Why are release notes no longer posted to the "Release Notes" forum?

frtoaster · August 2015

I noticed that the last three release notes were posted to www.arcgames.com, but not to the "Release Notes" forum.

http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/9480353
http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/9490253-star-trek-online:-release-notes:-august-6th,-2015
http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/9501383

The last post to the "Release Notes" forum was on July 24, 2015:

http://perfectworld.vanillaforums.com/categories/information-and-discussion-release-notes2

I also remember a few other occasions when the release notes were not posted to the "Release Notes" forum. Were the recent instances merely oversights, or is this a change in policy? I would prefer that the release notes be kept all in one place for easy reference.

seaofsorrows · August 2015

Cryptic has abandoned their 'official forums' in favor of Reddit.

What's funny is that the launcher still tells you to check the forum for release notes.

This site is basically just a 3rd party discussion site, calling it an 'official' site is quite a stretch these days.

mustrumridcully0 · August 2015

Is it strictly neccessary for Cryptic to post release notes on the forums?

There is an official Star Trek Online website, and it contains the release notes. Being there also means that it will be easier to make it appear in the news feeds from the old Cryptic launcher or in the Arc launcher.

seaofsorrows · August 2015

mustrumridcully0 wrote: »

Is it strictly neccessary for Cryptic to post release notes on the forums?

There is an official Star Trek Online website, and it contains the release notes. Being there also means that it will be easier to make it appear in the news feeds from the old Cryptic launcher or in the Arc launcher.

Except that the launcher directs you to the forum.

The forum that has no information at all.

It's posted on their Facebook Page, Reddit, Twitter, and the Arc page.. pretty much everywhere except the place that the launcher tells you to go.

Considering this is the 'official' forum, it's a bit odd that news is posted on Reddit and Twitter, but not here.

frtoaster · August 2015

mustrumridcully0 wrote: »

Is it strictly neccessary for Cryptic to post release notes on the forums?

I sometimes search through the release notes to find out when a specific change was made and what exactly was said about the change. It would be easier if all the release notes were kept in one place. I don't care where, as long as there is one central location where you can find all of them. If they want to abandon the "Release Notes" forum, then they should migrate over all the old release notes and make an official announcement.

mustrumridcully0 wrote: »

There is an official Star Trek Online website, and it contains the release notes. Being there also means that it will be easier to make it appear in the news feeds from the old Cryptic launcher or in the Arc launcher.

That may be how Arc and Cryptic's launcher are set up, but there isn't any technical limitation preventing them from linking to the forums.

EDIT: Hmmm, this list only goes back to June 12, 2014:

http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/tag/sto-patch-notes

But I can find much older ones:

http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/1049520-release-notes-14-april-2010
http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/1049500-release-notes-_-may-6_-2010

So maybe, the old release notes are there, but somehow hidden. I doubt most people have the skill to find them.

seaofsorrows · August 2015

patrickngo wrote: »

P'raps it's because Reddit audiences don't analyze, or criticize. Cryptic's staff have steadily grown less and less capable of handling anything that isn't praise, and the Forums are full of voices that aren't singing praises to (or about) them, their decisions, etc.

We're in a vicious circle here.

Cryptics silence on their own forums draws more and more ire from the player base.

Their silence is due largely to the ire from the player base.

I have noticed that Reddit has a more positive overall theme then this site, why I don't really know. That site gets constant updates from staff while this site gets absolutely none. Staff posts over there because people are nicer, people are nicer because they feel the staff talks to them.

Some of us have tried on multiple occasions to break the cycle here, but it's never worked. At best, we get the staff to talk to us here for a week, maybe two..then they're gone again. Now we have gotten to the point where communication here has gone from rare, to completely non existent.

Personally, I don't see any way around it. The Devs are gone from this site, that's just how it is.

mustrumridcully0 · August 2015

And all this hashed out just because Cryptic decided to put its Release Notes on the Official Star Trek Online Website, not the Official Star Trek Online Forums.

seaofsorrows · August 2015

That sums it up nicely patrickngo.

This is a symptom of a larger overall problem, the complete absence of Crpytic/PWE staff from their own official forums. Even our community manager has vanished from site which is unfortunate because she's rather well received, even on these 'hostile' boards.

But like all the others, she's on Reddit and social media.. everywhere but here.

mustrumridcully0 · August 2015

A thing t hat seems often forgotten:

The Official STO Forums are not the place to reach the entire potential audience for Star Trek Online. And in all likelihood, people that are here already know about the game and are playing it, have played it, or are seriously considering playing it.

But out there, in the world wide web, on places like reddit or facebook - there are countless of people that might not be that aware of STO. And getting them excited about STO has the chance of attracing new players that have not yet played the game and haven't considered playing it before.

