Star Trek: Online

[Noname Given]

That looks awesome, I wonder if they are customizable like BO's?

They stated the Doff system adds another order of magnitude with regard to character and account data; so right now, what you get is what you get. You can't even change a Doff's name - as again you're going to have 20 active ones and a score of others to choose from in the wings, so while they would love to allow just that, the sheer amount of data stoprage needed to allow it makes it impossible at this time.

They did say that soon aftre the base Doff system is in and working; they'll add the 'Dept. Hread' system to it, where you can select one of your BO's to be a Dept. head, and have him/her gain an extra space power based on his/her staff, etc.

One small dissapointment just relayed though - The new faction neutral tutorial won't be ready for Season 4 launch; and as it was the first thing tied to the Frderation and Klingon Academy buildings, both will be delayed untl after Season 4 launches; and the new tutorial and level 1 - 5 content is ready to go. (DStahl said he's talk more about that situation when he posts the May Engineering Report (probably somethime next week.)

All the rest of Season 4 - including the new Doff system; the Ground Combat and ground item revamp, the Klingon Homeworld makeover (turning in into the First Imperial City) are set to go for testing on Tribble in early June; and Live late June to early July.

 

[Thlaylie]

The fighters are fun on Tribble.

I love the fighter pets

Can't wait for my attack Horta

Hope the forum whiners at STO don't ruin that. (yes, the pathetic snots are crying about "enslaving" a pile of pixels reassembling a fictitious sentient while ignoring their "attack" BOffs )

 

[Scout101]

Will say that the customer service for this game is pretty poor. Had two missions that wouldn't resolve in a patrol (did them twice each, got all the success screens, told objectives were complete, etc. but didn't get credit for them). Submitted trouble tickets, and an hour later someone tells me they "investigated" and cannot award me the completed mission. The entire dialog (including the congrats message) was still in my NPC chat screen, so not sure what they "investigated". Even quoted the whole thing in my response to their answer, still not getting it awarded to me.

If they can't handle something that simple, not expecting much if I had any ACTUAL problems with the game. Can't even help with something simple, with no reward worth mentioning in play, and with the proof still on my screen....

 

[Thlaylie]

I've had a lot of weird glitches as well, but as you noticed, ticketing them is futile. Once I couldn't type in the Exchange? A restart of the game fixes most glitches but...

 

[syberghost]

Will say that the customer service for this game is pretty poor. Had two missions that wouldn't resolve in a patrol (did them twice each, got all the success screens, told objectives were complete, etc. but didn't get credit for them). Submitted trouble tickets, and an hour later someone tells me they "investigated" and cannot award me the completed mission. The entire dialog (including the congrats message) was still in my NPC chat screen, so not sure what they "investigated". Even quoted the whole thing in my response to their answer, still not getting it awarded to me.

The customer service folks physically don't have the ability to grant mission completion. They don't write the code, what do you expect them to do?

Other MMOs won't do that for you either. Even WoW, with the biggest budget and best CS tools in the industry, doesn't give CS the ability to do that, and won't bother escalating. You file a bug report and the developers will try to fix whatever caused it not to complete. That's all you can reasonably expect of them.

 

[Scout101]

Then they should probably fix their automated script so that the response doesn't say that they've investigated it and cannot find enough evidence to grant me the completed status, huh? Or do they not write that code, either?

Not expecting them to fix the code on the fly, but how is there NOT some sort of admin-level privilege that could allow them to do things like set a mission status to completed? If they can't do something that basic, what sort of things CAN they do? Is there any reason to even submit problems, or should we just suck them up and ignore them?

In this case, I've completed a mission, not been granted the win, and then completed it again, and still not gotten it. If they can't fix it, what should I reasonably do? Keep beating my head against that wall?

 

[syberghost]

In this case, I've completed a mission, not been granted the win, and then completed it again, and still not gotten it. If they can't fix it, what should I reasonably do? Keep beating my head against that wall?

