So after being highly frustrated by this irritating Ui replacement where I join a queue and have multiple matches cancelled due to Player Declines usually 3 times before it will finally let me into a map, it dawns on me that its not due to Player declines but the crappy UI removing Players from the selected queue
example
[1:15] [System] [MatchReady] Queue Group has been matched.
[1:15] [System] Joined channel "Match".
[1:15] [System] Left channel "Match".
Inbetween Joined and Left channel the pop up box to accept or decline match appeared and I selected accept only to be removed from queue.
I can see why some have given up on PvE when this terribly implemented system replaced the previous UI. It may look nicer but the coding and mechanics under the hood are mess.
Rant over.
I'd file a bug report if I knew it wasn't a waste of time
Hello rubber banding my old friend, time to bounce around the battlezone again, where are all my bug reports going?, out of love with this game I am falling, As Cryptic fail to acknowledge a problem exists, Shakes an angry fist, And from Support all I'm hearing are the sounds of silence.
Yeah, a discussion was raised on this in another thread not too long ago.
The conclusion most came to is that it's the result of the new feature that allows people to queue up for more then one queue at a time. What happens is you queue for say Borg Red Alert as well as Infected Conduit, you're just going to play the first one to pop. The Borg queue fills first and you hit accept. At this point, the system does not remove you from the ISA Queue, but you go off to defend the sector against the Borg. Now when the team queuing for ISA fills, the game sees that you're already on a mission and removes you from the ISA queue. When this happens, the system is not smart enough to replace you with the next player in queue, instead it cancels the entire team for 'declines' and re-forms the team completely.
I have also had dozens of times where the box has popped up and I clicked 'Accept' and was immediately just removed from the queue for absolutely no reason at all.
The system completely and totally sucks.. and just like everything else the Cryptic staff has said nothing and given no indication that they're looking at it or that they even care. This Queue UI is a serious example of horrible design and implementation without any form of testing.
The system completely and totally sucks.. and just like everything else the Cryptic staff has said nothing and given no indication that they're looking at it or that they even care. This Queue UI is a serious example of horrible design and implementation without any form of testing.
The Cryptic way.
Agreed. In my job if I gave this level of service to our customers, i'd be looking for other employment. It wouldn't be tolerated.
(I'm not saying anyone on the Cryptic staff should be fired, however I am saying the quality of the product doesn't meet customer expectations and more due care needs to be taken)
But ofc i'm in a different line of work where how I interact with customers directly affects the companies public image and customers buying from us again.
Hello rubber banding my old friend, time to bounce around the battlezone again, where are all my bug reports going?, out of love with this game I am falling, As Cryptic fail to acknowledge a problem exists, Shakes an angry fist, And from Support all I'm hearing are the sounds of silence.
Hello rubber banding my old friend, time to bounce around the battlezone again, where are all my bug reports going?, out of love with this game I am falling, As Cryptic fail to acknowledge a problem exists, Shakes an angry fist, And from Support all I'm hearing are the sounds of silence.
Recently I received a spam of errors about leaving the map or something of the sort. This took place while warping into ISA.
So frustrating not knowing how many players are actually truly queued, being unable to queue for something new without first removing everything, and worst of all getting kicked from all the queues randomly without being made aware of it, so all the wait time wondering how dead this game is turns out it's another "new and improved" UI error.
If someone wanted to kill off whatever's left of an MMO's end-game PvE, this new UI and all it's problems would be it.
The fact that it's been so long since implemented and nothing much has been done about it says a lot about how they're treating STO.
Don't get me started on the user interface with powers that fail to reliably activate in any timely manner if at all, in a fast-paced game, a persistent & game breaking bug that's been around for years with zero signs of ever being acknowledged or fixed. Any time I enjoy something in the game like Arena of Sompek, dying and failing the map cause that bloody hypo wouldn't activate or the team res console took an extra 3 seconds to pop - yeah okay keep your game.
This did happen with the old UI, too, though. Not as often as it happens now, but I did experience being removed from the queue for things, most notably Winter Invasion. At least now it gives you an actual message that it happened, which is one of the few good things that I can say about the new UI.
This is an MMO, not a Star Trek episode simulator. That would make for a terrible game.
dying and failing the map cause that bloody hypo wouldn't activate or the team res console took an extra 3 seconds to pop - yeah okay keep your game.
