Poor current state of community announcements

oredshirt · March 26

Look I know by the title someone is immediately going to think of locking this without reading. In fear of that I want to preface this message by saying I offer it as a player perspective with consideration, facts, and the highest constructive professionalism I can muster right now.

I am going to start with constructive analysis and input. There is currently no CENTRALIZED medium for community announcements... For several years I have personally relied on the arcgames - star trek online home pages(be it PC or the respective consoles) to gather information on upcoming content and events... This has always seemed to be the most informative place to come for information. It is fair to say there is a common theme of cut-copy-repost that occurs frequently for repeat events etc etc... Yeah we see typos, fantastic, but for the most part we can tell what the message is trying to convey. Those typos are silly but ultimately not that big a deal, right?(yeah ill get into those typos as I think there is one for a post today. The big deal, especially as of late, is all the missed opportunities going around and all the finger pointing of well we should have this today but we don't, no one tells us nothing, etc etc...

Summary here - no centralized medium for communications...
constructive feedback - establish a go-to one stop shop for news...(the arcgames website?)
(if I need to clarify or elaborate so far, let me know, I think this concept is easy to understand)

Current missed event(console) Did you know on console that we just ran a returning mudd bundle sale, but it was not announced anywhere? The sale appears to have run for 4 days ending today.... Almost no one knew about this... I had to find out by looking at a facebook page, where also supposedly it was announced that the anniversary freebies were coming back because oh yeah, we missed any announcement about that as well.. This doesn't just hurt the players but also the income of the game, need I get into that... I supported.. I wanted a bundle and am so glad I didn't miss that.... these aren't small oversights.

Aside from recommending a centralized news outlet(already the developed expectation of the arcgames homepage), player feedback feels like it is received from on above, almost never... It isn't like we don't talk about these things... In fact we talk about issues in the game so often and with so little response that people just stop talking about it(again the developed expectation of 'it is working as intended' or 'nothing ever works when it launches'). There are currently a plethora of issues you can't pay people 100m EC in game to go to forums to raise attention on, because they expect issues whether performance related of content related will rarely be given attention....

PVP - jkjk, I told you we would keep it professional.... no bringing up the lack of additional specialization updates, how bad we hate intel, the lack of new holdings or specializations or reputations... JKJKJKJKJKJK.....

But seriously announcements... missed opportunities at this point aren't just falling on the player, they are falling on the game as a whole... I really wanted to raise awareness of that and beg someone to direct that feedback to the appropriate people, because in the end we are truly missing out... all the other jokes aside(1v1 me, jk more), it really hurts and I know I am not alone in this... We are tired of having to sift through foreign language facebook posts and the deep dark pages of reddit to find out when the next big thing is going to be. Please help us.

eazzie · March 26

Your post appears to be more centralised round the fact that due to communication error the anniversary freebhttps://account.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline/#/discussion/1273305/anniversary-giveawaysies for console were not communicated to the players. This was admitted by Kael and rectified with a post here on the forum. @baddmoonrizin who usually steps up for kael also admitted the mistake and apologised profusely .... mistakes happen, however your post seems to make out the community staff (both employed and voluntary) are inept, something they are not. This game has one of the best if not the absolute best community management teams it has ever had for a long time. Mistakes happen from time to time. Kael not only oversees the community management for STO but is also senior community manger for all of Cryptics games and has a fantastic set of volunteer mods here supporting him. Along with them they also have a hefty number of the playing community supporting them.

Also please be mindful that any discussion of moderation or how the community management conducts things and operates here on the forum is strictly forbidden.

leemwatson · March 26

I'm also going to chime in with this little nugget.

The company is going through a transition, with lots of things going on that we won't see, nor be told about. Errors are more prone to happen till things settle. How do we know that it was supposed to be someone from DECA who was supposed to relay the message or not?? We can only guess.

Mistakes happens, life goes on.

However, I am totally with you @oredshirt#7209 about news being centralised.

It should be posted first on THIS forum site, not X, not FB, not Twitch, not Reddit or whatever wacky new site people use.

