It should have been closed yesterday. I think it's part of the promotion for Agents of Yesterday. Leaving threads a day open longer than they should be. Those marketing people at Cryptic are geniuses.
cause no body is actually saying anything bad about cryptic. about people defending cryptic, and haters. sure but nothing actually about cryptic... that and no one has reported it yet.
if I stop posting it doesn't make you right it. just means I don't have enough rum to continue interacting with you.
Most people in this thread have been fairly reasonable, despite a few who are not.
*Shrugs* If you don't like it, don't play it. If you have complaints despite liking it, present them in a respectful and sensible manner. Don't start whining, yelling, or threatening. Treat people like you want them to treat you back.
Now a LTS and loving it.
Just because you spend money on this game, it does not entitle you to be a jerk if things don't go your way.
I have come to the conclusion that I have a memory like Etch-A-Sketch. I shake my head and forget everything.
This is not a dream... not a dream. We are using your brain's electrical system as a receiver. We are unable to transmit through conscious neural interference. You are receiving this broadcast as a dream. We are transmitting from the year one, nine, nine, nine. You are receiving this broadcast in order to alter the events you are seeing. Our technology has not developed a transmitter strong enough to reach your conscious state of awareness, but this is not a dream. You are seeing what is actually occurring for the purpose of causality violation.
What would it take to get me to allegedly stop defending Cryptic? How much does it pay to come into here and hate on them all the time for the tiniest and silliest of reasons?...
...
...
...
...
Thought so.
Look, OP, you wanna really hate on Cryptic in a way which they will really notice? It's easy. Stop spending money on STO.
Or, if you do not currently support Cryptic's product financially in any way already, stop playing the game. But all this public teenage high school lunch room drama stuff has to stop. Your post reminds me of some of the shows on the Disney Channel where the mean girl at school keeps picking on Miley Cyrus for no good reason.
Saying that we are like Miley Cyrus was the meanest thing on this forum. lol
Cryptic is good, i dont see what problems people have or what supposedly is being defended.
Sto is a good game its why we all play it~
* whispers * He's with Dental.....
Dropping that name is a sure way to derail a thread.
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.
Most people in this thread have been fairly reasonable, despite a few who are not.
*Shrugs* If you don't like it, don't play it. If you have complaints despite liking it, present them in a respectful and sensible manner. Don't start whining, yelling, or threatening. Treat people like you want them to treat you back.
easier said than done,little known fact you're probably now aware of is that this is the ONLY Star Trek mmo out in the market so this is why people are bashing on the game...its not like they have a plethora of games to choose from.
doesnt even feel like Star Trek its just a shadow of the IP filled with a lot of pew pew and no exploration or diplomacy which is the essence of Star Trek,so yeah people have the right to whine and complain all they want,dont like it dont read it...
i weep for the younger generation of gamers,if these lazy brats werent so entitled and craved instant gratification maybe this would have been a sandbox mmo,scratch that this should have been a sandbox mmo from the begining not this pew pew fest with a Star Trek skin slapped onto it for money making purposes...
i weep for the younger generation of gamers,if these lazy brats werent so entitled and craved instant gratification maybe this would have been a sandbox
it is a bit simplistic. If the younger players are like that, this is because the world is like that. And these are the old generations who have created the world that we know.
money has replaced everything, and the young generations are raised to be consumers.
humans have forgotten that fulfillment, transcendence do not depend on money or power. (but it is an other story)
Cryptic is not bad or good, Cryptic is a company of our economy. they do things like all the other companies. I'm often disappointed by their choices, but at the end of the day, my life is still the same.
i weep for the younger generation of gamers,if these lazy brats werent so entitled and craved instant gratification maybe this would have been a sandbox
it is a bit simplistic. If the younger players are like that, this is because the world is like that. And these are the old generations who have created the world that we know.
money has replaced everything, and the young generations are raised to be consumers.
humans have forgotten that fulfillment, transcendence do not depend on money or power. (but it is an other story)
Cryptic is not bad or good, Cryptic is a company of our economy. they do things like all the other companies. I'm often disappointed by their choices, but at the end of the day, my life is still the same.
A lot of people forgets that STO is just a game
"Funny, I've always believed that the world is what we make of it." -- Ellie Arroway
What will it make for people to grasp there's more to a faction that mission count?
