Open Response To Dan Stahl's interview on Massively

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Hello,

This is my open letter of sorts. First I would like to say I appreciate the frank openess and time Dan is spending on the boards. I like that he responds to us and is there, available, and commenting. However, I also wanted to respond to part of the massively.com article that is being pimped out there.

Article on Massively.com

Lastly, is there anything you'd like to say to the often vocal critics the game has attracted?

One thing I think is important is [that] STO is six months into its life. It's only been out for six months, and we've already made a lot of changes. One of the most important things is where I think we had a hectic pace of putting out a lot of new things -- we've added all these new features, all these new ships, new, new, new -- but we have yet to go back and finish what we started.

I think the [criticisms], in some cases, are very true. There are bugs that have been around a long time that haven't been addressed. There are things like Memory Alpha that seem sort of interesting but aren't really developed. I think exploration is another area where we sort of had an idea about what we wanted to do, but it wasn't very well-delivered.

So moving forward, to answer the critics, we hear you, we understand things like ground combat not being everyone's cup of tea. So we're going to take time and slow down a little bit, and instead of adding a whole lot of new stuff, we're going to take the time to ensure that everything is working like it should, and it's all at the quality we want it to be.


So I am going respond as one of these 'vocal critics'.

One thing I think is important is [that] STO is six months into its life. It's only been out for six months, and we've already made a lot of changes. One of the most important things is where I think we had a hectic pace of putting out a lot of new things -- we've added all these new features, all these new ships, new, new, new -- but we have yet to go back and finish what we started.

Well for starters, it may have been out for 6 months, however, I question the forethought in releasing the game when you did. You could have spent the extra time fixing issues, rounding out the Klingons, and overall expanding the content. Instead we got:

- Nerfing of Science Officers.
- Nerfing of Cannons.
- Half the games content only available via the C-Store in regard to races and ships.
- Ker'rat STILL ain't fixed - AFTER 6+ MONTHS!!!!!!
- PvP tends to be one sided regardless of Faction.
- Ground combat is clunky and slow.
- Levelling is a bit like a logarithmic scale - Tedious at the start then hyper speed when you get to RA.
- List can go on (and I am sure people will comment as well on this in the replies)

Now I am happy I have a game to play. Not complaining there. However, a slight delay might have done good - Extra week in beta perhaps?

I think the [criticisms], in some cases, are very true. There are bugs that have been around a long time that haven't been addressed. There are things like Memory Alpha that seem sort of interesting but aren't really developed. I think exploration is another area where we sort of had an idea about what we wanted to do, but it wasn't very well-delivered.

Really curious of the word you used that they replaced with 'criticisms'. Was it 'b****hing' or 'gripes' or the like? Because I for one don't think these are either... Most complaints are valid and even those that are questionable are still valid.

Now that out of the way, I like this openess. Please for the love of pete keep it up. This is really refrshing as you admit there are issues and you are workign to fix them. Might disagree with the priorities you place, but still like what your doing.

Plus you made my previosu point above :)

So moving forward, to answer the critics, we hear you, we understand things like ground combat not being everyone's cup of tea. So we're going to take time and slow down a little bit, and instead of adding a whole lot of new stuff, we're going to take the time to ensure that everything is working like it should, and it's all at the quality we want it to be.

So- riddle me this batman. Are you saying efforts will be put forth to fix the bugs over slapping a new shade of whitewash on the rotting fence? If so - YIPPIE!!!!

All that being said, welcome aboard Dan. I really like what I have seen in the first month. I really want you to keep it up. Also keep the work life balance man. Spend time with the Wife and kiddos (assuming you have them). If not, I hope you have a cot and a change of clothes in yoru office :)

Blakinik

PS: Can I have my Del Taco Shuttle yet?

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If you want to complain about the game being released unfinished, you should blame Atari, or the former head dev, although I doubt even he had any control over that.

At least we have a head dev admitting what was obvious to players at the time. It took some balls for dstahl to say, "Yeah, we're six months out, so our priority should be finishing the game and making it ready for launch." = paraphrasing.

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If you want to complain about the game being released unfinished, you should blame Atari, or the former head dev, although I doubt even he had any control over that.