You should reasonably file a bug report, which captures information about your account that contributes to isolating and fixing the bug. Then you should skip that mission if it's not working for you. There's plenty to do in place of it.

Or, if you like, you could keep doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result, and complain about people who don't have the power to fix the problem.

Giving CS folks, who are low-wage high-turnover employees doing high-volume work, the ability to make account changes that result in item and currency creation is a recipe for in-game economic disaster and rampant cheating. That's why nobody does it anymore. There were some high-profile examples of cheating, and long about the time City of Heroes and World of Warcraft were being developed, the industry as a whole abandoned the practice.

 

[Scout101]

In this case, I've completed a mission, not been granted the win, and then completed it again, and still not gotten it. If they can't fix it, what should I reasonably do? Keep beating my head against that wall?

You should reasonably file a bug report, which captures information about your account that contributes to isolating and fixing the bug. Then you should skip that mission if it's not working for you. There's plenty to do in place of it.

Agreed, and I did. Of course, the thing for bug reports says upfront that they won't do anything to fix YOUR problem, but they'll look at what's going on to see if they can fix it overall. Hardly satisfying at a personal level...

Or, if you like, you could keep doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result, and complain about people who don't have the power to fix the problem.

That's the crux of the problem, though. Clearly a problem, and if not the CUSTOMER SERVICE people, who should have the power to correct problems the customer is receiving?

At the very least, it's bad form to use a canned message saying they investigated the problem and are unable to verify my problem or correct it. Makes them look indifferent or incompetant, take your pick. If they at least said they don't have the power to do that, and recommend I drop the mission and retry it if I want to complete it, it would at least be vaild (if frustrating) advice.

They also suggested I check out the forums and see if other customers had advice. Pretty clear they didn't even look at what I was talking about, as it seems unlikely a user on the forum can debug my code for me Even worse, since i did a quick search and it appears that talking about bugs or CS tickets gets your post closed or deleted...

Giving CS folks, who are low-wage high-turnover employees doing high-volume work, the ability to make account changes that result in item and currency creation is a recipe for in-game economic disaster and rampant cheating. That's why nobody does it anymore. There were some high-profile examples of cheating, and long about the time City of Heroes and World of Warcraft were being developed, the industry as a whole abandoned the practice.

Then maybe they shouldn't take those categories of complaints as tickets? It's infuriating that they have the category, you go through the process, and then tell you they looked at it and can't verify my complaint. Especially when you open the ticket by pasting in the entire dialog of the completed mission. And if the Cryptic workers can't be trusted to do their jobs, there's another problem. And should be grounds for termination if a review finds out they are enabling cheating...

 

[syberghost]

Agreed, and I did. Of course, the thing for bug reports says upfront that they won't do anything to fix YOUR problem, but they'll look at what's going on to see if they can fix it overall. Hardly satisfying at a personal level...

No, it doesn't at all say that. It says they'll fix THE problem, which is that mission not always granting completion.

That's the crux of the problem, though. Clearly a problem, and if not the CUSTOMER SERVICE people, who should have the power to correct problems the customer is receiving?

The developers should have the power to correct the bug; NOBODY should have the power to grant you the mission completion. When the bug is fixed, you can go do the mission.

At the very least, it's bad form to use a canned message saying they investigated the problem and are unable to verify my problem or correct it.

A necessary evil of $15/month price points. It's industry-standard form for a reason.

They also suggested I check out the forums and see if other customers had advice. Pretty clear they didn't even look at what I was talking about, as it seems unlikely a user on the forum can debug my code for me Even worse, since i did a quick search and it appears that talking about bugs or CS tickets gets your post closed or deleted...

That's what you get for doing a quick search instead of a thorough one. Bitching about CS will get your thread closed, yes; talking about a bug in the appropriate forums will not. And you'd be surprised how often the forums DO have the solution to a problem like this, although they might not for your specific one.

