[PODCAST] [INTERVIEW] Tribbles in Ecstasy Take 235: "What Tech Problems?!"

Comments

• sunseahl Member Posts: 827 Arc User

  September 2016

  It felt all kinds of weird having the interference from Independence Day creep into our interview....
  
  Sorry about that.​​

  Member of the "Disenchanted"
  

  drowrulesupreme wrote: »

  We don't want what the Feds have. We want the equivalent. We want fairer treatment. Concern, desire, greed to some extent, and passionate belief that the enough people would buy KDF items to make it worth Cryptic's while.

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• alex1ger Member Posts: 141 Arc User

  September 2016

  Hello, tribbles.
  
  I've got a lot of feedback, so ready, steady, go!
  
  
  
  Community question:
  
  Good question, I mean, the replicator sounds good, but how do you power it? Besides, there are people who suggest that starvation has less to do with "not enough food" and instead is a symptom of corrupt/ineffective/negligent governments and those issues might not go away even if affordable replicators existed.
  
  So maybe cheap and clean energy should be the first step instead? Well, you still need to get the necessary funding and we all know that established industries can influence politics through their lobbyists.
  
  I got a brilliant idea! How about some way to rewrite human brains to make them all have common sense? What are you saying? Brain washing? Well, that's one way to look at it, but it would only be used for the betterment of humanity! What? There is the potential for abuse? I guess you are right. What a pity. Common sense for everybody could have solved a lot of problems...
  
  The only way to better humanity would be if humanity bettered itself. Let's see how long that's gonna take...
  
  
  
  Feedback:
  
  
  I really enjoyed the interview. Especially the parts when Zeronius and you guys just went on one nerdy tangent after the other. That kind of friendly chatter is just so much more interesting to me than talking about... "the game".
  
  
  
  Unfortunately it's time for another round of brutal honesty. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
  
  
  
  So, there was a question on the show asking about the Cardassian-Dominion lockbox. See, during the week I saw a thread on reddit about... well, console players complaining that the supposed T6 ships in the lockbox (and the lobi store) were not T6, but T5 instead. And some of these console players claimed that support brushed them off calling the T6 thing a typo.
  
  And I'm like... Okay, Perfect World is responsible for support, but Cryptic, seriously? The first lockbox, the FIRST LOCKBOX on consoles and you can't launch it without some sort of issue. And this is a rather big issue. That's just precious.
  But that's not the best part... The executive producer chimed in in that reddit thread and in a thread here on the forums saying that they are working on it and everything will be fixed. That's great, isn't it?
  
  The first sentence of his statement basically says they noticed the issue the week before. And that's where I stop. Why? Let me explain it to Cryptic/Perfect World in no uncertain terms... If I were to consider you a "respectable" game developer, I would expect you to write this post the moment this terrible bug comes to your attention. NOT THE WEEK AFTER! And furthermore, you would not just answer in these specific threads, you would make a newsblog/announcement that shows up in the launcher. And a sticky thread on the forums. Wait, nevermind, because you STILL don't have a devtracker...
  
  That's what I would expect from a "respectable" game developer. Now if you wanted to actually impress me, you would do what I said in the previous paragraph and on top of that, you would "freeze" the lockbox event. Stop the boxes from dropping, stop selling keys, freeze all keys on the exchange. Yes, some people might possibly get upset, but that would be a very clear and visible sign that this issue has top priority. And as soon as the issue is fixed you "unfreeze" the event and you extend the event by how ever many days it was "frozen".
  
  
  
  First impressions, Cryptic, first impressions... See, the official STO twitter and CaptainGeko (and maybe other devs too) link and retweet reviews that praise the game. I get that. That's what everybody would do. But let's look at some of these reviews on YouTube. As of yet, very few of them managed to get to 10k views or more. A few feedbacks ago I mentioned a guy doing a "first impressions" video on the pc version. He got over 150k views by now. To (once again) put that into perspective: Very few of your official videos get to 100k views or more.
  You know, just go to YouTube and search for Star Trek Online. Among the first videos are this guy and a guy who reviewed the XBox version of STO. That guy got over 100k views by now and he does recommend checking out the game because it's free, but he is very clear about the issues it has. Just the part about voice acting and sound design alone is in-depth and fun at the same time.
  
