> @sirsitsalot said: > Well... I suppose if one were to compare that to a contemporary TV show on a streaming service,
But why would anyone make such a crazy comparison in the first place? This isn't a streaming service or a TV show, it is an MMO. So any comparisons regarding playable content would only make sense in relation to other MMOs.
> @sirsitsalot said:
> Well... I suppose if one were to compare that to a contemporary TV show on a streaming service,
But why would anyone make such a crazy comparison in the first place? This isn't a streaming service or a TV show, it is an MMO. So any comparisons regarding playable content would only make sense in relation to other MMOs.
Because, if you've seen what Sirsitsalot has been speaking about lately, it's about making it so that STO has meaningful stuff to make the game worthwhile to someone who wants to see the game reach the highest potential he thinks possible for Star Trek.
Pretty much, if Gearbox doesn't do anything to help make STO better in the long run, there will be nothing to shake up the status quo.
> @sirsitsalot said:
> Well... I suppose if one were to compare that to a contemporary TV show on a streaming service,
But why would anyone make such a crazy comparison in the first place? This isn't a streaming service or a TV show, it is an MMO. So any comparisons regarding playable content would only make sense in relation to other MMOs.
Its an interesting thought though. One 'argument' I've seen used against FFXIV (as an example) that was stated in this, or another, thread (not going to go hunting for these comments) was "I'm not playing that - it's a subscription based model and you don't get your money's worth if you don't play every day". I wonder how many of those who have that mindset about an MMO with a sub-based business model have subscriptions to one or more of the various streaming services out there but don't watch shows/movies on them every single day.
I think you're right. I doubt it's really a valid argument.
I have a Netflix-account that I barely use. Same with the NY Times and a Playstation Plus account.
I'm not paying for those because I have to use them every day - I pay for the convenience of being able to access all their data/content/games whenever I do want to read a newspaper, watch a movie or play a game.
And I'm way more active on STO. I'd definitely not consider money spent on a subscription wasted money. If I had to pay money to be able to access the game whenever I want, I'd be happy to do it.
(Then again, and this probably matters too, I've never had an issue with spending quite large sums on this game. As pointed out by others, paying a regular access fee may simply not be an option for everyone.)
[4:46] [Combat {self}] Your Haymaker deals 23337 (9049) Physical Damage(Critical) to Spawnmother
not directed towards any one person...
but i find it, well, funny, that people find excuses for them to not improve the game in many aspects. always giving scenarios that provide cryptic a reason not to do anything.
Some would call them white knights. Fanbois... Etc.
I think it is simply because they have become so used to the status quo that they can't see it ever being any other way, and they feel that nothing has changed for so long that it never could. Things only remain a certain way until someone in a decision-making position decides to change them. PWE saved Cryptic by buying them from Atari. But Cryptic was not saved for greatness, but rather mediocrity. They didn't even have enough staff on hand to address issues with certain features and functionality, so they REMOVED them. And they still can't do more than 2 content releases per year that can be blown through in a day, leaving players to run the same stuff over and over for six months at a time. All the while the lockbox keeys keep selling and so do the ships. But all the while the money has been flowing into PWE's coffers and not back into live development of stO.
Well we're about to get new decision-makers in charge. Maybe they will make decisions that actually improve the game.
And "STO is over a decade old" is not an excuse. It's still live. It's still making a profit. As long as the servers run, there is always an opportunity for growth and improvement. But only with a team that is equipped to make it so, and a budget that allows them to be so equipped.
New owners mean new decisions. Maybe they'll make some good ones.
A few times now you've been on this "Only delivering two content releases per year & us having to wait 6 months in between" stance for a while. Since a certain person isn't here to relay facts, let me break things down, starting from the last year we got a true expansion, 2018.
- January 23rd 2018: 8th anniversary, "Scylla & Charybdis" & Re-engineering were both introduced.
- April 3rd 2018: Season 14.5 update, "The Renegade's Regret" & Constable secondary specialization
- June 5th 2018: Victory is Life, gave us playable Jem'hadar, revamped DS9 interior, Gamma Quadrant addition to map, 6 new missions + "Home" 3 weeks later, Gamma Task Force Reputation, Romulans gain access to most Tier 5 & Tier 6 ally ships.
- October 9th 2018: Age of Discovery, added Discovery starting experience, "Secrets" & "Downfall" were added along with Tier 6 reputation expansion, Random TFOs
- January 23rd 2019: Mirror of Discovery & 9th anniversary, "Para Pacem" & "Illusion of Communication" were added along with Personal Endeavors
- May 14th 2019: Rise of Discovery, "The Plausibility of the Possible" & "The Impossibility of Reason" were added along with scaling Tier 6 starships, Discovery Legends reputation, August 29th 2019: Romulan faction restriction from Romulan ships removed
- September 10th 2019: Awakening, Patrols got revamped, "Beneath the Skin" story was added, Event system overhauled & Event reputation retired
- January 28th 2020: Legacy, 10th anniversary, "The Measure of Morality (part 1)" & "The Measure of Morality (part 2)" story as added
- June 30th 2020: House Divided, Start of Klingon playable experience revamp, "The Centre cannot Hold" & "The Khitomer Discord" stories added
- October 6th 2020: House Shattered, Experimental Ship upgrade token added for Tier 5-U and Tier 6 ships, "Partisans" story was added
- January 26th 2021: House Reborn & 11th anniversary, Discovery Klingon playable species option added alongside Klingon Recruitment, Cross-faction Flying, "Knowledge is Power" & "Leap of Faith" story added
- May 25th 2021: House United, "Warriors of the Empire" & "A Day Long Remembered" story to close out Year of Klingon update
- September 14th 2021:Reflections, Elite Captain Training Token introduced, Long awaited Mirror Universe storyline added with "Firewall"
From here, we can see that after Victory is Life, we had to wait usually around THREE OR FOUR months for major content updates. 2020 had a delay because of the impact of Covid & them transitioning to work from home. More or less we've been at THREE content updates a year, usually with around a few months of waiting in between, but never more than half a year.
Granted, the last major big system update we had was when the Event system was overhauled, which enabled them to add events that could handle different type of activities besides just TFOs for credit. It's what help make the Event Campaigns possible for different reward options.
Okay... So in 2018, we saw 5 content releases.
In 2019 we saw 3 content releases.
In 2020 we saw 2 content releases.
In 2021 we saw 2 content releases.
The last two years have established the trend. But to take your total period from 2018-2021, we've had 11 content releases in four years. And we are not talking about major content releases either. If you total up the number of missions that have been added in the last four years it falls drastically short of what the average MMO releases in expansion content in the same amount of time. How many lockbox ships or C-store ships (singularly or in bundles) have they released in the last 4 years?
2020 & 2021 had THREE content releases each, so the same as 2019.
- 2020 had Legacy, House Divided & House Shattered
- 2021 had House Reborn, House United & Reflections.