Then maybe they shouldn't take those categories of complaints as tickets?

They don't. There are things that can happen in missions that GMs can help you with, such as being stuck in geometry that the /stuck command doesn't fix. What they are not allowed to do is create SP, currency, or items, all of which would be done by awarding you mission completion. WHY you want it done isn't relevant. Whether or not you earned it isn't relevant. What's relevant is giving them the power to do that opens up cans of worms that eventually destroy the credibility of companies. CCP still hasn't fully recovered from what happened when their folks abused this power.

As for the developers who DO have the technical capability of performing that work doing it for you; their time is better spent fixing the bug so it doesn't happen again. When they get around to that is based on a number of factors:

1) How many people are affected by the bug.
2) How much work would be required to fix it?
3) What else might or would break to fix it?
4) Is there a workaround that is generally available to players?

Sometimes they just yank a mission clear out instead of fixing it. Sometimes they leave the bug in place because some other bug wouldn't get fixed if they fixed this one instead, that affects more people.

In this case, it doesn't affect many people, and there is no story progression blocked by failure to complete it. It's probably way, way down the list of their priorities. You can move on without it. Once they fix it, you can complete the mission in a short period of time.

 

[syberghost]

Matt Highison has posted pics of the 500 day Veteran Rewards jacket and belt, and what that reward adds to the other Jupiter uniforms if you buy that uniform pack.

http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?p=3542070#post3542070

IMHO the vet reward gets the best jacket of the set.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

I am so so on the Jupiter jackets. They all look rather meh. I rather sport a classic color scheme. So I have to wait and see what those unis look in red/blue/gold.
The belt however is pure WIN! I will swap the Wrath of Khan belt for this one!

 

[Vance]

Well, finally broke down and tried it out. The USS Resolute was my Miranda/Centaur class vessel for the trial run, and then for most of Saturday night. Sunday I got the USS Van-something or other... and it felt GOOD to uprade my command.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

Glad to hear that and hope you stick around.

P.S.: The TrekBBS Armada always needs capable young hotshot officers.

 

[Vance]

Well, I got Capable and Hotshot... Young? Not so much...

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

It's the internet. Noone will know.

You're a 18-year old girl, wink wink nudge nudge.

 

[Thlaylie]

They came out with a list of updates and immediately the forum whiners are crying about switching ships from your ship!

"Should only be shuttles whine."

Did they stop and think that maybe the mechanics of the game engine only allows either switching all ships from your ship or all ships from a station.

Other than that the updates look great, and June 7 for tribble launch.

Worried about the ground update though: How much cool stuff did they ruin?

 

[Aeolusdallas]

They came out with a list of updates and immediately the forum whiners are crying about switching ships from your ship!

"Should only be shuttles whine."

Did they stop and think that maybe the mechanics of the game engine only allows either switching all ships from your ship or all ships from a station.

Other than that the updates look great, and June 7 for tribble launch.

Worried about the ground update though: How much cool stuff did they ruin?

Well the ground combat is one area where almost everyone wants a change.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

What's troubling me is the intention to raise the difficulty for Captain level mobs.
Those are the mobs with the sword-/daharmasters and other bolt spray pistol using captains.
Excuse me? These NPCs are regularly oneshotting my complete team when I play on advanced and now they will get MORE difficult via more HP?
How is this better?

The other ground changes sound potentially cool and manually aiming opens some interesting new tactical options.
If you don't like that change, don't use it. It's optional.

 

[Distorted Humor]

Well, I am having a odd problem in the Davian<sp> missions, apparently the effects used by the boss on the first mission causes my video card or processor to go really hot, as I have a shutdown while fighting him. O well.... Guess that happens when you have a computer that is a few years old and you shoe-horned in a GT 250 video card.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

Try reducing the bloom effect to it's lowest setting and lighting/shadow qualuty as well. What resolution are you playing on? I had a lot of game crashes and reduced it one resolution setting. Had no crashes since.