Eight recent DB screw ups
Iknamur_
✭✭✭
in The Bridge
1. Firing good employees.
Things didn't go smoothly before, but thinking that you can improve them with fewer employees was obviously a bad decision. Art has been worse (I don't want to say "terrible"), the number of errors in the game has increased, bad decisions have been made lately. Most of all, DB doesn't hear its customers. In her December Production Update, Admiral Prince said that DB had heard our feedback, but then some of the decisions were exactly the opposite of what players wanted. I understand that making players happy might not be always good for business, but surely making them unhappy week after week can lead to no positive outcomes. DB, stop thinking with your pockets and use some of the money to hire some brains, it might keep this app alive. It's called investment.
2. Voyages crew nerf
I can understand the chron nerf if it indeed affected the game balance, but there's no explanation for nerfing crew. In the original post, an increased chance of getting crew was mentioned, but the reality is that non-dilemma purple crew are barely dropping now for voyages shorter than 9h. IMO voyages were the best addition to the game and that was because of the crew rewards, not the extra chronitons that inflated galaxy events. It was something positive, then DB decided that we shouldn't have nice things, which is very frustrating. An official statement, please?
3. Voyage only crew, dropping one time only!
It's not like the Trek Universe is limited and you can't come up with new crew, that's why the decision of having crew drop one time only seems very curious. I'd add cannon or non-cannon voyage only crew on a monthly basis just to make things more exciting, but DB decided that getting a 1/4 is the way to go. I would like an explanation for this decision, please.
4. Now that we're talking crew, I think that making Stamets the monthly 4* for the next 4 months is disrespectful. Most of us spent time and resources to get him from his event and it's frustrating to get him again, free. IMO the monthly crew should always be new exclusive crew, just like Captain Janeway was back in her days. There are other ways to complete partially fused crew and the monthly should not be one of them. And please don't tell me that new players need Stamets in particular, any 4/4 will be fine for them without affecting older players.
5. This is a personal opinion, but I must say that having three non-canon crew for the last part of the mega-event was disappointing. I wan't repeat here the forum talk about Mirror Sisko, Mirror Archer and Mirror Scotty, but we all know that it could have been much better than "Pirate Janeway" or the "Unappealing Troi". If DB can't come up with a good story and an exciting crew for a mega-event why bother?
6. Last week's shuttle / expedition hybrid was a disaster. It started with "technical difficulties" which would be a normal thing once in a while but absolutely annoying when it repeats week after week. Somebody clearly doesn't do his/her job properly and it really looks more and more like DB doesn't care.
Then it was the ending day screw up. Again, a negligence if it happened once, but negligence seems to be a synonym for DB.
But then DB tried to fix it and, as usual, made things worse. 6 additional tickets were given away for the Christmas day. Some of the players received them graciously, others were pissed off, but the point is that you can't alter the rules of the game DURING the game. Some of us wouldn't have started that event knowing that it would come up to using 6 additional tickets in a day when usually family comes first. This was a bad call and I say this without being directly affected. Forum posts were written, tickets were open, no answers so far. Personally I don't intend to let it go because, in terms of fairness and game management, I find it a very bad call. I want to know: did the person responsible for the 6 additional tickets play them all during Christmas? What was his/her final event rank? Does he/she have a family?
7. Ship schematics not updated
DB announced that PvP's reward change was scheduled for Jan 2nd. Is it so difficult to keep your word on something so easy? If there are thousands of players pissed off because one employee didn't do (again) his job, hopefully he will be looking for a new job starting today. You have probably been patient with your employees (I know we have!), but it's time for some real actions because we can't take it anymore.
8. The Picard compensation
IMO, the person who made the decision of giving out a free Picard is either not very smart or not playing (therefore not understanding) the game and I think it's important for us to know who this person is and what other decisions does he/she make. A player could get a compensation in the game for a screw up, but there are no compensations for all the disappointments and frustrations that affect players on a personal level. Decisions like giving out a free Picard or 6 additional tickets are major screw ups and DB should start owning its mistakes by offering proper compensations and by replacing the ones responsible. There are thousands of unhappy customers who spent lots of money and many hours playing this game and who demand satisfaction.
