1. What does it really say when a game's developers start personally singling out forum posters telling them that they are wrong?
2. and another great response from dstahl. attacking the customers is definately going to make things better for cryptic (hey did it not improve the situation when they told us that people who had problems with the game "just didn't get it"). i do feel sorry for dstahl though, he was not the one who made the decision to release a game more than a year before it was ready as he points out by stating that the klingon faction is still not there yet.
theres a great post in the thread (peregine falcon i think) pointing out that dstahl and cryptic as a whole have only themselves to blame.... which is completely true. and theres more than a few making excuses for the company which are pretty comical.
what i find realy funny is his comment about the cars speed... what he fails to mention is that cryptic pulled most of the devs off the project and that the car now barely moves, but he is right about either shutting up or leaving if you find the product to be sub-par. thats why i left a long time ago. nice to see i made the right decision as the game still seems to be trying to fix the same problems it had at launch, and theres a lot of them.
1. Actually, this isn't the start for Cryptic; it happened when they had CoH/CoV, it happened again with CO, and it started up in STO around the time that they disclosed what the movement would be like. To be fair, I have yet to see anyone from Cryptic (or most other companies) get as bad as Derek Smart (I think that's his name; the one who cusses out people in flame wars on forums).
2. Going after the customers is nothing new for them, but they would be far better served by having someone post on Cryptic's behalf in the forums who had a thicker skin than previous Cryptic posters. If your business depends on repeat business from customers (subscriptions in this case), you really do need someone representing you in public who can (at the very least) shrug off criticism. Posting about how your feeling are hurt, or how you are tired of hearing about a (valid) complaint, doesn't really help out your customer relations. Then again Cryptic has always had communication problems, most of which could be solved simply by the poster going back to double check for clarity and accuracy.
Honestly I thought the rant was mild other than calling out one of the users on the forums like that . You guys should be in other game forums. Like one of the devs got mad at a guy and actually made the comment in the forums in Fallen Earth and said I guess player-x needs a 5 day ban. Lotro we seen a couple of the devs come unglued more than once when we were bashing on Jeffry Stefield the cm actually blew her cool and threatened bans and mentions about 5 player names.
Really I get the devs lashing out, but they should not call out individual player names. After all forum rules are no trying to blacklist players, but the devs get away with it makes you go see bad customer servers and the proof is right there.
its not just that the dev named a player, its the fact that he is whining about being unable to change things that he knows are not right.
HE WORKS FOR THE PEOPLE THAT PAY MONTHLY SUBSCRIPTION'S! I AM SICK OF HEARING ABOUT IT IS NOT AN ACCEPTABLE RESPONSE.
the excuse that its being worked on has been used by cryptic for almost a full year now (the same issues), it was not acceptable when the game was launched, its even far less so a year later. if he did not want to hear people whine about how the game is incomplete, he should not have accepted a job that included trying to salvage a game that was launched far far before it should have been.
as i pointed out in another recent post, not only did cryptic not finish the game to a state where it was ready for release (imo and many other people's as well), they then gutted the dev team rather than finish sto (yes some people needed to go, but they still needed staff to finish the game).
and heres the thing (personally i just find it amusing) .... if he is sick of hearing about it... why would he say so? does he not think the players are sick of saying it after a year of wanting it fixed and it not happening?
and dinedae, yes i read the quote by derek smart. not that i was considering trying the game in question in that case, but im glad someone posted it here. it shows me the level of professional conduct that can be expected if you choose to do business with that particular company. that comment is not the only reason i wont try out that game, but it sure makes it easier to think it is not worth trying. as you point out, cryptics employees have been doing the same type of thing for a while.
IF THE ONLY DEFENCE FOR CRITICISM OF A GAME IS CALLING SOMEONE A TROLL OR HATER, THAT SAYS A LOT ABOUT THE QUALITY OF THE GAME
You can only get away talking to people that way , when all that is left , for practical purposes are Lifetime Subs. The person he called out is a lifer , and a strong proponent of the Klingon faction being finished, a year into the game. Hmmm, I think he has a point.
It really amazes me when I read their " ask Cryptic " how disingenuous they are , as well as the fluff question they choose to answer. They should spend more time actually working on the game, perhaps ?
I'll fess up and admit to also being the poster on STO that he called out, I think if you read the post of mine that spurred his comments you'll see I did none of the things he seems to be upset with, but that's not why I posted his quote.
I posted it because of this 12% number he threw out there (and then later backed away from). The argument I've been making since STO switched gears a few months before release to the KDF being a "PvP" mostly faction is the same one I make today - a faction based game needs to have all factions (be they two, three or some number X) have compelling game play. They repeatedly denounced that the KDF would simply be "monster play", but when the game launched it wasn't even that (at least monster play has a few compelling elements).
Now the KDF experience has gotten better, but it is this - 12% mentality that really worries me, because if it shifts again and the KDF is left as an even greater second class citizen than you have a game that once again isn't two factions.
Yeah I'm a lifer and I have some interest in seeing the game improve. I bought my lifer-sub during closed beta. The game has a plethora of problems, but the bones behind it are actually quiet good. It suffers from two huge problems though, lack of content and lack of an end game purpose. Neither of which do I think the current Dev team has the ability to fix. Is it cryptic's fault? Certainly, but I don't think Atari is helping the matter nor is CBS. It's too bad.