If the GM's, CM, Moderators et al. insist bugs should be posted on this forum site, then the CM et al. should prioritise this site, not X/Twitch/FB/Reddit etc. etc. first 'because it's easier', but because it would be courteous (and, yes, a tad more professional) to post where they are directing players to go to for bugs! I agree, I should not have to download and have active numerous sites, just to keep track of what is going on. I have FB, that is it. I have zero need for the others as the provide no actual value, and in a lot of cases, are just a show of incredulous players who can't stand someone disagreeing with them.

Most players using the other sites were probably banned here or something similar, but they shouldn't be prioritised because they might say something that may be negative. Grab the bull by the horns and steer them players back here (unless they are banned

).

baucoin · March 26

Yes, they could do better, but as has been pointed out they are going through a lot at the moment. The whole Console Anniversary giveaways mistake really made the company look bad however. I posted about seeing them starting on March 9th, and that was for the second day rewards. There was no official news about the error until March 22nd. But at least they are correcting the mistake (Big Thank You for that), I'm sure once things settle down fewer errors will pop up.

theboxisred · March 27

leemwatson wrote: »

I'm also going to chime in with this little nugget.

The company is going through a transition, with lots of things going on that we won't see, nor be told about. Errors are more prone to happen till things settle. How do we know that it was supposed to be someone from DECA who was supposed to relay the message or not?? We can only guess.

Mistakes happens, life goes on.

However, I am totally with you @oredshirt#7209 about news being centralised.

It should be posted first on THIS forum site, not X, not FB, not Twitch, not Reddit or whatever wacky new site people use.

If the GM's, CM, Moderators et al. insist bugs should be posted on this forum site, then the CM et al. should prioritise this site, not X/Twitch/FB/Reddit etc. etc. first 'because it's easier', but because it would be courteous (and, yes, a tad more professional) to post where they are directing players to go to for bugs! I agree, I should not have to download and have active numerous sites, just to keep track of what is going on. I have FB, that is it. I have zero need for the others as the provide no actual value, and in a lot of cases, are just a show of incredulous players who can't stand someone disagreeing with them.

Most players using the other sites were probably banned here or something similar, but they shouldn't be prioritised because they might say something that may be negative. Grab the bull by the horns and steer them players back here (unless they are banned ).

Agreed.
I would add that even if those customers are banned there is no harm in them retaining the ability to read these forums, or at least no harm in the aforementioned banned customers reading official notifications posted to these forums.

arliekkos · March 27

Yes there is a lot going on behind the scenes. What about before all of that? This has been ongoing for well before DECA.

oredshirt · March 27

@ eazzie, message received on the mention of moderation forbiddances . however, I think you skipped the summary. While I did not name any names, the purpose of the message is to suggest a centralized news location, not to single out or engage moderation or community managers directly. as a personal note, I act on a measure of do the right thing in the majority and learn from my mistakes... I don't read fine print and have honestly never even read the forum rules.... Moreover I pulled a single major announcement as an example... The finer purpose on focusing that example is that there have been no announcements on the NEWS section of the website... not everyone delves into the forum section or facebook where announcements toward this rectification are currently posted... it should not be a requirement to find out what is going on with new content in a game... utilizing the forum and facebook takes away from the main purpose of this post, to CENTRALIZE news.. specifically in regards to the anniversary event, this is not the first year that announcement has been missed. this also includes freebies on the past winter events as well... and further, many sales have gone completely unlisted in news(throughout the years) as well as other events like phoenix, etc...) this is not new or limited to this one giveaway. even further instead of simply complaining i offered further constructive criticism I think you failed to see the point of which is frustrating, but my fault for not being clear, so I apologize, please allow me to summarize the main point of the message again without the bulk:

Summary(keeping it simple): Centralize News/Announcements.

@ leemwatson, thanks for reiterating my point, you hit the nail on the head... that is all im asking... not to play musical newpapers with the announcements...

vetteguy904 · March 27

OP is new here, apparently. poor communication has been an issue for about 8 years now

josh · March 27

I usually get my updates from X but that seems less reliable these days. I do occasionally get emails but that's only new content/seasons. Why can't all announcements be sent through the same system?