At least we have a head dev admitting what was obvious to players at the time. It took some balls for dstahl to say, "Yeah, we're six months out, so our priority should be finishing the game and making it ready for launch." = paraphrasing.

Oh Atari is probably responsible for half the money grabs we have seen. Release of 'exclusives', the Gal-X in the C-Store, the per character issue for the recent release.... I have no coubt about that. But also remember a Cryptic Employee is an Agent of Atari as well....

Now did I think Dan has some balls saying it... yep. If I did not make that clear - I will now.

Now I want to see results. Craig was great at promising alot and delivering short. I like that Dan is telling people we will fix this and that. Now he needs to do it or this conversation will be alot different in the next few months....

Blakinik

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On the note of clunky and slow ground combat, I definately agree. Its very slow paced...before the game launched ground combat was supposed to be significantly more fast paced than space combat but they totally screwed that up sometime during the beta if I remember correctly. Star Trek was never about standing there unloading a hailstorm of beams and lasers onto an enemy...it never took more than 3 shots to take someone down and usually...even less. The slowness of ground combat makes episodes and ground content drag out and seem totally boring and it makes the aleady apparent slaughterfest even more aggravating. I miss pvp where you could pretty much 2 shot players and it was fast paced like how it should have been, but stupid players whined about it and Cryptic changed it and now look at where we are.

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Oh Atari is probably responsible for all the money grabs we have seen.

Fixed. Atari controls the accounting, and accounting controls the devs.

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One is promoting your bridge officers to specific seats within your ship -- first officer, chief medical officer -- allowing them to have specific duties and responsibilities that give them certain abilities and traits.
This is what I was hoping for!

The other is once you're a vice-admiral, being able to take bridge officers that you've sort of promoted under your wing, and make them their own character[s]. You've made a character the first officer, and you can say "you know, I want this guy to have his own unique crew" -- and we love the idea that you can then open up a new character slot, and now you can play that character with his own ship and his own crew. We see that as a great idea and something to work on the future.

We'd also love to work on things like having away teams in space, where a vice-admiral could have a couple of his "minor" captains following him around. For the short term, though, it's really going to be about positions and converting bridge officers to playable characters.

That has actually opened up a lot of ideas. There are certain bridge officers that you can't just create -- like, for instance, Liberated Borg. Or a Gorn -- if you find a Gorn bridge officer, if we put those other systems in place, you can go through the work to promote him and give him his own ship, and now you have a playable Federation Gorn captain. It takes a lot to get that, but you get something very distinctive.


I love this idea! Dan you are the man!

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Well I just found the loophole to get the Liberated Borg out to the masses. The system he is proposing above will do just that - unless it is a sub-par Liberated Borg.

Blakinik

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*sigh*

Whenever Dsthal speaks, he tends to hit all the right notes... until he reaches the C-store.

With things like the ship slots and the bridge officer slots, we looked those as being per character because it is a storage issue, there is a lot of data associated with your ship and your bridge officers, they all have inventories, it is almost a full on character. So it is a cost associated with data storage

I'm getting sick of the ********, Dan. Do you think that we are that stupid? That we can't look at the amount of storage required for the two additional character slots, compare it to the amount of storage needed for two BO or two ship slots and see that something isn't right? Even putting aside that clearly contrary evidence the storage excuse has always been the defacto argument from every developer who is screwing its customers. We, or at least the smart people on this forum, know that these things don't take more than a few kilobytes each to store, and even if they took up megabytes, which they most definitely DO NOT, that the price you're asking for those slots is several orders of magnitude higher than the cost to store them.... assuming that you use nothing less than high end enterprise class SSDs! It's a money grab, pure and simple.

Just cut the ********, stop with the lies already, people know better. You should know better.

Another thing -- you seem honest and humble with everything besides the C-store, but if you aren't honest and humble across the board, then it makes everything else you say look insincere. Watch yourself, if you lose the trust of your customer base we both know that STO will quickly die.

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*sigh*

Whenever Dsthal speaks, he tends to hit all the right notes... until he reaches the C-store. I'm getting sick of the ********, Dan. .

btw... I responded to this in the other thread interview thread.

