in this department (2 opening I think). Just with fixing these alone would help this game greatly.