I've said before that ships take a lot smaller investment in manpower, so they can be done & released faster than the new story content can. However, if you REALLY want the list, here it is, along with ships that were also given away for free for events
2018 had quite a number of ships, especially since it was an expansion release year. 2019 & 2020 were more or less equal, though they put more emphasis on legendary ships in 2020 which meant us getting fewer regular C-store ships and more of a legendary focus of ships. 2021 so far had the fewest ships of all the years.
We know that there is going to be new ships to look forward to as they still have the the California-class, the new version of the Excelsior from Lower Decks, The Viridian from Discovery S3, Friendship-class, Merian-Class, Angelou-class (Rainforest ship), Dresselhaus type, Ni'Var Razor & the USS Credence which appeared in S4 of Discovery, though that likely won't be in for a while.
142 ships in 4 years vs 13 playable content releases in 4 years.
But you are right. Ships don't require th same number of man-hours to produce. That is why I keep saying that the content development team needs to be bigger. And all that money from all of those ships did not increase the size of the content team in the slightest.
During that 4 years, Cryptic DID hire a team of developers to work on the ill-fated Magic The Gathering game. When that project failed, did they float those developers over to STO or any other title? Based on what I heard and read, they just cut them loose.
That's what I heard too. But I read it here on the Forums, from someone who probably quoted a livestream or something.
I have no idea how reliable that info is.
What I do know, is that they do seem to be recruiting more. Right now there are at least a few positions being advertised that weren't there before.
Most of them are for Neverwinter, but some of the newer ones (under 'Secret Stuff' in the link below) are new and seem to relate to big plans for their general infrastructure. I know very little about programming and software creation, but from the description I get the impression that they're looking for someone who can create new tools ('new features') for the Dev teams to work with.
Which sounds like something they desperately need, if what others are saying about their tools being a mess is true.
Imagine if Cryptic had an equivalent to the Galaxy Editor used in Starcraft 2 - as complicated and sometimes incredibly frustrating to use as it is, that is the single most powerful and comprehensive content creator tool I've ever seen for any game - at least that end-users have access to.
And just as an aside and not related in any way to STO, but if anyone should be complaining about lack of official content in games, it's the SC2 community...they haven't had anything since late 2019, which is when the most recent - and currently last - co-op commander was released, even though there are tons more characters that could be adapted for that system.
Blizzard never did make any mission packs after Nova Covert Ops, either...apparently, it flopped hard or something.
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!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
but some of the newer ones (under 'Secret Stuff' in the link below) are new and seem to relate to big plans for their general infrastructure.
If it was general infrastructure it would have been labeled as such, since it's labeled "Secret Stuff" it is probably for a new, unannounced game of some kind.
if anyone should be complaining about lack of official content in games, it's the SC2 community...they haven't had anything since late 2019, which is when the most recent - and currently last - co-op commander was released, even though there are tons more characters that could be adapted for that system.
Blizzard never did make any mission packs after Nova Covert Ops, either...apparently, it flopped hard or something.
SC2 has kind of run it's course, what that community really needs at this point is a StarCraft 3. The problem is that RTS games aren't as popular as they used to be, and StarCraft in particular has a VERY high skill ceiling, so there's not as much money to be made. It kills me to say that because StarCraft is probably my favorite Blizzard franchise, but it's the truth.
> @sirsitsalot said:
> Well... I suppose if one were to compare that to a contemporary TV show on a streaming service,
But why would anyone make such a crazy comparison in the first place? This isn't a streaming service or a TV show, it is an MMO. So any comparisons regarding playable content would only make sense in relation to other MMOs.
It's a comparison of content delivery methods and quantity of content to be delivered.
A book is also a "content delivery method" and a "quantity of content", but also an irrelevant comparison. This is a game, and more specifically an MMO, so peoples expectations are rightly based on games/MMOs, not on completely different mediums.
> @sirsitsalot said:
> Well... I suppose if one were to compare that to a contemporary TV show on a streaming service,
But why would anyone make such a crazy comparison in the first place? This isn't a streaming service or a TV show, it is an MMO. So any comparisons regarding playable content would only make sense in relation to other MMOs.
It's a comparison of content delivery methods and quantity of content to be delivered.
A book is also a "content delivery method" and a "quantity of content", but also an irrelevant comparison. This is a game, and more specifically an MMO, so peoples expectations are rightly based on games/MMOs, not on completely different mediums.
Yes... It is an MMO. A live product much like a TV show during its original running.
I only wish that were true. If it were, we would still have some really great things in this game, like the foundry. Because after a TV show airs, those episodes always exist (somewhere) and they can't go back and rip out parts they don't want to support anymore.
For some time, I have felt that MMOs should be produced in a similar fashion to a TV series.
And that's a valid opinion to have. But that's also fantasy land. I'm talking about reality, and comparing this video game/MMO to other video games/MMOs. And within that context, 10 hours of story content in an entire year seems incredibly sad for an MMO. Especially one based on such a huge IP. But hey, YMMV! Maybe those 10 hours of story content in an entire year is more than some people can keep up with!
They still haven't even revamped any more of the dozens of patrols still waiting, nor delivered any of the promised ground patrols (that aren't tied to a once-yearly event) or past conflict (like ones set during the Iconian War) patrols and we're going on - what...two years since the first set was released?
If GB actually gives them any additional resources, I want to see them working on stuff like THAT first, before any metaverse or additional storyline stuff comes up as anything more than breakroom banter.
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!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
> @sirsitsalot said:
> Well... I suppose if one were to compare that to a contemporary TV show on a streaming service,
But why would anyone make such a crazy comparison in the first place? This isn't a streaming service or a TV show, it is an MMO. So any comparisons regarding playable content would only make sense in relation to other MMOs.
It's a comparison of content delivery methods and quantity of content to be delivered.
I rather hate the way shows these days deploy an entire season on day one. Yeah, it's great to be able to binge the whole season, but when you are done, you've got an entire year to wait for the next one. And if the season ends with a cliffhanger, it's even worse. A few shows do release one episode per week, and while that does stretch the experience out a bit, and allows good speculative conversation among fans, it still leaves more than nine months with nothing new.
I would almost rather they release a 10-episode season one episode per month. Yes, it would mean having to wait on average of 30 days between episodes during a season, but at least there would be something new throughout the year, with only two months downtime between seasons. It would also lend itself to more profits because people would need to stay subscribed to the streaming service unless they are willing to wait until the 10th episode releases at which point they can subscribe, binge, and cancel
Not every streaming service does this. I know it's mostly Netflix that tends to dump everything for the season at once so people can stream it how they want. However, many streaming shows, especially Star Trek, do weekly installments so that you watch it and have to come back. There are still plenty of shows that I watch that are weekly on local and cable channels, though I guess it's a matter of what you tune into these days.