I feel like we are also missing a bigger piece here, the inaccuracies of said announcements. Right now I am standing on Drozana where Grym should be... I have been standing here for about 2 hours waiting. The announcement yesterday said "Tomorrow" but then also said the 28th. So which one is it? Given that Grym has not appeared I am assuming it's the 28th but that's clearly not what the announcement said.

Also the announcement for last years First contact day event said the toy rocket and Holo Phoenix were supposed to be reclaimable. After MULTIPLE tickets trying to get it resolved I finally gave up. It's sad that we as a community of players have been forced to just accept the fact that public announcements are always going to be inaccurate and make Cryptic and the game itself look like a joke.

eazzie · March 27

josh#0694 wrote: »

I usually get my updates from X but that seems less reliable these days. I do occasionally get emails but that's only new content/seasons. Why can't all announcements be sent through the same system?

I feel like we are also missing a bigger piece here, the inaccuracies of said announcements. Right now I am standing on Drozana where Grym should be... I have been standing here for about 2 hours waiting. The announcement yesterday said "Tomorrow" but then also said the 28th. So which one is it? Given that Grym has not appeared I am assuming it's the 28th but that's clearly not what the announcement said.

Also the announcement for last years First contact day event said the toy rocket and Holo Phoenix were supposed to be reclaimable. After MULTIPLE tickets trying to get it resolved I finally gave up. It's sad that we as a community of players have been forced to just accept the fact that public announcements are always going to be inaccurate and make Cryptic and the game itself look like a joke.

phoenix boxes doesn't start till Thursday.

baddmoonrizin · March 27

Because the moderation spectre was raised... 🙄 There is no reason why this discussion cannot continue, as long as there is no flaming, trolling, harassing, and/or violation of forum rules. Thank you. Carry on.

jonsills · March 27

Some of us are abandoning Xitter entirely, (political comments moderated out. - BMR). So posting there won't reach a fairly large swath of people. The social media zeitgeist is still settling on a generally-accepted alternative; Mastodon requires some technical knowledge to navigate, for instance (is your server in federation with Mastodon in general? Will it remain so?), Bluesky suffers from poor marketing (how many people who weren't sniffing around it already even know it's changed from invite-only to open?), Threads is a subsidiary of Meta with all that implies, and the other "solutions" are even worse. I still have a FB account, mostly to keep in touch with friends in Scotland and Australia who don't do Bluesky, but the STO FB account usually only gets updated with announcements of livestreams.

Overall, I think the best possible solution would be for all STO business to be announced on these official STO forums. Alternative sources are good, but you can't rely on them reaching everyone any more.

fleetcaptain5 · March 27

X is fine. Last time I checked, everyone could still decide whether or not they wanted to follow or, if differing opinions hurt, block someone else. If anyone wanted, they could simply create an account just to follow @trekonlinegame.

Besides, I don't think it's even required to have an account to be able to read stuff, though that might have changed recently.

Anyway, I do believe these official forums should be made more important than they currently are, compared to Reddit and X. But that's because these are the official forums, not because anything is wrong with X.
As long as it stays online, information provided through that account at least seems to be accurate and up-to-date. And that's all that matters in the end - whether or not one chooses to use X more broadly is hardly relevant, but I don't see the point of complaining about missing out on something when it's their own choice not to use it.

leemwatson · March 27

jonsills wrote: »

Some of us are abandoning Xitter entirely, (political comments moderated out. - BMR). So posting there won't reach a fairly large swath of people. The social media zeitgeist is still settling on a generally-accepted alternative; Mastodon requires some technical knowledge to navigate, for instance (is your server in federation with Mastodon in general? Will it remain so?), Bluesky suffers from poor marketing (how many people who weren't sniffing around it already even know it's changed from invite-only to open?), Threads is a subsidiary of Meta with all that implies, and the other "solutions" are even worse. I still have a FB account, mostly to keep in touch with friends in Scotland and Australia who don't do Bluesky, but the STO FB account usually only gets updated with announcements of livestreams.