I'm not saying that I'm full of bs... but I certainly agree that I don't come across that well when it comes to the C-Store. It is one of those areas that I'm working on communicating about in a more clear fashion.

The C-Store is absolutely a way that we generate income, but right now there is a ton of trial and error that we need to work through. Prices aren't always reflective of the cost/benefit and on our end not even taking into account a lot of the internal costs it takes to develop them. (For example some things aren't even covering the development costs of making them).

In the end the teams need to work better on regulating the prices of the items so the reflect all costs associated with them so that you as the consumer get a valuable service at a price that you feel is fair and worth your money.

I do come across as jumpy when it comes to the C-Store ... definitely agree there.. because it is one of those areas that I know we are working to improve and it just isn't fully there yet.

Check out my reply in the other thread for more of my pandering on this subject...

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What thread and i still would most politely request an answer to my "will there be new c-store thingies tomorrow" ? :)

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Link to the other thread, with Mr. Stahl's more extensive reply;

http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?p=2890438#post2890438

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btw... I responded to this in the other thread interview thread.

I'm not saying that I'm full of bs... but I certainly agree that I don't come across that well when it comes to the C-Store. It is one of those areas that I'm working on communicating about in a more clear fashion.

The C-Store is absolutely a way that we generate income, but right now there is a ton of trial and error that we need to work through. Prices aren't always reflective of the cost/benefit and on our end not even taking into account a lot of the internal costs it takes to develop them. (For example some things aren't even covering the development costs of making them).

In the end the teams need to work better on regulating the prices of the items so the reflect all costs associated with them so that you as the consumer get a valuable service at a price that you feel is fair and worth your money.

I do come across as jumpy when it comes to the C-Store ... definitely agree there.. because it is one of those areas that I know we are working to improve and it just isn't fully there yet.

Check out my reply in the other thread for more of my pandering on this subject...

You might consider using a floating price tag, whereby the price increases if more people buy it, drops if less people buy it, and drops over time.

[Archived Post]

btw... I responded to this in the other thread interview thread.

I'm not saying that I'm full of bs... but I certainly agree that I don't come across that well when it comes to the C-Store. It is one of those areas that I'm working on communicating about in a more clear fashion.

The C-Store is absolutely a way that we generate income, but right now there is a ton of trial and error that we need to work through. Prices aren't always reflective of the cost/benefit and on our end not even taking into account a lot of the internal costs it takes to develop them. (For example some things aren't even covering the development costs of making them).

In the end the teams need to work better on regulating the prices of the items so the reflect all costs associated with them so that you as the consumer get a valuable service at a price that you feel is fair and worth your money.

I do come across as jumpy when it comes to the C-Store ... definitely agree there.. because it is one of those areas that I know we are working to improve and it just isn't fully there yet.

Check out my reply in the other thread for more of my pandering on this subject...

Yeah, I accidentally posted this here instead of in the other thread, my bad.

Also made a thread particularly about that comment you made while you were responding, bad timing on my part.

It's good to see you respond and engage, but I still think it's BS, and the excuse about converting between ground and space reeks of more BS. Anyone who has even dabbled in programming is going to think it's BS., but I'll explain that in the other thread.

[Archived Post]

btw... I responded to this in the other thread interview thread.

I'm not saying that I'm full of bs... but I certainly agree that I don't come across that well when it comes to the C-Store. It is one of those areas that I'm working on communicating about in a more clear fashion.

The C-Store is absolutely a way that we generate income, but right now there is a ton of trial and error that we need to work through. Prices aren't always reflective of the cost/benefit and on our end not even taking into account a lot of the internal costs it takes to develop them. (For example some things aren't even covering the development costs of making them).

In the end the teams need to work better on regulating the prices of the items so the reflect all costs associated with them so that you as the consumer get a valuable service at a price that you feel is fair and worth your money.

I do come across as jumpy when it comes to the C-Store ... definitely agree there.. because it is one of those areas that I know we are working to improve and it just isn't fully there yet.

Check out my reply in the other thread for more of my pandering on this subject...

So, does that mean you will be drastically reducing the officer and ship slot prices, or will you be drastically raising the character slot prices? Your explanation here (and in the other thread) still doesn't cover the glaring inconsistencies with the pricing of these items.