With STO there is no subscription fee, and while it is now established that on average of 5 episodes a year with generously 2 hours of gameplay each is released, for a total of 10 hours per season, Comparing the delivery models of STO and streaming services becomes viable.
That's why I suggested that Cryptic couyld make 10 episodic missions, each designed to last roughly an hour, and release one per month, thus spreading out the content across to months of a year, leaving only 2 months between seasons. This would result in the same quantity of content released with shorter delay intervals in between.Their ship sales need not change quantity or regularity of release.
As it stands, we know that there are people who come back to STO for the latest content release and then drop off again until the next one. If they are not playing, they certainly aren't buying ships... Keep them coming back each month, and they are likely to see a ship they want and buy it. And putting those ships on display inside the monthly content releases, so the players can see them in-game would help. It's one of the oldest visual advertisement techniques in the book: Product Placement. Newe uniform? Make it where the plot has the player interacting with the crew of one of those new ships. Those NPCs would be wearing the new uniform. So new ship and new uniform all prominently factoring into a piece of new content... Profits should increase from the combination alone...
The problem with doing 10 episodic missions though is that what you ask hinges on them cranking out one right after another as soon as they are done. They have tried that somewhat before, with the Iconian War. I believe they said that it was very hard on the team so they didn't want to keep doing it that way.
The only way something like that would work is if they had an increase in the team size so that there were more people able to work on the missions, such as the Environmental, Character artist and content designer teams. However, that's something that would require spending, which we don't know what's going to happen with the new owners.
STO also used to have the newest ship (or at least a version of it) as a tease for people to get during missions. Most of the time, it was related to the anniversary ship, though for the 10th, they opted instead to have every on screen hero ship & the Enterprise-F show up. I think Tom Paris teased the original pilot escort ships like the Mercury during the Iconian War.
> @sirsitsalot said:
> Well... I suppose if one were to compare that to a contemporary TV show on a streaming service,
But why would anyone make such a crazy comparison in the first place? This isn't a streaming service or a TV show, it is an MMO. So any comparisons regarding playable content would only make sense in relation to other MMOs.
It's a comparison of content delivery methods and quantity of content to be delivered.
A book is also a "content delivery method" and a "quantity of content", but also an irrelevant comparison. This is a game, and more specifically an MMO, so peoples expectations are rightly based on games/MMOs, not on completely different mediums.
Yes... It is an MMO. A live product much like a TV show during its original running.
Content production is essentially the same. There are writers and different departments involved. For some time, I have felt that MMOs should be produced in a similar fashion to a TV series. Or at the very least, like a comic book series. It is not impossible, but it does demand a change of the development process. It demands an adherence to a certain required quota of content delivery within a designated timeframe that fits within the capabilities of the production teams. That requires an increase in staffing which will allow the workload to be efficiently spread out between more people. And in the case of an MMO, it requires tools that are very robust and intuitive allowing maximum functionality even with minimal staff. If one person could use a suite of tools that allows all elements to be combined efficiently and intuitively, then technically one person could produce a single episode in relatively short time. All that person would need is for all the components the episode requires to be in place. That means art assets, character dialogue, animation scripts, music, sound effects, environments and ship/character models. Hire five people to do the actual episode compilation process, and allocate assignments to the actual dedicated departments for the production of the assets and elements, where assignment priority is based on how soon they need to be ready for inclusion.
This is why dedicated departments need to exist and actually be staffed. And the tools they work with need to be efficient.
Your of course assuming that all the assets like environments, story script, character models and such are decided right from the start. Some of this is decided from the start like what the story is going to be, but many of these things usually depend on the focus.
I believe Cryptic said in the past that they start out their story scripts with having people in mind that they want to bring in. Since they rely heavily now on Star Trek actors, this usually results in them having to see who is available for them to get.
For instance, with the Klingon Civil War, Martok was going to be involved with it, so J.G. Hertzler was a must. Robert O'Reilly (aka Gowron) was an interesting addition, but they put a twist & take an existing character they recently introduced (Aakar) and rework him into Gowron's grandfather, just so they could have him play a big role. This could have been the plan from the start, and if O'Reilly didn't come back, things might have turned out differently. They also did the same thing with Adet'pa too, where she was originally generic and later given Rehka Sharma's face.
The character artists can't really have new characters ready unless they for sure know they have an actor for the role. This includes updating a character from generic to looking like said actor.
Ships of course are a different story as they are always working on introducing the next big ship, so it's easy for them to have those ready to go on time.
I don't know if you've tuned into watch Tacofangs, but every so often he goes on stream to show him working on assets, such as the case when he was working on the new Federation 2410 art kit for the Mirror arc, which still isn't quite finished yet. They don't always decide what it is they want to do right from the start and it takes time to make things.
Cryptic has a small team with everyone having to do pretty much everything, the result being very little actually gets done because of all the internal bottlenecking that causes. It's like a Home Depot expecting someone hired to work in the paint department being expected to work in the lumber department, the plumbing department AND the paint department and get everything done 100%.
There's nothing wrong with floating between departments to help out, but when the department the employee was hired in for has assignments pending, then that is where that employee needs to be ALLOWED to focus. That way their piece of the puzzle can be made ready to be fitted into place. Yes it means more employees, but it also means optimizing performance of the entire team.
And one thing that would be of highest importance is that the entire season needs to be planned out in advance. Before the first line of dialogue is recorded, the entire season's script needs to be fully written. That way all voice actors required can do the entire season's worth of dialogue and be done with it. As long as all departments begin work on a season far enough in advance that a new episode can be delivered at least once per month for 10 months , then very quickly the MMO in question will get a reputation for providing a long-term delivery of new content and will start drawing people to it like moths to a flame.
The more people who play, the more who would be likely to pay.
And if Gearbox/Embracer does some very serious and wide-spread marketing, even an MMO that has been around for over a decade can have new longevity, especially if it gets a reputation of delivering solid and regular content.
Yes... A lot would have to change, but I firmly believe that it would be worth it.
Let's get one thing clear. They do NOT have everyone doing everything. Even with the teams that they have, a lot of people focus on the thing that they were hired to do. Thomas Marrone for example is a ship artist & formerly a UI artist. He doesn't go and do Environment art because that's not what he was hired to do.
As I said above when it comes to the way they do things, they semi-plan out on everything, but they do not have everything 100% since a lot of the time, their plans require them to have the star trek actors they want available to record stuff. If they are not, then they have to go find someone who is and rework things to make it fit.
Larger MMORPGs like Final Fantasy XIV can bring out expansions every 2 years AND do content patches in-between mostly because they employ lots of people, but don't have everything voiced a lot of the time, so cutscenes do not always need voice actors. However, at the same time, the story is broken up into many small quests that have you go talk with someone & kill stuff, then go somewhere else & talk to turn the quest in. There's some variation, but they space the story out since it's a very story driven MMO.
We really do not know what is going to happen once the deal is finalized next month. We have to see.
So you're saying 1 (House Reborn) + 1 (House United) + 1 (Reflections) = 2?? In 2021 we received three content releases with a total of 5 new missions and 2 new queues. That is far less than I would like, but it's important to be accurate when complaining about these things. Whoever made the decisions before felt that STOs record profits didn't warrant any additional funding, hopefully Gearbox sees things differently and allows them to double the content development team. It will be awhile before we know if that's going to happen though, and if it does happen it will still take time to get any new hires up to speed on how things work with STO.
I accidentally glossed over two releases. That's still only 13 releases in four years...
...Four years...
...FOUR YEARS.!
Even the Victory Is Life and Age of Discovery content, each granting a new origin story, wasn't enough to provide any staying power. Blast through it and still have to wait months for the next raindrop in the desert
So, something new every 3.6 months on average <--- I guess you don't play many MMOs, because that's the release cadence for most AAA MMOs (and hell it's a higher pace than Blizzard's done for WoW in it's heyday.) And to be fair to Cryptic, the missions have a lot more content in them then even in the days of the weekly featured episode years (which were short lived.) If we were to do an honest comparison, I'd say most of the new 'single' episode drops would have been equivalent to 4 of the weekly episode drops.
And may 'old timers' (hey, I myself have been playing since the closed beta and started in October 2009) have a VERY rose colored glasses picture of the Atari days as it was clear the Atari upper management attitude was:
"Hey! STO launched. WHY are you guys spending our money ADDING more content to it?...."
And yes, I enjoyed the Foundry a lot and I think them abandoning it was a very poor decision on their part, but understand WHY it was envisioned and made in the first place, namely:
Atari didn't want to fund future content to STO, they wanted to put it in maintenance mode so the Devs for both STO and Neverwinter and Cryptic management designed and implemented a system that allowed the players to do it for them. Once they had an actual parent company that understood better how MMOs actually work and are run (aka PWE) - Cryptic pretty much abandoned The Foundry to focus on a more traditional Dev's create and release content model.
Formerly known as Armsman from June 2008 to June 20, 2012 PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
> @crypticarmsman said: > > Atari didn't want to fund future content to STO, they wanted to put it in maintenance mode so the Devs for both STO and Neverwinter and Cryptic management designed and implemented a system that allowed the players to do it for them. Once they had an actual parent company that understood better how MMOs actually work and are run (aka PWE) - Cryptic pretty much abandoned The Foundry to focus on a more traditional Dev's create and release content model.
Neverwinter launched (2013) after Cryptic joined PWI (May-April 2011). The foundry was also launched in May 2011. Of course they were working on the foundry before the merger, but the timeline you are proposing sounds questionable at best.
> @crypticarmsman said:
>
> Atari didn't want to fund future content to STO, they wanted to put it in maintenance mode so the Devs for both STO and Neverwinter and Cryptic management designed and implemented a system that allowed the players to do it for them. Once they had an actual parent company that understood better how MMOs actually work and are run (aka PWE) - Cryptic pretty much abandoned The Foundry to focus on a more traditional Dev's create and release content model.
Neverwinter launched (2013) after Cryptic joined PWI (May-April 2011). The foundry was also launched in May 2011. Of course they were working on the foundry before the merger, but the timeline you are proposing sounds questionable at best.
Not when you consider that The Foundry was going to be the main source of content for Neverwinter (and Neverwinter was being developed while they were still owned by Atari - and if you think they were able to throw the Foundry together in a month...no, I'm sure it was in development for 6 months to a year before the beta was deployed to STO - and Atari had been looking for buyers for Cryptic for awhile - and one of the things PWE liked was the robustness of the Cryptic engine (despite what many players thought of said engine at the time, and today) - so no, I don't think my claim that they developed the Foundry because Atari wasn't really giving the Dev team a lot of budget to put new content into the game a stretch, since Jack didn't know when or if they'd get sold.
Formerly known as Armsman from June 2008 to June 20, 2012 PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
but some of the newer ones (under 'Secret Stuff' in the link below) are new and seem to relate to big plans for their general infrastructure.
If it was general infrastructure it would have been labeled as such, since it's labeled "Secret Stuff" it is probably for a new, unannounced game of some kind.
if anyone should be complaining about lack of official content in games, it's the SC2 community...they haven't had anything since late 2019, which is when the most recent - and currently last - co-op commander was released, even though there are tons more characters that could be adapted for that system.
Blizzard never did make any mission packs after Nova Covert Ops, either...apparently, it flopped hard or something.
SC2 has kind of run it's course, what that community really needs at this point is a StarCraft 3. The problem is that RTS games aren't as popular as they used to be, and StarCraft in particular has a VERY high skill ceiling, so there's not as much money to be made. It kills me to say that because StarCraft is probably my favorite Blizzard franchise, but it's the truth.
Well, i see you in Homeworld 3!!, finally a nice RTS... and yeah, SC3 would be awesome..
So you're saying 1 (House Reborn) + 1 (House United) + 1 (Reflections) = 2?? In 2021 we received three content releases with a total of 5 new missions and 2 new queues. That is far less than I would like, but it's important to be accurate when complaining about these things. Whoever made the decisions before felt that STOs record profits didn't warrant any additional funding, hopefully Gearbox sees things differently and allows them to double the content development team. It will be awhile before we know if that's going to happen though, and if it does happen it will still take time to get any new hires up to speed on how things work with STO.
I accidentally glossed over two releases. That's still only 13 releases in four years...
...Four years...
...FOUR YEARS.!
Even the Victory Is Life and Age of Discovery content, each granting a new origin story, wasn't enough to provide any staying power. Blast through it and still have to wait months for the next raindrop in the desert
So, something new every 3.6 months on average <--- I guess you don't play many MMOs, because that's the release cadence for most AAA MMOs (and hell it's a higher pace than Blizzard's done for WoW in it's heyday.) And to be fair to Cryptic, the missions have a lot more content in them then even in the days of the weekly featured episode years (which were short lived.) If we were to do an honest comparison, I'd say most of the new 'single' episode drops would have been equivalent to 4 of the weekly episode drops.
And may 'old timers' (hey, I myself have been playing since the closed beta and started in October 2009) have a VERY rose colored glasses picture of the Atari days as it was clear the Atari upper management attitude was:
"Hey! STO launched. WHY are you guys spending our money ADDING more content to it?...."
And yes, I enjoyed the Foundry a lot and I think them abandoning it was a very poor decision on their part, but understand WHY it was envisioned and made in the first place, namely:
Atari didn't want to fund future content to STO, they wanted to put it in maintenance mode so the Devs for both STO and Neverwinter and Cryptic management designed and implemented a system that allowed the players to do it for them. Once they had an actual parent company that understood better how MMOs actually work and are run (aka PWE) - Cryptic pretty much abandoned The Foundry to focus on a more traditional Dev's create and release content model.
Let me put it in a better perspective for you...
Cryptic did in 2 years what it usually take half a decade o do.
No need to use such exaggerative language. If a kid is 5 years old you say they're 5 years old. You don't call them "half a decade" years old
But to your actual point, you are right: in previous years they actually made MORE content with LESS resources. Unfortunately they have settled into their preferred comfort zone. They are making a lot of money from their gamble boxes, and only make the absolute minimum amount of mission content to keep the players "around" (even if not playing regularly, paying attention enough to know when there is a new lockbox). It's sad, but it's the game we have.
For a year, Cryptic was able to persist on minimum funding. That is, just enough support from Atari to meet the contractual obligations. And yet still they managed to produce the first 5-part featured episode series, complete with a new planet zone that really felt like a thriving alien civilization.
What? The Defera city ground map to you felt like a planet with a 'thriving civilization'? You're easy to please. to me it was a small map (about the size of the SFA map with a lot of repeated sections and no for me a ton of randomly walking NPCs (which just bumped into everything back when it first released) <> Thriving civilization, but to each their own.
They did a much better job when they created the Bajor ground zone; and to this day, I amazed they never have leveraged that social zone more, or gave players a real reason to go there after (in the same way they give players a reason to go the SFA of the KA zones) 'The 2800' arc was completed.
But that's always been a problem in that Cryptic doesn't seem to know how to leverage social zones in general, and as a result we don't get many such zones because beyond the few they do leverage - they feel the others are just a waste of dev resources.
You also seem to forget how disjointed and utterly buggy these weekly missions were on first release. The Dev team disliked the cadence because they felt it forced them to push out content that was even LESS ready - and many of those mission segments kasted less than 5-10 minutes. Again, the way they release a complete mission now - said mission = 5 or 6 of the 'weekly mission' content days.
And hell, AFTER PWE we had the year of Iconian War mission releases - which WAS a lot of missions of both respectable length and general quality; but yeah, they came out and said the Dev team was burned out badly after that run, and sadly it wasn't a production cadence they could maintain.
The major problem is that PWE (and I'm sure Gearbox) gives them a finite budget and expects a large ROI - and in the end, they've found lockboxes and ships give them the best bang for their development buck - thus they come of with a ship based theme (like say MU universe ships) - build a storyline around that - do a mission chain over a year that ties in, and brings casuals back every 3months or so when they HAVE a couple themed ships ready (and another unrelated lockbox ship that tie into on of the films or current streaming series) - and that seems to bring them a good cashflow and profit - which is why it's the cadence we've had since 2017 or so.
If you or I quit today, they wouldn't care because we've bought a lot over the time we've played and they've made their money from us. Whales are gonna be Whales, (and we whine, but still stick around).
I think their marketing metrics show they get a good return by having some new ship/mission coordination every 3 - 4 months, and they get a lot of casuals to com in by the 'hot' ship (or get the lockbox ship tied to some Star trek content they really like); then they go away until the next context drop with the attached 'sellable' stuff.
There was a time when (at it's height) the STO team was 50 Devs - BUT they claimed that managing that size team effectively was too challenging at times, and it's probably why they have the current Dev team size of 35. They want to get the best balance of money spent to profit earned ratio, while not burning out their Devs and Programing team.
And (if the marketing copy is to be believed) Gearbozx is pleased with the way Cryptic runs itself, so supposedly, they'll be hands off (again, who knows as I've never seen a sellout where the new company doesn't do some major changes at some point) - but bottom line Cryptic knows it's strengths and weaknesses and is happy with the niche it's carved out - and CBS seems happy as well.
Cryptic isn't Square Enix, and they're not trying to attain Final Fantasy XIV level players numbers or status. The business plan that's worked for them for the last 4 years (and they claim STO is more profitable than its ever been since the content plan they adopted as Star Trek Discovery started streaming) is one they seem to want to stick with; but who knows what the Gearbox suits will be thinking 6 months to a year after they own Cryptic. They could keep the status quo; try to expand the playerbase and profitability, or they could put the game in maintenance mode similar to what Champions Online is in now - and focus on Neverwinter, which seems to be pulling in twice the cashflow of STO; with a similar content release strategy to STO's.
Time will tell.
Formerly known as Armsman from June 2008 to June 20, 2012 PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
So you're saying 1 (House Reborn) + 1 (House United) + 1 (Reflections) = 2?? In 2021 we received three content releases with a total of 5 new missions and 2 new queues. That is far less than I would like, but it's important to be accurate when complaining about these things. Whoever made the decisions before felt that STOs record profits didn't warrant any additional funding, hopefully Gearbox sees things differently and allows them to double the content development team. It will be awhile before we know if that's going to happen though, and if it does happen it will still take time to get any new hires up to speed on how things work with STO.
I accidentally glossed over two releases. That's still only 13 releases in four years...
...Four years...
...FOUR YEARS.!
Even the Victory Is Life and Age of Discovery content, each granting a new origin story, wasn't enough to provide any staying power. Blast through it and still have to wait months for the next raindrop in the desert
So, something new every 3.6 months on average <--- I guess you don't play many MMOs, because that's the release cadence for most AAA MMOs (and hell it's a higher pace than Blizzard's done for WoW in it's heyday.) And to be fair to Cryptic, the missions have a lot more content in them then even in the days of the weekly featured episode years (which were short lived.) If we were to do an honest comparison, I'd say most of the new 'single' episode drops would have been equivalent to 4 of the weekly episode drops.
And may 'old timers' (hey, I myself have been playing since the closed beta and started in October 2009) have a VERY rose colored glasses picture of the Atari days as it was clear the Atari upper management attitude was:
"Hey! STO launched. WHY are you guys spending our money ADDING more content to it?...."
And yes, I enjoyed the Foundry a lot and I think them abandoning it was a very poor decision on their part, but understand WHY it was envisioned and made in the first place, namely:
Atari didn't want to fund future content to STO, they wanted to put it in maintenance mode so the Devs for both STO and Neverwinter and Cryptic management designed and implemented a system that allowed the players to do it for them. Once they had an actual parent company that understood better how MMOs actually work and are run (aka PWE) - Cryptic pretty much abandoned The Foundry to focus on a more traditional Dev's create and release content model.
Let me put it in a better perspective for you...
Cryptic did in 2 years what it usually take half a decade o do.
No need to use such exaggerative language. If a kid is 5 years old you say they're 5 years old. You don't call them "half a decade" years old
Touche
But to your actual point, you are right: in previous years they actually made MORE content with LESS resources. Unfortunately they have settled into their preferred comfort zone. They are making a lot of money from their gamble boxes, and only make the absolute minimum amount of mission content to keep the players "around" (even if not playing regularly, paying attention enough to know when there is a new lockbox). It's sad, but it's the game we have.
