Author: johnk

‘Cryptic’ Does Not Stand For Quality. #sto #fail

Bed Bug
Sweet dreams: don't let the STO bugs bite.

I haven’t been playing Star Trek Online much lately, and what time I have spent has been marred by bugs new and old. From bugs in recent special events to those around for months–and even since beta, this growing infestation is sucking the fun out of the game for me. Consider these cases:

Cryptic recently hyped its remastered episodes in a week-long event.  One of those episodes, Stranded in Space, was remastered months ago and had a laundry list of bugs from the minor, like the double engine trails on the Azura, to the infuriating, like the security accolade mission consistently breaking in multiplayer runs.  None of these bugs were fixed for the special event. Cryptic really should fix content before they spotlight it like that; otherwise, they end up spotlighting the bugs more than the content.

One of the new rewards for playing Stranded In Space is a device that calls a freighter providing access to mail, bank, etc.  I played the mission, got the reward, and tried it. Nice. I played some more and swapped it back into a device slot–an annoyance which hints at a kludged implementation.  The countdown was still on 4 hours.  OK, maybe it has to stay slotted to count down.  I left it in the slot and played more: still 4 hours on the countdown.  I reported it as a bug and got back the boilerplate “this is a known problem and please be patient”. An advertised feature in a small release should not be that difficult to deliver correctly.

This week’s sale is 50% off extra slots, including extra bridge officer slots. There happens to be another months-old bug where the extra slots don’t increase your maximum number of slots correctly, so you stop gaining slots as you approach level cap.  After three frustrating tickets later, I got no resolution like a goodwill refund for something being broken that I bought with real money. Now they’re featuring it on the store, and it’s still broken. And there’s no warning that it’s bugged and may not work for some players.

Cryptic broke the interaction between cloaking devices and dialog boxes in January 2011, probably by adding some special features to one of the Romulan featured episodes [Serious Cloak Bug thread, STO Forums]. If you’re cloaked or using Mask Energy Signature and you respond to a dialog box, you decloak. Cryptic’s FUD on the issue is that fixing it requires fixing every single interaction in the game.  Huh? They caused the bug my changing a base mechanic for a feature episode mission.  They aren’t willing to break or recode that one episode now to fix a bug that affects the entire game.

Beyond just concentrating on quality and bug fixing, Cryptic could spend some time to get their bug tracking and reporting system fully working. The bug system now appears to do a search for similar bugs before activating the submit button, but I’ve reported the same bug many times over months and never seen my earlier bug reports. There’s no way to browse the bugs database to see what’s broken, how many times it’s been reported, if any root-cause analysis has been done, or when the bug is likely to be addressed.

I have been on both sides of this problem in my professional life, and a well-run issue tracker that lets people see what problems there are and when they’re likely to get fixed is a big factor in building trust between developers and users. The fabled Cryptic transparency only includes new and fun things; they are particularly silent and ineffective on the less glamourous front of admitting and fixing mistakes.

Beating the Dead Horse of Rank in STO

Beating a Dead Horse -- Office Space (1999)Players have argued against the current STO rank system since beta, and you can still find several active threads on the topic in the forums on any given day. The problem is that rank is a finite list, but level keeps increasing as the game matures and raises the level cap.  It’s come up outside the STO forums most recently in my fleet’s forums and a blog post by Blue Kae.

Fixing the problem requires decoupling this hard relationship between rank and level, something I’ve proposed many times [Devs – this whole ‘Rank’ situation is getting absurd…, Posts 53 and 55].  Here’s an updated version of what I last posted to the forums.

Re-characterize level as Officer Efficiency Rating. It’s a number and unbounded; that eliminates all the “exhaust the names list” problems that most proposals just delay, not solve. It’s lore friendly; e.g., the TNG bridge crew is often either doing or dodging crew evaluations. It also ties nicely to item level requirements (i.e., “You must be XXX to use this item”) since you’d only give the best/most dangerous equipment to the most capable officers–which is not necessarily highest-ranking.

