Ok, I’ve been thinking about this for a while and discussing it with some fellow dolphins.
It is my current belief that the whalepocalyse has already occurred and that we dolphins are late to the party.
Campaigns are a response to the fact that whales ran out of stuff to do and more importantly any reason to buy anything. Not that I don’t love the cheap stuff in campaigns, but I was really surprised that they were so affordable.
I think campaigns are evidence that DB has stopped any serious development of this game and are just using it as a cash cow until eventually income drops below a certain threshold.
I think there’s definitely further evidence in promising QoL updates over anything actually exciting coming. Again, QoL updates aren’t nothing but the lack of ambition is very disappointing.
I’m now in that position too, still here, still mostly enjoying the game, but with nothing serious to spend money on. And with many players getting 18+ immortalised legendaries a year, it won’t be too long until most of the paying player base are in the same position. And what then?
Players: DB, please stop adding new features and instead focus on existing bugs and QOL updates we've been asking for.
DB: Ok, we're looking into making QOL updates.
Players: DB is stopping new development, the game is dying and they're milking every last penny out of it!
Ok, I’ve been thinking about this for a while and discussing it with some fellow dolphins.
It is my current belief that the whalepocalyse has already occurred and that we dolphins are late to the party.
Campaigns are a response to the fact that whales ran out of stuff to do and more importantly any reason to buy anything. Not that I don’t love the cheap stuff in campaigns, but I was really surprised that they were so affordable.
I think campaigns are evidence that DB has stopped any serious development of this game and are just using it as a cash cow until eventually income drops below a certain threshold.
I think there’s definitely further evidence in promising QoL updates over anything actually exciting coming. Again, QoL updates aren’t nothing but the lack of ambition is very disappointing.
I’m now in that position too, still here, still mostly enjoying the game, but with nothing serious to spend money on. And with many players getting 18+ immortalised legendaries a year, it won’t be too long until most of the paying player base are in the same position. And what then?
Players: DB, please stop adding new features and instead focus on existing bugs and QOL updates we've been asking for.
DB: Ok, we're looking into making QOL updates.
Players: DB is stopping new development, the game is dying and they're milking every last penny out of it!
When was the time that players were asking for DB to stop development of new features??
I don't understand why people are saying that the more established players won't play the rerun - they still want the top 1500 to bag the new gold card. So everyone behind them has to push harder. The logic of the rerun is flawed by including a new gold. How does this "reduce bandwidth"? I called them out on it in the event thread but was quickly shot down.
Ok, I’ve been thinking about this for a while and discussing it with some fellow dolphins.
It is my current belief that the whalepocalyse has already occurred and that we dolphins are late to the party.
Campaigns are a response to the fact that whales ran out of stuff to do and more importantly any reason to buy anything. Not that I don’t love the cheap stuff in campaigns, but I was really surprised that they were so affordable.
I think campaigns are evidence that DB has stopped any serious development of this game and are just using it as a cash cow until eventually income drops below a certain threshold.
I think there’s definitely further evidence in promising QoL updates over anything actually exciting coming. Again, QoL updates aren’t nothing but the lack of ambition is very disappointing.
I’m now in that position too, still here, still mostly enjoying the game, but with nothing serious to spend money on. And with many players getting 18+ immortalised legendaries a year, it won’t be too long until most of the paying player base are in the same position. And what then?
Players: DB, please stop adding new features and instead focus on existing bugs and QOL updates we've been asking for.
DB: Ok, we're looking into making QOL updates.
Players: DB is stopping new development, the game is dying and they're milking every last penny out of it!
When was the time that players were asking for DB to stop development of new features??
I don't understand why people are saying that the more established players won't play the rerun - they still want the top 1500 to bag the new gold card. So everyone behind them has to push harder. The logic of the rerun is flawed by including a new gold. How does this "reduce bandwidth"? I called them out on it in the event thread but was quickly shot down.
You misunderstood the term bandwidth in the context Shan used:
"Because running an older event again with minimal changes gives our team more bandwidth to fix bugs, make long-awaited quality-of-life improvements, and build new features."
Replace bandwidth with, for example, time and there you are.
Campaigns are a response to the fact that whales ran out of stuff to do and more importantly any reason to buy anything. Not that I don’t love the cheap stuff in campaigns, but I was really surprised that they were so affordable.
I think campaigns are evidence that DB has stopped any serious development of this game and are just using it as a cash cow until eventually income drops below a certain threshold.
Well, I hope that this is not true. But, sadly, it is a possible scenario. DB is a small company. Right now focused very much on marketing their Disruptor Engine and the development of other games.
I cherish the additions of the Campaigns as well. But an offer like that would have been unthinkable in the early stages of the game. Over time many big spenders have left though and so this creates needed revenue from others. Also cause unlike with certain monster hits the potential for new players is limited. But hopefully the coming series will also get new players into the game.
Let´s also keep in mind that they changed the shuttle structure to a less time consuming process for the developers a while ago. So together with the Flashback events the team has some more time on their hands for improvements, new stuff etc. .
But we can speculate all we want. In time we will see if STT still is some sort of priority for DB or simply run "on the sidelines" by now...
Ok, I’ve been thinking about this for a while and discussing it with some fellow dolphins.
It is my current belief that the whalepocalyse has already occurred and that we dolphins are late to the party.
Campaigns are a response to the fact that whales ran out of stuff to do and more importantly any reason to buy anything. Not that I don’t love the cheap stuff in campaigns, but I was really surprised that they were so affordable.
I think campaigns are evidence that DB has stopped any serious development of this game and are just using it as a cash cow until eventually income drops below a certain threshold.
I think there’s definitely further evidence in promising QoL updates over anything actually exciting coming. Again, QoL updates aren’t nothing but the lack of ambition is very disappointing.
I’m now in that position too, still here, still mostly enjoying the game, but with nothing serious to spend money on. And with many players getting 18+ immortalised legendaries a year, it won’t be too long until most of the paying player base are in the same position. And what then?
You cracked me up with the dolphin label. How would you define that group?
Ok, I’ve been thinking about this for a while and discussing it with some fellow dolphins.
It is my current belief that the whalepocalyse has already occurred and that we dolphins are late to the party.
Campaigns are a response to the fact that whales ran out of stuff to do and more importantly any reason to buy anything. Not that I don’t love the cheap stuff in campaigns, but I was really surprised that they were so affordable.
I think campaigns are evidence that DB has stopped any serious development of this game and are just using it as a cash cow until eventually income drops below a certain threshold.
I think there’s definitely further evidence in promising QoL updates over anything actually exciting coming. Again, QoL updates aren’t nothing but the lack of ambition is very disappointing.
I’m now in that position too, still here, still mostly enjoying the game, but with nothing serious to spend money on. And with many players getting 18+ immortalised legendaries a year, it won’t be too long until most of the paying player base are in the same position. And what then?
You cracked me up with the dolphin label. How would you define that group?
That's a very good question and one that may never have a satisfying answer, so I guess we have to look at it in terms of relative spending. If one buys the campaign every month and the regular monthly card, that's $180/year. No one would consider them whales. So lets set the lower bound for Dolphin at around $200/year (assuming at least a couple of 10 for 10s). My own thinking is that a true Whale buys the $100 event offer semi regularly, perhaps once a month, so lets set the upper bound of dolphin at around $1200/year. Within that realm are the dolphins. Of course this is totally just trying to say that there are many players who are whale-ish, ie spend less than the hyperbolic figure we associate with whales, but still spend a lot.
Most games keep the whales spending by rolling out more and more stuff for them to buy because the mechanics of the game encourage using money to solve a problem (supplier induced demand essentially). Timelines as it currently exists doesn't really have any ongoing mechanic except perhaps faction events that rewards "investment" in the game beyond a reasonable core of immortalised legendaries. Once you have the fairly limited breath and depth you need to hit 10 hrs voyages on a regular basis, there really isn't any reason to continue upgrading your crew in terms of game mechanics. Gauntlet only demands a handful of crew, Arena the same. Galaxy and Skirmish events need almost no legendary crew. Only faction events reward any crew depth and even then campaigns have really upped the ante of faction events by supplying so many shuttle boosts in the rewards.
What's needed is a new mode or an expansion to an existing mode that increases the amount of crew we can deploy or some new target for us to hit that uses an as yet unintroduced asset.
If there isn't something new that encourages people to spend then the player base who does spend and keep the lights on will spend their gaming budget elsewhere and the lights will go out.
Ok, I’ve been thinking about this for a while and discussing it with some fellow dolphins.
It is my current belief that the whalepocalyse has already occurred and that we dolphins are late to the party.
Campaigns are a response to the fact that whales ran out of stuff to do and more importantly any reason to buy anything. Not that I don’t love the cheap stuff in campaigns, but I was really surprised that they were so affordable.
I think campaigns are evidence that DB has stopped any serious development of this game and are just using it as a cash cow until eventually income drops below a certain threshold.
I think there’s definitely further evidence in promising QoL updates over anything actually exciting coming. Again, QoL updates aren’t nothing but the lack of ambition is very disappointing.
I’m now in that position too, still here, still mostly enjoying the game, but with nothing serious to spend money on. And with many players getting 18+ immortalised legendaries a year, it won’t be too long until most of the paying player base are in the same position. And what then?
Players: DB, please stop adding new features and instead focus on existing bugs and QOL updates we've been asking for.
DB: Ok, we're looking into making QOL updates.
Players: DB is stopping new development, the game is dying and they're milking every last penny out of it!
When was the time that players were asking for DB to stop development of new features??
I think you are reading too much into that. People were complaining about a change that seemed to add no functionality at the time. At no point in that thread does anyone suggest that actual development of new features should be halted.
I don't understand why people are saying that the more established players won't play the rerun - they still want the top 1500 to bag the new gold card. So everyone behind them has to push harder. The logic of the rerun is flawed by including a new gold. How does this "reduce bandwidth"? I called them out on it in the event thread but was quickly shot down.
You misunderstood the term bandwidth in the context Shan used:
"Because running an older event again with minimal changes gives our team more bandwidth to fix bugs, make long-awaited quality-of-life improvements, and build new features."
Replace bandwidth with, for example, time and there you are.
I have a killer 3rd gen T/A right now that I am in the process of making a show car out of. I plan to make the paint job somewhat "galaxy" themed. (No, not STT galaxy event themed. LOL)
We had a huge forum post ASKING for QoL improvements, with lots of votes on it! You're taking that as a bad sign?? They LISTENED to us!
It's the absence of other developments. I am pro the QoL improvements in a general sense, but it's the lack of any revealed ambition that I am concerned about.
And in truth, I haven't lobbied for any QoL improvements myself and the timing of the expression of my concerns is coincidental with that movement. I have been asking about the lack of plans and hype about future developments for well over a year.
This is a genuine problem for the game and the lack of development may well lead to its early closure. If you are happy about that, well good luck to you, but I am not.
We had a huge forum post ASKING for QoL improvements, with lots of votes on it! You're taking that as a bad sign?? They LISTENED to us!
Also it occurs to me that maybe they shouldn't be listening to you. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, but perhaps they'd be better off doing other things. Things that will actually drive revenue.
I have a killer 3rd gen T/A right now that I am in the process of making a show car out of. I plan to make the paint job somewhat "galaxy" themed. (No, not STT galaxy event themed. LOL)
As you have prolly seen, I believe threads are ok to boldly go where no thread has gone before. We are not writing books here, we’re talking like regular Joe’s
We had a huge forum post ASKING for QoL improvements, with lots of votes on it! You're taking that as a bad sign?? They LISTENED to us!
Also it occurs to me that maybe they shouldn't be listening to you. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, but perhaps they'd be better off doing other things. Things that will actually drive revenue.
Nor should they be listening to you. DB knows what drives revenue. They also know what contributes to their costs. And they are making decisions to maximize revenue/minimize costs.
If the cost of their outsourced CS team is too high because of all the bugs, then they can decide to focus on minimizing those bugs instead of adding a new buggy feature that generates more tickets.
If the time/cost dealing with emails going to the wrong people prompting cards needing to be given to everyone is too high, they can focus on fixing their email system to avoid those issues.
It's not a lack of new features that kills a software product. It's a focus on only adding new features while creating a hacky mess of a product that is impossible to maintain that eventually is a product's death.
My biggest concern from the flashback event is not that DB is focusing on QOL improvements, it's that their event code is so difficult to maintain that a replay event with minimal reward changes was still considered too much effort. To me that says they've already gone too far in ignoring the maintainability of their system.
If they need a month of flashback events so that they can fix the issues with their system, I'm all for it. I'd rather have no new events for a month now and a bug free 2020.
We had a huge forum post ASKING for QoL improvements, with lots of votes on it! You're taking that as a bad sign?? They LISTENED to us!
Also it occurs to me that maybe they shouldn't be listening to you. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, but perhaps they'd be better off doing other things. Things that will actually drive revenue.
Nor should they be listening to you. DB knows what drives revenue. They also know what contributes to their costs. And they are making decisions to maximize revenue/minimize costs.
If the cost of their outsourced CS team is too high because of all the bugs, then they can decide to focus on minimizing those bugs instead of adding a new buggy feature that generates more tickets.
If the time/cost dealing with emails going to the wrong people prompting cards needing to be given to everyone is too high, they can focus on fixing their email system to avoid those issues.
It's not a lack of new features that kills a software product. It's a focus on only adding new features while creating a hacky mess of a product that is impossible to maintain that eventually is a product's death.
My biggest concern from the flashback event is not that DB is focusing on QOL improvements, it's that their event code is so difficult to maintain that a replay event with minimal reward changes was still considered too much effort. To me that says they've already gone too far in ignoring the maintainability of their system.
If they need a month of flashback events so that they can fix the issues with their system, I'm all for it. I'd rather have no new events for a month now and a bug free 2020.
I'm trying to get you to listen to me and indirectly DB listening to all of us. I totally understand that bug squashing is important, though it's not the same thing as QoL improvements.
Here's an important question. Why now? A lot of these bugs and QoL requests are very old hat, why deal with them now? What have they been doing for the last year? What have they got to show for any serious development effort in all of that time? The last genuine new thing was the skirmish event and I'm being a little generous even including that. Since the introduction of Voyages really no seriously impactful feature has been added. It seems to me that they have the tiniest of man hours working on the development of this game, if there's anyone actually dedicated to it at all. They mostly tinker with the UI, loot tables and sales tactics. How long did it take them to expand premium packs??
We had a huge forum post ASKING for QoL improvements, with lots of votes on it! You're taking that as a bad sign?? They LISTENED to us!
Also it occurs to me that maybe they shouldn't be listening to you. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, but perhaps they'd be better off doing other things. Things that will actually drive revenue.
Nor should they be listening to you. DB knows what drives revenue. They also know what contributes to their costs. And they are making decisions to maximize revenue/minimize costs.
If the cost of their outsourced CS team is too high because of all the bugs, then they can decide to focus on minimizing those bugs instead of adding a new buggy feature that generates more tickets.
If the time/cost dealing with emails going to the wrong people prompting cards needing to be given to everyone is too high, they can focus on fixing their email system to avoid those issues.
It's not a lack of new features that kills a software product. It's a focus on only adding new features while creating a hacky mess of a product that is impossible to maintain that eventually is a product's death.
My biggest concern from the flashback event is not that DB is focusing on QOL improvements, it's that their event code is so difficult to maintain that a replay event with minimal reward changes was still considered too much effort. To me that says they've already gone too far in ignoring the maintainability of their system.
If they need a month of flashback events so that they can fix the issues with their system, I'm all for it. I'd rather have no new events for a month now and a bug free 2020.
Great points here! And something to keep in mind is that if DB wants to be a middleware vendor by licensing out the Disruptor Engine, it’s in their financial best interest to make it more stable anyway, even if every last STT player was kidnapped by aliens at this exact moment and nobody was left to worry about QoL/bug issues in this game.
I would have though it would be relatively easy to add more "collections" to the system at a regular interval. Even that mini update would be something to keep the masses engaged.
I have a killer 3rd gen T/A right now that I am in the process of making a show car out of. I plan to make the paint job somewhat "galaxy" themed. (No, not STT galaxy event themed. LOL)
I am happy to participate in the derailment to add something lighthearted to what seemed to sound surprisingly a little mean reply after my comments.
In my 20's I had a white 79 Trans Am with the grey/black/red hood bird and I blew an ungodly amount of money on that car turning it into street/drag car then letting water into the block while I was training and deployed for a year. Sold it as I started a family and did not have time/money to take care of it properly. I don't know if I'll ever have another 450 horsepower monster, but I loved that car and still miss it.
We had a huge forum post ASKING for QoL improvements, with lots of votes on it! You're taking that as a bad sign?? They LISTENED to us!
It's the absence of other developments. I am pro the QoL improvements in a general sense, but it's the lack of any revealed ambition that I am concerned about.
And in truth, I haven't lobbied for any QoL improvements myself and the timing of the expression of my concerns is coincidental with that movement. I have been asking about the lack of plans and hype about future developments for well over a year.
This is a genuine problem for the game and the lack of development may well lead to its early closure. If you are happy about that, well good luck to you, but I am not.
It feels like we're basically at a crossroads of optimist vs pessimist here. I agree the game has not had any drastic development change in a while, but it's already too time consuming for my life and I know I spend an unhealthy amount of time at it. I really don't need more features, unless some are removed. Since the campaign is attached to the daily chores (that also generate revenue via adds), I can't see the grindy daily time wasters going anywhere for now, so unless the event structure is changed to require less time I really don't want major new game development any further. Maybe that's just me.
Maybe the work on the new Windows client application, as well as the ongoing work on updated versions of the other clients, has taken precedence over the introduction of a new gameplay mechanism. Just a thought. 🖖
"In the short run, the game defines the players. But in the long run, it's us players who define the game." — Nicky Case, The Evolution of Trust
Maybe the work on the new Windows client application, as well as the ongoing work on updated versions of the other clients, has taken precedence over the introduction of a new gameplay mechanism. Just a thought. 🖖
This, and probably the problems with the Facebook client (see the banner with the request to test the fixes). Also I can imagine that they intensely investigate on the missing ads problem as this means actual loss of income and it has been going over a very long time already.
My biggest concern from the flashback event is not that DB is focusing on QOL improvements, it's that their event code is so difficult to maintain that a replay event with minimal reward changes was still considered too much effort. To me that says they've already gone too far in ignoring the maintainability of their system.
This is true though.
Anyways it would be cool to see some sort of developers' diaries to better understand what they really work on and what we can expect to see in the near or distant future.
Episode 10 came out of the blue. Why does DB not use such things to create some anticipation? The lack of information about what they are up to is a bit disturbing.
Wir, die Mirror Tribbles [MiT] haben freie Plätze zu vergeben. Kein Zwang und kein Stress, dafür aber Spaß, Discord und eine nette, hilfsbereite Gemeinschaft, incl. voll ausgebauter Starbase und täglich 700 ISM.
Anyways it would be cool to see some sort of developers' diaries to better understand what they really work on and what we can expect to see in the near or distant future. Why does DB not use such things to create some anticipation? The lack of information about what they are up to is a bit disturbing.
Yes. Also keeping in mind that before the game was released and even for some time after they had all kinds of developer updates and even released videos where they talked about new or coming features.
Anyways it would be cool to see some sort of developers' diaries to better understand what they really work on and what we can expect to see in the near or distant future. Why does DB not use such things to create some anticipation? The lack of information about what they are up to is a bit disturbing.
Yes. Also keeping in mind that before the game was released and even for some time after they had all kinds of developer updates and even released videos where they talked about new or coming features.
kind of like a video update, maybe every Friday afternoon, where one or two people could show us things in the works and maybe even give away new crew? They could have some sort of funny name for it too, like...disruptor stram...?
kind of like a video update, maybe every Friday afternoon, where one or two people could show us things in the works and maybe even give away new crew? They could have some sort of funny name for it too, like...disruptor stram...?
Yes, your time machine is perfectly on stream and not disrupted at all
Anyways it would be cool to see some sort of developers' diaries to better understand what they really work on and what we can expect to see in the near or distant future. Why does DB not use such things to create some anticipation? The lack of information about what they are up to is a bit disturbing.
Yes. Also keeping in mind that before the game was released and even for some time after they had all kinds of developer updates and even released videos where they talked about new or coming features.
kind of like a video update, maybe every Friday afternoon, where one or two people could show us things in the works and maybe even give away new crew? They could have some sort of funny name for it too, like...disruptor stram...?
Comments
Players: DB, please stop adding new features and instead focus on existing bugs and QOL updates we've been asking for.
DB: Ok, we're looking into making QOL updates.
Players: DB is stopping new development, the game is dying and they're milking every last penny out of it!
When was the time that players were asking for DB to stop development of new features??
When the daily mission screen was redesigned to support campaigns.
https://forum.disruptorbeam.com/stt/discussion/comment/149377/#Comment_149377
You misunderstood the term bandwidth in the context Shan used:
"Because running an older event again with minimal changes gives our team more bandwidth to fix bugs, make long-awaited quality-of-life improvements, and build new features."
Replace bandwidth with, for example, time and there you are.
Well, I hope that this is not true. But, sadly, it is a possible scenario. DB is a small company. Right now focused very much on marketing their Disruptor Engine and the development of other games.
I cherish the additions of the Campaigns as well. But an offer like that would have been unthinkable in the early stages of the game. Over time many big spenders have left though and so this creates needed revenue from others. Also cause unlike with certain monster hits the potential for new players is limited. But hopefully the coming series will also get new players into the game.
Let´s also keep in mind that they changed the shuttle structure to a less time consuming process for the developers a while ago. So together with the Flashback events the team has some more time on their hands for improvements, new stuff etc. .
But we can speculate all we want. In time we will see if STT still is some sort of priority for DB or simply run "on the sidelines" by now...
You cracked me up with the dolphin label. How would you define that group?
Captain Level: 95
VIP Level: 12
Unique Crew Immortalized: 525
Collections Completed: Vulcan, Ferengi, Borg, Romulan, Cardassian, Uncommon, Rare, Veteran, Common, Engineered, Physician, Innovator, Inspiring, Diplomat, Jury Rigger, Gauntlet Legends
That's a very good question and one that may never have a satisfying answer, so I guess we have to look at it in terms of relative spending. If one buys the campaign every month and the regular monthly card, that's $180/year. No one would consider them whales. So lets set the lower bound for Dolphin at around $200/year (assuming at least a couple of 10 for 10s). My own thinking is that a true Whale buys the $100 event offer semi regularly, perhaps once a month, so lets set the upper bound of dolphin at around $1200/year. Within that realm are the dolphins. Of course this is totally just trying to say that there are many players who are whale-ish, ie spend less than the hyperbolic figure we associate with whales, but still spend a lot.
Most games keep the whales spending by rolling out more and more stuff for them to buy because the mechanics of the game encourage using money to solve a problem (supplier induced demand essentially). Timelines as it currently exists doesn't really have any ongoing mechanic except perhaps faction events that rewards "investment" in the game beyond a reasonable core of immortalised legendaries. Once you have the fairly limited breath and depth you need to hit 10 hrs voyages on a regular basis, there really isn't any reason to continue upgrading your crew in terms of game mechanics. Gauntlet only demands a handful of crew, Arena the same. Galaxy and Skirmish events need almost no legendary crew. Only faction events reward any crew depth and even then campaigns have really upped the ante of faction events by supplying so many shuttle boosts in the rewards.
What's needed is a new mode or an expansion to an existing mode that increases the amount of crew we can deploy or some new target for us to hit that uses an as yet unintroduced asset.
If there isn't something new that encourages people to spend then the player base who does spend and keep the lights on will spend their gaming budget elsewhere and the lights will go out.
I think you are reading too much into that. People were complaining about a change that seemed to add no functionality at the time. At no point in that thread does anyone suggest that actual development of new features should be halted.
@Synthetic Commander my first car was a 1980 Trans Am with your avatar on the hood. T-tops, louvres, shaker, duel exhaust. I loved that car
Ah.
Thank you.
Way to derail a thread @Banjo1012!
I have a killer 3rd gen T/A right now that I am in the process of making a show car out of. I plan to make the paint job somewhat "galaxy" themed. (No, not STT galaxy event themed. LOL)
It's the absence of other developments. I am pro the QoL improvements in a general sense, but it's the lack of any revealed ambition that I am concerned about.
And in truth, I haven't lobbied for any QoL improvements myself and the timing of the expression of my concerns is coincidental with that movement. I have been asking about the lack of plans and hype about future developments for well over a year.
This is a genuine problem for the game and the lack of development may well lead to its early closure. If you are happy about that, well good luck to you, but I am not.
Also it occurs to me that maybe they shouldn't be listening to you. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, but perhaps they'd be better off doing other things. Things that will actually drive revenue.
As you have prolly seen, I believe threads are ok to boldly go where no thread has gone before. We are not writing books here, we’re talking like regular Joe’s
Nor should they be listening to you. DB knows what drives revenue. They also know what contributes to their costs. And they are making decisions to maximize revenue/minimize costs.
If the cost of their outsourced CS team is too high because of all the bugs, then they can decide to focus on minimizing those bugs instead of adding a new buggy feature that generates more tickets.
If the time/cost dealing with emails going to the wrong people prompting cards needing to be given to everyone is too high, they can focus on fixing their email system to avoid those issues.
It's not a lack of new features that kills a software product. It's a focus on only adding new features while creating a hacky mess of a product that is impossible to maintain that eventually is a product's death.
My biggest concern from the flashback event is not that DB is focusing on QOL improvements, it's that their event code is so difficult to maintain that a replay event with minimal reward changes was still considered too much effort. To me that says they've already gone too far in ignoring the maintainability of their system.
If they need a month of flashback events so that they can fix the issues with their system, I'm all for it. I'd rather have no new events for a month now and a bug free 2020.
I'm trying to get you to listen to me and indirectly DB listening to all of us. I totally understand that bug squashing is important, though it's not the same thing as QoL improvements.
Here's an important question. Why now? A lot of these bugs and QoL requests are very old hat, why deal with them now? What have they been doing for the last year? What have they got to show for any serious development effort in all of that time? The last genuine new thing was the skirmish event and I'm being a little generous even including that. Since the introduction of Voyages really no seriously impactful feature has been added. It seems to me that they have the tiniest of man hours working on the development of this game, if there's anyone actually dedicated to it at all. They mostly tinker with the UI, loot tables and sales tactics. How long did it take them to expand premium packs??
Great points here! And something to keep in mind is that if DB wants to be a middleware vendor by licensing out the Disruptor Engine, it’s in their financial best interest to make it more stable anyway, even if every last STT player was kidnapped by aliens at this exact moment and nobody was left to worry about QoL/bug issues in this game.
I am happy to participate in the derailment to add something lighthearted to what seemed to sound surprisingly a little mean reply after my comments.
In my 20's I had a white 79 Trans Am with the grey/black/red hood bird and I blew an ungodly amount of money on that car turning it into street/drag car then letting water into the block while I was training and deployed for a year. Sold it as I started a family and did not have time/money to take care of it properly. I don't know if I'll ever have another 450 horsepower monster, but I loved that car and still miss it.
It feels like we're basically at a crossroads of optimist vs pessimist here. I agree the game has not had any drastic development change in a while, but it's already too time consuming for my life and I know I spend an unhealthy amount of time at it. I really don't need more features, unless some are removed. Since the campaign is attached to the daily chores (that also generate revenue via adds), I can't see the grindy daily time wasters going anywhere for now, so unless the event structure is changed to require less time I really don't want major new game development any further. Maybe that's just me.
This, and probably the problems with the Facebook client (see the banner with the request to test the fixes). Also I can imagine that they intensely investigate on the missing ads problem as this means actual loss of income and it has been going over a very long time already.
This is true though.
Anyways it would be cool to see some sort of developers' diaries to better understand what they really work on and what we can expect to see in the near or distant future.
Episode 10 came out of the blue. Why does DB not use such things to create some anticipation? The lack of information about what they are up to is a bit disturbing.
Yes. Also keeping in mind that before the game was released and even for some time after they had all kinds of developer updates and even released videos where they talked about new or coming features.
If it's easier for developers to use this event to get more time to fix bugs i'm ok with it but would be nice to get at least a message on that.
kind of like a video update, maybe every Friday afternoon, where one or two people could show us things in the works and maybe even give away new crew? They could have some sort of funny name for it too, like...disruptor stram...?
Yes, your time machine is perfectly on stream and not disrupted at all
This would very much allay my fears.