Correction: PWE and now Gearbox/Embracer are where all the money went to / is now going to... It's not like it was under Atari, where the subscription fees went to the owner/publisher and cash shop sales went to Cryptic. Cryptic gets paid according to the contracted budget agreement. Mening they might see bonuses if the profits hit a specific threshold, but otherwise, they won't get any more than what their contract mandates. And since Zen is the only method of monetization, The owner/publisher takes that.
Cryptic would make more mission content if they had the staff and man hours to be able to do so. With a larger team the increased workload could be distributed evenly among everyone in each department so one personb in that department would not increase their workload while the department itself can collectively produce more content. It's like opening up one of those never-used extra checkout lanes at a wal mart. More people doing the same thing knocks out the workload quicker. That's what I could never get He Who shall Not Be Named to understand. ll I got from him was "That's not how game development works" as a broad answer to anything I put forward.
I don't think Cryptic has been being LAZY. I don't blame them for not falling all over themselves to bust their butts to do things that the owner/publisher is not going to allocate a dime more for in the process. PWE has been the party just sitting back and raking in the money, not giving a fraction of a damn whether or not new playable content went into the game, just so long as the Zen kept being bought for all the fluff. Maybe if enough of us would have closed our wallets due to lack of enough content coming as regularly as stuff we were expected to buy, then maybe PWE might have wondered what wasn't happening and allocate enough funds to make sure it would happen. But we didn't. We just went "Here... Take my money!" So they didn't have any incentive to see to it that Cryptic had the budget to go beyond the status quo.
PWE created the fire. We fed it. And Cryptic got burned. As per my prior observations, Cryptic was very passionate about STO, even during the Content Drought due to Atari's ineptitude. But since PWE took over, that passion and drive has all but vanished. I get the impression that Cryptic isn't really happy with the arrangement they had to work under with PWE, and would dearly love to actually do more. But if the ones signing their paycheck doesn't care one way or another about what Cryptic would like to do, so long as the Zen sales keep rolling in, I can't blame anyone for losing their passion and just embracing the hum drum. cycle. At least they have a job, right? PWE is totally detached from the products they sell. We have no way of knowing whether or not it will be any different under Gearbox/Embracer. If they bought PWE, it means they've certainly got more money to throw around than PWE. And i they can just see the potential that STO has always had and throw some of that money towards helping Cryptic reach that potential, then things can only get better. I hope that is what happens. I'm not going to hold my breath for it... But I do hope for it.
Gearbox did not have anything to do with the purchase. Here's how I understand it's going to work: Embracer Group is a holdings company which means that they hold shares over the companies in which they have acquired. Gearbox is one such subsidiary & will oversee Cryptic Studios. However, the press release says that Cryptic studios & PWE Publishing well remain independent, which to me sounds like there's not going to be any meaningful change that is happening here.
I know what I said is likely going to be a big disappointment, but this is what the press release from Embracer said. It did also say though that Gearbox is going to onboard them, meaning that there is going to probably be some kind of new expectations from Gearbox, but we won't know anything really until the deal finalizes next month.
What will happen if Gearbox doesn't make any kind of meaningful change with Cryptic here?
Gearbox did not have anything to do with the purchase. Here's how I understand it's going to work: Embracer Group is a holdings company which means that they hold shares over the companies in which they have acquired. Gearbox is one such subsidiary & will oversee Cryptic Studios. However, the press release says that Cryptic studios & PWE Publishing well remain independent, which to me sounds like there's not going to be any meaningful change that is happening here.
I know what I said is likely going to be a big disappointment, but this is what the press release from Embracer said. It did also say though that Gearbox is going to onboard them, meaning that there is going to probably be some kind of new expectations from Gearbox, but we won't know anything really until the deal finalizes next month.
What will happen if Gearbox doesn't make any kind of meaningful change with Cryptic here?
If there are no notable changes, it means that Embracer and Gearbox is content with how things are going, and acquired PWE NA and Cryptic more for IP deals/licensing. As it is currently, there are no announced changes to staffing, which sometimes happen when game companies change hands. Everyone who was already involved with PWE NA and Cryptic are going to remain where they are for the most part. Nothing will change for awhile then, as Gearbox and Embracer leave their newest acquisitions alone for awhile to see how they do financially and operationally.
So at the very least, we're looking at 3-6 months, or at least 2 financial quarters, before Gearbox makes any potential recommendations and Embracer uses their shareholding power to force a board/staff change if necessary, up to maybe one full financial year before anything is adjusted.
---
That being said, the only realistic change that might happen sooner than later is pushing to hire more staff, if only to help with bug-fixing, code documentation and clean-up, and additional content creation. Given that Cryptic is now more or less permanently operating from home for the most part, no need to have individuals physically move to Cali and into the office. Even then, it would mostly be apprenticing under the main Cryptic staff until they have more familiarity with the game code and game assets, which can take awhile (moreso given the clunky engine and ancient production methodology).
That would still leave a year or two of no notable changes while the new hires get caught up with things, meaning still no major changes during that time. Just a larger fixed bugs list and some additional content work put in.
which to me sounds like there's not going to be any meaningful change that is happening here.
The main Chinese Perfect World parent company is being removed from the equation though (I'm guessing PWE Publishing will be renamed once everything is finalized), and imo that's probably where the main problem has been.
Comments
> Well... I suppose if one were to compare that to a contemporary TV show on a streaming service,
But why would anyone make such a crazy comparison in the first place? This isn't a streaming service or a TV show, it is an MMO. So any comparisons regarding playable content would only make sense in relation to other MMOs.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
Because, if you've seen what Sirsitsalot has been speaking about lately, it's about making it so that STO has meaningful stuff to make the game worthwhile to someone who wants to see the game reach the highest potential he thinks possible for Star Trek.
Pretty much, if Gearbox doesn't do anything to help make STO better in the long run, there will be nothing to shake up the status quo.
I think you're right. I doubt it's really a valid argument.
I have a Netflix-account that I barely use. Same with the NY Times and a Playstation Plus account.
I'm not paying for those because I have to use them every day - I pay for the convenience of being able to access all their data/content/games whenever I do want to read a newspaper, watch a movie or play a game.
And I'm way more active on STO. I'd definitely not consider money spent on a subscription wasted money. If I had to pay money to be able to access the game whenever I want, I'd be happy to do it.
(Then again, and this probably matters too, I've never had an issue with spending quite large sums on this game. As pointed out by others, paying a regular access fee may simply not be an option for everyone.)
[3/25 10:41][Combat (Self)]Your Haymaker deals 26187 (10692) Physical Damage(Critical) to Orinoco.
That's what I heard too. But I read it here on the Forums, from someone who probably quoted a livestream or something.
I have no idea how reliable that info is.
What I do know, is that they do seem to be recruiting more. Right now there are at least a few positions being advertised that weren't there before.
