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Oops: StormShade Inserts Foot In Mouth
Daevian
Member Posts: 17
Original thread here: http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?p=3267626
"While this is a route we could have taken, it's not a route Cryptic would ever take. You know how every studio out there has something that they're known for having in their games?
Bioware always makes games with incredible stories.
Liohead Studios makes games where not only the outcome, but the entire world is changed based on the players moral decisions.
Rockstar makes awesome action based sandbox games.
Conversely, Bethesda makes awesome sandbox style RPGs.
Obsidian Entertainment can make a good sequel to almost any game.
Cryptic Studios makes games where players have unmatched control over their avatar's "style".
We pride ourselves on allowing players an unmatched level of customization available to them. This includes everything from the clothes your avatar wears, right down to what weapons you keep equipped on your ship."
I was going to write stuff about this, but I think the post actually speaks for itself. The "route" he refers to is a players suggestion that Federation ships should almost exclusively be limited to beam weapons, whereas Klingon ones should only have cannon weapons.
I will add that I'm currently playing STO and enjoying it in a "I took a 6 month break and forgot all the bad bits" kind of way, but my interest is waning again...
Comments
So, I had to go and read that entire thread from top to bottom just so I had the context right.
Basically the CM community Manger said that and hes getting it on the chin from some and others are giving him praise. All I can say is he told the truth, they got a lot of avatar customization. Cstore and what not I kind of really like the praise he heaped on the other game communities.
So I don't see how he stuck his foot in his mouth, he did not set cryptic in a bad light from what I could read. Gosh I hate really long threads.
Oh well it was worth the read.
Oh don't get me wrong, I think he pigeonholed each company rather well.
What concerns me is the only good thing he could say about Cryptic to compare to them is "we allow you to make your character look pretty".
Which means everything is cool for about the first 10 mins, and right down the toliet from there.
Is there any wonder this game was just selling for $2.50?
hey OP, STO is just one of their minor failures, look at Cryptic's other games and they're totally right about what they do.
COH/V was so awesome because that's all you had to worry about, how cool your super dude was, and using the powers to reinforce that with others.
No other complicated bullcrap like skilltrees and whatnot.
PLAY WURM ONLINE!! www.wurmonline.com
So Cryptic is best known for giving the player base Ken and Barbie avatars to play dress up with , great . BTW, APB did a much better job with the avatar customization . Someone needs to let Cryptic know that . It funny when they've nothing to say they always revert back , but our customiation options are the best and most extensive. Whoopie doo ! Honestly if the gameplay is mediocore , what does it count for? They had one game go to F2P , and the customization was better in CO. For all the good it does them . If I wanted to play dress-up games I'd invest my time in dolls, not video games. Sheesh. If it was so laughable , it'd be sad. Although it's not like they haven't made that claim over , over , over and over again , either.
Ok, that's not correct any longer. Sure Cryptic games generally give far more customization options than other games, but APB has beat any Cryptic game in this area. Saying unmatched isn't correct any longer. Given the initial work being shown for the WoD MMO from CCP (and which will be used in EvE as well), I'm willing to bet CCP may just give Cryptic very good competition in the customization department as well.
"Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan
So did Aion. Cryptic's crappy CO engine is really nothing special, actually quite the opposite
I had to check the calendar and make sure it was 2011 and not 2004.
Character customization is not the thing that Cryptic are best known for these days, is it?
Obsidian makes great sequels to other companies games?
WTF? They made a really crappy FPS version of Bethesdas "Elder scrolls" (Battlespire) and made Biowares brilliant Neverwinter night" into a so so game.
Is he kissing up to them because both companies are owned by Atari?
It is still what they do best. CoX, Champions and STOs best point is the character customization.
What would their best point be otherwise? Taking monthly fees for s Star trek CORPG that should be B2P?
Obsidian also made KOTOR 2.
All they do is make bad sequels to try to leach money off of the consumer's love for a pre-established franchise.
Thats... all I really have to add to this otherwise unappealing thread.
I really enjoyed creating a character in Champions online. I thought at the time that the tech they had designed there would have been more usefull as a graphic design tool. something like a realtime poser program. if you could export the character mesh for use in 3ds max for example. but whats the use of such a great character creation toolset when the game is so crap. In the case of STO theres hardly any point in having a crazy looking avatar in the first place. any divergence from starfleet uniforms and IP specific alien races just serves to make it feel even less like a startrek game. if thats even possible.
I agree with you. I don't really like how there's no cohesiveness to the uniforms in STO's realm. Its weird and unimmersive, but thats my biggest problem with STO.
I like the game, I really do... But it doesn't encourage interaction with each other. It seems to DISCOURAGE it. Meh, I don't know. Doesn't matter. It is what it is.
