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Things that hurt the game
Jurati_whoa
✭✭✭
in The Bridge
In my opinion:
1. Bangate - this was a purge of many of the longterm players i knew. Everything in the game was deteriorating after this, including even competition, fleet stability, new player joining, etc.
2. Fleet boss battles - such awesome potential was completely overshadowed by the completely disregarded game crippling limitations of in game messaging, as well as many issues with fbb that were compounded by the poor comms. It was fun at first so i cant really say dead on arrival, but over time it has been more of a frustration than a source of fun and enjoyment.
Add yours!
1. Bangate - this was a purge of many of the longterm players i knew. Everything in the game was deteriorating after this, including even competition, fleet stability, new player joining, etc.
2. Fleet boss battles - such awesome potential was completely overshadowed by the completely disregarded game crippling limitations of in game messaging, as well as many issues with fbb that were compounded by the poor comms. It was fun at first so i cant really say dead on arrival, but over time it has been more of a frustration than a source of fun and enjoyment.
Add yours!
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You seriously think that sulus husband caused more harm to the game than wrg’s obliviousness?
What a joke. Even during “busy times” less than 50 people spend time here. Thats not even a meaningful percentage of the currently dwindling playerbase.
Then fracking stop.
1. When various issues arose with Fleet Boss Battles over the last year, players would report those issues on the forums. Many of them were read and addressed by the employees and the few that were not players have offered assistance to other players. That thread is full of examples of both.
2. When the Objective Events were first launched and people noticed the required 18 Admiral Division Arena wins were a pain point, players used this forum to coordinate the tanking strategy where participating players would remove their entire Arena bridge crews to make it easier for other players to win.
3. For years players have used this forum to recruit new players into fleets to get them setup for success.
There are many other examples, but this helps demonstrate the point. The players that make up this active community on this forum always work together to overcome whatever issues may arise to the benefit of all. This forum has played no small part in the continued success of Star Trek Timelines.
And that is why I say with conviction that the single biggest threat to Star Trek Timelines was Princess Uhura (P.U.). There have been other "noteworthy" forum villains in the past (Cpt_Insano_2K1 comes to mind) but P.U. was the worst.
During P.U.'s reign of terror the forum itself was under attack. Despite displaying obvious outward signs of hating the game, P.U. spent many hours each day overseeing the forum, monitoring every thread, hijacking most of them, attacking respondents and submarining even the most benign of discussions, the end result of which was a dramatic reduction in forum participation. P.U. was cancer to the free, open exchange of ideas this forum needs to do all the good work it does to benefit the community.
Most people dissatisfied with the game simply quit playing, but not P.U. Whether P.U. was suffering from extreme sunk cost fallacy and kept playing to prolong their suffering, their narcissism was so extreme or their ego was so fragile they could not abide the idea of quitting, or they were an employee from a rival company pretending to be a dissatisfied player, P.U. made it their mission to cast a wide net and envelope and ensnare as many players as possible into their misery and that nearly tore this place apart.
The weeks leading up to P.U.'s banishment were the darkest this forum had ever known and the days after the banishment was almost a celebration! People who had not posted in weeks returned, threads were started and allowed to stay on topic, nobody took any disagreements personally and lashed out, it was great! If the forums had streets, people would have been dancing in them!
If Star Trek Timelines can survive P.U. it can survive anything. I for one am happy P.U. is banished, the players and the forum are much better for it. Nothing 'hurt the game' more than P.U.
Apparently it was for getting something right about WRG, rather than what she actually known for. She clashed with other players many times and nothing was done. Scored a critical hit on the company and was gone before she clicked "The Bridge" to exit the thread.
IIRC
It's not a total block. If someone quotes an account you've ignored you'll still see the quote, and it won't hide threads. But it's still good when someone gets under your skin. And if someone gets off on riling folks up, being ignored will deprive them of that engagement.
Starport
I use that function. But it is often bypassed by my OCD. I have to read EVERYTHING in a thread.
But, for normal people it is definitely an option.
Here's the thing, people who are looking will see. Yes chat can be improved, but the fleet message is there. And chat works most of the time. And once you've opened the boss it should be obvious what you're working towards. If 50% of your fleet doesn't fight any boss that's because they don't want to, not because chat is broken. If they're targeting a different boss that's because they're being selfish (and stupid).