Or maybe to have that lightbulb moment that we stopped having separate missions for the three factions years ago and maybe expecting them to fritter away developer time on content that can only be run by a fraction of the player base isn't just unreasonable, it's outright STUPID.
See, ordinarily I'd agree that it makes no sense to make exclusive content for one faction.
Here's the problem though: the devs were very, very clear on this being a unique faction that was "at least as large as the Romulans". That claim requires creating a sufficient amount of faction-unique content. So you don't get to argue that it's somehow "unfair" for Cryptic to make unique content for one faction when they, themselves, set the scale upon which they would be judged.
So with that half of your argument dismissed out of hand by Cryptic's own word on the subject, let's look at the other half: is the TOS faction truly as big as the Romulans?
The Romulans had over 20 missions spread across 4 different story arcs. Though you choose a faction to be allies with at Lvl 10, you have unique missions until Lvl 20. I created a Rom toon and had fun playing through missions for several days before I reached the bridging point between the other two factions. And I will note that I was blowing through the missions, at that.
The TOS faction has 6 across a single story arc, and is over by Lvl 10. I created a toon and was finished with the new content in a single day of play. Yes, the TOS missions are longer, but that still doesn't extend the faction length long enough to compete with the Romulans by any measure.
Let's look at other content, then. The Romulans had an entire fleet of new ships at their disposal for every tier. The TOS faction gets 1 ship at the start of the game, and then uses Fed ships the rest of the way. You have to pay Cryptic with *real money* to get any of the other TOS-era ships.
The TOS faction at least has unique skill animations (like the Roms), weapons (ditto), and its own map though, right? Except that once you leave the starting area with a TOS toon....which is an easy mistake for new players to make, as there is no indicator in-game telling you "grab what you want because there's no coming back after this"....there is no way to obtain most of that unique content ever again. So perhaps its biggest selling point (that of people who want to keep that 23c "feel") is completely ruined by the game's failure to properly indicate its own ending point. Could they eventually fix this and provide us with a way to access 23c content again? Sure. But we can't judge the faction on what might exist in the future, we can only judge it on what exists right now.
So, with everything assessed, there's only one logical conclusion here: The new faction is objectively much smaller than the Romulan faction in every measurable way. So....stop dismissing everybody who disagrees with you as a "troll" and let folks like the OP complain. They have every right to do so, since Cryptic set the scale and didn't live up to it. I've invested a lot of my time and effort into this game, so I can't say I'm fond of being slapped with the label of "troll" for not being satisfied with what we got.
People need to wrap their brains around the notion that full factions are simply infeasible. Basically Cryptic made a mistake, back when, with the Klingons. It was a 'Blue vs. Red' era, and the idea was good; but having 2 factions de facto means you're building 2 games. Instead of 1 storyline, you now need to write 2; instead of 1 queue, you now need to supply 2; instead of 1 set of gear, you now need to create 2; etc. And that might even be worth it, if there are about an equal amount of blues and reds. But, in reality, only a handful of people are playing the Klink these days.
So, to-date, we should simply accept that a 'new faction' is a faction that will have its own unique characteristics, some unique storyline, some unique gear, etc; but that it can't be a full-blown separate game any more. Accept that premiss, and you'll have a lot more fun.
People need to wrap their brains around the notion that full factions are simply infeasible.
Then they shouldn't promise as much when they announce a new faction. Or, better yet, they should just stop making new factions altogether.
I have no problem "wrapping my brain" around the difficulty of making unique factions. What's in question here is whether or not they should bother making new factions at all if they're going to be only 10 levels and 6 missions different from the existing factions. That seems like a complete waste of effort. They could have spent this time and effort giving every existing character a brand new story arc set in the TOS era, perhaps where we were playing as Temporal Agents investigating a conspiracy in the 23rd century.
People need to wrap their brains around the notion that full factions are simply infeasible.
Then they shouldn't promise as much when they announce a new faction. Or, better yet, they should just stop making new factions altogether.
I have no problem "wrapping my brain" around the difficulty of making unique factions. What's in question here is whether or not they should bother making new factions at all if they're going to be only 10 levels and 6 missions different from the existing factions. That seems like a complete waste of effort. They could have spent this time and effort giving every existing character a brand new story arc set in the TOS era, perhaps where we were playing as Temporal Agents investigating a conspiracy in the 23rd century.
As already noted by other people in this thread: this expansion was mainly done to get new players in the game. Which is one of the reasons why the special recruitment event is tied in with the new faction.
Here's the problem though: the devs were very, very clear on this being a unique faction that was "at least as large as the Romulans".
Bull TRIBBLE. Cryptic has NEVER said that. Not one press realease, not one blog. One Dev chatting in a pod cast said it and the words are hardly even out of his mouth before commenting that many others there at Cryptic didn't even want to call it a faction AT ALL.
You will never EVER hold them accountable to that statement. It's not a promise, it ain't a contract, hell it's not even a bullet point on a white board of things they want to do one day. Its chit chat. Treat it accordingly.
Here's the problem though: the devs were very, very clear on this being a unique faction that was "at least as large as the Romulans".
Bull ****. Cryptic has NEVER said that. Not one press realease, not one blog. One Dev chatting in a pod cast said it and the words are hardly even out of his mouth before commenting that many others there at Cryptic didn't even want to call it a faction AT ALL.
Let's look at the exact quote in question, then.
"It is a new faction - we were coy about calling it a new faction in the press release - there was some marketing concerns about the connotations of it, but it's at least as much of a new faction as Romulans."
Now certainly, you can argue that they weren't sure if they should call it a new faction, which (according to that quote) is true. It is clear that some members of the dev team did not want it considered a faction of its own. But if there were "concerns about the connotations of it", then maybe nobody on the dev team should be saying things like "it's at least as much of a new faction as Romulans", so that there would be absolutely no confusion on the subject. I can't speak for other developers, but when I worked in that field, we were often restricted in what we were allowed to say about it, primarily to prevent this exact problem. If Geko didn't want the TOS stuff to be held to the standard of a faction, then it should never have been said at all.
Plus, I love this "one dev said it" bit. One developer said it, so we're not supposed to take that developer at their word? So what, I shouldn't trust the developers to know what they're talking about from now on, even though they're the ones that make all of the content in the first place? So that implies that the absolute best case scenario here is that Geko made an honest mistake in calling it a "new faction", but nobody on the Cryptic staff bothered to correct that mistake, despite the release being months away at the time it was said.
Plus, the only indication of any disagreement on whether or not TOS is a "faction"....was from Geko's own mouth. Geko's the one who said "there was some marketing concerns about the connotations of it".
So we should trust Geko's word, but only individual parts of it, and only after the release actually comes out? Because that's what you're doing here: you're picking and choosing which parts of Geko's statements we are "allowed" to consider true, and which are "just chit chat". Exactly how are ordinary, casual players of this game meant to discern which parts of what a dev says are "true" and which are "false" without any sort of indication from any other devs?
The fact of the matter is, from that "one podcast" by "one dev", virtually the entire gaming media and most of the player base drew their presumptions about what the new expansion would contain. Worse, there were multiple threads in this very forum that used Geko's words as an early defense of the lack of content shown on Tribble. You can't act like this podcast was somehow "limited" in scope, that nobody knew about Geko's statements and that nobody actually trusted them, because it's very obvious that everyone did.
Again, I doubt anyone on Cryptic's team was intentionally trying to be malicious here, but you can't possibly pretend that it's somehow the playerbase's fault that we thought the developers knew what they were talking about. Developers were absolutely held responsible for what they say, regardless of where they say it. It doesn't matter if its on the forums, in a podcast, in an interview, whatever. When a developer makes a statement like this, they should be held to it, and taken to task if the end results do not meet the expectations they set.
The thing is that some people tend to complain about everything and the kitchen sink thus creating white noise for actual valuable remarks.
It also helps to look at the big picture instead of individual misgivings.
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.
Here's the problem though: the devs were very, very clear on this being a unique faction that was "at least as large as the Romulans".
Bull ****. Cryptic has NEVER said that. Not one press realease, not one blog. One Dev chatting in a pod cast said it and the words are hardly even out of his mouth before commenting that many others there at Cryptic didn't even want to call it a faction AT ALL.
Let's look at the exact quote in question, then.
