Maybe you've already seen me post in the forum every now and then, I'm here since headstart back in late January 2010. In late 2014 I have even officially applied for a volunteer work training at Cryptic Studios in Los Gatos to get even more involved in the game and learn more about what's inside STO and how to maintain the game and improve it even further. Unfortunately, you already had enough personnel back then, but that doesn't mean it's impossible to try again, right?
This idea with operations is absolutely great! Thank you for bringing this project to life! With my gaming and also editing experience (foundry in STO, but also other games such as Zelda Classic and Dungeon Keeper), and with a nice number of friends I've made in all the years in this game, I think I might be able to help, and I'd love to help. I have enough knowledge to find a possible source of a bug and I have already helped eradicating bugs in the bug forum before by giving detailed descriptions of when and how it appears and how you can reproduce it. Also, I think I can say that I'm a good proof-reader to find typos in new episodes and also in other content.
I would be honored and happy to work more closely with the developer team in this project. I do have enough free time (my work percentage right now is at 70, so I should have two full days off a week and several hours in between working days as well) to play and test things out in STO. I work well in a team, and I am also independant at the same time (bus driver, you know hehe).
Shy greetings and thanks again for doing this, it's greatly appreciated!
~ Eris The Vorta
"Everything about the Jham'Hadar is lethal!" - Eris
Original Join Date: January 30th, 2010
This sounds like a superb idea. An excellent way of including some of the more intense players to hell the game move along much more smoothly. I wish I had the time, as it would be an interesting venture!!
Sadly I can't join, but it sounds like a step in the right direction!
CM
"Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure science." - Edwin Hubble
- I'm a Legendary gamer with over 1000 completed games.
- I'm a Legendary modder that created some of the best game mods ever (related to ST check Starfleet Command 3: The Return of the Borg on moddb).
- I have in-depth knowledge of several game engines, including from MMOs.
- Due to my generally unconventional approach to gameplay I find a lot of bugs very easy.
- I've been playing STO since beta.
- I've found and reported several STO bugs, including ship load-out, gameplay and exchange bugs (and yes, ship item loadout is still bugged).
That being said, since currently I do access the game on daily basis, I can help if needed.
Have a nice day !
I have worked with map developers in the past on tribble to stomp out bugs before release. I also have a pretty decent grasp on how the mechanics of the game are. I have no issues with testing and giving detailed reports. I only ask that if I take this effort to break down the problems that it will be taken seriously as an effort to fix the bugs that currently exist. I don't want that to be taken as a negative as I would love to see this game continue to move forward and would be dedicated if I knew this would be the case. I just know that in the past, problems were found and detailed on tribble and were still let loose on the holodeck server.
I also understand that some problems are much harder to fix than they seem on the outside and developers might not have the time to fix such things. I'd only ask that if it were a really serious issue that at the very least it not be let out in the wild if we can prove it is there. If you can say that would happen, I'd love to work with you on making STO a better place for everyone and would stay positive throughout knowing I'd be making a difference for everyone.
Hello team, my name is Tom "Maverick" Cruz, former fleet leader of Jupiter Force, past Co-Host of STOked and creator of STOked Radio. I would like to formally apply for the Operational Support Team. I have established past experience working professionally with cryptic in bug reporting and investigations so i understand how to file reports with supporting evidence. I'm hopeful and excited to be able to offer my experience again.
I would also like to be a bug hunter. Yet there needs to be a compensation scheme in place. Be it be zen or ships or other valued items in game. Aped is right. In certain areas, what you want may run afoul with local laws. You will need to verify age before you do anything. However for me, Service Guarantees citizenship
Hi, in game my toon is Corbin, and I'm a whale. I have almost everything in the game since beta and started with a lifetime account right out of the gate. As such I have a fairly deep understanding of the underlying game mechanics throughout the various seasons and am happy to offer any constructive feedback as needed.
to those saying there needs to be compensation..no there doesn't. they are asking for help for a free game you play. completely on volunteer basis. no laws will be broken doing this. none. they don't need to verify age. no one os doing any work. they are asking for you to report to them when you find issues. that's it. when you play the game and you fins a problem let them know...that's not covered by any labor laws.
Is there an official form to apply through, or is just saying, "I am interested." enough?
"I am interested."
Essentially, yes!
I'm looking through people and will be speaking with QueenVaccine about candidates for the program. Afterwards, we'll put messaging out to all relevant members, and move forward.
I'm interested. I can write detailed bug reports and I have a programming background, so I can make some educated guesses about how systems were built that might inform bug hunting. If this program means filed bug reports can get some sort of acknowledgement, I'd be happy to help.
...The Operational Support Team is a volunteer force that will work with our team in order to submit, review, and resolve bugs that you might find. Our goal is to stomp out the bugs!
As of my experience, there never was a problem with finding and reporting bugs. It was mostly Cryptic ignoring reports and not fixing them.
...We will be taking volunteers from the community to join the Operational Support Team. We're looking for high-caliber members from the community who can effectively work alongside us in hunting down bugs.
For me, this sound like Cryptic wants to pass on some work, but without paying a dime.
Q&A/ testers is a common profession in the game and software industry, people make their living of it.
high caliber volunteers, heh, a ferengi couldn't formulate "high quality work for free" any better
STO is not a community project or a self made mod.
It's a product of a profit oriented company, generating dividends for its share holders.
Instead of cutting some bonuses and hire testers on regular bases, this attempt of exploiting players passion for a game.
And I was thinking, gambling boxes are the bottom line of shame
I like the idea of including the community but I personally don't have enought knowledge to apply for this, but please also consider including PvP players in this "team".
That would help a lot.
Thanks
Can we get more details on what's expected of the volunteers? One concern I have is how much work this will be. If it becomes too onerous, I can see many volunteers dropping out. Also, what skills are you looking for specifically? If you're looking for someone to break DPS records and show you how to do it, then I'm not your man. On the other hand, I'm perfectly willing to run debugging tools that require a good understanding of software. I think Microsoft provides tools to generate crash dumps. If I spend enough time to figure out how to use these tools, would Cryptic's programmers be able to get a decent stack trace out of it? I'm pretty sure the symbolic names of the functions and variables would be missing from the crash dumps. Cryptic's programmers would have to run a tool on their end to look up the names from the addresses. I'd only be willing to go through this trouble if Cryptic is able to interpret the data.
Also, I've often thought that bug reporting would be much easier if we had better tools. I've probably taken hundreds of screenshots over the years, and it's really an inefficient way to go about it.
Some tools that I think would be useful:
(a) raw data dump of an item.
(b) raw data dump of the character, including skills, traits, and specializations.
(c) raw data dump of a ship build, including boffs and doffs.
(d) raw dump of the graphics settings. (Actually, I can get this already, but I don't know if QA knows how to interpret it.)
(e) completely disable animations in the tailor. (No, "Static Stance" doesn't do this.)
(f) A button in the tailor to generate a JPEG file with shots of the character from 4 or 5 different angles. There should be a full-body version and a close-up version. The JPEG file should include the metadata contained in saved costume files.
(g) A better combat log. Yes, I know that combat log parsers already exist. But my understanding is that a lot things are reported in a weird way, and if you don't know all the quirks, then you can't write a good parser. The log doesn't have to be human readable, but it needs to be accurate and consistent. Keep the current combat log for humans if you want, but you should create an "advanced" combat log specifically designed to be parsed by machines.
One final concern: I'm worried that Cryptic will grow reliant on volunteer help. Even though many of us are willing to help, this should be a supplement, not a replacement for internal procedures.
In reference to your post on 'Operational Team Members'
I would appreciate you considering my application in regards to the above please. I am a PRINCE 2 (qualified) Project Manager and so am used to liaising with a myriad of differing people and conveying ideas and concepts in a coherent manner. In addition to this I own a computer hardware review site 'overclockerstech(dot)com and as such one can compose a professional document within any given framework.
Skills:
Network & Systems Administration. Fault finding and Diagnosis User/customer facing skills. Helpdesk Support/Escalating calls Project Management: PRINCE 2 Standards (http://www.apmg-international.com/examquery.asp) ITIL knowledge and procedures Incident management abilities In-depth PC hardware knowledge and experience. Self-starter with strong organisational skills Testing and in-depth 'review' knowledge. Excellent technical and article writing attributes. Active Directory Proven knowledge of Extreme computer cooling methods and technologies.
Lastly I can appreciate that roles like this require some form of commitment and whilst I do not have have hundreds of hours to spend monthly ( Being a mature gentleman with two children,a fiancée and the acting roles I have ) I am able to spend sometime on this project for any given length you require. I am based within the United Kingdom so I am unsure if the time differential will factor into the equation.
If we can't participate directly, can we still submit bugs in a specific place on the forum for the Bug Hunters to look at?
By the way, DirectX 9 needs to get working again for the game. Safe Mode can be tedious to setup to play.
Indeed. A welcome change and one which can be implemented swiftly, is that the safe mode in the arc launcher is turned on until switched off. It would save me a lot of extra clicking.
Either way, though I'm probably registered as on of the forum idiots, i'm willing to participate in the hunt.
Post edited by questerius on
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
I'm usually described on the charge sheet as a computer programmer, so I at least know how to file a halfway decent bug report. If that's any good to you, I'll volunteer to help.
When would this start? If it's after the 10th of September I'll be able to volunteer.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though. JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
i would like to help too, at least pvp wise on skills/bugs etc, allready found some and reported bugs but nothing happenned... i guess this program will increase the response speed of bug correction as well, anyway, the bros at opvp would be happy to help improve the game.
Comments
Maybe you've already seen me post in the forum every now and then, I'm here since headstart back in late January 2010. In late 2014 I have even officially applied for a volunteer work training at Cryptic Studios in Los Gatos to get even more involved in the game and learn more about what's inside STO and how to maintain the game and improve it even further. Unfortunately, you already had enough personnel back then, but that doesn't mean it's impossible to try again, right?
This idea with operations is absolutely great! Thank you for bringing this project to life! With my gaming and also editing experience (foundry in STO, but also other games such as Zelda Classic and Dungeon Keeper), and with a nice number of friends I've made in all the years in this game, I think I might be able to help, and I'd love to help. I have enough knowledge to find a possible source of a bug and I have already helped eradicating bugs in the bug forum before by giving detailed descriptions of when and how it appears and how you can reproduce it. Also, I think I can say that I'm a good proof-reader to find typos in new episodes and also in other content.
I would be honored and happy to work more closely with the developer team in this project. I do have enough free time (my work percentage right now is at 70, so I should have two full days off a week and several hours in between working days as well) to play and test things out in STO. I work well in a team, and I am also independant at the same time (bus driver, you know hehe).
Shy greetings and thanks again for doing this, it's greatly appreciated!
~ Eris The Vorta
Original Join Date: January 30th, 2010
Sadly I can't join, but it sounds like a step in the right direction!
CM
- I'm a Legendary modder that created some of the best game mods ever (related to ST check Starfleet Command 3: The Return of the Borg on moddb).
- I have in-depth knowledge of several game engines, including from MMOs.
- Due to my generally unconventional approach to gameplay I find a lot of bugs very easy.
- I've been playing STO since beta.
- I've found and reported several STO bugs, including ship load-out, gameplay and exchange bugs (and yes, ship item loadout is still bugged).
That being said, since currently I do access the game on daily basis, I can help if needed.
Have a nice day !
I also understand that some problems are much harder to fix than they seem on the outside and developers might not have the time to fix such things. I'd only ask that if it were a really serious issue that at the very least it not be let out in the wild if we can prove it is there. If you can say that would happen, I'd love to work with you on making STO a better place for everyone and would stay positive throughout knowing I'd be making a difference for everyone.
Twitter | @STOkedshow
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Mostly because I can do what I do normally on a semi-official status.
The Starfleet Renegades
"If you didn't get your ship from me, you probably didn't get the 100,000 light year warranty."
I'm looking through people and will be speaking with QueenVaccine about candidates for the program. Afterwards, we'll put messaging out to all relevant members, and move forward.
For me, this sound like Cryptic wants to pass on some work, but without paying a dime.
Q&A/ testers is a common profession in the game and software industry, people make their living of it.
high caliber volunteers, heh, a ferengi couldn't formulate "high quality work for free" any better
STO is not a community project or a self made mod.
It's a product of a profit oriented company, generating dividends for its share holders.
Instead of cutting some bonuses and hire testers on regular bases, this attempt of exploiting players passion for a game.
And I was thinking, gambling boxes are the bottom line of shame
Holy Grail of Gamification is Addiction | 5 Ways to Accomplisch | and the Psychology of Freemium
That would help a lot.
Thanks
This link used to show every thread that I ever started in "Gameplay Bug Reports":
http://perfectworld.vanillaforums.com/search?adv=1&search=&title=&author=frtoaster&cat=889&tags=&discussion_d=1&within=1+day&date=
And this link used to show every thread that I ever started in "Tribble - Bug Reports":
http://perfectworld.vanillaforums.com/search?adv=1&search=&title=&author=frtoaster&cat=957&tags=&discussion_d=1&within=1+day&date=
But now, the search page is limited to only 10 search results. When did this change? Is this itself a bug?
