I just read perhaps the dumbest state of game address ever wherein Cryptic relays to us, the dumb user community, that they were caught off guard at how popular Star Trek would be. Those of us who have played it know that the game is not ready for prime time and I see this message as a clever attempt to cover up everything that will go wrong launch day.
Lets take a look at this.
Nah, there is no way in hell this game will be popular right?
Cryptic is "stunned" and "crushed" about how popular it is just two weeks before the game goes live. Two weeks. The game goes live February 2nd or the 12th I cannot remember. Does it really matter? The release date is just days away and now they are basically admitting that they are not ready. Take a look at this statement:
Oh ok I see. Glad that you are planning an MMO based around one of the biggest sci-fi franchises ever and just now upgrading your hardware. This would be like Bioware stating two weeks before release that they hadn't planned on Jedis being so popular so now they have to finish that content. Speaking of unfinished content on release the state of the game also goes on to mention Klingons getting some love for their afterthought faction play:
Yeah because heaven forbid you leave out stores and gear for your incomplete faction on release day. As it is now Klingons are made to level fast to catch up to the Federation players to create "pvp targets" so that it looks like that side of the game is all well and dandy. That may be some beta thing but I really doubt it.
The letter goes on to mention that the build we are using is still behind the actual work being done and yes we all know that. But that will not fix things such as me beaming down to planets as a ship, beaming up to space as a person, the terrible performance of the engine and over half a million bug submissions that are sitting in the queue right now.
Overall I see Cryptic scrambling to cover up the fact that the game is going to be released in a rushed unfinished state. I have little hope that they can clear these things up by the time the game launches and I feel like many of us will be paying to beta test. So if you bought into the lifetime subscription plan well you might as well have put in an application with Cryptic to fix the game over the next 6 months. Only you just paid them for your work.
You can read the full State of the Game message here :
http://www.startrekonline.com/node/899
Lets take a look at this.
- Star Trek
- MMO
- Gaming nerds around the world
- Spam and advertising out the ass
- New Star Trek movie rebooted franchise last May
Nah, there is no way in hell this game will be popular right?
Cryptic is "stunned" and "crushed" about how popular it is just two weeks before the game goes live. Two weeks. The game goes live February 2nd or the 12th I cannot remember. Does it really matter? The release date is just days away and now they are basically admitting that they are not ready. Take a look at this statement:
The actual numbers crushed our predictions. So, we tore apart our logs and began doing a lot of extra optimization work even while we stumbled upon some truly bizarre crashes that can only appear with this sort of load. The result? The shard has been steadily improving over the first few days of Open Beta. Given the hardware we're adding and a couple more fixes we have in the pipe, shard performance and stability should continue to improve over the coming week.
Oh ok I see. Glad that you are planning an MMO based around one of the biggest sci-fi franchises ever and just now upgrading your hardware. This would be like Bioware stating two weeks before release that they hadn't planned on Jedis being so popular so now they have to finish that content. Speaking of unfinished content on release the state of the game also goes on to mention Klingons getting some love for their afterthought faction play:
Better stores are coming to Qo’noS. You’ll be able to purchase disruptors, consoles, and all the things a proper warlord needs to improve his starship and clobber his pathetic, cowering enemies.
Yeah because heaven forbid you leave out stores and gear for your incomplete faction on release day. As it is now Klingons are made to level fast to catch up to the Federation players to create "pvp targets" so that it looks like that side of the game is all well and dandy. That may be some beta thing but I really doubt it.
The letter goes on to mention that the build we are using is still behind the actual work being done and yes we all know that. But that will not fix things such as me beaming down to planets as a ship, beaming up to space as a person, the terrible performance of the engine and over half a million bug submissions that are sitting in the queue right now.
Overall I see Cryptic scrambling to cover up the fact that the game is going to be released in a rushed unfinished state. I have little hope that they can clear these things up by the time the game launches and I feel like many of us will be paying to beta test. So if you bought into the lifetime subscription plan well you might as well have put in an application with Cryptic to fix the game over the next 6 months. Only you just paid them for your work.