"It is a new faction - we were coy about calling it a new faction in the press release - there was some marketing concerns about the connotations of it, but it's at least as much of a new faction as Romulans."
Now certainly, you can argue that they weren't sure if they should call it a new faction, which (according to that quote) is true. It is clear that some members of the dev team did not want it considered a faction of its own. But if there were "concerns about the connotations of it", then maybe nobody on the dev team should be saying things like "it's at least as much of a new faction as Romulans", so that there would be absolutely no confusion on the subject. I can't speak for other developers, but when I worked in that field, we were often restricted in what we were allowed to say about it, primarily to prevent this exact problem. If Geko didn't want the TOS stuff to be held to the standard of a faction, then it should never have been said at all.
Plus, I love this "one dev said it" bit. One developer said it, so we're not supposed to take that developer at their word? So what, I shouldn't trust the developers to know what they're talking about from now on, even though they're the ones that make all of the content in the first place? So that implies that the absolute best case scenario here is that Geko made an honest mistake in calling it a "new faction", but nobody on the Cryptic staff bothered to correct that mistake, despite the release being months away at the time it was said.
Plus, the only indication of any disagreement on whether or not TOS is a "faction"....was from Geko's own mouth. Geko's the one who said "there was some marketing concerns about the connotations of it".
So we should trust Geko's word, but only individual parts of it, and only after the release actually comes out? Because that's what you're doing here: you're picking and choosing which parts of Geko's statements we are "allowed" to consider true, and which are "just chit chat". Exactly how are ordinary, casual players of this game meant to discern which parts of what a dev says are "true" and which are "false" without any sort of indication from any other devs?
The fact of the matter is, from that "one podcast" by "one dev", virtually the entire gaming media and most of the player base drew their presumptions about what the new expansion would contain. Worse, there were multiple threads in this very forum that used Geko's words as an early defense of the lack of content shown on Tribble. You can't act like this podcast was somehow "limited" in scope, that nobody knew about Geko's statements and that nobody actually trusted them, because it's very obvious that everyone did.
Again, I doubt anyone on Cryptic's team was intentionally trying to be malicious here, but you can't possibly pretend that it's somehow the playerbase's fault that we thought the developers knew what they were talking about. Developers were absolutely held responsible for what they say, regardless of where they say it. It doesn't matter if its on the forums, in a podcast, in an interview, whatever. When a developer makes a statement like this, they should be held to it, and taken to task if the end results do not meet the expectations they set.
Also I want to share something I have come to understand during my time on this earth, maybe it's the beginnings of wisdom even.
There is more to life than "gotcha!" and looking for things to call SLAP in the FACE and get upset over.
In fact those things are without any merit at all, and your time is more valuable than that, no matter who you are.
At the center of every person is a fundamental root and core of dignity, and it's always there, you just have to turn and face it. Even if because of circumstances or habits you can't see it, you've never really lost it. It's always there with you, sometime hidden but never truly gone.
Wow, i'm so glad to hear you say that. But i will be monitoring your posts on a different forum you post on to see if you really mean that stuff. and if you dont and wind up saying nasty stuff there, i willhave to call you out here. deal?
Al Rivera could eat a live baby on a Twitch stream, and I'll give Cryptic $50 just so I could enjoy reading the forum outrage afterwards.
I don't think Cryptic is that particularly great, it's just that I think a great deal of the STO playerbase is that much worse.
pretty much this...
when I see a comment by a user bitching about things that are unfactual or misrepresented, I state why I think they are wrong. Well, that is by definition defending cryptic ... but in my book it is more about calling out BS statements.
Like in another thread on this expansion somebody summed up the story missions of this "expansion" to 8 in total and that is not a lot, far behind of expansions like New Romulus or whatever it was called. Now that's true and I was wishing for more, but how on earth does it matter how much content they deliver when I didn't even pay a single penny for it? Again, I wasn't robbed of anything since I didn't pay anything.
I do have a problem however with the other guy saying that delta rising only had 10 missions and the other missions inbetween were no real missions...they very much were missions, but with less story driving content. And the Kobali groundzone wasn't mentioned at all for the sake of his argument. Just want to point out this was also free of charge.
When would I stop defending cryptic (although I'd like to see my way of commenting more as pointing out facts over the "untruth")?