Oh yes powertray lag is esp consistent on ground when healing is concerned. Many a time I hit a hypo and adrenaline rush or Medical tricorder and its activated but only for it to go on cd and my to be character face down waiting to hit respawn as the heal itself failed to give me the health
Hello rubber banding my old friend, time to bounce around the battlezone again, where are all my bug reports going?, out of love with this game I am falling, As Cryptic fail to acknowledge a problem exists, Shakes an angry fist, And from Support all I'm hearing are the sounds of silence.
Don't get me started on the user interface with powers that fail to reliably activate in any timely manner if at all, in a fast-paced game, a persistent & game breaking bug that's been around for years with zero signs of ever being acknowledged or fixed. Any time I enjoy something in the game like Arena of Sompek, dying and failing the map cause that bloody hypo wouldn't activate or the team res console took an extra 3 seconds to pop - yeah okay keep your game.
For quite a while now, if asked what this games biggest and most game breaking problem was, I would have probably responded with the input lag. It's unreal frustrating and still has never been addressed..
This horrible queue system though has pushed that issue to #2 on my list.
The Input lag makes game play frustrating, the queue system prevents you from playing at all.
The UI is, as has been said MANY times by a LOT of players, and utter disgrace.
I'll list a few things that currently seem to be wrong with it that i'm experiencing:
The aforementioned being removed from the queue group, possibly due to the system thinking someone left and kicking the whole team.
The filters for difficulty do not properly work. If i use the drop down box to chose Elite but am on a tab that lists some missions that only have normal difficulty those ones still get listed (Colony Invasion, Fleet Defense etc), so the list still stays massive.
You have the UI open, join a queue, get the prompt to join and click Accept. Then you go to close the UI and it tells you you still have queues you have not joined....?????? I already accepted one you pile of junk!
Still getting instances where i get zero prompt to tell me to accept a mission, meaning i just suddenly pop into a mission without warning.
Once i click accept and am in a queue there is no place that it indicates what i am queued for or how long i need to wait. I have zero UI input to tell me what is actually going on right there.
If i'm in a queue group and waiting for a mission to pop but someone declines (or gets kicked) there is no way to drop out of that queue once you hit accept. So if you are unfortunate enough to be stuck in a queue for 30mins+ (even up to 2hrs! I've seen from one of the DPS league admins) you have no way to back out and go do something else. You're stuck wondering if it'll just randomly pop without warning.
I honestly don't care what people say about the grinding, or the balance pass or the content release timetable; this UI is in my view doing more harm to the game than anything else right now for the end-game players.
-Balance passes you can adapt you builds to.
-Grinding you can chose to ignore.
-You can avoid lack of new episodes by running group content.
BUT......
If the UI used to get into the group content is as bad as this then you are going to be hard pressed to get people willing to fight with it and join you to play with. Even setting up a private group is a royal pain in the TRIBBLE with this. You have created a system that actually discourages people from lining up for the only end-game content available to us; is it any wonder players are leaving or getting fed up with things?
The UI is, as has been said MANY times by a LOT of players, and utter disgrace.
I'll list a few things that currently seem to be wrong with it that i'm experiencing:
The aforementioned being removed from the queue group, possibly due to the system thinking someone left and kicking the whole team.
The filters for difficulty do not properly work. If i use the drop down box to chose Elite but am on a tab that lists some missions that only have normal difficulty those ones still get listed (Colony Invasion, Fleet Defense etc), so the list still stays massive.
You have the UI open, join a queue, get the prompt to join and click Accept. Then you go to close the UI and it tells you you still have queues you have not joined....?????? I already accepted one you pile of junk!
Still getting instances where i get zero prompt to tell me to accept a mission, meaning i just suddenly pop into a mission without warning.
Once i click accept and am in a queue there is no place that it indicates what i am queued for or how long i need to wait. I have zero UI input to tell me what is actually going on right there.
If i'm in a queue group and waiting for a mission to pop but someone declines (or gets kicked) there is no way to drop out of that queue once you hit accept. So if you are unfortunate enough to be stuck in a queue for 30mins+ (even up to 2hrs! I've seen from one of the DPS league admins) you have no way to back out and go do something else. You're stuck wondering if it'll just randomly pop without warning.
I honestly don't care what people say about the grinding, or the balance pass or the content release timetable; this UI is in my view doing more harm to the game than anything else right now for the end-game players.
-Balance passes you can adapt you builds to.
-Grinding you can chose to ignore.
-You can avoid lack of new episodes by running group content.
BUT......