Overall, I think the best possible solution would be for all STO business to be announced on these official STO forums. Alternative sources are good, but you can't rely on them reaching everyone any more.

FB (usually) gets updates before the forum does, and apart from the Console Giveaway snaffu, it is usually on point. As I have it set to notify, I usually get all my 'Official' info first there when I am not near my laptop.

baddmoonrizin · March 27

And I will say that, because I tend to update the forum the most, I rely on FB and Twitter to let me know that there *is* something to post. So, if it doesn't get posted, I'm in the dark. And if it's slow to notify me, then I'm behind the official announcement getting it posted here. 🤷‍♀️

splatty · March 28

fleetcaptain5#1134 wrote: »

X is fine. Last time I checked, everyone could still decide whether or not they wanted to follow or, if differing opinions hurt, block someone else. If anyone wanted, they could simply create an account just to follow @trekonlinegame.

Besides, I don't think it's even required to have an account to be able to read stuff, though that might have changed recently.

You need an account to see any posts on X, and have done for a while. And players (of any game) shouldn't be expected to create an account just to see news/updates that should be posted on the official forums first regardless.

And all this might be moot anyways with the new DECA CM in a couple of weeks.

oredshirt · March 28

vetteguy904 wrote: »

OP is new here, apparently. poor communication has been an issue for about 8 years now

Lol, not new here.... and I know comms have been rough forever as well as having extremely in depth and informative comms, but it's getting past the point of irritation and into exclusive territory... if we can't make it better lets at least stop the decline..

josh#0694 wrote: »

The announcement yesterday said "Tomorrow" but then also said the 28th. So which one is it? Given that Grym has not appeared I am assuming it's the 28th but that's clearly not what the announcement said.

Okay, so this you can observe with distinct consistency, unless it has to do with login capability, you can count on updates/events always launching on a tuesday or thursday... if it is any other day of the week, it is out of cycle and unlikely to occur....

Glad to see I am not alone in chasing news... Would just be really nice to have a community declaration of a safe space to count on. I'll still come here... I'll check FB over X, but I don't know what the recourse is when there is another breakdown.... It feels like the only option is to show up somewhere and keep saying it happened again, lol.... Also, thanks Badmoon for seeing the constructive side, I think this comms business can get tapered with just a little awareness.

rattler2 · March 28

splatty wrote: »

And all this might be moot anyways with the new DECA CM in a couple of weeks.

Uh... wut? First I heard of that, and I'm on the Mod Team.
Pretty sure right now that's not true.

pottsey5g · March 28

rattler2 wrote: »

splatty wrote: »

And all this might be moot anyways with the new DECA CM in a couple of weeks.

Uh... wut? First I heard of that, and I'm on the Mod Team.
Pretty sure right now that's not true.

We where told around a week ago that there is already a staff member at DECA and they would start communicating with the community in a matter of weeks. I didn't get the impression this person was taking over the blogs anytime soon or that the current CM is going away anytime soon. It did sound like that would be the case long term over the year or how ever long the transition process takes.

Which I am hopeful for as blogs poor quality has been a major weakness in STO. Poor communication with the player base is one of the areas I am hopeful DECA are going to improve.

baddmoonrizin · March 28

rattler2 wrote: »

splatty wrote: »

And all this might be moot anyways with the new DECA CM in a couple of weeks.

Uh... wut? First I heard of that, and I'm on the Mod Team.
Pretty sure right now that's not true.

Yeah, Rattler, it was during the livestream with the CEO.

rattler2 · March 28

I didn't catch all of it.

crypticarmsman · March 28

vetteguy904 wrote: »

OP is new here, apparently. poor communication has been an issue for about 8 15 years now

FTFY (And no as someone who's been with the game since closed Beta that's NOT Hyperbole.)

splatty · March 29

rattler2 wrote: »

I didn't catch all of it.

