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Ten Forward Weekly 10/14/21
faxmachine
Member Posts: 120 Arc User
from reddit.
So I'm going to preface this by noting that this Ten Forward Weekly was VERY technical based, which made creating a summary difficult. Don't take anything below as anything but a very truncated version of what the devs said. If you want the full details about this go watch the stream.
- When asked whats the most challenging part of the game for systems
- Jeremy: The ideation process in systems design is becoming harder and harder because A: They have already done it most likely. B: They have no idea if its fun.
- Jonathan: Dealing with legacy decisions about systems and having to ask how new changes are going to affect it. Uses melee ground combat as an example. They can change things around the margins, but they can't really do much to change the fundamentals
- Jeremy: Duty Officer system is difficult to change, and difficult to add new features that make it feel like part of the system instead of just feeling tacked on
- All: Talked about how MMOs have changed in the 10+ years STO started. Most people don't want the old school kind of raids, and the need to make content most of the playerbase will enjoy makes doing the more crunchier raid kind of stuff impossible. They can make something thats meant to be general content, and maker it harder, but can't really designing something from the ground up to be raid like hard
- Talked about how STO has a large base of invisible players who don't communicate on Streams/forums. Cryptic can't just listen to what Twitch chat/forums say they want or risk alienating the larger playebrase. They use the metric/statistics they gather to see what people want, but also know statistics can easily give you whatever answer you want if you ask the wrong question
- Jeremy believes that PVP was based on flawed fundamentals, needs a complete overhaul on how it works to make it fun. Talked about using pre-made ships/gear/stat selections for PVP would basically be making another game. Also talked about how changing PVP would alienate the people who enjoy it for what it is, but trying to do both splits the playerbase. Jonathan wants to learn the PVP ecosystem and make smaller changes to nudge it in a better direction rather then make seismic changes
- Bringing STO over to something like Unreal would require redoing all the art assets, all code, etc. Would take 2-3 years and they wouldn't be able to pt out any other content in that time. They dont feel like the return would be worth it on it
- Subnucleonic Beam is something on Jonathan's radar to tweak in such a way that it wouldn't mess with PVE, but would help with PVP
- Talked about making the "Bond of Life" trait. Its very modular, easy to add new things onto it in the future. Supports the ability to have pets level up individually. Looking into getting some of the creatures not available to everyone in places where everyone can get them
- The actual implementation of ships is overly complex/archaic. Its not a system that does everything they want it to now, and does a lot more then is ever going to be used. Same for many tools.
- Had a lot of people working on trying to fix EV suits. QA, systems, Kael, even Al, all at the same time. Patch might come out Friday
- The Jem'Hadar tribble test was done to look at NPCs following their "beacons" that tell them where to go on the map, but are passing through solid walls/force fields that they aren't support to in the process. Were telling people to play missions to see if NPCs broke when they turned off the "emergency path-finding" system that was causing it
- Weston has looked into why ships don't warp out sometimes and can't figure it out. A lot of that is based on early beta cutscene code that uses a different animation branch then the actual cutscenes
- The tailor, instead of using its own lighting, instead uses the lighting on the map its on
- In STO's game code male and female are different species like human/vulcan, so editing all clothing items to work with both male and female characters would require adding data to each species/gender by hand to make them use every piece of clothing. Talk about getting character artists better tools
- Making all consoles unviersal would be easier, but still comes with issues/a lot of data work. Comes with precedence issues like people who have have bought a ship for the item exclusivity, and being unable to make things locked to ships in the future
- All rep items being unable to be re-engineered is something they want to tackle, but they want to do it all at once rather then piecemeal
- Warp cores being unable to be re-engineered because of a complexity to their design. They have no easy way to put into a spreadsheet to spit out RNG mods. Would require redoing them to get it to work. Something they want to do but haven't put aside the time
- Kit frames can't be re-engineered for balance reasons. Crpyitc is aware kit performance/readiness mods are far more desirable then everything else and don't want to make it easy for everyone to run around with just that
- Jonathan worked on a crafting systems rework pitch. Doing large scale systems revamps gets more expensive as the game gets old, making it harder to do them, and systems becoming more connected to each other also makes it harder
- Cryptic began having discussions about the ever increasing DilEX back in late 2017/2018. The ever increasing cost to change things slowed down their ability to implement changes. They have ideas for things that are more game wide, but also have ideas to target the movers/shakers/top end who have a lot of diltihum, and are the ones most influencing the market/make the most zen change.
- Its both a source and sink issue. Not only spending dil is needed, but also giving out less dilthium is also something that needs to be looked at. Changes to how they rewarded dil starting with ViL onward have been a big cause of the issue.
- Have talked about large dil sinks like an infinitely scaling system that is dilithum based, and have talked about account wide refinement limits(not sure if they would do it because it might be too late in the game's lifespan for acocunt wide refinement) But it all comes down to the cost of time.
- The idea that Cryptic would make more money if they sold more ships at lower cost has never proven true. Ships like(the Oberth used as an example) people like them, but don't really buy them as much as they go after the ones for lockbox/lobi/R&D packs.