If the UI used to get into the group content is as bad as this then you are going to be hard pressed to get people willing to fight with it and join you to play with. Even setting up a private group is a royal pain in the **** with this. You have created a system that actually discourages people from lining up for the only end-game content available to us; is it any wonder players are leaving or getting fed up with things?
Well said and every point you made about the UI is spot on and problems I encounter daily.
Hello rubber banding my old friend, time to bounce around the battlezone again, where are all my bug reports going?, out of love with this game I am falling, As Cryptic fail to acknowledge a problem exists, Shakes an angry fist, And from Support all I'm hearing are the sounds of silence.
I hope we have at least 1 of those threads up continuously to give the Devs who are responsible a better chance to see how successful their work has been. I also think we need some way to vent the frustration and this place is the best I could imagine. In case anybody at Cryptic wonders the thing is still a nightmare, does not get better on its own and get me so pissed at times that I’m in danger of letting it out on my teammates. I rather go offline then.
Aside from the buggy mess itself I fail to understand completely why you are making it even for “willing” players so immensely hard to get even new stuff like Binary Circuit Elite to play.
-> For some reason you don’t let us set up 10 player private matches like CC?
-> You don’t let us queue for it in a sub 10 player group consisting of cross faction teammates?
-> You release 10 player maps in the first place while there is not enough interest in PvE to get even maps with half the team size to pop for single individuals?
My workaround for this fun killer by the way is to call a bud on phone (!), have him team-up on faction A with 2-4 players. I choose faction A or B and also team up with 2-4 players of the respective faction. Then I pray that at least 1-3 pugs are queueing up for it to fill missing ranks and coordinate the lineup with my bud. After slaying three dragons and freeing a princess this PvE map finally pops then!
We are so sick of it that we fake the matches by now to maximize the mark rewards for both teams. Doing it this way helped our players to generate up to 1750 marks in sum for every 6 minute run we do. By coordinating each stage of the map the “looser” team consisting of players that don’t need the marks that urgent is ensured to get 150 (winners take 200) at least.
I understand that you guys at cryptic loved to kill the old Borg STF because none of you is left who can program new maps which are even half as fun. What I don’t understand however is why you invest efforts into new maps and then cripple them entierly to have them dead in just a few weeks.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
Oh good, it's not just me.
As I've said elsewhere in the forum I'm recently returned from a lengthy hiatus and hadn't seen the new queue UI before. I've struggled with it a few days and it's confusing and counter intuitive. That's it's apparently also bugged seven ways till Sunday is not helping.
Everyone else has already covered the problems so no need for me to repeat it. All I can say is that as a returned player this UI is seriously making me consider leaving again as it's making it frustrating bordering impossible to access the end game content.
Logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end of it.
Thank you. It's not just my imagination here. Every one of these points are things I experience every day. Getting completely dropped from the queue makes me want to throw things.
Perhaps just drop the whole accept/decline button and drag everyone in when the queue fills. Sure, sometimes those people will be afk and get a penalty for not being in front of their computer when the queue pops, but isn't that better than everyone else waiting a minute for their autodecline then going back into the queue an infinite amount of times until you actually have 5 people hit accept? This is, by definition, AFK and should impose the penalty and help save the sanity of the other 4 people who just want to go in and get stuff done without having to hit accept every minute only to have some mystery person decline.
The thing has notably improved. The permanent filters for ground and space are just one example of nice improvements.
But I agree that they still have to solve some of the other problems. Getting removed for no reason is annoying. As are the stupid notifications you get when you want to close the window after hitting accept for the only queue you are in.
The thing has notably improved. The permanent filters for ground and space are just one example of nice improvements.
But I agree that they still have to solve some of the other problems. Getting removed for no reason is annoying. As are the stupid notifications you get when you want to close the window after hitting accept for the only queue you are in.
While it has improved its still a massive step back from what we had before. Even now I have to do way more clicking and way more fiddling with pointless options to get into a mission. What was a simple fun to use UI has turned into a frustrating click fest.
The UI is that bad is has killed queues and killed fleets driving a number of people away from the game.
Someone decided (not us) that we neaded a new UI and it was implemented without any good testing. After months allready only minor things ware fixed. If you have have time to fix things don't replace them ...
I get the feeling that despite the VAST majority of people agreeing that the UI is terrible and damaging to the game, Cryptic really don't give two hoots about our opinions.
They made the changes and we are stuck with it. It may be pushing players away but do they care....no. Why, because they will just tempt new players with shiny OP ships or toys, or palm others off by dropping the odd celebrity voice-over in here and there.