Basically when they start to charge for content, and the content doesn't live up to my expectations. IF I had to pay 20 euros for the TOS "expansion" and I only got a new tutorial for it, I'd be extremely disappointed ... however, my disapointment is lessoned by the fact that I didn't pay a dime for it.
Make you a deal - for the next year when I'm watching movies at home and rolling my eyes at the stupid "commentary does not reflect the opinion of the studio" I'll try to remind myself its because of people like datcritickitten who CAN'T TELL THE DIFFERENCE and so we have to have these baby-buggy bumpers. And that no matter how stupid it is that we have to have those kinds of disclaimers, its because there really are shmucks running around trying to butt their chins against any hand they can find so they can shriek about getting slapped in the face.
What will it make for people to grasp there's more to a faction that mission count?
Or maybe to have that lightbulb moment that we stopped having separate missions for the three factions years ago and maybe expecting them to fritter away developer time on content that can only be run by a fraction of the player base isn't just unreasonable, it's outright STUPID.
See, ordinarily I'd agree that it makes no sense to make exclusive content for one faction.
Here's the problem though: the devs were very, very clear on this being a unique faction that was "at least as large as the Romulans".
No. That is already what someone interpreted into it.
The wording was "as least as much as a faction as the Romulans" Sure, some interpret this that it must be as large as them. but it seems to me that it was a lot more about all the systems, visual and SFX changes this faction brought. And in that regard it might in fact not just be even more than the Romulan faction had to offer. Unique 23c bridge officer power variants, unique user interface sounds, new SFX for many standard features like scanning and tricorders.
Geko did not talk about faction story content. He talked about things that set define the feel of a faction and that make the experience of being part of it unique.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Here's the problem though: the devs were very, very clear on this being a unique faction that was "at least as large as the Romulans".
Bull ****. Cryptic has NEVER said that. Not one press realease, not one blog. One Dev chatting in a pod cast said it and the words are hardly even out of his mouth before commenting that many others there at Cryptic didn't even want to call it a faction AT ALL.
You will never EVER hold them accountable to that statement. It's not a promise, it ain't a contract, hell it's not even a bullet point on a white board of things they want to do one day. Its chit chat. Treat it accordingly.
Sadly, this is very much like the '... and the players love it' statement - an offhand comment that was taken out of context and blown completely out of proportion.
And it unfortunately, still rears its ugly head to this day.
Indeed. Far as I'm concerned, the way Geko's comment has been treated has been one long exercise in nitpickingly trying to find fault with Cryptic at all cost. At least "And the players love it!" was sort of a fun meme; but the faction thing is just childish.
Make you a deal - for the next year when I'm watching movies at home and rolling my eyes at the stupid "commentary does not reflect the opinion of the studio" I'll try to remind myself its because of people like datcritickitten who CAN'T TELL THE DIFFERENCE and so we have to have these baby-buggy bumpers. And that no matter how stupid it is that we have to have those kinds of disclaimers, its because there really are shmucks running around trying to butt their chins against any hand they can find so they can shriek about getting slapped in the face.
Truly a shame that whenever someone brings up a complaint in this forum, the immediate response is to degrade and demean that person, instead of actually responding to what they've said.
But then, that's a problem common with most game forums, so I shouldn't be surprised that it's hard to find actual discussion about the expansion's faults here. You can't expect much from places such as these.
Bottom line: Geko said something that we now know isn't true. I'm not asking for anybody's head on a pike, so stop pretending I'm being unreasonable. I'm simply asking for Geko to come out and say "I said something that was misconstrued by both players and the media as being more than it was. I'm sorry for the confusion." That would be the simple, adult thing to do. Something he's had two months to do prior to this release, mind you, but I'd settle for hearing it now. It's not like I'm going to quit playing and boycott the game or anything, I'm just expressing an opinion that this expansion doesn't live up to what I was led to believe, and I find it "childish" that nobody in these forums can defend the expansion without insulting everyone who disagrees.
Stil waiting for the link to that blog. I'm sure for the level of outrage expressed there MUST be an official post from Cryptic with those exact word in in it, yes?
When a developer makes a statement like this, they should be held to it, and taken to task if the end results do not meet the expectations they set.
This just slays me. What will being "held to it" and "taken to task" look like? Are you hoping your singular outrage is enough to force them to start over from scratch so they can strictly adhere to what you assumed based on some random Dev comment? Should someone be fired, sued, publicly flogged?
The one and only "consequence" you can offer has nothing to do with long-winded walls of text. You may only deprive them of your money, and when you realize how inconsequential that is, possibly you re-think the perspective with which you relate to the world.
> @nikeix said: > Stil waiting for the link to that blog. I'm sure for the level of outrage expressed there MUST be an official post from Cryptic with those exact word in in it, yes?
What does ablog have to do with anything? when a game's executive producer says something to the players, they should be able to believe him. if he is saying things that aren't true, thats a problem.
and if you havent noticed they created an official section on the official forums for podcasts. when the executive producer goes on a podcast and that podcast is posted in the official podcast section on the official forums, people should actually be able to believe what they hear.
the main problem here is he said something that wasnt true and then he refused to correct himself.
Comments
cause no body is actually saying anything bad about cryptic. about people defending cryptic, and haters. sure but nothing actually about cryptic... that and no one has reported it yet.
if I stop posting it doesn't make you right it. just means I don't have enough rum to continue interacting with you.
*Shrugs* If you don't like it, don't play it. If you have complaints despite liking it, present them in a respectful and sensible manner. Don't start whining, yelling, or threatening. Treat people like you want them to treat you back.
This is not a dream... not a dream. We are using your brain's electrical system as a receiver. We are unable to transmit through conscious neural interference. You are receiving this broadcast as a dream. We are transmitting from the year one, nine, nine, nine. You are receiving this broadcast in order to alter the events you are seeing. Our technology has not developed a transmitter strong enough to reach your conscious state of awareness, but this is not a dream. You are seeing what is actually occurring for the purpose of causality violation.
Saying that we are like Miley Cyrus was the meanest thing on this forum. lol
Dropping that name is a sure way to derail a thread.
easier said than done,little known fact you're probably now aware of is that this is the ONLY Star Trek mmo out in the market so this is why people are bashing on the game...its not like they have a plethora of games to choose from.
doesnt even feel like Star Trek its just a shadow of the IP filled with a lot of pew pew and no exploration or diplomacy which is the essence of Star Trek,so yeah people have the right to whine and complain all they want,dont like it dont read it...
i weep for the younger generation of gamers,if these lazy brats werent so entitled and craved instant gratification maybe this would have been a sandbox mmo,scratch that this should have been a sandbox mmo from the begining not this pew pew fest with a Star Trek skin slapped onto it for money making purposes...
it is a bit simplistic. If the younger players are like that, this is because the world is like that. And these are the old generations who have created the world that we know.
money has replaced everything, and the young generations are raised to be consumers.
humans have forgotten that fulfillment, transcendence do not depend on money or power. (but it is an other story)
Cryptic is not bad or good, Cryptic is a company of our economy. they do things like all the other companies. I'm often disappointed by their choices, but at the end of the day, my life is still the same.
A lot of people forgets that STO is just a game
"Funny, I've always believed that the world is what we make of it." -- Ellie Arroway
Here's the problem though: the devs were very, very clear on this being a unique faction that was "at least as large as the Romulans". That claim requires creating a sufficient amount of faction-unique content. So you don't get to argue that it's somehow "unfair" for Cryptic to make unique content for one faction when they, themselves, set the scale upon which they would be judged.
So with that half of your argument dismissed out of hand by Cryptic's own word on the subject, let's look at the other half: is the TOS faction truly as big as the Romulans?
The Romulans had over 20 missions spread across 4 different story arcs. Though you choose a faction to be allies with at Lvl 10, you have unique missions until Lvl 20. I created a Rom toon and had fun playing through missions for several days before I reached the bridging point between the other two factions. And I will note that I was blowing through the missions, at that.
The TOS faction has 6 across a single story arc, and is over by Lvl 10. I created a toon and was finished with the new content in a single day of play. Yes, the TOS missions are longer, but that still doesn't extend the faction length long enough to compete with the Romulans by any measure.
Let's look at other content, then. The Romulans had an entire fleet of new ships at their disposal for every tier. The TOS faction gets 1 ship at the start of the game, and then uses Fed ships the rest of the way. You have to pay Cryptic with *real money* to get any of the other TOS-era ships.
The TOS faction at least has unique skill animations (like the Roms), weapons (ditto), and its own map though, right? Except that once you leave the starting area with a TOS toon....which is an easy mistake for new players to make, as there is no indicator in-game telling you "grab what you want because there's no coming back after this"....there is no way to obtain most of that unique content ever again. So perhaps its biggest selling point (that of people who want to keep that 23c "feel") is completely ruined by the game's failure to properly indicate its own ending point. Could they eventually fix this and provide us with a way to access 23c content again? Sure. But we can't judge the faction on what might exist in the future, we can only judge it on what exists right now.
So, with everything assessed, there's only one logical conclusion here: The new faction is objectively much smaller than the Romulan faction in every measurable way. So....stop dismissing everybody who disagrees with you as a "troll" and let folks like the OP complain. They have every right to do so, since Cryptic set the scale and didn't live up to it. I've invested a lot of my time and effort into this game, so I can't say I'm fond of being slapped with the label of "troll" for not being satisfied with what we got.
So, to-date, we should simply accept that a 'new faction' is a faction that will have its own unique characteristics, some unique storyline, some unique gear, etc; but that it can't be a full-blown separate game any more. Accept that premiss, and you'll have a lot more fun.
I have no problem "wrapping my brain" around the difficulty of making unique factions. What's in question here is whether or not they should bother making new factions at all if they're going to be only 10 levels and 6 missions different from the existing factions. That seems like a complete waste of effort. They could have spent this time and effort giving every existing character a brand new story arc set in the TOS era, perhaps where we were playing as Temporal Agents investigating a conspiracy in the 23rd century.
Isn't everyone?
As already noted by other people in this thread: this expansion was mainly done to get new players in the game. Which is one of the reasons why the special recruitment event is tied in with the new faction.
Bull TRIBBLE. Cryptic has NEVER said that. Not one press realease, not one blog. One Dev chatting in a pod cast said it and the words are hardly even out of his mouth before commenting that many others there at Cryptic didn't even want to call it a faction AT ALL.
You will never EVER hold them accountable to that statement. It's not a promise, it ain't a contract, hell it's not even a bullet point on a white board of things they want to do one day. Its chit chat. Treat it accordingly.
Now certainly, you can argue that they weren't sure if they should call it a new faction, which (according to that quote) is true. It is clear that some members of the dev team did not want it considered a faction of its own. But if there were "concerns about the connotations of it", then maybe nobody on the dev team should be saying things like "it's at least as much of a new faction as Romulans", so that there would be absolutely no confusion on the subject. I can't speak for other developers, but when I worked in that field, we were often restricted in what we were allowed to say about it, primarily to prevent this exact problem. If Geko didn't want the TOS stuff to be held to the standard of a faction, then it should never have been said at all.
Plus, I love this "one dev said it" bit. One developer said it, so we're not supposed to take that developer at their word? So what, I shouldn't trust the developers to know what they're talking about from now on, even though they're the ones that make all of the content in the first place? So that implies that the absolute best case scenario here is that Geko made an honest mistake in calling it a "new faction", but nobody on the Cryptic staff bothered to correct that mistake, despite the release being months away at the time it was said.
Plus, the only indication of any disagreement on whether or not TOS is a "faction"....was from Geko's own mouth. Geko's the one who said "there was some marketing concerns about the connotations of it".
So we should trust Geko's word, but only individual parts of it, and only after the release actually comes out? Because that's what you're doing here: you're picking and choosing which parts of Geko's statements we are "allowed" to consider true, and which are "just chit chat". Exactly how are ordinary, casual players of this game meant to discern which parts of what a dev says are "true" and which are "false" without any sort of indication from any other devs?
The fact of the matter is, from that "one podcast" by "one dev", virtually the entire gaming media and most of the player base drew their presumptions about what the new expansion would contain. Worse, there were multiple threads in this very forum that used Geko's words as an early defense of the lack of content shown on Tribble. You can't act like this podcast was somehow "limited" in scope, that nobody knew about Geko's statements and that nobody actually trusted them, because it's very obvious that everyone did.