The chat can be at perfect as you want, but if 50% of your fleet doesn't care enough to contribute and be team players, nothing will fix that. It's much easier for certain posters to blame WRG for everything. But at the end of the day, the fleet needs to be responsible for the members recruited to the fleet.
This is our experience as well. I tend to give the benefit of the doubt and when fleet members say they didnt know, and apologize, i accept that.
The issue for me is that this had been a promised fix for almost 6 months at this point. And we have suffered as a fleet for the delay.
Weve lost longtime players to retirement because of these issues. This is bad for the game in general, not just our fleet.
This is not an issue withfleet leadership, its an issue with in game comms.
As for things that hurt the game, it's pretty simple:
I'm willing to let WRG off the hook for what they inherited from TP. But even under WRG's tenure, I lost track early of mistakes. They were exacerbated by defenses that amounted to "You what we mean." Clearly not, or there wouldn't have been thread after thread asking someone to tell us what the hell you meant. You know what's better than an apology? Thinking through in the first place. Timelines was predictable. I don't believe it must remain predictable, but I do think alterations to predictable things ought to be announced ahead of time. This current mega-event's pre-packs are a good example. Yeah, the announcement was made several days before the packs went live, but that announcement went out on a Friday and no one was around to address any questions until Monday.
Player fatigue is unavoidable for any game. I get that. But Timelines notoriously alienated a great many Day 1 players who weren't just big spenders; they were some of the key pillars of this forum community. We're fortunate that some of our pillars have stuck it out. And where's the new blood? Anecdotally, my fleet was once constantly at a max 50 players. We could replace an inactive player within an hour of creating the opening. We've struggled to maintain even 25, and realistically only about 15 actually active at any given time. I'd take that personally, except I've heard similar problems from a lot of other fleets. Either there are a lot of new players who create and join a fleet as soon as they can, or there just aren't enough interested in playing in the first place.
Do you want to know what piqued my interest in Timelines? Things that, if you'd pitched to me as comics or books would have made me yawn. That Ferengi-Kazon alliance. Mind you, I have always hated the Kazon. But the idea that those two factions could align--especially under Grand Nagus Rom--fascinated me. Game text referenced Mirror Emperor Spock and Romulan Empress Sela. Alexander Rozhenko resorted to becoming an Augment. There was a chance this game might offer something novel. Then came the asinine Canon Purity War of 2016, now in its seventh year, and we have to endure whining even when canonical content is added.
Lastly, I know the tutorial's been revamped since I joined, but I think it could stand to be revamped again. Stepping into the entire franchise can surely be intimidating, so starting off with some familiar faces would be inviting to me. It could even be written into the tutorial that both the Leonard Nimoy and Ethan Peck Spocks exist in this game, reassuring older players that this game includes content they want, too.
BanGate was the weirdest move ever. I mean who in authority okayed that move?
I’m the Founding Admiral of multiple big/well raked fleets I know players they were so squeaky clean who got banned from that I mean nobody meant any harm. If anything, it was WRG’s mistake and then they turned around and punished the players for their lack of QA/QC. Just WOW 😮
I wasn’t banned because it happened during work hours and I was busy working for The Man at the office, but still I was just stunned by somebody at WRG obviously just having a big temper tantrum. But it’s water under the bridge at this point.
Unfortunately, in the Q&A yesterday, the dev team said this is 'not likely to be fixed.' We have been focusing on trying to get our fleet members to join discord, but then of course you run into the problem of 'have to be able to get in touch with them in the first place to let them know that...' :-)
While I disagree with the banning, I will say that anyone who went to the lengths that incurred the banning knew what they were doing. Anyone who says they innocently kept pushing that button and did not know this wasn’t right is not being truthful.
I would come back for that!
They’re back. Under a pseudonym.
I think possibly a second pseudonym. A new name popped up over the weekend.
My name is gladiator
Is that chat feature subcontracted out to a third party?
At the risk of derailing this thread: you seem to have the wrong name for that: https://gladiator.fandom.com/wiki/Maximus_Decimus_Meridius
I know. Autocorrect changed it to that. I hit submit and realized it later. I’ve tried to change it to the correct name about ten times since but I keep getting an oops something went wrong message
How do you trigger a response from this chat bot? It doesn’t seem to be functioning beyond pre-programmed announcements. Or is that considered “working as intended”?
Her name is N.A.N.C.I.!!!!!