Dev Feedback Request
 

I know you're very busy getting Season 7 ready over at Cryptic, but most of us would appreciate a little more Dev interaction on active topics. Changes may be ongoing, and you might not have a lot to say, but when there are major changes like the Reputation System or Dilithium cost and we don't hear anything for an extended period it's a little worrying.

Would you mind dropping into these threads every once in awhile, even if it's just to say 'Thanks for the feedback', so we know our concerns are being addressed? Or, as an alternative, a quick weekly update that highlights any concerns and/or systems currently being investigated/worked on would really help us know what's on your radar. The blogs are great, but the don't do much beyond introducing content.

Thanks in advance.

+1 to this!!

We're trying, but not only are we very busy working on the patches, it's also sometimes difficult to comment on threads when features are rapidly in flux.

We're constantly iterating on different versions of features - for example, I've recently updated the Tier 5 Romulan reputation power (in part because of feedback on this forum), but I haven't posted specific details because it's still being tested by our internal team and tuned.

We're very interested in player feedback and bug reports - that's a large part of why the Tribble server exists. That does mean, however, that it's hard for us to say, "X item is going to cost Y Dilithium," at this stage in development, since we *are* listening to feedback - and making changes daily.

Is it going to have actual romulan skins on the rifles or is it just going to have that green fisher price thing I saw on tribble like all the other plasma rifles in the game.

Everyone at Cryptic must be doing a really good job... No one has gotten into any trouble because the dev blog didn't include anyone being sent to the Klingon computer to make any new ships LOL.

Problem is, in the past, there has been tons of feedback on various issues concerning content on Tribble, and yet that content has almost always been pushed to Holodeck, unchanged despite the feedback.

A lot of times it would help to just say yes, we'll work on that. The romulan t5 change just needs that.. the dilithium issue has people in arms and needs more details, but most things can get by just an acknowledgement of a change coming.

Well, for things like the Romulan power, I'm in a position where I can say that I'm actively working on it.

For things that have major implications for the game economy - such as Dilithium costs - designers like myself have to be much more careful. Borticus and I have both posted that Dilithium numbers are being looked at, but beyond that, we can't really give much more detail until final decisions have been made. When those decisions have been made, you will most likely see a post, a dev blog, or both.

I can understand that players are frustrated that sometimes it seems like we're not listening. I'm a long-time MMO player myself, and I know what it's like to look at these things from a player's perspective - or, prior to working in design, from a QA tester's perspective. From those perspectives, it's easy to wonder why a particular issue hasn't been addressed.

From a designer's perspective, we have a lot of things to consider before we make a post. Do we have enough information that we can post without just creating more questions?

Did someone else already post on that subject? If not, why not? If so, am I going to be overlapping with what they already said, or worse, contradicting them?

Is posting going to create an expectation that a feature is going to work in a specific way, when that feature is still in flux?

It may be worth just jumping in and saying "We're looking at this", but if we just did that with every thread, that approach would quickly lose credibility.

Anyway, this has gotten a bit long winded, but the general answer is that we're trying to communicate when we can, and we'll continue to try to do more of that whenever possible.

Please OP, I'd rather the devs worry about addressing issues through coding than posting on forums.

Well one thing that sticks out though that you and whoever was working with you when it comes to melee... Brought a huge side of the KDF back or something to life LOL. Some people don't notice but a majority of the KDF's races either have melee bonus damage in their race specifics and ones you can pick from so its a big game changer that made the KDF more fun to play.

So in all what you and people that work with you have done on that note was a huge advancement for the game and many thanks :D

You're very welcome. I'm a big fan of melee combat, too. I'm glad the changes are working out.