You can read the full State of the Game message here :
http://www.startrekonline.com/node/899
OK, let's be fair here. Even if the people actually writing the game, even if the product managers for the game, knew in their bones the response would be overwhelming...the MBAs who write the checks would say, "You want HOW many servers? For a BETA TEST?! GET THE HELL OUT OF MY OFFICE!"
ReplyDeleteAs to the rest? Yeah, there's about three months more work to do before release, and two weeks to do it in. As a programmer, I don't envy them in the least. As a player, I'm a little miffed, but not really surprsied.
You have to spend money on a triple A title for it to make money. I really just do not see how they could tackle this franchise and not be ready for the response. It seems too bad that they dont have the kind of money Warhammer Online had behind their title for this one. If they did I bet they would be better off. Warhammer Online had plenty of money spent on it it is just too bad the game was terrible. Here we have what COULD be really good space combat and a company that needs more backing in my mind. But who am I kidding, it is Atari after all. EA spent money on Warhammer that did not see fruition. Maybe Atari will take a chance here
ReplyDeleteAnd therein lies the problem. The game is being financially backed by a company that is not notorious for lavishing lots of cash they don't feel they have to spend; and I'd be willing to bet that most of the decision-makers and check-writers are not themselves Trekkies. They see Trekkies as a revenue source, but they don't really care much beyond that.
ReplyDeleteI believe the actual developers at Cryptic *do* care and are doing their best with what they've been given, resource wise. And I think they actually stand a chance of pulling it out, but it's going to be a rough couple of months during initial launch, and they're going to have to do a lot of fast talking to bring back some of the people who get turned off during that time.
Good point. Sad, but good. And this angers me. Too bad they can't all be a stand alone hit like Icarus Studios (Fallen Earth crew). I will give Star Trek all I can in beta ( I cannot even login right now) but after that it is a tough sell
ReplyDeleteAnd given that it sounds like you've got other irons in the MMO fire, as it were, I don't blame you. Myself, I'm ready for a break from WoW, and that's the only other MMO I'm playing these days (and pretty casually at that), so I'm probably going to stick with STO for a bit and see how it evolves. There are a lot of issues, but many of them I think could be cleared up with relatively little effort per issue, which gives me hope that, given time to work on them, they'll get straightened out.
ReplyDeleteLets be fair though, cryptic has worked on this for only 18 months, they have been busting their asses in other words to get this to where it is today and besides the server load and the ship bug the only issue I had was with my sound card drivers on XP PRO x64. The first company who tried to make STO happen worked on it for 4 years and never got past concept art...That's over double the time cryptic has worked on it and has produced an almost finished product, and face the facts an MMO is NEVER finished, i've played EQ2 for over 4 years and they are always patching bugs/adding content, an MMO is a constant work in progress. And as to the comparison to WAR, it was in development for 3 years. So if a few months of initial buggyness equals a quicker polished product i'm all for it seeing as Ive been waiting for this since Perpetual Entertainment was working on it in 2005 and let us all down...Luckily STO didn't go the way of Star Gate Worlds and just completely fall apart during development.
ReplyDeleteThis is true, and I would rather give my money to Cryptic for this title than Mythic for Warhammer Online. I feel like we as gamers need a sci fi title to succeed (other than EvE).
ReplyDeleteYeah Fantasy based MMO's are dime a dozen.
ReplyDeleteIt's also sadly the reality of the modern online world that paying customers are now *always* late-beta-testers. Everything is released too early, when it's "good enough" or when some arbitrary date has been set, rather than when it's actually fully baked.
ReplyDeleteWoW was pretty rough 5 years ago.
Hell, last time played EVE, just a few months ago, I got bitten by some surprising bugs. (I also find EVE a great concept but the glacial gameplay just isn't for me).
Almost finished is a matter of debate. Cryptic did the same thing with Champions. Sure, the concept was good and the ideas were sound in the beginning, but the balancing issues were way off and there wasn't enough content in the game to hit max level without grinding.
ReplyDeleteThis isn't the first time Cryptic has done this.
[...] from Angry Gamer about the latest “State of the Game” address from Cryptic, located right here. He sums up my feelings about Cryptic and the messes they continually create pretty well. Take a [...]
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