Doesn't alter the fact you were wrong. Ironic given the context of poor communication.

splatty · March 29

pottsey5g wrote: »

We where told around a week ago that there is already a staff member at DECA and they would start communicating with the community in a matter of weeks. I didn't get the impression this person was taking over the blogs anytime soon or that the current CM is going away anytime soon. It did sound like that would be the case long term over the year or how ever long the transition process takes.

Which I am hopeful for as blogs poor quality has been a major weakness in STO. Poor communication with the player base is one of the areas I am hopeful DECA are going to improve.

They were very vague about it, but the way it was worded (to me) sounded like the DECA CM would be only dealing with the DECA devs so would be still be Mike for Cryptic so like you said, probably a year or so transition or however long it takes for DECA to take over. Be interesting to see if DECA creates their own forums or reuse this one. Just got wait and see.

arabatur · March 29

We always knew what was going when LaughingTrendy ran the show, it's been downhill since then.

equinox976 · March 29

eazzie wrote: »

This game has one of the best if not the absolute best community management teams it has ever had for a long time.

fleetcaptain5 · March 29

splatty wrote: »

pottsey5g wrote: »

We where told around a week ago that there is already a staff member at DECA and they would start communicating with the community in a matter of weeks. I didn't get the impression this person was taking over the blogs anytime soon or that the current CM is going away anytime soon. It did sound like that would be the case long term over the year or how ever long the transition process takes.

Which I am hopeful for as blogs poor quality has been a major weakness in STO. Poor communication with the player base is one of the areas I am hopeful DECA are going to improve.

They were very vague about it, but the way it was worded (to me) sounded like the DECA CM would be only dealing with the DECA devs so would be still be Mike for Cryptic so like you said, probably a year or so transition or however long it takes for DECA to take over. Be interesting to see if DECA creates their own forums or reuse this one. Just got wait and see.

I hope not. That would probably mean we lose this one, including all of its valuable information.

oredshirt · March 30

so... not exactly trying to gripe more... but dilithium event? so now we've missed the anniversary freebies, a mudd sale, and half a dilithium event, and the patch notes were not very complete.... all of this in the last what... 18 days? hearing this transition is going to take a year means the focus shouldn't be so immediate right? so like.. idk what to even say or ask... do we expect this for the next year? i feel like... can someone @ someone who can talk to someone... or just talk to someone? seems above my paygrade, idk who to even talk to...

Dil event is not on facebook, is not on arc website, is not on playstartrekonline website.. not hidden in the phoenix event post... IS VERY HIDDEN, in the main menu in game if you are willing to tab through the several featured holding project posts.... also noticeable if like me after the third time you see bonus dil at the end of a queue, and then go check a character to see if the have a pool and assume it just ran dry, but the fourth time you check BEFORE you run a queue only to realize something funny going on here... like... sorry... that's a rant. a civil rant by my standard... now that 66% of the event is gone.. just felt like someone had to say something... dunno how many people have actually noticed..

davefenestrator · March 30

I really hope DECA doesn't switch to new forums or worse yet Discord. Over a decade of info will be lost forever, and Discord is lousy as a forum replacement because every post is mashed together into one long stream instead of separate topics with their own titles.

rattler2 · March 30

Not to mention a PITA to moderate. I've seen how fast Deep Rock Galactic's channels can go. Getting a decent conversation can be difficult even if it is in real time. Having a Discord server alongside the forums might be nice, but not as a wholesale replacement.

crypticarmsman · April 2

davefenestrator wrote: »

I really hope DECA doesn't switch to new forums or worse yet Discord. Over a decade of info will be lost forever, and Discord is lousy as a forum replacement because every post is mashed together into one long stream instead of separate topics with their own titles.

If anything they'll just shut down the Forums entirely. I don't think DECCA has run Forums for any of its mobile offerings. Plus it's not like the actual STO Devs or current STO CM really post anything to them - it's usually the LAST place current info is posted (if/when the CM remembers they exist) and its been that way for years.

Poor current state of community announcements

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