On the difficulty in getting a STF queue to fill:

Gecko: “So many queues, so many people are spread out. (not enough players)”
Lootcritter: “There used to be. Before the dark times. Before Delta Rising”

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Whether I’m on the road or in the office, part of my monday ritual is listening to the weekly Priority One Podcasts.  While I don’t always agree with what I hear (Elijah’s dead wrong about DS9 – nuff said), I do enjoy the banter between Cookie, Jayce and Elijah.  The production quality is consistently high, but if you’re interested in an unvarnished view, check out their live recording sessions each week (usually Fridays @ 8pm eastern – I think).

Check out this weeks podcast here: http://priorityonepodcast.com/po219/

What I enjoy the most are the visits and interviews with the production staff at Star Trek Online.  Little tidbits from production behind-the-scenes, to practical discussions about player engagement offers a decent view in what it takes to bring Star Trek Online to life.

When I have complaints it usually touches on the producer-friendly environment, when you see missed opportunities with questions or follow-ups.  This week – I have no such complaints with the P1 Hosts.  In fact, I think they’re getting better at asking tougher questions.  Way to go Cookie 😉

But in listening to Captain Gecko’s comments this week I found myself wanting to answer back many of comments and assertions he makes.  It’s no secret I don’t care for him as a spokesperson for the game, but I do recognize that he does love the franchise that ultimately pays his salary.

I also realize that I honestly don’t know what’s happening behind the scenes.  I can only base my responses on what I experience in game, or on assumptions based on my work experiences.

This is the point in my post where I’d advise you to turn back if you’re not a fan of snarky, one-sided comments in a truly partisan blog post.

*ahem*

Throughout the interview Gecko tends to wander, to further embellish comments he’s already made.  In some cases it’s to add depth or additional background to the conversation (which can be awesome), but sometimes it inadvertently reveals his inability to connect with the typical gamer.

This is what really grinds my gears. I honestly don’t care that he can’t discuss the bad things (ridiculous lag, persistent bugs, rushed work and poor planning), but when he glosses over them, or when he doesn’t take them seriously I start to question his role as spokesperson.  And when he admits he doesn’t even know the names of STF’s in the games (Gecko: we use internal names), I begin to seriously wonder what Cryptic is thinking.

So as I listened to his lengthy interview, I found myself responding with each questionable statement or comment.  Some of the responses below are paraphrased.

Gecko: “So many queues, so many people are spread out. (not enough players)”
Lootcritter: “There used to be. Before the dark times. Before Delta Rising.”

Gecko: “So we’re planning to take some (queues) out of rotation.”
Lootcritter: “Ok.  can we start with the queues that are unplayable?.”

Gecko: “Lets say we have 50 queues, but only have 100 players, it’s very hard to get queues going.”
Lootcritter: “We used to have enough players.  But ok, I’ll play along.  We have 65+ queues, and only 6-8 get filled.  Even during LoR, there would be 30+ running.  Must be that damn reporting bug.”

Gecko: “We’re trying to do things to drive people to queues, perhaps get them into rotation”
Lootcritter: “Didn’t you just cancel rotating events six months ago?”

Gecko: “We’ll try a carrot. We’ll try triple rewards say, on Vicious Cycle, and everyone will play that”
Lootcritter: “Empty queues are NOT the result of too many queues.  Tripling the rewards will not make players engage a difficult queue while the game is lagging as bad as it is.”

Gecko: “We all know what your playing.  It’s Borg Disconnected. You’re playing Infected Space.  … People gravitate to the ones that are fun and have good rewards.  The Spire is one of my favourites, buts it’s long…”
Lootcritter: “WRONG” and “The Spire has shitty rewards.  ‘Nuff said.”

Gecko: “Delta Rising was originally going to have Playable Borg – that was an early design”
Lootcritter: ” Is he trolling us?”

Gecko: “We want to refill our coffers with new ships.  The last T6 ship we will build will be a Klingon Science Cruiser.”
Lootcritter: ” Mother-frakker. He IS trolling us.”

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Here a a few highlights/tidbits we got from this weeks podcast:

• Season Ten will be the end of the Iconian Arc
• More episodes are coming (3-5 additional)
• Crafting Update
• Fleet revamp is coming (10.5 or 11)
• Skill revamp (Season 11)
• Duty Officer revamp
• Cross faction Ship Traits
• Featured Episodes will make a re-appearance, likely uncoupled from lobi promotion/event
• Cardassian likely to get an episode revamp next, Breen possibly.
• Advanced queues are getting a fix, ala ANRA
• Delta Recruits success: Far more accepted and loved than we anticipated.
• They will eventually separate space and ground traits (yay) but what’s holding it up is that some races don’t have 9 traits for each.
• Queues take 6 weeks to design.
• Missions come in 2 styles, 3 and 6 week versions in terms of development time.