Most of them are for Neverwinter, but some of the newer ones (under 'Secret Stuff' in the link below) are new and seem to relate to big plans for their general infrastructure. I know very little about programming and software creation, but from the description I get the impression that they're looking for someone who can create new tools ('new features') for the Dev teams to work with.
Which sounds like something they desperately need, if what others are saying about their tools being a mess is true.
https://crypticstudios.com/careers
With some luck they can attract the required talent...
[3/25 10:41][Combat (Self)]Your Haymaker deals 26187 (10692) Physical Damage(Critical) to Orinoco.
And just as an aside and not related in any way to STO, but if anyone should be complaining about lack of official content in games, it's the SC2 community...they haven't had anything since late 2019, which is when the most recent - and currently last - co-op commander was released, even though there are tons more characters that could be adapted for that system.
Blizzard never did make any mission packs after Nova Covert Ops, either...apparently, it flopped hard or something.
#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!"
If it was general infrastructure it would have been labeled as such, since it's labeled "Secret Stuff" it is probably for a new, unannounced game of some kind.
SC2 has kind of run it's course, what that community really needs at this point is a StarCraft 3. The problem is that RTS games aren't as popular as they used to be, and StarCraft in particular has a VERY high skill ceiling, so there's not as much money to be made. It kills me to say that because StarCraft is probably my favorite Blizzard franchise, but it's the truth.
A book is also a "content delivery method" and a "quantity of content", but also an irrelevant comparison. This is a game, and more specifically an MMO, so peoples expectations are rightly based on games/MMOs, not on completely different mediums.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
I only wish that were true. If it were, we would still have some really great things in this game, like the foundry. Because after a TV show airs, those episodes always exist (somewhere) and they can't go back and rip out parts they don't want to support anymore.
And that's a valid opinion to have. But that's also fantasy land. I'm talking about reality, and comparing this video game/MMO to other video games/MMOs. And within that context, 10 hours of story content in an entire year seems incredibly sad for an MMO. Especially one based on such a huge IP. But hey, YMMV! Maybe those 10 hours of story content in an entire year is more than some people can keep up with!
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
If GB actually gives them any additional resources, I want to see them working on stuff like THAT first, before any metaverse or additional storyline stuff comes up as anything more than breakroom banter.
#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!"
Not every streaming service does this. I know it's mostly Netflix that tends to dump everything for the season at once so people can stream it how they want. However, many streaming shows, especially Star Trek, do weekly installments so that you watch it and have to come back. There are still plenty of shows that I watch that are weekly on local and cable channels, though I guess it's a matter of what you tune into these days.
The problem with doing 10 episodic missions though is that what you ask hinges on them cranking out one right after another as soon as they are done. They have tried that somewhat before, with the Iconian War. I believe they said that it was very hard on the team so they didn't want to keep doing it that way.
The only way something like that would work is if they had an increase in the team size so that there were more people able to work on the missions, such as the Environmental, Character artist and content designer teams. However, that's something that would require spending, which we don't know what's going to happen with the new owners.
STO also used to have the newest ship (or at least a version of it) as a tease for people to get during missions. Most of the time, it was related to the anniversary ship, though for the 10th, they opted instead to have every on screen hero ship & the Enterprise-F show up. I think Tom Paris teased the original pilot escort ships like the Mercury during the Iconian War.
Your of course assuming that all the assets like environments, story script, character models and such are decided right from the start. Some of this is decided from the start like what the story is going to be, but many of these things usually depend on the focus.
I believe Cryptic said in the past that they start out their story scripts with having people in mind that they want to bring in. Since they rely heavily now on Star Trek actors, this usually results in them having to see who is available for them to get.
For instance, with the Klingon Civil War, Martok was going to be involved with it, so J.G. Hertzler was a must. Robert O'Reilly (aka Gowron) was an interesting addition, but they put a twist & take an existing character they recently introduced (Aakar) and rework him into Gowron's grandfather, just so they could have him play a big role. This could have been the plan from the start, and if O'Reilly didn't come back, things might have turned out differently. They also did the same thing with Adet'pa too, where she was originally generic and later given Rehka Sharma's face.
The character artists can't really have new characters ready unless they for sure know they have an actor for the role. This includes updating a character from generic to looking like said actor.
Ships of course are a different story as they are always working on introducing the next big ship, so it's easy for them to have those ready to go on time.
I don't know if you've tuned into watch Tacofangs, but every so often he goes on stream to show him working on assets, such as the case when he was working on the new Federation 2410 art kit for the Mirror arc, which still isn't quite finished yet. They don't always decide what it is they want to do right from the start and it takes time to make things.
Let's get one thing clear. They do NOT have everyone doing everything. Even with the teams that they have, a lot of people focus on the thing that they were hired to do. Thomas Marrone for example is a ship artist & formerly a UI artist. He doesn't go and do Environment art because that's not what he was hired to do.
As I said above when it comes to the way they do things, they semi-plan out on everything, but they do not have everything 100% since a lot of the time, their plans require them to have the star trek actors they want available to record stuff. If they are not, then they have to go find someone who is and rework things to make it fit.
Larger MMORPGs like Final Fantasy XIV can bring out expansions every 2 years AND do content patches in-between mostly because they employ lots of people, but don't have everything voiced a lot of the time, so cutscenes do not always need voice actors. However, at the same time, the story is broken up into many small quests that have you go talk with someone & kill stuff, then go somewhere else & talk to turn the quest in. There's some variation, but they space the story out since it's a very story driven MMO.
We really do not know what is going to happen once the deal is finalized next month. We have to see.
So, something new every 3.6 months on average <--- I guess you don't play many MMOs, because that's the release cadence for most AAA MMOs (and hell it's a higher pace than Blizzard's done for WoW in it's heyday.) And to be fair to Cryptic, the missions have a lot more content in them then even in the days of the weekly featured episode years (which were short lived.) If we were to do an honest comparison, I'd say most of the new 'single' episode drops would have been equivalent to 4 of the weekly episode drops.
And may 'old timers' (hey, I myself have been playing since the closed beta and started in October 2009) have a VERY rose colored glasses picture of the Atari days as it was clear the Atari upper management attitude was:
"Hey! STO launched. WHY are you guys spending our money ADDING more content to it?...."
And yes, I enjoyed the Foundry a lot and I think them abandoning it was a very poor decision on their part, but understand WHY it was envisioned and made in the first place, namely:
Atari didn't want to fund future content to STO, they wanted to put it in maintenance mode so the Devs for both STO and Neverwinter and Cryptic management designed and implemented a system that allowed the players to do it for them. Once they had an actual parent company that understood better how MMOs actually work and are run (aka PWE) - Cryptic pretty much abandoned The Foundry to focus on a more traditional Dev's create and release content model.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
>
> Atari didn't want to fund future content to STO, they wanted to put it in maintenance mode so the Devs for both STO and Neverwinter and Cryptic management designed and implemented a system that allowed the players to do it for them. Once they had an actual parent company that understood better how MMOs actually work and are run (aka PWE) - Cryptic pretty much abandoned The Foundry to focus on a more traditional Dev's create and release content model.