The fact the their change is killing off veteran players in droves doesn't mater to them, we are expendable and meaningless to them and their corporate masters. I strongly suspect this is the first of many "streamlining" changes to match the PC to the consoles to save on dev time and resources. And all in the name of profits and progress for Cryptic.
I get the feeling that despite the VAST majority of people agreeing that the UI is terrible and damaging to the game, Cryptic really don't give two hoots about our opinions.
I wouldn't be so quick to talk about vast majority of people, since most of the current issues with queue UI and Cryptic way of handling it is pretty much a community fault....at least at this point it is.
Cryptic, as any other run of the mill F2P studio, is susceptible to the right kind of pressure. We, as a community, failed to apply said pressure and that's it. And am not talking about boycotting the product or closing our wallets, its much more simple than that.
I get the feeling that despite the VAST majority of people agreeing that the UI is terrible and damaging to the game, Cryptic really don't give two hoots about our opinions.
I wouldn't be so quick to talk about vast majority of people, since most of the current issues with queue UI and Cryptic way of handling it is pretty much a community fault....at least at this point it is.
Cryptic, as any other run of the mill F2P studio, is susceptible to the right kind of pressure. We, as a community, failed to apply said pressure and that's it. And am not talking about boycotting the product or closing our wallets, its much more simple than that.
That's wrong its not the community fault, its the devs fault for not taking onboard feedback, not testing the new UI correctly and forcing an unneeded change that makes things worse.
Sometimes it doesn't matter how much or what type of pressure the players put on games devs. As sometimes devs both in STO and other games ignore the players or wrongly write-off players comments. Its a tricky balance for devs and sometimes players should be ignored and other times devs ignore players when they should really listen. Games have been killed by this when devs have got it the wrong way around.
Speaking about the new rubbish UI it just took me over 15 clicks, lots of mouse movement to get into CE a queue. Its so frustrating to use its no wonder a large amount of people have given up and left STO.
I get the feeling that despite the VAST majority of people agreeing that the UI is terrible and damaging to the game, Cryptic really don't give two hoots about our opinions.
I wouldn't be so quick to talk about vast majority of people, since most of the current issues with queue UI and Cryptic way of handling it is pretty much a community fault....at least at this point it is.
Cryptic, as any other run of the mill F2P studio, is susceptible to the right kind of pressure. We, as a community, failed to apply said pressure and that's it. And am not talking about boycotting the product or closing our wallets, its much more simple than that.
What complete nonsense. How is it our fault as a community that the devs forced upon us a UI that is clearly faulty and at best unwanted by a huge number of highly experienced players?
What exactly have we done to warrant having this pile of junk foisted on us?
What have we done that means our feedback and constant train of threads like this one are ignored?
You seem to think we've all done something to cause this. That is utter rubbish i'm afraid to say. THEY pushed this on us, THEY must own up to the mistake and sort the mess out or face the consequences of dwindling player numbers.
This forum may only be a minority of players but we are very vocal at least, as are the in game chats, and the guys on Reddit. It's not like the whole player-base has been silent on the issue of this UI for months. This issues in CONSTANTLY being brought up by both old and new players alike.
I get the feeling that despite the VAST majority of people agreeing that the UI is terrible and damaging to the game, Cryptic really don't give two hoots about our opinions.
I wouldn't be so quick to talk about vast majority of people, since most of the current issues with queue UI and Cryptic way of handling it is pretty much a community fault....at least at this point it is.
Cryptic, as any other run of the mill F2P studio, is susceptible to the right kind of pressure. We, as a community, failed to apply said pressure and that's it. And am not talking about boycotting the product or closing our wallets, its much more simple than that.
That's wrong its not the community fault, its the devs fault for not taking onboard feedback, not testing the new UI correctly and forcing an unneeded change that makes things worse.
You are missing how it all started...
Let's go back to the dev.blog about the new Queue UI shortly before season 13.
A dev.blog written and ordered by a person(s) well knowing that the UI isn't any better than the old one (despite being claimed so) and it is as far as possible from being an improvement (again despite being claimed so) or even functional considering the state at the release and some time after it.
Now that dev.blog was made with the knowledge that in a few days the season 13 is released and everyone will know that everything said in the dev.blog was a utter TRIBBLE and as distant from reality as it gets. Did Cryptic actually gave a damn about that? Not really! Did the community raised proper stink over such blatant BS? Not really!