BTW, APB did a much better job with the avatar customization . Someone needs to let Cryptic know that .
So did Aion. Cryptic's crappy CO engine is really nothing special, actually quite the opposite
Aion? Last time i tried Aion it was your typical mmo character creation, 5 or 6 faces, 5 or 6 hairstyles etc. You could scale your character but other than that aion was extremely limited and games like EQ2 had aion smoked on character creation. SOmething change?
ah okay, could have been different back when aion launched. when I tried it two months ago however, I was very impressed by the character customization options available
edit: actually I think you're mistaken - here is an OB video of aion showing character creation -
5 or 6 hairstyles/faces sounds actually like WoW (character customization is sadly absolutely awful in that game)
I wonder what would happen if Cryptic realised that a good game doesn't need madly detailed character customisation. I mean, the amount of time they spend designing assets for customisation, they could spend it better developing good games, as opposed to bad games.
Comments
Honestly I thought the rant was mild other than calling out one of the users on the forums like that . You guys should be in other game forums. Like one of the devs got mad at a guy and actually made the comment in the forums in Fallen Earth and said I guess player-x needs a 5 day ban. Lotro we seen a couple of the devs come unglued more than once when we were bashing on Jeffry Stefield the cm actually blew her cool and threatened bans and mentions about 5 player names.
Really I get the devs lashing out, but they should not call out individual player names. After all forum rules are no trying to blacklist players, but the devs get away with it makes you go see bad customer servers and the proof is right there.
its not just that the dev named a player, its the fact that he is whining about being unable to change things that he knows are not right.
HE WORKS FOR THE PEOPLE THAT PAY MONTHLY SUBSCRIPTION'S! I AM SICK OF HEARING ABOUT IT IS NOT AN ACCEPTABLE RESPONSE.
the excuse that its being worked on has been used by cryptic for almost a full year now (the same issues), it was not acceptable when the game was launched, its even far less so a year later. if he did not want to hear people whine about how the game is incomplete, he should not have accepted a job that included trying to salvage a game that was launched far far before it should have been.
as i pointed out in another recent post, not only did cryptic not finish the game to a state where it was ready for release (imo and many other people's as well), they then gutted the dev team rather than finish sto (yes some people needed to go, but they still needed staff to finish the game).
and heres the thing (personally i just find it amusing) .... if he is sick of hearing about it... why would he say so? does he not think the players are sick of saying it after a year of wanting it fixed and it not happening?
and dinedae, yes i read the quote by derek smart. not that i was considering trying the game in question in that case, but im glad someone posted it here. it shows me the level of professional conduct that can be expected if you choose to do business with that particular company. that comment is not the only reason i wont try out that game, but it sure makes it easier to think it is not worth trying. as you point out, cryptics employees have been doing the same type of thing for a while.
IF THE ONLY DEFENCE FOR CRITICISM OF A GAME IS CALLING SOMEONE A TROLL OR HATER, THAT SAYS A LOT ABOUT THE QUALITY OF THE GAME
You can only get away talking to people that way , when all that is left , for practical purposes are Lifetime Subs. The person he called out is a lifer , and a strong proponent of the Klingon faction being finished, a year into the game. Hmmm, I think he has a point.
It really amazes me when I read their " ask Cryptic " how disingenuous they are , as well as the fluff question they choose to answer. They should spend more time actually working on the game, perhaps ?
I'll fess up and admit to also being the poster on STO that he called out, I think if you read the post of mine that spurred his comments you'll see I did none of the things he seems to be upset with, but that's not why I posted his quote.
I posted it because of this 12% number he threw out there (and then later backed away from). The argument I've been making since STO switched gears a few months before release to the KDF being a "PvP" mostly faction is the same one I make today - a faction based game needs to have all factions (be they two, three or some number X) have compelling game play. They repeatedly denounced that the KDF would simply be "monster play", but when the game launched it wasn't even that (at least monster play has a few compelling elements).
Now the KDF experience has gotten better, but it is this - 12% mentality that really worries me, because if it shifts again and the KDF is left as an even greater second class citizen than you have a game that once again isn't two factions.
Yeah I'm a lifer and I have some interest in seeing the game improve. I bought my lifer-sub during closed beta. The game has a plethora of problems, but the bones behind it are actually quiet good. It suffers from two huge problems though, lack of content and lack of an end game purpose. Neither of which do I think the current Dev team has the ability to fix. Is it cryptic's fault? Certainly, but I don't think Atari is helping the matter nor is CBS. It's too bad.
ah okay, could have been different back when aion launched. when I tried it two months ago however, I was very impressed by the character customization options available
edit: actually I think you're mistaken - here is an OB video of aion showing character creation -
5 or 6 hairstyles/faces sounds actually like WoW (character customization is sadly absolutely awful in that game)
I wonder what would happen if Cryptic realised that a good game doesn't need madly detailed character customisation. I mean, the amount of time they spend designing assets for customisation, they could spend it better developing good games, as opposed to bad games.
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