Players unlock rank titles at OER’s 1, 2, 10, 20, 30, and 40 for ENS, LTJG, LT, LCDR, CDR, and CAPT. Rank title is like the current achievement title but separate. Players can choose to set their current rank to whatever titles they have unlocked, giving RPers in particular a level of control they often ask for. Players would have an option to allow auto-assigning new ranks on level-up for those who don’t want to be bothered; I’d probably default that to “on” so new behavior matches current behavior as closely as possible. Rank title would have a separate toggle like achievement title for overhead display.

Bridge Officers would use the same system, but their rank title unlocks would be at 1, 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50 instead. I originally didn’t have BOFFs as Captains, but if you check out the command leadership section of USS Enterprise (CVN 65),  both Captain and XO hold the rank of Captain.

Membership in a fleet also unlocks rank titles at different fleet levels. The default rank progression would be Fleet Commander (or Acting Fleet Captain for fleets using rank 1 as a probationary positon), Fleet Captain, Commodore (or Rear Admiral LH), Rear Admiral (or Rear Admiral UH), Vice Admiral, Admiral, Fleet Admiral. Personally, I like Commodore and hate the LH/UH designations, but others feel strongly against Commodore; this approach can satisfy both camps.

So why has Cryptic ignored this issue? Dstahl’s position is that it’s too much work because of the number of dialog and item text changes required [You won’t get away with this, Rear Admiral, Lower Half!, Post 51]. I think this is just a worse-case scenario meant to dissuade further unrest, and I’ve suggested ways to minimize and spread out the effort [Devs – this whole ‘Rank’ situation is getting absurd…, Post 51]. Given Cryptic’s similar rationalization and lack of action on a game-wide bug they introduced in the Romulan featured episode [Serious Cloaking Bug, Post 159], I doubt we’ll see any change in their position, and that attitude is partly why I’m on indefinite STO hiatus.

Orion’s Champion Proposal: Transparency Turbine-Style

The STO community lavishes praise on Cryptic for their transparency, but I think Turbine deserves at least as much credit–and perhaps more for not over-sharing. A case in point is Orion’s latest dev diary post about the upcoming changes to the Champion.

Orion’s Page – Blog Archive – Champion Proposal: Final Stages

Elf ChampionMy first LOTRO character was a champion based on a character from a LOTR-based NWN persistent world. Gameplay with that champion (rolled two years ago this month) felt a little lethargic and uninteresting compared to my eventual love, the runekeeper. I’ve dabbled with champions since then and liked what I’ve seen in changes to the class and overall combat engine.

From Orion’s latest post, this update to the champion class will be significant.  I’m not a big enough champion nerd to appreciate subtle changes in how skills and stances relate, but a few things stand out:  no more shields, no fervor penalty for two-handing, and far fewer on-defeat skills. That last one is big for me as a solo; I don’t get to use on-defeat skills as much wandering around alone.

My sense is this champion tune-up is on par with or bigger than what the runekeeper got a few months ago. Some of those runekeeper changes didn’t stand out in the dev diaries but ended up being fantastic; i.e., Master of Writs. Pairing solid posts like Orion’s with Turbine’s usually-well-delivered updates has me eager to roll a new champion and see how it feels when the time comes.

I’m not so eager for STO Season 4 and the Duty Roster System: Cryptic’s having problems in the discussion and delivery departments lately, and they’d do well to take a few pages from Turbine’s book. Turbine’s communications with the LOTRO community are more measured and better timed. It may help that the LOTRO community seems better behaved but no less passionate: their forums suffer less from heat/noise–except for those trash-talking PvMP forums, of course.

It also helps that forums.lotro.com supports RSS feeds to get around the heat, noise, and overload that trying to stay on top of STO’s forums inflicts on me.  Hint, hint.