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Livestream with Cryptic QA on Friday.

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  • jhymeldev#0987 jhymeldev Member Posts: 9 Arc User
    sthe91 wrote: »
    https://media.giphy.com/media/1AfMOd1TdSU0vN9OQt/giphy.gif

    Me stumbling on this thread. Sorry I missed it a few weeks ago, bring these topics to the stream and we can chat!

    Welcome to the forums. Will you also get a fancy title indicating you are Quality Assurance or something like that? Thanks for your answers and your explanations about why some of the questions cannot be answered, fall under the NDA, etc. I really enjoyed the livestream last night. You do not deserve the flack that you are getting from some. Passion from STO players is one thing, some attacking Cryptic is another.

    sorry, as this is not against his person as a whole, but his place in not being able to answer the questions posed to him. so flack is well deserved and, get this, "the feedback" should be welcomed so he can adjust as needed, or adjust the type of questions he "can" answer and topics he "can" discuss. it would also be nice if a thread in the forums was created a week out to post such questions, etc for those that use them as "official" comms.

    im glad he can take the flack, but yall really need to stop casting the shield barrier for this company.

    i have said i will give it more time as i am able to adjust and like the interaction. its nice to see someone trying at least, and that is something much needed from any company.

    Feedback is always welcome, as long as communicated respectfully which most do. I'll discuss more about the process this Friday and what we're doing to communicate the "results" of the questions I don't have answers readily available.

    I normally post a thread on the reddit a week or so before, depending on my schedule. I was just able to post threads on the forums so feel free to head over to it and ask any questions for this Friday! The thread: https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline/#/discussion/1258523/friday-q-a-stream-with-qa-lead-at-6pst
  • trillbuffettrillbuffet Member Posts: 861 Arc User
    My opinion on this is that the whole basis for people wanting to afk through content is because its boring. So during the age of this game and other games out there the press F interact was commonplace. Although now I feel like there have been enough advancements especially in this game to where some kind of big overhaul can occur to where this is changed to active gameplay.

    Just to give a few examples take a look at the Voth ground battle zone for instance its different blocks of territory with npcs just standing around waiting to be killed. However if you look at TFO's like the Pahvo ground one just on the basis of player to npc interaction there is no pressing F to the flow of combat in that content. Something as simple as that taking place of interacts in TFO's and Battle zones could go a long way into developing better content that players do not feel is so boring that they will just afk it. Also for that matter being able to just wait around spawn camping bosses for dilithium should not be permitted either.

    So what a lot of people have problems with has reasonable in my opinion ways it can be made to be better. In this game there is such a thing as too much content where people can get spread out too much especially with how gamewide communication has not really been a strong area for development as well. The only time you ever see any is with the Winter holiday and Risa events but other than that its like people are stuck in their little bubble until one of those events happen. I do feel though that the Tzenkethi one would be a lot more fun though if they would tone down the amount of resistance those npcs can give each other tho as well as their defense to the non-forward arcs and possibly aft that raiders bypass that resistance being one of their main functions is the flanking aspect.

    So overall the game needs a big QoL overhaul just to touch base on a game that has aged past the need for things that make it boring and make people want to just afk rather than play the game.
  • jkwrangler2010jkwrangler2010 Member Posts: 263 Arc User
    I would like to see updates to older STF. Fleet Alert needs new enemies added [Voth, Iconian, Tzenkethi, True Way, Terran, Elachi, Delta baddies]. Would also like to see an Advanced and Elite version of Fleet Alert. Colony Invasion could use the same updates: more enemies and harder versions.

    The Endeavor system also needs new enemies added for both ground and space. It's always the same enemies popping up: Defeat Voth, Undine, Borg, Hur'q, Gorn, Vaadwaur, Terrans, Tholians, Tzenkethi etc. Need to add Klingon, Romulan, True Way [Cardassian and Jem'Hadar], Iconian, Orion, Naussican, Breen, Elachi etc.
  • lordmerc22lordmerc22 Member Posts: 776 Arc User
    You do all realise you are talking for a QA stream there? I mean there is nothing he can do with additions to content or alterations but he tries to make sure everything works. That said I liked his stream so far and he done his best to answer questions too
  • lordmerc22lordmerc22 Member Posts: 776 Arc User
    lordmerc22 wrote: »
    You do all realise you are talking for a QA stream there? I mean there is nothing he can do with additions to content or alterations but he tries to make sure everything works. That said I liked his stream so far and he done his best to answer questions too
    People do this same thing on Reddit too.