- Jonathan wants an exponential dil system where "if you have so much dil you can ride into every room on an avalanche you can get reward for that" but to take that dil out of of the economy in the process. Like an ever increasing in size dil asteroid to where, by the time you get it up to level 10, you have removed a bunch of dil from the game in the process, and everyone is better off for it. These sorts of systems would do more then all the smaller things they have done/talked about, like vanity shields, combined.
- Have taken the feedback about pass tokens being switched to dil to heart. Any future dil changes will be with things we actually engage with, but also isn't just going to be a sink, are going to make players feel like they are being rewarded.
- Jonathan wants to make dil sinks that feel more like a community effort(very different from just another fleet holding) that gives players do more then they could before. Big problem is high end content isn't robust enough for so much of that.
- Thomas has been pushing to get duty officers reduced/removed from fleet projects so people can start dumping dil into it.
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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Comments
- Warp cores can't be re-engineered because they use different custom code from other space gear.
STO's design is a warning to developers about technical debt - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_debt
The more duct tape and baling wire you add on to a rushed initial design, the harder it gets to make changes. You either need to put enough budget into refactoring systems as you go, or end up where they are now: it would take a second team of the same size spending 2-3 years (which really means 4-5
It seems about the same in mine, and it's made up mostly of 5-6 people with multiple characters. Almost everything except the colony is more or less done... and it's always the dilithium that seems to be filled last, not the duty officers or anything else.
"There's No Way Like Poway!"
Real Join Date: October 2010
Of course, if you make the lobi and promo ones more special, that's hardly surprising.
That is disappointing.
I didn't quite understand all the dilithium talk. Especially the things about asteroids and the community effort thing.
If I had to guess... they're trying to come up with ideas on how we can spend our mountains of Dilithium as a community that feels meaningful rather than "just another sink". Kinda like how we had those server wide objectives for things a while ago. We all contributed and were rewarded for our efforts. If we have some kind of server wide community project that requires dilithium... it might actually be more meaningful than say... individual projects or the occasional temporary sale on items in the DL store.
They said an idea they've thrown around (but not something they've committed to doing) is an ability that summons a dilithium asteroid that follows you around, with upgrades to make the asteroid bigger and bigger the more dilithium you spend on it. On the extreme end they said it could even be a dilithium moon. It's purely an ego type of thing that people with MASSIVE stockpiles of dilithium might be tempted to invest in just to show off, which would remove a ton of dil from the economy and help bring the dilex back down.
It also goes back into the earlier bit they said before about not being able to add something that the active forum/reddit/facebook/twitter community may want, since it might be something that could possibly alienate the larger community that isn't active on many channels. Remember, they're not in this to make a game that vocal community members want. They're out to make a game they think that EVERYONE who plays the game will enjoy.
This is another case of something that's been a huge issue for this team lately, and that's addressing problems no one has instead of putting time into issues that actually need fixing. This isn't even an issue, and they're addressing it based on their best guess that it will somehow fix the Dilithium issue.
The problem is in that last line.. on what they think that everyone who plays the game will enjoy. How do they know this, when every avenue of feedback that's available to them is just written off as the 'vocal minority?' We are told that voices on sites like this basically don't matter and that they're addressing the needs of the many all while doing things like looking into duty officer fleet contributions..
The problem is they're doing what they think is best without any real information at all and it's really been showing over the last few years. The Dilithium issue is just another example of how little the developers really understand about the community or how this game actually works.
Again, I appreciate them being willing to consider, but they miss the point again. Having the tokens available for Dilithium wasn't a bad idea.. it was a player idea. The problem was the way they changed the idea for us just based on their great knowledge of 'what's best.'
Players were talking about taking things that we might use daily and having an option to ALSO use Dilithium for it, much like the way Cryptic already does with allowing buyouts for events. The issue was that they took this idea and used it instead to take away something we already had and then try to charge Dilithium for us to get it back. That's why players don't like it.. we already had free pass tokens which you took away and then charged us to get them back.
This team is very frustrating in the way that they "listen." I honestly wonder if feedback has any real point at all.
You summoned it up perfectly: "the problem is they're doing what they think is best without any real information at all".
Kael mentioned once that they're doing email campaign to get feedback from the playerbase, but I have to wonder: are they really?
If they truly are, I have to wonder what exactly are they asking about.
But more importantly, this latest stream just goes on to once again show that they are not playing the game, otherwise none of them would talk about reducing and/or removing the DOFFs requirements for the fleet holding to increase dilithium donations.
Instead, they'd be wondering if increasing the amount of Fleet Credits you get from donating dilithium would help.
They would also think of actually fixing the DOFFs assignments, instead of talking about adding new features. The system has been broken for years now, with no fix in sight... forget new features, just fix what isn't working.
Ci sono tre tipi di giocatori:
- quelli a cui non va mai bene niente... e vanno sul forum a trollare;
- quelli che sono talmente imbesuiti da credere a qualunque cosa i dev dicano, perfino che la luna è fatta di formaggio... e vanno sul forum a trollare;
- quelli che credono a quello a cui è giusto credere, sono d'accordo con quello con cui è giusto essere d'accordo e sono critici con quello che non va;
Ai giocatori dei primi due tipi, gratis in omaggio un bello specchio lucente su cui arrampicarsi. E una mazzata in testa per la loro poca intelligenza e compassione verso gli altri giocatori che non la pensano come loro.
