Newest Ask Cryptic on Champions Online

"For whatever people may fault them on, Cryptic Studios has an excellent track record for trying to keep communications open between the company and the fans."

ahem.... cough....

http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=147393

On a more general note, I will continue to post items like this because after the last two months, I feel that Cryptic's coverage on this site is not balanced and gives gamers an unclear impression about the games mentioned. I've long defended Massively for being impartial, but with Cryptic, it's just not true, sorry guys. I don't know if it's because you copy paste the press releases from Cryptic, but the feedback you have had from ex players such as myself has been pretty overwhelming.

I know it's good for a news site to support the community, but credit where credit is due and Cryptic have had a considerable amount of time to right hte wrongs of the initial launch. For a company that champions there awesome generic MMO builder, it sure take a long fucking time to get updates out....

I'd much rather you got behind smaller independent efforts, like the 'Love' MMO, or look forward to companies like oToy or OnLive to see what they have planned for MMO's. I think if we can see substantial news stories, rather than just telling us about rather limp news letters then news stories would be much better received.

@Turlagh

What Cryptic needs to do is learn to listen to it's testers. I was never part of the CO beta, I was in beta but didn't provide much feedback other then bug reporting.

I was very active in the STO closed beta. There we mentioned countless issues we found with the game. Sadly Cryptic had become too close to their game. They couldn't see the flaws that the testers were pointing out and were slow and hesitant to make any major changes.

I went from giddy and excited for STO to warning my friends to stay away. I don't mind CO, butgiven the IP STO could have been so much more.

@Mr Angry I've been saying that for months :p

I beta tested both STO and CO, and it's true that they didn't fix a lot of flaws that were pointed out, whether they were bugs or gameplay directions. However, I also believe that they simply don't have the personnel available to make the sweeping changes and rampant fixes they need to make in their games. With 50 people on Star Trek Online, that's still only what, 40% of the staff available for the FIRST Mass Effect (125). I'm not going to guess how many are on CO right now, because the number might be depressing. This also doesn't excuse the fact that it took them 4-5 months to fix CO with the Kitchen Sink Patch.

A good part of the reason their MMOGs feel generic is due to the fact that the Cryptic Engine is made to be generic; it's sole function is to serve as a common foundation on which they can churn out MMOGs. Unfortunately, their games seem to be bound by a lot of the Engine's limitations because of this.

As for Massively's articles: they are reporting based on someone's viewpoint...the writer's. If 50% is true neutral, they're probably about 65-70% favoring Cryptic, generally. Spinning it the other way because commenters disagree would be doing a disservice to the readers as well. They can spin it however they want because, y'know, I'm an adult and I can figure it out for myself whether a game is good or not. It's not like Massively doesn't report the bad as well, but some seem to gloss over that. Let people do the research and find out for themselves; if they're reading Massively as gospel (or any one source for that matter), that's their own fault.

I will say one thing though: Massively has gone a little downhill with the civility of its comment postings. Although somewhat surprisingly, this one is still going well.

It's funny. People on the Cryptic forums say that Massively always puts a negative spin on all of their coverage of Cryptic's games... and yet, the posters here say the opposite.

I swear Massively's deliberately trolling it's readers with these things.