  
  
  By the way, when Mr. Ricossa and Zeronius claimed that Agents of Yesterday had as much episodic content as Delta Rising, I did actually log in and checked my mission journal. Yeah, that's kinda sad actually. -.-
  Turns out that they are "theoretically" right. Delta Rising had 9 "true" episodes at launch (up to and including "Takedown") whereas AoY had 10 episodes. Now you could argue whether or not the two episodes that supposedly ended the Temporal story arc should have been part of the expansion, but I'm not gonna do that. We could also argue whether "What's left behind" and "Dust to Dust" should be counted for the Delta Rising arc since they've been included in the mission journal.
  
  But let's talk about something more interesting. Hey, Cryptic, when Delta Rising launched and people didn't really like the inclusion of the patrol mission wrappers and the much steeper leveling curve... Weren't you talking about how you wanted to make patrol missions more interesting by injecting them with parts of the story? So... Back then you kinda maybe almost considered at least part of them story content, but now, when compared to AoY, you kinda sorta seem to conveniently "forget" about that.
  Make up your mind, are those missions or even parts of them story content, yes or no? Does one wrapper (including all the patrols) equal one story mission? What about two wrappers? Tell me, Cryptic. I'm listening intently.
  
  And what else did they kinda "forget"? The repeatable Kobali ground story missions. Even though people may not have liked this stuff, "technically" at least part of it might qualify as story content. Now look at AoY and tell me: Where's the content?

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• chozoelder2nd Member Posts: 440 Arc User

  September 2016

  If you were to submit a project or device for the betterment of humanity to the Roddenberry awards, what would it be and why?

  I would want something that would benefit Salman Khan's idea on a free worldwide education. Khan Academy is a great website that's helped me out before. If there was somehow an easy way to get it into the hands of people that really need it, it would be fantastic.
  
  
  Feedback
  
  Okay Midnite. I understand your point. You're right in that it shouldn't be expected to literally stop yourselves on every single detail and say, "Warning. Spoilers coming in." Christ... that would be dreadful.
  
  If you really think it's okay to say major stuff like that... Well, I can't really blame you.
  
  I could go into a spiel about why I said what I said, how I don't agree that it's similar to talking about old films with friends, and tell the whole story about why I think like this, but I'll just give you the short version. I have a feeling that it is what you'll prefer.
  
  Basically when I was a kid I got spoiled on pretty much just about everything cool that interested me. As a kid I was always told the same thing, "It's been years. Suck it up." I followed that advice and went "Ehh, okay. Fine." Many years went by and I then found out that my best friend wasn't spoiled on a lot of things that seemed to be common knowledge. That's when my outlook changed. I no longer thought it was fair to say "It's been years" or something like "If you cared enough you would've seen it within the year." But context is still important, and the context here is that this is a Star Trek podcast.
  
  I can agree with Midnite when he says it's too much of a hassle to worry about when this is a podcast about Star Trek. That's fair enough. Thank you for understanding where I'm coming from, Midnite. Hearing that means a lot more than you realize because it's literally the first time I'm hearing someone be friendly about the subject.
  
  
  
  As for that tweet Midnite read that obviously refers to Sun, I think it was a little much. If you really pay attention, you don't hear many interruptions. If anything, the guests interrupt them just as much, which is something that shouldn't be frowned upon since they're the guest. It's cool since they're being decent about it. When devs do interrupt, it's not like they're being jerks about it. They're simply trying to get their point across.
  
  Sun isn't necessarily demanding or shoving ideas either. There's nothing wrong with giving ideas. When a dev refutes a point, it usually ends with "fair enough". Sure it's a little cynical sometimes, but I feel where she's coming from. I have a frequently played Rom and KDF.
  
  
  
  Star Trek Discovery Delay
  
  I'm a Zelda fan so I'm used to delays. I'm fine with it. I'll always prefer a delay if means not having to sacrifice quality.
  
  
  
  Fleet Station K-13 Holding
  
  I'm happy. It's satisfying my itch for more TOS themed stuff. For some people it might just be gear/equipment and a fleet zone map, but for me it's more ways of having fun. It might just be the thing that gets me to level my AoY character that's still currently level 16.

  

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