DB, I want to write once again about customer support, because this is an issue that haven't been solved so far. Sometimes people have sent the same ticket (word by word) for the same general issue but have gotten different answers and solutions from DB. Then there are people who open a ticket because your screw ups affect them in a particular way and they receive a standard answer, most of the time saying "we can't" or "we don't want to", without paying attention to the personal nature of the ticket. I understand that you probably have too few customer support employees and too many tickets to handle, but there are only two solutions for this thing: hire more or stop screwing up.
I want to point out that for almost two years players have had some great ideas about STT development and only few of them were put into practice. This game has an incredible creative player base and you, DB, manage to disappoint them week after week. I would be very sad to speak of this game in past tense, but it certainly feels that we're pretty close to that moment.
Things didn't go smoothly before, but thinking that you can improve them with fewer employees was obviously a bad decision. Art has been worse (I don't want to say "terrible"), the number of errors in the game has increased, bad decisions have been made lately. Most of all, DB doesn't hear its customers. In her December Production Update, Admiral Prince said that DB had heard our feedback, but then some of the decisions were exactly the opposite of what players wanted. I understand that making players happy might not be always good for business, but surely making them unhappy week after week can lead to no positive outcomes. DB, stop thinking with your pockets and use some of the money to hire some brains, it might keep this app alive. It's called investment.
2. Voyages crew nerf
I can understand the chron nerf if it indeed affected the game balance, but there's no explanation for nerfing crew. In the original post, an increased chance of getting crew was mentioned, but the reality is that non-dilemma purple crew are barely dropping now for voyages shorter than 9h. IMO voyages were the best addition to the game and that was because of the crew rewards, not the extra chronitons that inflated galaxy events. It was something positive, then DB decided that we shouldn't have nice things, which is very frustrating. An official statement, please?
3. Voyage only crew, dropping one time only!
It's not like the Trek Universe is limited and you can't come up with new crew, that's why the decision of having crew drop one time only seems very curious. I'd add cannon or non-cannon voyage only crew on a monthly basis just to make things more exciting, but DB decided that getting a 1/4 is the way to go. I would like an explanation for this decision, please.
4. Now that we're talking crew, I think that making Stamets the monthly 4* for the next 4 months is disrespectful. Most of us spent time and resources to get him from his event and it's frustrating to get him again, free. IMO the monthly crew should always be new exclusive crew, just like Captain Janeway was back in her days. There are other ways to complete partially fused crew and the monthly should not be one of them. And please don't tell me that new players need Stamets in particular, any 4/4 will be fine for them without affecting older players.
5. This is a personal opinion, but I must say that having three non-canon crew for the last part of the mega-event was disappointing. I wan't repeat here the forum talk about Mirror Sisko, Mirror Archer and Mirror Scotty, but we all know that it could have been much better than "Pirate Janeway" or the "Unappealing Troi". If DB can't come up with a good story and an exciting crew for a mega-event why bother?
6. Last week's shuttle / expedition hybrid was a disaster. It started with "technical difficulties" which would be a normal thing once in a while but absolutely annoying when it repeats week after week. Somebody clearly doesn't do his/her job properly and it really looks more and more like DB doesn't care.
Then it was the ending day screw up. Again, a negligence if it happened once, but negligence seems to be a synonym for DB.
But then DB tried to fix it and, as usual, made things worse. 6 additional tickets were given away for the Christmas day. Some of the players received them graciously, others were pissed off, but the point is that you can't alter the rules of the game DURING the game. Some of us wouldn't have started that event knowing that it would come up to using 6 additional tickets in a day when usually family comes first. This was a bad call and I say this without being directly affected. Forum posts were written, tickets were open, no answers so far. Personally I don't intend to let it go because, in terms of fairness and game management, I find it a very bad call. I want to know: did the person responsible for the 6 additional tickets play them all during Christmas? What was his/her final event rank? Does he/she have a family?
7. Ship schematics not updated
DB announced that PvP's reward change was scheduled for Jan 2nd. Is it so difficult to keep your word on something so easy? If there are thousands of players pissed off because one employee didn't do (again) his job, hopefully he will be looking for a new job starting today. You have probably been patient with your employees (I know we have!), but it's time for some real actions because we can't take it anymore.
