I still can t get how DB doesn t know all this stuff at least weeks in advance, but instead seems to make some calls regarding new events, crew, bonus, just a couple days before the event wents live.
I know. It's kind of baffling that they don't have a production schedule where at a minimum the November events are already done and ready to go and they're currently working on December events. Even if it currently involves needing flexibility for some Discovery crew waiting on approval and stuff like that. Instead it feels like kids cramming to get a last minute assignment done to they can turn it in tomorrow.
Maybe theres another reason that just came to my mind.
Until now, ppl knew before event start, what crew(except Discovery crew this month) and what kind of event the nxt week isl so they had the chance to say, well i planned buying event packs this week but now i safe up for nxt week, cause this event even has crew i am more eager to have. Now the event is already running before info goes live, and ppl that wanted to buy prob did buy the event packs. So if nxt week has great crew as well, high chance they will buy again and spend more, while with advanced info they might had passed to buy event packs for the previous event.
Or they'd have to buy now that they didn't have time to level the right bonus crew.
The cynical side of me feels that driving up pack sales may be a side benefit of this decision in that respect as well.
It seems a better solution would be to go one week without an event (for the players), but DB continues on events just as they have been with no break. So they would have an event ready, completely, on Thursday that would be the event actually running the next Thursday.
That actually gives DB significantly more time for event prep and still gives the players 100% of the information a week in advance.
I would be more than happy to go one week without an event if it meant we could have a accurate event notice a week in advance.
It seems a better solution would be to go one week without an event (for the players), but DB continues on events just as they have been with no break. So they would have an event ready, completely, on Thursday that would be the event actually running the next Thursday.
That actually gives DB significantly more time for event prep and still gives the players 100% of the information a week in advance.
I would be more than happy to go one week without an event if it meant we could have a accurate event notice a week in advance.
100% Yes! This is exactly what should have been done and what should have been done months ago. The problem is not that DB has problems providing information, but that DB is working until the last minute for the event. Giving players a 1 week break so DB can be a week ahead would solve so many problems. I'm shocked that Db continues to have these problems and can't come to that realization themselves.
Maybe now the "it's CBS's fault!" detractors will wake up and realize that was never a factor with the recent decline in quality.
This seems like the exact opposite of what DB should do to reassure me this game will be around until next week. Sure, why wouldn't I spend money on it.
It seems a better solution would be to go one week without an event (for the players), but DB continues on events just as they have been with no break. So they would have an event ready, completely, on Thursday that would be the event actually running the next Thursday.
That actually gives DB significantly more time for event prep and still gives the players 100% of the information a week in advance.
I would be more than happy to go one week without an event if it meant we could have a accurate event notice a week in advance.
100% Yes! This is exactly what should have been done and what should have been done months ago. The problem is not that DB has problems providing information, but that DB is working until the last minute for the event. Giving players a 1 week break so DB can be a week ahead would solve so many problems. I'm shocked that Db continues to have these problems and can't come to that realization themselves.
I'm sure they've realized that but they've also realized that a week without people buying $100 event packs is a major hit to their bottom line.
What they need to realize is that they need to improve their offers and pricing. Many have suggested a week off and offer (multiple) previous event $100 offers. Or a full on replay. Or send out proper limited time offers to ALL PLAYERS not just RNG it. But I guess they decided to go this route instead of any of the suggested ones. It's a shame that customers are suggesting better ways DB could make money off them yet DB doesn't take the hint.
I appreciate that DB wanted to push Discovery and may or may not have had a tie in with CBS and then subsequent problems with that and the release of the Discovery crew, also appreciate this is the first time you've tied in with a live brand new Star Trek series. In hindsight however it would have been better to have waited 1 month where DB could have sorted out any bugs with Discovery mega event month and not revealing spoilers - such as Georgiu's death..
Hindsight is a wonderful thing but a lot of players haven't been too happy with how the Discovery mega month has gone as opposed to for example the Borg mega month --- sometimes waiting a few extra weeks such as for Discovery would have been better than the problems experienced with a live show and then the release after the episodes aired of event crew
"Tuesday afternoon" so non-US players will get to know on Wednesday morning and as result will most likely have to pay more to un-freeze event crew.
My heart bleeds for this only slight inconvenience faced for playing in the US timezone. Meanwhile others lose out every day by not being able to claim fleet rewards.
1) Timezone(s) as we have several. I believe 4 or 5 depending on how you look at it.
2) He was stating it was penalizing "non-US" so you are making comments about someone who was sticking up for your interests.
You're right. Tarrant, I apologise for the comment. I misread this, but you're 100% right.
I was afraid they would bail on this. It seems like any form of event accountability is to much to ask for. I really like the 1 week ahead schedule and will be upset to see it go. Would have much preferred they took a week or two off to get settled again. This underpreparedness is probably just another result of the mass exodus of their staff.
It's much better to receive accurate info rather than fast info, so I agree with the goal.
But it's also hard to argue with the many requests to take a break and slow down event releases (or simply rely on reruns for a while), so that they can be fully prepared for release in plenty of time to give us that accurate info in a more timely manner.
What will be telling is whether the next event is a Discovery event. If so, the delayed schedule will probably be due to DB's contractual obligation to promote CBS's new "live" product. If it's something from any other series, it's going to look amateurish.
In either case, DB should make every effort to return to its previous scheduling practices, inconsistent though they sometimes were. I have my doubts that extending the schedule is really going to make Shan's job any easier. Much more likely that the delay will just anger the players while not really improving things in terms of accuracy of information.
What will be telling is whether the next event is a Discovery event. If so, the delayed schedule will probably be due to DB's contractual obligation to promote CBS's new "live" product. If it's something from any other series, it's going to look amateurish.
In either case, DB should make every effort to return to its previous scheduling practices, inconsistent though they sometimes were. I have my doubts that extending the schedule is really going to make Shan's job any easier. Much more likely that the delay will just anger the players while not really improving things in terms of accuracy of information.
What "contractual obligation" to promote anything? People keep throwing that excuse up, although it really doesn't make much sense, and DB hid behind it without ever acknowledging or denying it.
If you're CBS, do you REALLY want DB to promote anything? They pay their licensing fee, done.
I am waiting for more information.
There is no change to variants, and how they would provide a bonus for the event. Where it is sometimes more tricky is when non variants are added, to give more choices to players.[/quote]
More choices, which is exactly where the problem will arise. You give us more choices with less time to unvault and shuffle around crew. So these choices you will provide us with the day before the portal goes up won't be as helpful for many of us.
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What "contractual obligation" to promote anything? People keep throwing that excuse up, although it really doesn't make much sense, and DB hid behind it without ever acknowledging or denying it.
There was a DB post, later edited, that referred to event crew "pending CBS approval." It's very much possible that CBS has placed restrictions on what DB can and cannot say.
If you're CBS, do you REALLY want DB to promote anything?
If you're CBS, you want Discovery getting as much exposure and cross promotion as possible. This is bigger than just a TV show - the success of All Access is at stake as well.
Look, we all know you just lost a huge chunk of staff, and the ability to keep up with what should be a reasonable schedule was already not happening before that. The fact that you've had a pre-prepped month of events and still need to push back when players get info is sad, but I know well past out of your hands, Shan.
What should be done to compensate players for this change, as advocated on the first page of this thread, is an extreme reduction in or elimination of the charge to pull characters out of the vault - even if you do so only on Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday leading into each event.
Otherwise DB is blatantly punishing players for DB programmers' inability to do their job a) correctly and b) in a timely manner.
1. I was speculating about the contractual obligations, but as Dralix pointed out, there's certainly reason to think that CBS is calling the shots behind the scenes.
2. Synergy is a real thing and companies like CBS use it to leverage their properties all the time while exerting editorial influence over what's produced that bears their product names. Seriously, to say otherwise is... well, it's like you're not aware of what's happened in media in the last forty years.
This was not an easy decision to make, and I understand your concerns.
Let's see how this works for everyone involved. It does not mean there will not be improvements to the process down the line.
Shan, I appreciate the quick response as to why, but do you have the information requested regarding clarification of how this is going to go directly below your post? Specifically on repeat characters and if you are changing if other versions of a character will now not automatically be eligible for bonus? Or are you waiting to hear back from above on those details?
I am waiting for more information.
There is no change to variants, and how they would provide a bonus for the event.
Where it is sometimes more tricky is when non variants are added, to give more choices to players.
That is very tricky which is why I'm surprised it was done as often as it has been of late. That used to be a once in a blue moon. (in my first 5 months of play I think I saw it once or twice).
Honestly, if you can at least give us the EXISTING crew that is featured as well as the new crew (your parenthesis New Crew thing threw me), we can figure out at least some of the variants ourselves.
Given the circumstances, and I can only speak for myself, I'm willing to meet you at that spot with not much fuss if that is the case.
That also assumes that there are going to be existing crew in events going forward and that the parenthesis in your statement does not mean all new crew all the time.
In January, the goal was to be 4 weeks heads up on events. Now it's even LESS. To be honest, with the amount of chronitons going around, I'm fine with Friday as I can FE within 30 minutes for any 5*. But we need a darn new event!
Thanks for the info, no thanks for the content. I don't know what is going on with DB firing and demoting people, but obviously it is turning things to the worse. If you want to make money, give players what they want.
Bottom line is an easy answer to this development: I'll be suspending all spendings again, including the monthly card, waiting for the production team to "do better".
To me the message is "We can't give you the information as quickly in advance because we don't have our stuff together until two days before the event happens." I had thought these things would be coded much farther in advance than that.
There should be no more events until they can fully plan and communicate at least a week in advance, as it has been for what seems like forever. You would think most of the event infrastructure would be in place and easier to use as time moves forward.
This is disppointing to hear, but everybody is still on equal footing, so it should have little effect on potential event rankings for the majority of players in the game... right?
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing. ~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
This is disppointing to hear, but everybody is still on equal footing, so it should have little effect on potential event rankings for the majority of players in the game... right?
I don't think anyone complaining here is worried about rankings between players - everyone gets screwed over by this change in the exact same way (as opposed to, say, people who only ever get crappy offers) - but that doesn't eliminate or even ameliorate the fact that players are getting screwed over.
It shouldn't even come down to us having to ask to have the charge for moving crew out of the vault reduced or eliminated: the "we're shortening notice on event crew" should have been accompanied by "and as a result, we're removing the cost for the first X number of crew thawed".
How many crew are people normally taking out of a vault for an event?? At most, I have only taken out 3 crew members out of a vault for an event. That's only two days to do without any crystals.
I enjoy knowing as far in advance as possible who the new crew are going to be, but I guess I'm not seeing it as such a big deal. I have a fair number of frozen crew, but even when the bonus is some large number of characters like "all Ferengi," I don't have that many to pull out of cryo. For the event starting tomorrow, I didn't even have to unfreeze anyone. Maybe it's just me, but I don't really understand the outrage.
This is such ****. The more I think about it, the angrier I get. NO MORE MONEY FROM ME. I can't deal with stupidity.
They only moved it from Wednesday to Friday. We will still have 6 days to prepare our crew and make roster changes.
Wrong, two days. New crew names on Fridays, Tuesdays for existing crew that you could work on.
I don't read it like that. It still going to be: New crew is a Dax, then all Dax will count. If new crew is Janeway, then all Janeways will count. There is no differences really. Most events do not have all ferengis or all Klingons. That happens only if they are no crew variants or it's a megaevent.
I don't read it like that. It still going to be: New crew is a Dax, then all Dax will count. If new crew is Janeway, then all Janeways will count. There is no differences really. Most events do not have all ferengis or all Klingons. That happens only if they are no crew variants or it's a megaevent.
The key point of clarification that we're still waiting on is whether Friday's announcement will only give new characters, or existing. If all three featured crew are announced on Friday, regardless of whether they are new or existing, then the impact is a lot less.
For instance, suppose on Friday it's announced that event crew are the long awaited 5* Tarses, existing 4* Nevesa, and new 4* Marc Lenard Romulan (Balance of Terror). One can reasonably assume that all Romulans will give a bonus.
That's of course an extreme example, but we can make reasonable assumptions based on past events.
How many crew are people normally taking out of a vault for an event?? At most, I have only taken out 3 crew members out of a vault for an event. That's only two days to do without any crystals.
For this week’s event I had to take out 5. Couple of Daxes and Sareks. It gets harder when you factor in voyages and gauntlets since you could be using crew in either of those.
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Or they'd have to buy now that they didn't have time to level the right bonus crew.
The cynical side of me feels that driving up pack sales may be a side benefit of this decision in that respect as well.
That actually gives DB significantly more time for event prep and still gives the players 100% of the information a week in advance.
I would be more than happy to go one week without an event if it meant we could have a accurate event notice a week in advance.
100% Yes! This is exactly what should have been done and what should have been done months ago. The problem is not that DB has problems providing information, but that DB is working until the last minute for the event. Giving players a 1 week break so DB can be a week ahead would solve so many problems. I'm shocked that Db continues to have these problems and can't come to that realization themselves.
This seems like the exact opposite of what DB should do to reassure me this game will be around until next week. Sure, why wouldn't I spend money on it.
I'm sure they've realized that but they've also realized that a week without people buying $100 event packs is a major hit to their bottom line.
What they need to realize is that they need to improve their offers and pricing. Many have suggested a week off and offer (multiple) previous event $100 offers. Or a full on replay. Or send out proper limited time offers to ALL PLAYERS not just RNG it. But I guess they decided to go this route instead of any of the suggested ones. It's a shame that customers are suggesting better ways DB could make money off them yet DB doesn't take the hint.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing but a lot of players haven't been too happy with how the Discovery mega month has gone as opposed to for example the Borg mega month --- sometimes waiting a few extra weeks such as for Discovery would have been better than the problems experienced with a live show and then the release after the episodes aired of event crew
You're right. Tarrant, I apologise for the comment. I misread this, but you're 100% right.
But it's also hard to argue with the many requests to take a break and slow down event releases (or simply rely on reruns for a while), so that they can be fully prepared for release in plenty of time to give us that accurate info in a more timely manner.
In either case, DB should make every effort to return to its previous scheduling practices, inconsistent though they sometimes were. I have my doubts that extending the schedule is really going to make Shan's job any easier. Much more likely that the delay will just anger the players while not really improving things in terms of accuracy of information.
What "contractual obligation" to promote anything? People keep throwing that excuse up, although it really doesn't make much sense, and DB hid behind it without ever acknowledging or denying it.
If you're CBS, do you REALLY want DB to promote anything? They pay their licensing fee, done.
I am waiting for more information.
There is no change to variants, and how they would provide a bonus for the event.
Where it is sometimes more tricky is when non variants are added, to give more choices to players.[/quote]
More choices, which is exactly where the problem will arise. You give us more choices with less time to unvault and shuffle around crew. So these choices you will provide us with the day before the portal goes up won't be as helpful for many of us.
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There was a DB post, later edited, that referred to event crew "pending CBS approval." It's very much possible that CBS has placed restrictions on what DB can and cannot say.
If you're CBS, you want Discovery getting as much exposure and cross promotion as possible. This is bigger than just a TV show - the success of All Access is at stake as well.
What should be done to compensate players for this change, as advocated on the first page of this thread, is an extreme reduction in or elimination of the charge to pull characters out of the vault - even if you do so only on Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday leading into each event.
Otherwise DB is blatantly punishing players for DB programmers' inability to do their job a) correctly and b) in a timely manner.
2. Synergy is a real thing and companies like CBS use it to leverage their properties all the time while exerting editorial influence over what's produced that bears their product names. Seriously, to say otherwise is... well, it's like you're not aware of what's happened in media in the last forty years.
That is very tricky which is why I'm surprised it was done as often as it has been of late. That used to be a once in a blue moon. (in my first 5 months of play I think I saw it once or twice).
Honestly, if you can at least give us the EXISTING crew that is featured as well as the new crew (your parenthesis New Crew thing threw me), we can figure out at least some of the variants ourselves.
Given the circumstances, and I can only speak for myself, I'm willing to meet you at that spot with not much fuss if that is the case.
That also assumes that there are going to be existing crew in events going forward and that the parenthesis in your statement does not mean all new crew all the time.
Bottom line is an easy answer to this development: I'll be suspending all spendings again, including the monthly card, waiting for the production team to "do better".
It might be time for you to step away for a bit.
There should be no more events until they can fully plan and communicate at least a week in advance, as it has been for what seems like forever. You would think most of the event infrastructure would be in place and easier to use as time moves forward.
Could you please continue the petty bickering? I find it most intriguing.
~ Data, ST:TNG "Haven"
They only moved it from Wednesday to Friday. We will still have 6 days to prepare our crew and make roster changes.
I don't think anyone complaining here is worried about rankings between players - everyone gets screwed over by this change in the exact same way (as opposed to, say, people who only ever get crappy offers) - but that doesn't eliminate or even ameliorate the fact that players are getting screwed over.
It shouldn't even come down to us having to ask to have the charge for moving crew out of the vault reduced or eliminated: the "we're shortening notice on event crew" should have been accompanied by "and as a result, we're removing the cost for the first X number of crew thawed".
Wrong, two days. New crew names on Fridays, Tuesdays for existing crew that you could work on.
I don't read it like that. It still going to be: New crew is a Dax, then all Dax will count. If new crew is Janeway, then all Janeways will count. There is no differences really. Most events do not have all ferengis or all Klingons. That happens only if they are no crew variants or it's a megaevent.
The key point of clarification that we're still waiting on is whether Friday's announcement will only give new characters, or existing. If all three featured crew are announced on Friday, regardless of whether they are new or existing, then the impact is a lot less.
For instance, suppose on Friday it's announced that event crew are the long awaited 5* Tarses, existing 4* Nevesa, and new 4* Marc Lenard Romulan (Balance of Terror). One can reasonably assume that all Romulans will give a bonus.
That's of course an extreme example, but we can make reasonable assumptions based on past events.
For this week’s event I had to take out 5. Couple of Daxes and Sareks. It gets harder when you factor in voyages and gauntlets since you could be using crew in either of those.