Agli appartenenti al terzo tipo, invece, dico grazie. Anche se non sempre si riesce a mantenere la calma, siete quelli per cui vale la pena incazzarsi.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
I'm part of a large fleet...and often the dilithium is easily filled before the 20-100 duty officer requirements some have
That's like saying "the data says most people use non-electric cars". Yeah cool, and?
Of course, they do, that's currently the least bothersome mean of travel.
Electric cars? Expensive, battery technically on lease, gotta know where to find recharge stations to avoid issues, take a lot more time to fully "refill", need an equipment with the right size.
Bikes? When you're in a city and not far from work, yes. Quite risky on any road without proper bike lanes, especially with a crappy weather.
Buses? You have a line nearby? No? Tough luck.
High speed trains? Kinda excessive in most cases and the US don't even know what this is because car manufacturers made sure to kill their appeal a while ago.
Does that mean people want to keep gasoline cars forever and are fully satisfied with them? Hell no.
People would love alternatives that don't have more issues than the current easier solution, but they still don't have enough leverage to make significant changes happen.
Same thing with STO, the alternatives are less appealing.
People don't buy enough C-Store ships?
Well, duh, have you looked at your "featured" tab of the C-Store that is the first thing that shows up when you open it? Bundles, bundles, bundles.
$30 tokens, $10 promo packs on sale, $120 legendary TOS bundle, $10 key bundle, $50 Genesis bundle, $250 11th anniversary bundle.
Wanna get a single ship? Well, you have two types of choices:
-either you go to a ship vendor in specific locations or the ships tab of the C-Store and go through the maaaaany ships in the list (unless you know which filters to use and tweak and where to find the appropriate filters) to find something that may be interesting
-or you buy the seemingly less expensive packs and keys that you can use on lootboxes that drop everywhere in the game and hopefully get the ship everyone seems to get with the various "X was issued a Special Requisition Choice Pack - Tier 6" that keep appearing by default on your screen.
i.e. 100k DIL gets you a specialization seat reroll like the re-engineer system works.
(My Crossfield has a Pilot seat, but I want to reroll it for Intel for those sweet sweet agro drops)
Then your fleet is truly and completely unique, because no other fleet works that way.
I am an altaholic with around 35 characters in a variety of fleets and I have seen the same thing that lianthelia said in a number of them. I have never payed much attention to how the projects are scheduled and why, I just contribute to the ones that are up, but I suspect that it has something to do with exactly how they go about scheduling them and the mix of players contributing.
For instance, some people apparently don't craft at all and barely do doff missions and so tend to indiscriminately dump loads of common quality doffs into projects. Others craft and do the doff missions (a few moreso than running player missions and whatnot) so unless they buy extra doff slots they have fewer to contribute (which can get even fewer as time goes on since higher quality doffs are kept while the white quality ones get contributed).
The more aggressive DPS-oriented fleets probably have little trouble with getting doffs while the more casual general purpose fleets would in theory tend to get fewer.
Like almost everything else in statistics it is probably a bell curve with every possible behavior being done somewhere along it.
Or, you know...make the other stats actually USEFUL.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
I mean, let's not go all "DOOM", 'cause I'd rather his game was around for a while yet, but reading things like "too late in the game's life span" (which, granted, could be working as a result of he notes, rather than what was directly said) sure doesn't give me a lot of confidence as a consumer of their product.
Pretty sure the term "too late in the game's lifespan" refers not to the mortality of a game, but the point certain things can be done due to the games age. Don't forget STO is 11 years old by now. Some things would have been a lot easier maybe one or two years after launch rather than 11, or even during initial development. Its not just one bit of code that you have to consider. Its the lines of code added since that one bit. The older the MMO, the more lines of code are piled on that could be adversely affected if you're going for something deep in the code.
Yep, see my note about technical debt above.
We have a decade-plus old application at work that was written with the ancient MFC framework for Windows applications. That made the initial design go faster but has made it harder to work with and there is now a decade of stuff tacked on for new features and work-arounds to live with the framework.
It's harder than it should be to make any changes, but we can't just re-write it from scratch because that would be 100 times the work of whatever the latest change requires.
(I don't work for Cryptic, I'm a Windows application developer at an unrelated company.)
that is exactly what it seems like.
Opinions aren't right or wrong, but mine differs. I'd agree about them giving up on making major changes to the engine, but they are still pouring money into creating new content including story episodes and TFOs, some with Trek voice actors. In my opinion if they were just grabbin' the cash they'd be skipping the more expensive actors (using unknowns or just silent text) and creating less new content besides ships to sell.
Well, Runescape's been around for 20, 22 if you could the original one, now long gone, from 1999.
True, also there is the effect of emergent behavior rising from the implementation of system elements that may be driving some of the systems that players take for granted, and which might be tricky to duplicate with a different engine, database adjustments for the requirements of the engine, etc. (it overlaps with technical debt but is not quite the same thing).