8. The Picard compensation
IMO, the person who made the decision of giving out a free Picard is either not very smart or not playing (therefore not understanding) the game and I think it's important for us to know who this person is and what other decisions does he/she make. A player could get a compensation in the game for a screw up, but there are no compensations for all the disappointments and frustrations that affect players on a personal level. Decisions like giving out a free Picard or 6 additional tickets are major screw ups and DB should start owning its mistakes by offering proper compensations and by replacing the ones responsible. There are thousands of unhappy customers who spent lots of money and many hours playing this game and who demand satisfaction.
DB, I want to write once again about customer support, because this is an issue that haven't been solved so far. Sometimes people have sent the same ticket (word by word) for the same general issue but have gotten different answers and solutions from DB. Then there are people who open a ticket because your screw ups affect them in a particular way and they receive a standard answer, most of the time saying "we can't" or "we don't want to", without paying attention to the personal nature of the ticket. I understand that you probably have too few customer support employees and too many tickets to handle, but there are only two solutions for this thing: hire more or stop screwing up.
I want to point out that for almost two years players have had some great ideas about STT development and only few of them were put into practice. This game has an incredible creative player base and you, DB, manage to disappoint them week after week. I would be very sad to speak of this game in past tense, but it certainly feels that we're pretty close to that moment.
31
Comments
As for the Mirror Bev event, I was going to let it go, but I do think you're right that we shouldn't, that was a mega-blunder too. DB should never change an event's schedule during the event. It was unwise of them to even run these two events during the biggest holidays for most of its player base.
Captain of the voyage vessels: Queen of Bashir, Landsknecht, and Sunspear, the first luxury starship cruiseliners.
Amenities include wifi, fully-functioning holodecks, a full-service bar, 3 party decks, a Trill spa, and a business centre.
Fun fact: The ships are propelled by bouncy castle technology.
DB: Do Better.
Member of Starship Trista.
Proud Former Officer of The Gluten Empire
Retired 12-14-20. So long, and thanks for all the cat pics!
8 recent screwups
7 non-canon crew
6 expedition tickets
5-day events... (one wasn't)
4 new Voyage crew
3 Janeway's
2 event server crashes
And one copy of Mirror Picard.
I've always tried to be reasonable and specific with my criticisms of DB and STT, which means avoiding massive over-arching conspiracy theories about institutional antipathy towards the player base.
But increasingly, I have no choice but to wonder this exact same thing: Are the people making decisions with regard to the game even playing it? Do they understand the experience/psychology of the player sufficiently to presage the impact-of/response-to those decisions?
Because for every time [DB] Black Pebble pops in and posts something that indicates they get "it" (the game, the players, the in-jokes, the level of the room), there seem to be about 3 instances of DB doing things that have no possible outcome other than pissing off a lot of people. So either they're doing it on purpose (I sure hope not), or they just don't realize that's how it's gonna end up.
Which is sad in a whole other kind of way.
I have to ask, though: at the End of the day, does it really matter?
I mean, if you're walking along and a boulder falls from the top of the cliff next to you, does it really matter to you if the boulder fell because a person pushed it, or because erosion made it unstable? Either way, you've still been crushed flat by a big rock.
I gave up when they punished us with 6 more tickets. I personally felt like dB was saying FU to my face.
A few extra syllables here and there make it awkward to sing but...
You should add this into the "Do Better 2" thread as one of the issues that needs to be adequately addressed before players consider trusting DB again.
Additionally only 3/7 login 4* were not available in events. Janeway, troi, seven and now staments were. Login rewards are mainly for new players. Good for them as he is a great 4* sci.
Nothing to argue about the event mess up though.
Thanks, will do.
On 1: I can't, however, in good conscience, condone laying off people who have been doing solid work that players thoroughly applauded, but I can understand if they left on their own volition.
On 6: I was also rather unpleasantly surprised when I came back to STT on Christmas just to find out that I had 3,5 hours to finish 9 tickets, which I had planned to leave for the next day. It forced me to betray my family, by frantically finishing tickets while they were resting and/or celebrating, it forced me to betray STT, by totally playing it not the way it is meant to be played, and finally, I betrayed myself for giving a word and doing something completely different. Not a good feeling, I tell you.
On 8: I don't have much of a problem with the freebie as much as I have a problem with the thought process behind it, and the short-sightedness to the consequences it might entail. It shows a severe lack of management skills and it makes the simple fact that not enough thought was put into it all the more apparent. On Megaevents the 5th star on the recurring crew member is missing for a reason, and the entire STT community is conditioned to accept it, and either buy the 25€ offer, or save up 50k honor. Blatantly giving a 5th copy after the entire Mega is over makes me think that DB does not understand its community... And that is a very sad conclusion to draw.