Ironically, although it doesn't bother me as much as most people, I posted a thread suggesting some form of graphical toggle that would allow you to set up a default uniform and have it apply to all Starfleet personnel in your own game client ONLY. One guy replied that the Devs had already said it was technically unfeasible because of the way the dynamic uniforms were rendered and I admitted defeat, but that didn't stop the "You WILL Look at my character the way I want them to look!!!!!!!" brigade from continuing to lay into me :P
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?
I'm quite sure Battlespire was developed and published by Bethesda.
I agree on NWN2, but KOTOR2 and New Vegas are at least as good as the originals.
I think it is very accurate, and kind of sad really. You can make AWESOME characters... and then not do anything with them. Not a good strategy, I never really hear anyone saying how awesome WoW's customization is... but some how it seems to be doing ok.
This kind of brings me back to something on the CO forums. Pretty much the biggest draw to being a subscriber in the upcoming F2P system is complete power choice and customization. Not the content mind you (well minus the adventure packs that take maybe 2 days to complete if you don't try very hard), but the power choice is what makes is "premium". There is simply no reasoning with the rabid fanboi core group of CO players that this is not a good thing. It's never a good thing when the content isn't worth paying for.
LotRo is free and probably one of the best MMO's out there.
Price argument, squashed.
I would say this post is a bigger foot in mouth, specifically the 12% part.
"It is getting a bit old with the "when is Cryptic going to stop ignoring the KDF"...
Not to single you out personally Varrangian, but in general there is a perception that the STO dev team is ignoring the KDF and I'd like to call bullcrap on that. Every update including and since Season 2 has had KDF goodness in it.
Will remastered episodes be only for the faction they were intended for? YES. Feds are NOT going to be replaying Gates of Grethor, and vice versa.
We all want two viable factions and more in STO, and as I've said repeatedly - it will take time - the KDF will never have as many episodes as the Feds in the short term, but we will continually make it better. Overnight armchair quarterbacks aside, the dev team is constantly improving the KDF for the 12% of our player base who play them"
http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=196150&page=7
[QUOTE=dstahl;3269588]It is getting a bit old with the "when is Cryptic going to stop ignoring the KDF"...
Not to single you out personally Varrangian, but in general there is a perception that the STO dev team is ignoring the KDF and I'd like to call bullcrap on that. Every update including and since Season 2 has had KDF goodness in it.
Will remastered episodes be only for the faction they were intended for? YES. Feds are NOT going to be replaying Gates of Grethor, and vice versa.
We all want two viable factions and more in STO, and as I've said repeatedly - it will take time - the KDF will never have as many episodes as the Feds in the short term, but we will continually make it better. Overnight armchair quarterbacks aside, the dev team is constantly improving the KDF for the 12% of our player base who play them.[/QUOT
Lotro (and DDO) were not developed as F2P games and would NEVER have been developed to the level of quality you seem to ascribe to it, had it been envisioned as such (please see every other F2P game ever made for reference). No way a US company is going to shell out the budget for a AAA and then go with a F2P model. So the non-point is totally moot.
And it is what. 4-5 years old?
F2P argument, debunked and squashed.
The problem with Stormshades post is, I believe, as I mentioned on the STO forums themselves, the sad fact that all the other attributes he listed for other development companies are far more important to the success of an MMO than the relatively trivial character customisation.
That post by dstahl is one of the biggest reasons I will never buy another product from Cryptic Studios. It demonstrates a high and mighty I'm right you are wrong attitude that has been demonstrated over and over in forum posts and interviews from Cryptic developers.
It also reveals just how they really feel about the KDF.. only 12% of the player base therefore not worthy of anything more than minor tweaks every now and then.
What does it really say when a game's developers start personally singling out forum posters telling them that they are wrong?
It's headed to F2P , at breakneck speed . He's busy getting it ready and doesn't have time to putz around with anything as trival as the second faction ?
It's obvious he's been given a timeframe to turn the game around and increase subs, coupled with the release of SW:ToR , he's feeling the heat.
Obviously I've been given a heap of responsibility to drive the ship and at no point have I ever said that we're not going to make any more KDF content. In fact, quite the contrary I've said that I'm committed to making the KDF faction get to a place where we feel it has a solid PVE experience. I've said we're not there yet. I've said that it is going to take time. I've asked for patience.
So yeah - I get a little tired of the "are we there yet" comments when clearly we aren't.
I feel as though your entire point is "I'm going to keep asking are we there yet until we are there". Fine. But I get tired of hearing it sometimes and it certainly doesn't make the car go any faster. I feel you are half-right in that I can fulfill customer _demands_ by continuing to improve the KDF... but I certainly can't stop you from complaining no matter how hard I try.... so as a human being... I think its fair to say... I'm a bit tired of "Are we there yet?" comments. I can understand them - but I'm here to tell you - they aren't making anything go any faster. It's just complaining for the sake of complaining at this point.
Btw... the answer is NO - we aren't there yet. But we're on our way - we're on the right road and we're cruising along at top speed.
If you don't like the speed at which the car is moving - your options are to jump out or watch the DVD in the back seat and eat some cheerios.
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.
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
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.
"Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan