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My WRTP proto-flounce - others welcome
Oomox
✭✭✭
in The Bridge
Greetings Captains
Once upon a time, I was a member of a cantankerous and tempestuous discussion forum where members who, when heartily disenchanted with the forum, or its policies, or its other members, whatever was killing their joy with the forum, or life in general, were encouraged to open a thread allowing them to thoroughly vent their spleens before heading off into cyber-oblivion. This was called a ‘flounce’ thread.
Right across this planet, 2020 has been an awful year, and IMO WRTP have contributed fulsomely to this awfulness with their treatment of the occasionally paying public. The offer wall and IronSource issues have not magically gone away, nor is the treatment of players legitimate concerns during that debacle forgotten. The haemorrhage of experienced long time players continues unchecked, such is their level of boredom with what this game has been allowed to become, and their disenfranchisement with Star Trek Timelines experience, which in turn blithely ignores their experience and loyalty since the early days. More recently, the cack-handed appearance of the much heralded “event hub”, mysteriously manifesting ahead of schedule (obviously Q playing with the time -space continuum again) which does exactly diddly-squat to improve gaming experience or game functionality, while genuine player concerns remain ignored or vaguely alluded to as ‘in development’ and then passed over.
And now coinciding with the latest event “First Doctrines”, the ‘offer’ of 10 citations (4 5*, 3 4*, 2 3* and 1 2*) issued forth Thursday last (20201015) for a local cost of €109.99! This is pure contempt – extravagant, eye watering costs for an utterly trivial and derisory return! Is there an assumption somewhere in WRTP that all players who occasionally pay have fallen from the apex of the stupid tree and smacked each branch of same tree exactly once with their heads and credit cards on their descent to finally smack the Earth again on their arrival, and will buy such dross unquestioningly?
Altogether, I put it to you that this amounts to an abominable treatment of the players – simultaneously attempting a mugging of them while contemptuously spitting them in the eye.
Someone in WRTP needs to wake up very soon and take a thorough and long hard look at customer experience and current functionality. Stop waving your arms about, waxing lyrical waffle about planned new features, and deal with the actual issues – lack of player engagement, abominable game chat and DM/PM facilities, boredom with outright formulaic sleep inducing events, events where every two bit extra in a one off episode now becomes a 5* character reward (Solok as a 5* - really? Why?), used once and never seen of or heard from again, lack of new conflicts/missions, to name a very few. From this perspective, WRTP are engaged in self-congratulatory wallpapering over profoundly serious structural fissures in the very foundations of their product, and they’re patting themselves on the back over the new colour scheme the unsolicited wallpaper over the cracks introduces while the whole edifice splits a few further metres apart and simultaneously sinks further into narcolepsy.
This thread is my proto-flounce.
I assume there will be a Christmas event later this year and an honour sale following this event. WRTP are on notice that they have the intervening time to attempt something concrete that genuinely engages the community and attempts to grow the game in step with that community and make amends. If not, then certainly I and my credit card are out, and I will not be the last one to go. The only reason now I remain now at all are my very excellent squad mates, a wonderful engaged fleet admiral, and the prospect of the end of year Christmas event and honour sale to help put 2020 out of its misery and firmly in the past.
I encourage other similarly motivated occasionally paying captains, or free to plays genuinely concerned about this community and game, who may also find themselves in proto-flounce mode, to add their voices and issues to this thread. I implore WRTP to both listen and act.
Thanks for reading, support if you have any to lend, and LLAP,
Oomox.
Once upon a time, I was a member of a cantankerous and tempestuous discussion forum where members who, when heartily disenchanted with the forum, or its policies, or its other members, whatever was killing their joy with the forum, or life in general, were encouraged to open a thread allowing them to thoroughly vent their spleens before heading off into cyber-oblivion. This was called a ‘flounce’ thread.
Right across this planet, 2020 has been an awful year, and IMO WRTP have contributed fulsomely to this awfulness with their treatment of the occasionally paying public. The offer wall and IronSource issues have not magically gone away, nor is the treatment of players legitimate concerns during that debacle forgotten. The haemorrhage of experienced long time players continues unchecked, such is their level of boredom with what this game has been allowed to become, and their disenfranchisement with Star Trek Timelines experience, which in turn blithely ignores their experience and loyalty since the early days. More recently, the cack-handed appearance of the much heralded “event hub”, mysteriously manifesting ahead of schedule (obviously Q playing with the time -space continuum again) which does exactly diddly-squat to improve gaming experience or game functionality, while genuine player concerns remain ignored or vaguely alluded to as ‘in development’ and then passed over.
And now coinciding with the latest event “First Doctrines”, the ‘offer’ of 10 citations (4 5*, 3 4*, 2 3* and 1 2*) issued forth Thursday last (20201015) for a local cost of €109.99! This is pure contempt – extravagant, eye watering costs for an utterly trivial and derisory return! Is there an assumption somewhere in WRTP that all players who occasionally pay have fallen from the apex of the stupid tree and smacked each branch of same tree exactly once with their heads and credit cards on their descent to finally smack the Earth again on their arrival, and will buy such dross unquestioningly?
Altogether, I put it to you that this amounts to an abominable treatment of the players – simultaneously attempting a mugging of them while contemptuously spitting them in the eye.
Someone in WRTP needs to wake up very soon and take a thorough and long hard look at customer experience and current functionality. Stop waving your arms about, waxing lyrical waffle about planned new features, and deal with the actual issues – lack of player engagement, abominable game chat and DM/PM facilities, boredom with outright formulaic sleep inducing events, events where every two bit extra in a one off episode now becomes a 5* character reward (Solok as a 5* - really? Why?), used once and never seen of or heard from again, lack of new conflicts/missions, to name a very few. From this perspective, WRTP are engaged in self-congratulatory wallpapering over profoundly serious structural fissures in the very foundations of their product, and they’re patting themselves on the back over the new colour scheme the unsolicited wallpaper over the cracks introduces while the whole edifice splits a few further metres apart and simultaneously sinks further into narcolepsy.
This thread is my proto-flounce.
I assume there will be a Christmas event later this year and an honour sale following this event. WRTP are on notice that they have the intervening time to attempt something concrete that genuinely engages the community and attempts to grow the game in step with that community and make amends. If not, then certainly I and my credit card are out, and I will not be the last one to go. The only reason now I remain now at all are my very excellent squad mates, a wonderful engaged fleet admiral, and the prospect of the end of year Christmas event and honour sale to help put 2020 out of its misery and firmly in the past.
I encourage other similarly motivated occasionally paying captains, or free to plays genuinely concerned about this community and game, who may also find themselves in proto-flounce mode, to add their voices and issues to this thread. I implore WRTP to both listen and act.
Thanks for reading, support if you have any to lend, and LLAP,
Oomox.
23
Comments
I have a feeling the pandemic slowed down many things they wanted to do as a company.
Please keep that in mind when creating any kind of discussions on our forums, thanks!
Greetings Shan.
Thanks for your comments. Here are mine.
Is there some factual error in my OP?
Do you dispute any of my points?
Do you really believe this is hyperbole?
No Shan - this is very genuinely how the gaming experience feels. If you read melodrama in any of this, that Shan is on you, and on WRTP.
Perhaps it is now time to concede that maybe the players do have a point, and not just misplaced temerity to dare pipe up and call time, and it would behoove better to actually engage and address the issues raised positively, than dismiss them as melodrama.
Because such dismissal has worked so well thus far, hasn't it?
LLAP
Oomox
Well said and thank you for your post.
For sure. But the color of the hub button and the lettering on it is a matter of seconds. It does not fit the other elements on screen in any kind of way, looks like a foreigner in space. That more complex things take time, fine. But ruining such a little thing even?
If i ever don t enjoy this game anymore, i just delete the app and move on.
No need for me to spread extra negativity. 🤗
For the most part the players that are left have been very conservative. Initially they didn't want major change, just QoL updates. Then, they complained about being afraid that there will be too much to do in the game. Recently, I posted about the staleness of the roster and lack of real power creep and the people here seemed happy with the status quo,
I have become convinced that as the game churns players that the players who remain are the subset of all of the population that the game ever had that are happy with the product as is. This is a natural break on ambition. If TP do introduce changes they risk alienating these remaining players. This is especially problematic for TP if they don't have confidence that they could get back previous spending players.
DB/TP don't have an established tradition of hyping their own product, this also suggests a lack of faith in their game. Recently there have been some murmurings of development of stuff that veteran players will be interested in, though details are light and it's still months away so is potentially vaporware. And even at that, they haven't made a big deal of it. I genuinely don't think they're focused on giving us the best game experience, they are focused on monetizing what's left of their player base.
The reality is that DB/TP have treated Timelines as a cash cow for several years now, with absolutely minimal development. Even in this new era with a new owner they have mostly been working to keep our expectations low rather than trying to generate any hype.
What I want to see is a developer that is proud of their game and wants to try and grow its' player base rather than sleepily coax its' remaining unsuspecting paying players out of more of their money before one day just closing up shop because revenues have fallen so low that they can't even support creating 10 pictures a month.
If there are things about the game you are not happy with, any competent/conscientious game designer would appreciate the feedback. Having you suffer in silence and then suddenly vanish from the game entirely without explaining why doesn't help you or them.
But apathy is building in our fleet. It is a slow burn, but it is there, and it is painful. We've lost long time 3+ year players who have waited a long time for something new. We stay together because we're fleetmates, we enjoy the company and joint share of the game.
We simply want to be heard, we want hope that there are real game play improvements, new game content, and something to be excited about again. The mini event? A new weekend event? A distress call? Episode? Some hope? Can we at least have a dev update or a timeline? We worked 3 years building our crews, our fleet, our starbase and I'm watching it slowly erode before my eyes.
I'm still hopeful with new ST shows coming online and trying to be positive. I'm just trying to give a real life pulse. I don't WANT to quit, I want this game to be as great as ST. Make it so..
Thanks for your support Princess Trista.
It is sad to see so much that was promised remaining undelivered, and over a long interval of time. What is perhaps equally sad, is that we've become accepting of this treatment as customers of this experience.
Hopefully our collective effort here will have soon have some positive yield and improve player and customer experience.
LLAP
Oomox
This post! This is our hope and our motivation.
Excellent points and very well made. Thank you.
I sincerely hope that this excellent post from a more recent player, alongside those of longer term players, is giving WRTP further food for thought.
Maybe if I'm bored later, I'll give another lesson on how to have a constructive, civil discussion. I've been busy, though. Can someone else do it this time?
The honor sales were sweet but they also lead to the fact that all the crew I absolutely wanted to FF are done plus some more. We really really really need something to employ the crew we have, even if it only was an unlimited number of voyages to be filled so we never felt like "Boy, 80% of my FFed 5* crew is just idling - what a waste!". The latter is how I currently feel and I have hardly any desire to add any of my 3/5 or 4/5 crew to that idling FF pool, not to mention the lower fused ones. Spending 10 $ on a 3rd star? Forget it! I have 11 gold citation lying around with no purpose, why should I spend real money on stars then? Not to mention: Why should I spend money on mediocre 1st stars when I have the best crew FF already (speaking of the lack of power creep...)? I am not that kind of collector.
I was super lucky with Pining Vina, getting her from 2 to 4 stars with only four 490 dil packs, then I felt like citing her to 5. And when the FF animation popped up I realized that I felt nothing because I knew I will hardly ever see her doing anything in the game, despite her not being bad.
The game is stale to the point of standing still. Cite crew - what for with no occupation for them? Open reward portal packs - what for without a portal update? So I do daily chores without any feeling of accomplishment or reward. This is basically like a job, just without the salary. What does TP think how long players are going to do this and even spend money on this "job"?
Thank you for your excellent contributions.
It is disheartening to see the frequency with which the same issues are being flagged by poster after poster on this thread. In spite of that somewhat depressing litany, maybe the number of captains, squad leaders and fleet admirals (re-)cataloging these issues on an ongoing basis, there will be some desperately hoped for action to improve the most pressing ones.
1000% this...
Erin was her name if I remember correctly.
Agreed. Best thread I've seen for a while. Shame it will fall on deaf ears as usual.
1. Raise captain level.
2. Search avatars by name feature
3. Fleet rewards
4. Admiral tools (lock rooms - promote demote squad leaders)
5. Regular portal updates
6. Voyage recall tokens (time reducers)
7. New event type (not just a short skirmish)
8. Expand map
9. New missions
10. Expand collections
11. Raise immortal total rewards
12. Revise squad rewards
13. Fix chat censor
14. Create a shipyard
15. Extra Voyages
16. Revise gauntlet
17. 1 click builds in galaxy events
I'm certain this list can be expanded. I am also certain some of these feature are "easy" and some are "more difficult" but the game is coming up on 5 years old and some of these issues have been around quite awhile now.
Will the game survive without our fleet? Sure it will, for now. But from other responses I gather we're saying what others are thinking or fearing, but didn't want to admit. We eat stale bread because we love the idea. How long though will we continue to eat it before we say enough or look for new bread?
You can look at us as whiners or complainers, that doesn't mean we don't appreciate the QoL changes made, or innovations like the starbase, skirmish event, voyages, etc that showed DB now WRTP can bring us new things. It is in fact those changes and new additions that have kept us here month after month. We just need a little nugget of hope for the future.
Wr/tp should take note of this list, and make sure that the items on it are part of their priority list. I wouldnt even care about the priority rank. I would just be thrilled if this was the actual list they were working on.
Where are the quality of life improvements that were promised?
The inventory solution was a pathetic band-aid, as opposed to a real solution.
The offer wall was an invasion of privacy that not all players could even access, had it worked as promised.
The campaigns give a lot of good stuff, but from the beginning seemed like a way to coax just a little more money out of monthly-card players (it worked on me).
The event hub is annoying and less of a hub during an active event than the old interface, even if it is meant to accommodate future additions.
My biggest frustration, which definitely could have alleviated much of the blow-back about the event hub, is effective communication with players. Some games are so good at regularly scheduled updates, whether it's something like a portal refresh or the introduction of new missions. Every chance I get to provide feedback, I ask for more regular communication and a shared development roadmap for the next 6-18 months.
My 4 year anniversary is only a couple months away, but burn-out and apathy are setting in. The game feels more like a chore than a fun escape these days, and DB/WRTP is terrible at engaging players and creating excitement, especially after so many failures and feedback falling on deaf ears.
hey remember when DB used to do a live video update EVERY WEEK to show us cool things in the works, and even occasionally give away waffles?
I wonder how many programmers even work on the game these days? Creating crew and events of existing event types doesn't (or anyway shouldn't) require a programmer.