I hate making such posts... I come back to the forums to share, discuss stuff with fellow trekkies, and generally have some heaps of good fun, while meeting new awesome people. However, I will also not allow myself to be silent where the screw-up is apparent and needs to be punished - or at least, made apparent enough for DB to understand.
My description of DB is "Malignant Apathy"
This. ^^^
In my opinion, an even worse decision than the Mirror Picard blunder, as they literally changed the rules of the game half-way through the event. Both "compensations" feel like rushed, poor decisions. As someone who didn't have enough time to use 9 tickets in one day and fell from rank 300 to 1,050 at the end of the event, I'm ticked that I missed out on a 5* Beverley.
Thanks for ruining Xmas and New Years, DB!
Some of these things could be forgivable, but the length and breadth of them is all down to #1.
They need *more* planning and *more* eyes looking for problems, and instead they've impaired their ability to do both. It's hard to admit after having spent so much on this game, but this feels like death throes.
-Lord Wizzlestix I
How do you know this? Were you in the meetings regarding company resource allocation, GPA discussions, cuts etc.? Links etc. plz.
2.
Yeah it is a bummer.
3.
But they can drop 1 time 4 times no? i.e. FF crew with some luck ... just as you can get Guinan FF with lots of luck.
4.
Meh ... the best is of course to use crew that are maybe one-offs and have not been part of an event ... e.g. Resistance Shakaar, Gorn Captain etc. ... but Stamets is great for those f2p ... "effort" to get Stamets FF was pretty minimal for anyone with a half decent crew (hey I got him FF and if I can do it anyone can - I placed 7.700 in that event) so that is kinda moot in your argument there ... I see the monthly log-in rewards as a boost for f2p players (who may not have had a decent crew at that time), as anyone who has put serious time into the game will have obtained almost anything DB can offer (other than brand new crew).
5.
As you said ... personal opinion so not really relevant, as there are others who do not feel DB "messed up" with that respect and do not mind non-canon crew. You bring your other arguments down by bringing in personal opinions, keep everything clean and clinical and you stand stronger.
6.
A terrible mistake. No foresight whatsoever.
7.
It happens, but yeah, when I don't meet my deadlines I get full heat from my boss. Shouldn't happen ... compensation? Another Mirror Picard?
8.
This is really poor decision-making on DB's part and DB basically gives the middle finger to any serious/paying player.
But yeah ... the culmination to point 8 was especially poor with regards to who actually pays to keep the game running ... those that pay are slowly coming to the realisation that it might not be worth it and once that settles in and starts to grow then this game is on its last legs and once players realise that then the pace will pick up on how soon this game dissolves into memories.
However, they tend to not update the portals as regularly as they have done before. There should be a portal update every month to include event crew from I think 6 months or so ago respectively.
Yeah that was super rough and I feel really bad for those who are gone.
2. Voyages crew nerf:
This one really hit me like cheese-grader toilet paper. The Voyage Nerf has just been awful, and I can tell you for a fact now: My Galaxy Event experience GREATLY suffered for it. I had a lot less Chrons and a lot less fun. I found myself wishing they had put up the 1250 Chrons for $9.99 offer.... wait.... I see what you did there DB!
3. Voyage only crew, dropping one time only!:
I HATE unfused crew, and I HATE having now way to fuse someone other than Citations.
4. I think that making Stamets the monthly 4* for the next 4 months is disrespectful.
If i didn't have him FF i would have appreciated it, BUT as it stands he is FF, just like the past 2 monthly super rares. It would be nice if, just for once, it could be someone I need. RNG lol
5. I must say that having three non-canon crew for the last part of the mega-event was disappointing
I didn't like it either, but I don't think this was DB decision. At least 2 of them were MED characters with really good stats.
6. Last week's shuttle / expedition hybrid event
I think this demonstrates why holiday events should be shorter and not longer...
7. Ship schematics not updated
They doubled down on this one.... even the fix had issues lol
8. The Picard compensation
Please refer to: https://forum.disruptorbeam.com/stt/categories/the-bridge
Clearly it said "NX-class" and the icon showed NX-class ... and I got ISS Enterprise ...