Neverwinter launched (2013) after Cryptic joined PWI (May-April 2011). The foundry was also launched in May 2011. Of course they were working on the foundry before the merger, but the timeline you are proposing sounds questionable at best.
Not when you consider that The Foundry was going to be the main source of content for Neverwinter (and Neverwinter was being developed while they were still owned by Atari - and if you think they were able to throw the Foundry together in a month...no, I'm sure it was in development for 6 months to a year before the beta was deployed to STO - and Atari had been looking for buyers for Cryptic for awhile - and one of the things PWE liked was the robustness of the Cryptic engine (despite what many players thought of said engine at the time, and today) - so no, I don't think my claim that they developed the Foundry because Atari wasn't really giving the Dev team a lot of budget to put new content into the game a stretch, since Jack didn't know when or if they'd get sold.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
Well, i see you in Homeworld 3!!, finally a nice RTS... and yeah, SC3 would be awesome..
No need to use such exaggerative language. If a kid is 5 years old you say they're 5 years old. You don't call them "half a decade" years old
But to your actual point, you are right: in previous years they actually made MORE content with LESS resources. Unfortunately they have settled into their preferred comfort zone. They are making a lot of money from their gamble boxes, and only make the absolute minimum amount of mission content to keep the players "around" (even if not playing regularly, paying attention enough to know when there is a new lockbox). It's sad, but it's the game we have.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
They did a much better job when they created the Bajor ground zone; and to this day, I amazed they never have leveraged that social zone more, or gave players a real reason to go there after (in the same way they give players a reason to go the SFA of the KA zones) 'The 2800' arc was completed.
But that's always been a problem in that Cryptic doesn't seem to know how to leverage social zones in general, and as a result we don't get many such zones because beyond the few they do leverage - they feel the others are just a waste of dev resources.
You also seem to forget how disjointed and utterly buggy these weekly missions were on first release. The Dev team disliked the cadence because they felt it forced them to push out content that was even LESS ready - and many of those mission segments kasted less than 5-10 minutes. Again, the way they release a complete mission now - said mission = 5 or 6 of the 'weekly mission' content days.
And hell, AFTER PWE we had the year of Iconian War mission releases - which WAS a lot of missions of both respectable length and general quality; but yeah, they came out and said the Dev team was burned out badly after that run, and sadly it wasn't a production cadence they could maintain.
The major problem is that PWE (and I'm sure Gearbox) gives them a finite budget and expects a large ROI - and in the end, they've found lockboxes and ships give them the best bang for their development buck - thus they come of with a ship based theme (like say MU universe ships) - build a storyline around that - do a mission chain over a year that ties in, and brings casuals back every 3months or so when they HAVE a couple themed ships ready (and another unrelated lockbox ship that tie into on of the films or current streaming series) - and that seems to bring them a good cashflow and profit - which is why it's the cadence we've had since 2017 or so.
If you or I quit today, they wouldn't care because we've bought a lot over the time we've played and they've made their money from us. Whales are gonna be Whales, (and we whine, but still stick around).
I think their marketing metrics show they get a good return by having some new ship/mission coordination every 3 - 4 months, and they get a lot of casuals to com in by the 'hot' ship (or get the lockbox ship tied to some Star trek content they really like); then they go away until the next context drop with the attached 'sellable' stuff.
There was a time when (at it's height) the STO team was 50 Devs - BUT they claimed that managing that size team effectively was too challenging at times, and it's probably why they have the current Dev team size of 35. They want to get the best balance of money spent to profit earned ratio, while not burning out their Devs and Programing team.
And (if the marketing copy is to be believed) Gearbozx is pleased with the way Cryptic runs itself, so supposedly, they'll be hands off (again, who knows as I've never seen a sellout where the new company doesn't do some major changes at some point) - but bottom line Cryptic knows it's strengths and weaknesses and is happy with the niche it's carved out - and CBS seems happy as well.
Cryptic isn't Square Enix, and they're not trying to attain Final Fantasy XIV level players numbers or status. The business plan that's worked for them for the last 4 years (and they claim STO is more profitable than its ever been since the content plan they adopted as Star Trek Discovery started streaming) is one they seem to want to stick with; but who knows what the Gearbox suits will be thinking 6 months to a year after they own Cryptic. They could keep the status quo; try to expand the playerbase and profitability, or they could put the game in maintenance mode similar to what Champions Online is in now - and focus on Neverwinter, which seems to be pulling in twice the cashflow of STO; with a similar content release strategy to STO's.
Time will tell.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
Gearbox did not have anything to do with the purchase. Here's how I understand it's going to work: Embracer Group is a holdings company which means that they hold shares over the companies in which they have acquired. Gearbox is one such subsidiary & will oversee Cryptic Studios. However, the press release says that Cryptic studios & PWE Publishing well remain independent, which to me sounds like there's not going to be any meaningful change that is happening here.
I know what I said is likely going to be a big disappointment, but this is what the press release from Embracer said. It did also say though that Gearbox is going to onboard them, meaning that there is going to probably be some kind of new expectations from Gearbox, but we won't know anything really until the deal finalizes next month.
What will happen if Gearbox doesn't make any kind of meaningful change with Cryptic here?
If there are no notable changes, it means that Embracer and Gearbox is content with how things are going, and acquired PWE NA and Cryptic more for IP deals/licensing. As it is currently, there are no announced changes to staffing, which sometimes happen when game companies change hands. Everyone who was already involved with PWE NA and Cryptic are going to remain where they are for the most part. Nothing will change for awhile then, as Gearbox and Embracer leave their newest acquisitions alone for awhile to see how they do financially and operationally.
So at the very least, we're looking at 3-6 months, or at least 2 financial quarters, before Gearbox makes any potential recommendations and Embracer uses their shareholding power to force a board/staff change if necessary, up to maybe one full financial year before anything is adjusted.
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That being said, the only realistic change that might happen sooner than later is pushing to hire more staff, if only to help with bug-fixing, code documentation and clean-up, and additional content creation. Given that Cryptic is now more or less permanently operating from home for the most part, no need to have individuals physically move to Cali and into the office. Even then, it would mostly be apprenticing under the main Cryptic staff until they have more familiarity with the game code and game assets, which can take awhile (moreso given the clunky engine and ancient production methodology).
That would still leave a year or two of no notable changes while the new hires get caught up with things, meaning still no major changes during that time. Just a larger fixed bugs list and some additional content work put in.
The main Chinese Perfect World parent company is being removed from the equation though (I'm guessing PWE Publishing will be renamed once everything is finalized), and imo that's probably where the main problem has been.