So there are very good reasons to present information and be active outside the forums. And it might yield a better return on investment then posting on the official forums.

And the role of the community manager and its team (if any) is not to fulfill some moral or ethical obligication to the players of STO. It's to reach a community and to help growing the game's audience.

seaofsorrows · August 2015

mustrumridcully0 wrote: »

And the role of the community manager and its team (if any) is not to fulfill some moral or ethical obligication to the players of STO. It's to reach a community and to help growing the game's audience.

And she does.

Everywhere but here.

You'll notice that most of the time, it's one announcement that's copy pasted to multiple sites with the exclusion of this one. I mean, we're talking about something as simple as updating the release notes, is it that much to ask that a link be posted?

Lets not forget, this site is set up by the developers of the game as a place for discussion of said game. Why would announcements be copied to every site under the sun except this one?

No one is demanding that anyone fulfill a 'moral obligation,' but if your intent is to reach the community of players that actually play the game, it would stand to reason that official forums of said game would be a logical place to post news.

This has been the policy in the past as well, the silence from the staff is a new thing. They have always been less active on the official forums, but they have recently gone from 'less active' to 'completely gone.'

And no one really knows why.

mustrumridcully0 · August 2015

If Trendy has a problem with the developers posting on reddit or wherever, I am sure they will talk about it eventually and find a solution. But I suspect it might not be a big deal as you think it is. AFAIK, the developers have always had to work under an NDA. That means they most likely know what they can talk about and what not.

And they do not neccessarily need highly accurate and detailed information out there. Just enough information to get people intersested.

And the most likely result of more tightly control how things are released will be that we will get less information. We already had that plenty. I think it's more fun if the information are out there and dedicated fans collect them together, and we are all discussing what it could really mean, than having nothing to go on.

The next problem is, if you're reaching out to bring in new people, patch info isn't it. People who never go to the forums, or don't already play the game, should not and likely do not have the background to put that information in context.

Why the frack do you think it matters whether the patch info is on the official website or on the official forums? Either works. Full Stop.

And it doesn't matter if people can't put things into context - especially if it's for advertisement purposes.

Cryptic has a severe management and internal governance problem, this topic is merely a symptom of it-when a Dev can update their tweets hourly, how much coding/developing are they really doing? when Devs are on Reddit, are they working on material, or are they hanging out in Reddit? when someone is on Facebook, are they testing their product and checking for bugs/interactions, or are they facebooking?

You worry to much. I have strong doubts that the developers can just goof off at work. Certainly not as much as I can.

And most likely they have to do more overtime.

Micro-Managing creative people is a great way to stop them being creative.

ravin · August 2015

What's more important is why was this thread created when someone asked the same thing yesterday? These new forums have a search feature, right?

captainmal3 · August 2015

I remember when it was first pointed out that the devs were spending too much time on reddit and not here (I think it was one of those 'reddit asks' interview style things) Trendy fed us some lip service about wanting to interact with the whole STO player community and not just the people who post on these forums. At the time, I bought it, because I thought it'd be a case of the devs being on reddit and here, not simply abandoning their official forums completely. I should not have to go to a third party, unrelated website to find out information that should be posted here. It's a seriously messed up situation and I think the devs need to be called out on it. Unfortunately, the reddit crowd are naturally overjoyed to have the devs talking to them so they aren't going to do it, and calling out the devs here doesn't help because, as is the whole point, they aren't here to read it.

dareau · August 2015

mustrumridcully0 wrote: »

A thing t hat seems often forgotten:

The Official STO Forums are not the place to reach the entire potential audience for Star Trek Online. And in all likelihood, people that are here already know about the game and are playing it, have played it, or are seriously considering playing it.

But out there, in the world wide web, on places like reddit or facebook - there are countless of people that might not be that aware of STO. And getting them excited about STO has the chance of attracing new players that have not yet played the game and haven't considered playing it before.

So there are very good reasons to present information and be active outside the forums. And it might yield a better return on investment then posting on the official forums.

And the role of the community manager and its team (if any) is not to fulfill some moral or ethical obligication to the players of STO. It's to reach a community and to help growing the game's audience.

First off, you seem to be confusing "marketing" with "community management". Marketing exists to do one thing, and one thing only - advertise the game to increase the size of the playerbase (and therefore 'community'). Community Management may be included in many a marketing scheme, as they are "corporate's public face" to the general community. However, part of community management, by implication of the definition of management, is to manage the existing community.

So it's not a "moral / ethical obligation", it's part and parcel of the job to "manage" us "remaining" community members by keeping us abreast of the latest game plans/hype.

Secondly, the major gripe is that there exists no central, one stop, repository of all STO's "official Development related statements". You need to listen to multiple podcasts to find some nuggets, follow no less than 3 distinct "social media" systems (Twitter, Facebook, Twitch) for more, and one "general interest forum" (Reddit) for the rest.

This makes it hard for, say, the casual player to decide "do I trawl through maybe a dozen sites to find out what's going on and should I stay, or should I actually play the game so I can handle the content that they're tossing at us?"

Personally, I don't really care where said "central repository" is, however, one would think that the Publisher's "official websites and forums" would be "the best" place to do so because, you know, the publisher can give full control of everything to the developers to make sure their message goes out the way they want it to - but if they want to use a "general interest forum" or even edited podcasts where you're not 100% certain that the editors will always paint Cryptic in a positive light (remember how Massively turned on Cryptic and lost their "exclusive" status?) they're more than welcome to, just make it quite clear everywhere that STO information exists, such as somewhere on this forum that the central repository is at site X.

Thirdly, I'm not saying that said "central repository" is the only place for said information to be posted, and I'm not 100% adverse for "external partners" having, say, a 24 hour window of "them being the only place said info is available" - but central repositories, by definition, are the "main" place for said information to eventually reside...

mustrumridcully0 · August 2015

dareau wrote: »

mustrumridcully0 wrote: »

A thing t hat seems often forgotten:

The Official STO Forums are not the place to reach the entire potential audience for Star Trek Online. And in all likelihood, people that are here already know about the game and are playing it, have played it, or are seriously considering playing it.

But out there, in the world wide web, on places like reddit or facebook - there are countless of people that might not be that aware of STO. And getting them excited about STO has the chance of attracing new players that have not yet played the game and haven't considered playing it before.

So there are very good reasons to present information and be active outside the forums. And it might yield a better return on investment then posting on the official forums.

And the role of the community manager and its team (if any) is not to fulfill some moral or ethical obligication to the players of STO. It's to reach a community and to help growing the game's audience.

First off, you seem to be confusing "marketing" with "community management". Marketing exists to do one thing, and one thing only - advertise the game to increase the size of the playerbase (and therefore 'community'). Community Management may be included in many a marketing scheme, as they are "corporate's public face" to the general community. However, part of community management, by implication of the definition of management, is to manage the existing community.

So it's not a "moral / ethical obligation", it's part and parcel of the job to "manage" us "remaining" community members by keeping us abreast of the latest game plans/hype.

Secondly, the major gripe is that there exists no central, one stop, repository of all STO's "official Development related statements". You need to listen to multiple podcasts to find some nuggets, follow no less than 3 distinct "social media" systems (Twitter, Facebook, Twitch) for more, and one "general interest forum" (Reddit) for the rest.

This makes it hard for, say, the casual player to decide "do I trawl through maybe a dozen sites to find out what's going on and should I stay, or should I actually play the game so I can handle the content that they're tossing at us?"

Personally, I don't really care where said "central repository" is, however, one would think that the Publisher's "official websites and forums" would be "the best" place to do so because, you know, the publisher can give full control of everything to the developers to make sure their message goes out the way they want it to - but if they want to use a "general interest forum" or even edited podcasts where you're not 100% certain that the editors will always paint Cryptic in a positive light (remember how Massively turned on Cryptic and lost their "exclusive" status?) they're more than welcome to, just make it quite clear everywhere that STO information exists, such as somewhere on this forum that the central repository is at site X.

Thirdly, I'm not saying that said "central repository" is the only place for said information to be posted, and I'm not 100% adverse for "external partners" having, say, a 24 hour window of "them being the only place said info is available" - but central repositories, by definition, are the "main" place for said information to eventually reside...

While a central repository would be very convenient to have for me, the question would be if it's actually relevant to a majority of the community to have it?

Even if stuff gets posted on the forums, there are often other posts asking information about it. Even if something is written inside an official article that is linked on the forums and all, people ask questions about somethnig that is spelled out in that official article.

That means while being thorough might be appealing to some, it might just be wasted on a large part of the "community" of the game, since most will not bother.

The mythical "casual player" that gets cited so often is not going to wade through a central repository. If he has a question he really wants answered, he most likely will just post it on the forums and read the replies. (Chances are half the replies would not even consider sending him to a "central repository", but instead complain about the game and recommend avoiding it completely. Maybe then he gets to reddit and aks there again, hoping to find less jaded people that actually post a useful response...)

pwlaughingtrendy · August 2015

Yep. Closing the second thread about this in 2 days. We're moving over to the blog posts for featuring information that I link in every maintenance post.

You can also find a listing of all of the previous patch notes here.

You'll always see the patch notes posted first thing on the official website.

Why are release notes no longer posted to the "Release Notes" forum?

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