Sure we talked about the UI being horrific and so on, but somehow Cryptic got pass on being a lying and disregarding ...... on that one. Why? And who is to be blamed for that one? Cryptic or the community waving hand over the bigger issue and giving them pass?
In the same time how many QA session or streams with devs we had since then? Did the community used it as an opportunity to slap them around for what they done? Did we as a community at least attempted to put a wrench to their BS PR machine? Nope, we had shills being excited about new stuff we can buy or a token content.....
“And who is to be blamed for that one? Cryptic or the community waving hand over the bigger issue and giving them pass?”
Clearly Cryptic is the blame as this thread shows the community hasn’t given them a pass, we are still complaining and calling them out on the bad change.
Even if we had used even more different ways to voice our problems with the new UI, none of it would have mattered. If they are ignoring forum threads, twitter comments and blog comments, they are also going to ignore complaints through a QA session or stream.
They addressed some issues, which proves they have listened to at least some of the criticism. The fact that they ignored all other stuff that was probably more difficult to solve or simply didn't want to change shows that it's not the community that is the problem here.
They've simply been selective in what they wanted to hear, and what information they would use as input. Or they're still working on it, that's also a real possibility of course.
Besides, it's not as if those QA and related PR-stuff such as interviews with devs are really all that critical. Even if they were, most answers they usually get are so vague that Cryptic can still go in any direction and not held accountable to anything.
So none of it would have mattered. We did what we could and most of us have been pretty clear about what's wrong with the new UI.
I have noticed several of the points brought up here, especially regarding the joined/left match queue group announcement. The new UI is slowly growing on me, but I dislike having to drop out of a queue if I realize that I want to add another mission to my queue group.
Besides, it's not as if those QA and related PR-stuff such as interviews with devs are really all that critical. Even if they were, most answers they usually get are so vague that Cryptic can still go in any direction and not held accountable to anything.
So none of it would have mattered. We did what we could and most of us have been pretty clear about what's wrong with the new UI.
Nah, you are allowing their PR department to get the message out and that is the biggest mistake we can do. The issue with queue UI started with PR department blatantly lying to us and incidentally the solution lies there as well.
You create enough disturbance, you bare the PR department for getting any meaningful message out without being derailed in favor of the queue UI question and month from now we have them talking to us about it if nothing else. Its simple as that, public relations are not only the only venue we have to hit them back, it is good to remember that it is supposed to be a road with two lanes, one for them and one for the community. Since Cryptic made it into one lane road, i say we choke it and see where it goes from there. Simply put, once you prevent part of the company to do their job (outreach outside this board) in a meaningful way, once they are forced to focus on other stuff than getting their message out, you will have their attention
Now i don't want to argue about it too strongly because we are on the same boat here. But i firmly believe that that's the way to go and that the community can do much more in that regard. It worked on much bigger fries than Cryptic in less time and i believe once the community gets over feeling like we owe Cryptic something for talking to us (looking at you reddit), we can achieve something. Perhaps not what we want, but surely we can at least put an end to the "stonewalling" that is happening now!
Besides, it's not as if those QA and related PR-stuff such as interviews with devs are really all that critical. Even if they were, most answers they usually get are so vague that Cryptic can still go in any direction and not held accountable to anything.
So none of it would have mattered. We did what we could and most of us have been pretty clear about what's wrong with the new UI.
Nah, you are allowing their PR department to get the message out and that is the biggest mistake we can do. The issue with queue UI started with PR department blatantly lying to us and incidentally the solution lies there as well.
You create enough disturbance, you bare the PR department for getting any meaningful message out without being derailed in favor of the queue UI question and month from now we have them talking to us about it if nothing else. Its simple as that, public relations are not only the only venue we have to hit them back, it is good to remember that it is supposed to be a road with two lanes, one for them and one for the community. Since Cryptic made it into one lane road, i say we choke it and see where it goes from there. Simply put, once you prevent part of the company to do their job (outreach outside this board) in a meaningful way, once they are forced to focus on other stuff than getting their message out, you will have their attention
Now i don't want to argue about it too strongly because we are on the same boat here. But i firmly believe that that's the way to go and that the community can do much more in that regard. It worked on much bigger fries than Cryptic in less time and i believe once the community gets over feeling like we owe Cryptic something for talking to us (looking at you reddit), we can achieve something. Perhaps not what we want, but surely we can at least put an end to the "stonewalling" that is happening now!
Yeah well, most people don't treat a game as a second job. They either accept changes like the UI ones, or they simply move on. Which resonates well with other's observations.
Sure, increasing pressure could work. But I wonder who those bigger fries are - probably the type of companies that are important in real life. I doubt enough people consider this game important enough to throw a fit, start a fire so to say, or anything like that.
You may be right to some extent that we could have done a lot more. To be fair, I have the feeling that many players are simply not caring anymore. Even on the forum there is noticably less activity and less rage about things. But then again, it really shouldn't be necessary to go as far as you are suggesting.
Comments
The conclusion most came to is that it's the result of the new feature that allows people to queue up for more then one queue at a time. What happens is you queue for say Borg Red Alert as well as Infected Conduit, you're just going to play the first one to pop. The Borg queue fills first and you hit accept. At this point, the system does not remove you from the ISA Queue, but you go off to defend the sector against the Borg. Now when the team queuing for ISA fills, the game sees that you're already on a mission and removes you from the ISA queue. When this happens, the system is not smart enough to replace you with the next player in queue, instead it cancels the entire team for 'declines' and re-forms the team completely.
I have also had dozens of times where the box has popped up and I clicked 'Accept' and was immediately just removed from the queue for absolutely no reason at all.
The system completely and totally sucks.. and just like everything else the Cryptic staff has said nothing and given no indication that they're looking at it or that they even care. This Queue UI is a serious example of horrible design and implementation without any form of testing.
The Cryptic way.
Agreed. In my job if I gave this level of service to our customers, i'd be looking for other employment. It wouldn't be tolerated.
(I'm not saying anyone on the Cryptic staff should be fired, however I am saying the quality of the product doesn't meet customer expectations and more due care needs to be taken)
But ofc i'm in a different line of work where how I interact with customers directly affects the companies public image and customers buying from us again.
Hello rubber banding my old friend, time to bounce around the battlezone again, where are all my bug reports going?, out of love with this game I am falling, As Cryptic fail to acknowledge a problem exists, Shakes an angry fist, And from Support all I'm hearing are the sounds of silence.
Edited
Hello rubber banding my old friend, time to bounce around the battlezone again, where are all my bug reports going?, out of love with this game I am falling, As Cryptic fail to acknowledge a problem exists, Shakes an angry fist, And from Support all I'm hearing are the sounds of silence.
So frustrating not knowing how many players are actually truly queued, being unable to queue for something new without first removing everything, and worst of all getting kicked from all the queues randomly without being made aware of it, so all the wait time wondering how dead this game is turns out it's another "new and improved" UI error.
If someone wanted to kill off whatever's left of an MMO's end-game PvE, this new UI and all it's problems would be it.
The fact that it's been so long since implemented and nothing much has been done about it says a lot about how they're treating STO.
Don't get me started on the user interface with powers that fail to reliably activate in any timely manner if at all, in a fast-paced game, a persistent & game breaking bug that's been around for years with zero signs of ever being acknowledged or fixed. Any time I enjoy something in the game like Arena of Sompek, dying and failing the map cause that bloody hypo wouldn't activate or the team res console took an extra 3 seconds to pop - yeah okay keep your game.
Oh yes powertray lag is esp consistent on ground when healing is concerned. Many a time I hit a hypo and adrenaline rush or Medical tricorder and its activated but only for it to go on cd and my to be character face down waiting to hit respawn as the heal itself failed to give me the health
Hello rubber banding my old friend, time to bounce around the battlezone again, where are all my bug reports going?, out of love with this game I am falling, As Cryptic fail to acknowledge a problem exists, Shakes an angry fist, And from Support all I'm hearing are the sounds of silence.
For quite a while now, if asked what this games biggest and most game breaking problem was, I would have probably responded with the input lag. It's unreal frustrating and still has never been addressed..
This horrible queue system though has pushed that issue to #2 on my list.
The Input lag makes game play frustrating, the queue system prevents you from playing at all.
I'll list a few things that currently seem to be wrong with it that i'm experiencing:
I honestly don't care what people say about the grinding, or the balance pass or the content release timetable; this UI is in my view doing more harm to the game than anything else right now for the end-game players.
-Balance passes you can adapt you builds to.
-Grinding you can chose to ignore.
-You can avoid lack of new episodes by running group content.
BUT......
If the UI used to get into the group content is as bad as this then you are going to be hard pressed to get people willing to fight with it and join you to play with. Even setting up a private group is a royal pain in the TRIBBLE with this. You have created a system that actually discourages people from lining up for the only end-game content available to us; is it any wonder players are leaving or getting fed up with things?
Well said and every point you made about the UI is spot on and problems I encounter daily.
Hello rubber banding my old friend, time to bounce around the battlezone again, where are all my bug reports going?, out of love with this game I am falling, As Cryptic fail to acknowledge a problem exists, Shakes an angry fist, And from Support all I'm hearing are the sounds of silence.
I hope we have at least 1 of those threads up continuously to give the Devs who are responsible a better chance to see how successful their work has been. I also think we need some way to vent the frustration and this place is the best I could imagine. In case anybody at Cryptic wonders the thing is still a nightmare, does not get better on its own and get me so pissed at times that I’m in danger of letting it out on my teammates. I rather go offline then.
Aside from the buggy mess itself I fail to understand completely why you are making it even for “willing” players so immensely hard to get even new stuff like Binary Circuit Elite to play.
-> For some reason you don’t let us set up 10 player private matches like CC?
-> You don’t let us queue for it in a sub 10 player group consisting of cross faction teammates?
-> You release 10 player maps in the first place while there is not enough interest in PvE to get even maps with half the team size to pop for single individuals?
My workaround for this fun killer by the way is to call a bud on phone (!), have him team-up on faction A with 2-4 players. I choose faction A or B and also team up with 2-4 players of the respective faction. Then I pray that at least 1-3 pugs are queueing up for it to fill missing ranks and coordinate the lineup with my bud. After slaying three dragons and freeing a princess this PvE map finally pops then!
We are so sick of it that we fake the matches by now to maximize the mark rewards for both teams. Doing it this way helped our players to generate up to 1750 marks in sum for every 6 minute run we do. By coordinating each stage of the map the “looser” team consisting of players that don’t need the marks that urgent is ensured to get 150 (winners take 200) at least.
I understand that you guys at cryptic loved to kill the old Borg STF because none of you is left who can program new maps which are even half as fun. What I don’t understand however is why you invest efforts into new maps and then cripple them entierly to have them dead in just a few weeks.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
As I've said elsewhere in the forum I'm recently returned from a lengthy hiatus and hadn't seen the new queue UI before. I've struggled with it a few days and it's confusing and counter intuitive. That's it's apparently also bugged seven ways till Sunday is not helping.
Everyone else has already covered the problems so no need for me to repeat it. All I can say is that as a returned player this UI is seriously making me consider leaving again as it's making it frustrating bordering impossible to access the end game content.
Perhaps just drop the whole accept/decline button and drag everyone in when the queue fills. Sure, sometimes those people will be afk and get a penalty for not being in front of their computer when the queue pops, but isn't that better than everyone else waiting a minute for their autodecline then going back into the queue an infinite amount of times until you actually have 5 people hit accept? This is, by definition, AFK and should impose the penalty and help save the sanity of the other 4 people who just want to go in and get stuff done without having to hit accept every minute only to have some mystery person decline.
But I agree that they still have to solve some of the other problems. Getting removed for no reason is annoying. As are the stupid notifications you get when you want to close the window after hitting accept for the only queue you are in.
The UI is that bad is has killed queues and killed fleets driving a number of people away from the game.
Someone decided (not us) that we neaded a new UI and it was implemented without any good testing. After months allready only minor things ware fixed. If you have have time to fix things don't replace them ...
They made the changes and we are stuck with it. It may be pushing players away but do they care....no. Why, because they will just tempt new players with shiny OP ships or toys, or palm others off by dropping the odd celebrity voice-over in here and there.
The fact the their change is killing off veteran players in droves doesn't mater to them, we are expendable and meaningless to them and their corporate masters. I strongly suspect this is the first of many "streamlining" changes to match the PC to the consoles to save on dev time and resources. And all in the name of profits and progress for Cryptic.
I wouldn't be so quick to talk about vast majority of people, since most of the current issues with queue UI and Cryptic way of handling it is pretty much a community fault....at least at this point it is.
Cryptic, as any other run of the mill F2P studio, is susceptible to the right kind of pressure. We, as a community, failed to apply said pressure and that's it. And am not talking about boycotting the product or closing our wallets, its much more simple than that.
Sometimes it doesn't matter how much or what type of pressure the players put on games devs. As sometimes devs both in STO and other games ignore the players or wrongly write-off players comments. Its a tricky balance for devs and sometimes players should be ignored and other times devs ignore players when they should really listen. Games have been killed by this when devs have got it the wrong way around.
Speaking about the new rubbish UI it just took me over 15 clicks, lots of mouse movement to get into CE a queue. Its so frustrating to use its no wonder a large amount of people have given up and left STO.
What complete nonsense. How is it our fault as a community that the devs forced upon us a UI that is clearly faulty and at best unwanted by a huge number of highly experienced players?
What exactly have we done to warrant having this pile of junk foisted on us?
What have we done that means our feedback and constant train of threads like this one are ignored?
You seem to think we've all done something to cause this. That is utter rubbish i'm afraid to say. THEY pushed this on us, THEY must own up to the mistake and sort the mess out or face the consequences of dwindling player numbers.
This forum may only be a minority of players but we are very vocal at least, as are the in game chats, and the guys on Reddit. It's not like the whole player-base has been silent on the issue of this UI for months. This issues in CONSTANTLY being brought up by both old and new players alike.
You are missing how it all started...
Let's go back to the dev.blog about the new Queue UI shortly before season 13.
A dev.blog written and ordered by a person(s) well knowing that the UI isn't any better than the old one (despite being claimed so) and it is as far as possible from being an improvement (again despite being claimed so) or even functional considering the state at the release and some time after it.
Now that dev.blog was made with the knowledge that in a few days the season 13 is released and everyone will know that everything said in the dev.blog was a utter TRIBBLE and as distant from reality as it gets. Did Cryptic actually gave a damn about that? Not really! Did the community raised proper stink over such blatant BS? Not really!
Sure we talked about the UI being horrific and so on, but somehow Cryptic got pass on being a lying and disregarding ...... on that one. Why? And who is to be blamed for that one? Cryptic or the community waving hand over the bigger issue and giving them pass?
In the same time how many QA session or streams with devs we had since then? Did the community used it as an opportunity to slap them around for what they done? Did we as a community at least attempted to put a wrench to their BS PR machine? Nope, we had shills being excited about new stuff we can buy or a token content.....
Clearly Cryptic is the blame as this thread shows the community hasn’t given them a pass, we are still complaining and calling them out on the bad change.
Yes via the forum posts, twitter comments, blog comments and the rest.
So it’s not the commodity’s fault, it’s the devs fault.
Even if we had used even more different ways to voice our problems with the new UI, none of it would have mattered. If they are ignoring forum threads, twitter comments and blog comments, they are also going to ignore complaints through a QA session or stream.
They addressed some issues, which proves they have listened to at least some of the criticism. The fact that they ignored all other stuff that was probably more difficult to solve or simply didn't want to change shows that it's not the community that is the problem here.
They've simply been selective in what they wanted to hear, and what information they would use as input. Or they're still working on it, that's also a real possibility of course.
So none of it would have mattered. We did what we could and most of us have been pretty clear about what's wrong with the new UI.
STO Beta Test and Launch Veteran
Nah, you are allowing their PR department to get the message out and that is the biggest mistake we can do. The issue with queue UI started with PR department blatantly lying to us and incidentally the solution lies there as well.
You create enough disturbance, you bare the PR department for getting any meaningful message out without being derailed in favor of the queue UI question and month from now we have them talking to us about it if nothing else. Its simple as that, public relations are not only the only venue we have to hit them back, it is good to remember that it is supposed to be a road with two lanes, one for them and one for the community. Since Cryptic made it into one lane road, i say we choke it and see where it goes from there. Simply put, once you prevent part of the company to do their job (outreach outside this board) in a meaningful way, once they are forced to focus on other stuff than getting their message out, you will have their attention
Now i don't want to argue about it too strongly because we are on the same boat here. But i firmly believe that that's the way to go and that the community can do much more in that regard. It worked on much bigger fries than Cryptic in less time and i believe once the community gets over feeling like we owe Cryptic something for talking to us (looking at you reddit), we can achieve something. Perhaps not what we want, but surely we can at least put an end to the "stonewalling" that is happening now!
Yeah well, most people don't treat a game as a second job. They either accept changes like the UI ones, or they simply move on. Which resonates well with other's observations.
Sure, increasing pressure could work. But I wonder who those bigger fries are - probably the type of companies that are important in real life. I doubt enough people consider this game important enough to throw a fit, start a fire so to say, or anything like that.
You may be right to some extent that we could have done a lot more. To be fair, I have the feeling that many players are simply not caring anymore. Even on the forum there is noticably less activity and less rage about things. But then again, it really shouldn't be necessary to go as far as you are suggesting.