I suppose I'll have to use Google then.
https://www.google.com/search?q=site:perfectworld.vanillaforums.com+frtoaster+"Submitted+on+Holodeck"
https://www.google.com/search?q=site:perfectworld.vanillaforums.com+frtoaster+"Holodeck ticket ID"
https://www.google.com/search?q=site:perfectworld.vanillaforums.com+frtoaster+"Submitted+on+Tribble"
https://www.google.com/search?q=site:perfectworld.vanillaforums.com+frtoaster+"Tribble ticket ID"
Can we get more details on what's expected of the volunteers? One concern I have is how much work this will be. If it becomes too onerous, I can see many volunteers dropping out. Also, what skills are you looking for specifically? If you're looking for someone to break DPS records and show you how to do it, then I'm not your man. On the other hand, I'm perfectly willing to run debugging tools that require a good understanding of software. I think Microsoft provides tools to generate crash dumps. If I spend enough time to figure out how to use these tools, would Cryptic's programmers be able to get a decent stack trace out of it? I'm pretty sure the symbolic names of the functions and variables would be missing from the crash dumps. Cryptic's programmers would have to run a tool on their end to look up the names from the addresses. I'd only be willing to go through this trouble if Cryptic is able to interpret the data.
Also, I've often thought that bug reporting would be much easier if we had better tools. I've probably taken hundreds of screenshots over the years, and it's really an inefficient way to go about it.
Some tools that I think would be useful:
(a) raw data dump of an item.
(b) raw data dump of the character, including skills, traits, and specializations.
(c) raw data dump of a ship build, including boffs and doffs.
(d) raw dump of the graphics settings. (Actually, I can get this already, but I don't know if QA knows how to interpret it.)
(e) completely disable animations in the tailor. (No, "Static Stance" doesn't do this.)
(f) A button in the tailor to generate a JPEG file with shots of the character from 4 or 5 different angles. There should be a full-body version and a close-up version. The JPEG file should include the metadata contained in saved costume files.
(g) A better combat log. Yes, I know that combat log parsers already exist. But my understanding is that a lot things are reported in a weird way, and if you don't know all the quirks, then you can't write a good parser. The log doesn't have to be human readable, but it needs to be accurate and consistent. Keep the current combat log for humans if you want, but you should create an "advanced" combat log specifically designed to be parsed by machines.
One final concern: I'm worried that Cryptic will grow reliant on volunteer help. Even though many of us are willing to help, this should be a supplement, not a replacement for internal procedures.
I would appreciate you considering my application in regards to the above please.
I am a PRINCE 2 (qualified) Project Manager and so am used to liaising with a myriad of differing people and conveying ideas and concepts in a coherent manner. In addition to this I own a computer hardware review site 'overclockerstech(dot)com and as such one can compose a professional document within any given framework.
Skills:
Network & Systems Administration.
Fault finding and Diagnosis
User/customer facing skills.
Helpdesk Support/Escalating calls
Project Management: PRINCE 2 Standards (http://www.apmg-international.com/examquery.asp)
ITIL knowledge and procedures Incident management abilities
In-depth PC hardware knowledge and experience.
Self-starter with strong organisational skills
Testing and in-depth 'review' knowledge.
Excellent technical and article writing attributes.
Active Directory
Proven knowledge of Extreme computer cooling methods and technologies.
Lastly I can appreciate that roles like this require some form of commitment and whilst I do not have have hundreds of hours to spend monthly ( Being a mature gentleman with two children,a fiancée and the acting roles I have ) I am able to spend sometime on this project for any given length you require. I am based within the United Kingdom so I am unsure if the time differential will factor into the equation.
Yours sincerely
Indeed. A welcome change and one which can be implemented swiftly, is that the safe mode in the arc launcher is turned on until switched off. It would save me a lot of extra clicking.
Either way, though I'm probably registered as on of the forum idiots, i'm willing to participate in the hunt.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
I think I'll just stick to some older ones for now...
i.imgur.com/dshwYbp.png
i.imgur.com/nK6XlCF.jpg
i.imgur.com/tWvmB.jpg
i.imgur.com/SqxJppP.jpg
Let me know if you need more information but I think they speak for themselves.
Goodnight, troll sweet prince.