Again, I doubt anyone on Cryptic's team was intentionally trying to be malicious here, but you can't possibly pretend that it's somehow the playerbase's fault that we thought the developers knew what they were talking about. Developers were absolutely held responsible for what they say, regardless of where they say it. It doesn't matter if its on the forums, in a podcast, in an interview, whatever. When a developer makes a statement like this, they should be held to it, and taken to task if the end results do not meet the expectations they set.
It also helps to look at the big picture instead of individual misgivings.
awesome post!
Wow, i'm so glad to hear you say that. But i will be monitoring your posts on a different forum you post on to see if you really mean that stuff. and if you dont and wind up saying nasty stuff there, i willhave to call you out here. deal?
pretty much this...
when I see a comment by a user bitching about things that are unfactual or misrepresented, I state why I think they are wrong. Well, that is by definition defending cryptic ... but in my book it is more about calling out BS statements.
Like in another thread on this expansion somebody summed up the story missions of this "expansion" to 8 in total and that is not a lot, far behind of expansions like New Romulus or whatever it was called. Now that's true and I was wishing for more, but how on earth does it matter how much content they deliver when I didn't even pay a single penny for it? Again, I wasn't robbed of anything since I didn't pay anything.
I do have a problem however with the other guy saying that delta rising only had 10 missions and the other missions inbetween were no real missions...they very much were missions, but with less story driving content. And the Kobali groundzone wasn't mentioned at all for the sake of his argument. Just want to point out this was also free of charge.
When would I stop defending cryptic (although I'd like to see my way of commenting more as pointing out facts over the "untruth")?
Basically when they start to charge for content, and the content doesn't live up to my expectations. IF I had to pay 20 euros for the TOS "expansion" and I only got a new tutorial for it, I'd be extremely disappointed ... however, my disapointment is lessoned by the fact that I didn't pay a dime for it.
Sigh.
The wording was "as least as much as a faction as the Romulans" Sure, some interpret this that it must be as large as them. but it seems to me that it was a lot more about all the systems, visual and SFX changes this faction brought. And in that regard it might in fact not just be even more than the Romulan faction had to offer. Unique 23c bridge officer power variants, unique user interface sounds, new SFX for many standard features like scanning and tricorders.
Geko did not talk about faction story content. He talked about things that set define the feel of a faction and that make the experience of being part of it unique.
Indeed. Far as I'm concerned, the way Geko's comment has been treated has been one long exercise in nitpickingly trying to find fault with Cryptic at all cost. At least "And the players love it!" was sort of a fun meme; but the faction thing is just childish.
But then, that's a problem common with most game forums, so I shouldn't be surprised that it's hard to find actual discussion about the expansion's faults here. You can't expect much from places such as these.
Bottom line: Geko said something that we now know isn't true. I'm not asking for anybody's head on a pike, so stop pretending I'm being unreasonable. I'm simply asking for Geko to come out and say "I said something that was misconstrued by both players and the media as being more than it was. I'm sorry for the confusion." That would be the simple, adult thing to do. Something he's had two months to do prior to this release, mind you, but I'd settle for hearing it now. It's not like I'm going to quit playing and boycott the game or anything, I'm just expressing an opinion that this expansion doesn't live up to what I was led to believe, and I find it "childish" that nobody in these forums can defend the expansion without insulting everyone who disagrees.
This just slays me. What will being "held to it" and "taken to task" look like? Are you hoping your singular outrage is enough to force them to start over from scratch so they can strictly adhere to what you assumed based on some random Dev comment? Should someone be fired, sued, publicly flogged?
The one and only "consequence" you can offer has nothing to do with long-winded walls of text. You may only deprive them of your money, and when you realize how inconsequential that is, possibly you re-think the perspective with which you relate to the world.
> Stil waiting for the link to that blog. I'm sure for the level of outrage expressed there MUST be an official post from Cryptic with those exact word in in it, yes?
What does ablog have to do with anything? when a game's executive producer says something to the players, they should be able to believe him. if he is saying things that aren't true, thats a problem.
and if you havent noticed they created an official section on the official forums for podcasts. when the executive producer goes on a podcast and that podcast is posted in the official podcast section on the official forums, people should actually be able to believe what they hear.
the main problem here is he said something that wasnt true and then he refused to correct himself.