    He makes it clear hes a QA guy, and can't answer questions about gameplay changes, or when some new thing is coming, yet like half the questions he gets are just that. People don't read, that takes effort.

    Yes I noticed it on Reddit too and in the end it may discourage the person who is streaming without having to as some not only dont read, but also get rude if they dont get an answer
  • phoenixc#0738 phoenixc Member Posts: 5,459 Arc User
    I realize this thread has gone on for pages after the following quote, but when I read it, I felt a need to respond:
    Voicing legitimate concern would be great. But that's not what people are doing. People are acting like 12 year olds stomping their feet and telling mommy they hate her and then slamming their door. None of the threads I see are constructive. Its all "cryptic is bad" "I hate this" "this is stupid" "why isn't this game specifically catered to what I want". Thats all.

    I feel that there is justification for a lot of the "rage." Of the many MMO communities I have been active in, this one is the one whose developers have their finger on its pulse the least.

    Things this community has been asking for for YEARS have gone ignored while things that nobody asks for are shoved down our throats. Things that could be awesome and add real player agency and depth to the game go unsupported for so long that they become broken beyond repair and are gutted from the game with stupid excuses that anyone who doesn't have their noses shoved up Cryptic's aft quarters can see right through them.

    I don't know...

    My introduction to MMOs was Ultima Online, where player freedom was at the forefront of the developers minds. They created a world, established its rules and turned players loose within it to choose who and what they would become, But what EA did to Unltima Online 2 was inexcusable, so I quit that game and never looked back, except for looking back with fondness for what the game's vision represented for players and longed for another game that would attempt to do the same.

    I found that again to a large degree in Star Wars Galaxies. Again, Raph Koster's vision of an open world where we the player could be and do what we wanted was given form, free of rigid classes and level advancement. We had 32 professions to pick and choose skills from, mixing and matching to get a character that we wanted. But because marketing screwed up the box description for the standard edition of the game concerning Jedi, rather than own the mistake, they introduced the Hologrind which destroyed the symbiotic relationship between play styles. Revamps to the combat system and the introduction of combat levels to the game also began shifting the core of the game away from what drew people to it to begin with. Then the NGE happened, and it went full level based with rigid classes, and anywhere from 75% - 90% of the player base left.

    For the most part, before drastic changes started happening to SWG's core framework, the community was the least toxic. But when they started changing the game, moving it away from its original vision, that is when the toxicity began to take hold, And when they started making the changes, they stopped paying attention to what the paying community was asking for.

    When you remove mechanics and features from a game, it pisses people off. And whether many want to admit it or not, in the back of their mind, they begin to wonder if or when a feature of mechanic they enjoy might also be removed. An "us vs them" mentality inevitably forms, which we have seen in place for quite a while. And there are always white knights ready to jump in and deflect detractors' comments, when their brown nosing efforts ultimately earn them nothing when the hammer comes down later.

    STO is in the hands of a developer that used to be great for its size, but has lost its balls after being sold to PWE,

    Star Trek is one of the greatest IPs in the world, represented by one of the most mediocre MMOs in the world. THAT id what pisses me off, aand has pushed me into a position of little-to-no confidence in Cryptic/PWE's direction.

    Oh... and these forums are a mere ghost of what they were It used to be thattopics moved off the first page in a matter of hours. Now it takes days or weeks for it to happen. And I typically only see the same people posting. This does not speak well for the community.

    We've got this huge list of topics we are not allowed to discuss, in many cases the reasons for a lot of them having been rendered moot by subsequent changes to game mechanics and core direction. But create a topic that touches on one of these elements, and some forum police reports it to a moderator and it gets closed.

    When there are so many things that a community cannot freely discuss, then discussion dries up. And discussion in this forum is pretty bloody dry.

    And this latest update was a disaster. Cryptic has set a new record on on missing the mark. Was there even a single aspect that wasn't FUBAR on release? The longer the very visible downward spiral continues, the more justifiable the so-called "rage." And from my chair, STO has been spiraling down for a while now, with no end in sight...

    Unless Cryptic regrows a pair and stands up to PWE. It's funny. Before PWE bought them, they were smaller and even more limited, but they still found creative ways to bolster continued interest in STO. And now, in they years since PWE bought them, STO has actually become less of a game. It's lost entire systems and features with nothing to replace them. Monetized games of chance are supported like clockwork while actual playable content only drops one or two missions at a time, few and far between.

    STO generates revenue for PWE, but PWE is not funding its growth. Ever one of the live feeds from Cryptic I watch, I see developers who clearly want to do stuff, but can't for whatever BS reason.

    I wish they would all walk, leave PWE holding the bag and start a new dev team, and create games of their own IP again and rebuild themselves. Because the leash PWE has them on is clearly a short one, and it stifles creativity.

    i have created a few threads thanking them for many things, and oddly, (well not really) those threads die out real fast.

    i think the most recent was the artwork for the login, the splash page and such for the YoK. its very nice and well done and i posted about it.

    for your post sir...many good points and many have been discussed at length as well.

    The quick death of thankyou threads is pretty much universal in game forums, or at least in the games I have been in. There usually is not a lot to say so they quickly become "me too" posts and players seeing that often don't comment because what they would have said has already been said multiple times in the thread already.

    It isn't that players are ungrateful louts or whatever, more that forums thrive on differing opinions and points of view, and usually there is some subject category that generates the most interest.

    In Second Life it was mainly monetary and IP issues, followed by bugs, and system expansions, with a side of moral issues. Defiance was narrower with PvP vs PveE balance issues being the longest and most hotly contended. Here the biggest underlying driver seems to boil down to lore and the Trek fanbase split along with space Barbie stuff like which ships, races/factions, and whatnot are available and which are often asked for but never implemented. There is also issues like the loss of unique features like the Foundry and cross-game chat that sometimes still crop up but are more often just rehashed in other subject threads.

    There have been a surprising number of interesting studies published about virtual worlds, online gaming, and how people interact with them :)
  • jkwrangler2010jkwrangler2010 Member Posts: 263 Arc User
    So why can't the QA person forward questions/concerns/ideas to the development team? The dev team seems to be some secret cabal locked away in a secret area that mere mortals aren't able to reach. The people that invest the most time and money in the game and want it to succeed, seem to get brushed aside as a nuisance. Why can't the community have a section to submit ideas on how to improve the game to keep it running for years to come?
  • lordmerc22lordmerc22 Member Posts: 776 Arc User
    So why can't the QA person forward questions/concerns/ideas to the development team? The dev team seems to be some secret cabal locked away in a secret area that mere mortals aren't able to reach. The people that invest the most time and money in the game and want it to succeed, seem to get brushed aside as a nuisance. Why can't the community have a section to submit ideas on how to improve the game to keep it running for years to come?
    Typically its legal reasons.

    If a player suggests something, the devs publicly acknowledge it, and then they do anything remotely similar to it, the person who suggested the idea could sue the company for "taking" their idea without paying/crediting them.

    Ambassador Kael has mentioned that if you tried to send Cryptic a story idea they would be legally obligated to just trash it without looking at it so there could be no accusations of them taking that idea with crediting the author.

    This is also why game devs rarely respond to forum post with QoL/new feature ideas unless they are just saying "X idea simply isn't possible".

    Does not work exactly that way. You must go and first get copyrights patent registered on your idea to be able to do anything legaly.
  • jkwrangler2010jkwrangler2010 Member Posts: 263 Arc User
    So why can't the QA person forward questions/concerns/ideas to the development team? The dev team seems to be some secret cabal locked away in a secret area that mere mortals aren't able to reach. The people that invest the most time and money in the game and want it to succeed, seem to get brushed aside as a nuisance. Why can't the community have a section to submit ideas on how to improve the game to keep it running for years to come?
    Typically its legal reasons.

    If a player suggests something, the devs publicly acknowledge it, and then they do anything remotely similar to it, the person who suggested the idea could sue the company for "taking" their idea without paying/crediting them.

    Ambassador Kael has mentioned that if you tried to send Cryptic a story idea they would be legally obligated to just trash it without looking at it so there could be no accusations of them taking that idea with crediting the author.

    This is also why game devs rarely respond to forum post with QoL/new feature ideas unless they are just saying "X idea simply isn't possible".

    I'm not talking about story ideas. I'm talking about updates for quality of life improvements, updating current end game stf etc.
  • mustrumridcully0mustrumridcully0 Member Posts: 12,963 Arc User
    If what I posted has come up more than once , my apologies . It seems like I can't post what I previously wrote. Here is what I wrote.

    I think the toxicity of some of the community is a direct by-product of the business practices of the company.

    Using other media about the game other than the official forums of the game to me I saw as a big mistake. It either tells me as a customer that they would rather not talk to us or have no real interest of representing their product.
    And you're talking the wrong lesson. People that visit the forums - they tend to become very quickly aware of what they post on twitter, facebook, twitch and what not, because among the people that visit the forums, there are lots that follow the game in depth and will share what they learn.

    On places like twitter or facebook - there they reach people that aren't so interested in the game yet, and try to catch their interest and excitement so they play the game. It's advertisement.

    Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
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