Star Trek Online Advisory Board gets its own FAQ

by Eliot Lefebvre on Apr 8th 2010 9:00AM

Sci-fi, Culture, Forums, News items, Opinion, Star Trek Online

When Star Trek Online announced the formation of their Advisory Council for fan input, the response was fairly unhappy, in the same way that the sun's surface is fairly warm. No one, especially the vocal forumgoers, liked the idea of certain fans getting extra input in the game's direction. Cryptic is aware of the negative reaction, and they're doing their best to ameliorate concerns by clarifying the intended purpose of the board. A list of frequently asked questions has just recently gone live on the official site, no doubt hoping to clear the air and mollify those who felt silenced.

As the FAQ takes pains to reinforce, the intent was not to replace other forms of player feedback, but to use a different angle to get in touch with fans not active on the forums. The council itself will have methods for removing members seen as advancing a personal agenda over the wishes of others, and there will be methods to add new members based on a variety of factors. Star Trek Online's team does seem to have their heart in the right place, but unpopular decisions can be hard to bounce back from. It remains to be seen how the coommunity will react to Cryptic's explanatory olive branch.

Source

Tags: advisory-council, backlash, controversy, cryptic, cryptic-star-trek, cryptic-studios, faq, forums, st-online, star-trek-mmo, star-trek-online, sto, trek-online

Reader Comments (28)

I knew you guys couldn't go a day without a Cryptic-related article :)

Much like Cryptic in general: good idea, poorly implemented.

Will they just stop already... Cryptic really has shown they have no idea what they are doing..

So they hire some third party Social Networking Firm to find these Council members. They could even be bothered themselfs to put in the time to find fans for there own game to get feedback from. Just another way from them to lay blame at the feet of another company if this goes bad.

"Q: So people who don't give feedback in the forums are going to talk to one of four strangers about it?
A: Star Trek fans who feel overwhelmed by the forums and disinclined to post there may prefer speaking with other Star Trek fans in different venues, yes."

I don't see that happening much if any at all. If the person can't be bothered to provide feedback via ingame or on the forums do they really think the person is going to walk up-to some stranger on a venue and start giving out feedback. Heck the council member at the venue more then likely has a lot more on there mind then taking down feedback from some fan.

See now, you're the reason this council was created. The reason you don't see it having much value is precisely the point: who doesn't know that if they post on the forums, people like you will jump all over them?

Heaven forbid that anyone should have something positive to say, and these days even negative opinions that attempt to be constructive are still flamed to death.

Having council members that won't deride you or call you a n00b or a fanboi is a great idea; but people like you can't understand because you're the problem they were created to solve.

All this drama over STOked is much ado about nothing.

The more I play this game the more i realize its not Cryptic who's bad but that its all just mass hysteria by the players for little to no reason. It seems that MMO gamers opinions are like a forest fire; one spark seems to set the entire forest ablaze in a self propagating cycle of destruction.

If that's the case, then why does Cryptic get so much flack and no one else?

It's not that they make one bad decision, it's the multitude of poor ideas that they implement without consulting the majority, find out that, whoops, they made a mistake, and then set it back to the way it was or to how people wanted it, all the while claiming they're "listening to the community" when what theyre really listening to is the blowback. If they'd listened to the community in the first place, people wouldn't discuss them with such vitriol.

What are the multiple bad ideas they have run with in STO that they have gone against the communities wishes and how do we know what the community wants?

Bottom line is consumers vote with wallets and we don't know what their revenue is despite what rabid forums warriors would lead us to think. Cryptic only needs to listen to IFG shareholders at the end of the day.

"If that's the case, then why does Cryptic get so much flack and no one else?"

SOE? FunCom? Yeah, enjoying the shelter as Cryptic is the lightning rod of choice these days. Serves Cryptic right for releasing new games and hogging all the attention that goes with it.

I think if Cryptic had approached as more of a voted on council where the community could view the initial canditates and vote on the council instead of being "told" hey here's your council things would of gone over smoother.

Making the players "active" in the decision also makes it a game element since Cryptic could of approached like an in game live sort of event.

There's so many ways they could of approached this to get players who don't communicate on the official boards that would of made it about everyone but they went for the quickest and hence once again the community loud mouth aggro bots are crying. They should just realize this is how it will always be. Cryptic will make a controversial decision a huge up roar / rage event will happen and boom they waffle and try to fix it.

I understand your desire to feel part of the selection process, but I honestly don't think you've really thought your alternative through, or at least, maybe you just haven't explained it enough here?

Let's say that they did exactly as you say.

How would you nominate someone for a vote? Would you choose someone whose attitudes reflected your own? How would you know that was the case? The most 'public' players are those on the forums, and it would be so much simpler to find out what those players stood for that it would be difficult for a non-forum 'personality' to achieve the same level of campaigning.

And that's the whole problem: the council needs to be non-forum members to get an alternative point of view across.

Any kind of public election would pretty much guarantee that wouldn't happen.

@Ian

If I were playing STO, which is to presume there is a Bizzaro World, I would probably choose a forum personality that took it upon themselves to compile and organize a sensible list of suggestions and feedback. Like a sticky author.

@Kdolo:

Sure, but Cryptic's reasoning is that they already have the forums, and can already find out what forum users want from the game.

If they'd created a council with forum personalities, everyone would be up in arms about why only a small group of them gets chosen and how it would mean Cryptic are ignoring the majority of forum users: there's really no way at all for Cryptic to implement it that wouldn't turn out bad (in my opinion, the forum users mostly think they can't do anything right as it is, regardless of what they try).

Attempting to get feedback from non-forum users is tricky, but important.

I played a Klingon when STO first came out, and it was very evident over the course of my first month of play that they (Cryptic) have little insight into development of a mmorpg, but perhaps are better at making single-player games. The list of what's lacking from this game, and it's inherent mmo design flaws is a bit lengthy for this post, but the community has already spoken.

Yea, the community has already spoken with their action of un-subscribing to this game. I've always found it odd how idiots with educations (the devs) enter into this trance of denial about how horribly designed their game is, and then believe by allowing the remaining people who are subscribing to provide input, can cure the disease state or stop the bleeding. Truth is, Cryptic failed to listen to it's community during beta and re-skinned Champions Online with a spaceship. There isn't anything Cryptic can do to turn this game around.

Oh, and way to go mmorpg.com with the 7.5 score on this single-player game;

You appear to be implying that you have only played the Klingon side of the game - if this is the case then you are not qualified to judge the whole game based on only the PvP faction.

When calling the developers "idiots" just for making mistakes in making a game is not a mature or valid argument - they clearly did not intend to make a bad game and insulting people to get your point across shows a lack of intelligence. Argumentum ad hominem.

The game obviously is not what people want but at least Cryptic are trying to put things right (with this admittedly ill-conceived and poorly implemented Council and content patches etc).

@Super Healer
I think calling the developers "idiots" for making mistakes in developing a game valid, if not mature. Maybe they didn't intend to make a bad game, but calling the team idiots because they didn't flesh out the game before it was released is not an ad hominem attack. Ad hominem would be "You must be wrong because you're an idiot." What Korben is saying, "They were wrong because of this. That makes them idiots"

Agree or disagree, but it's totally valid. Personally, I would have used much sharper language :)

@Ian I didn't think it through really? So what about EvE thats how their panel works. Please Research and Come Again dude.

@Load of Idiots:

You mean the CSM that is composed entirely of very active players from the forums?

Fail comprehension test, dude.

Dude this is nothing like EVE's CSM. You're the one who needs to get his facts straight. If it were more like that and created like that I think people would be happier.

I wonder why they think the vast majority of players that can't be bothered with providing feedback through official channels (forums) will go to fansites to do so...

The "vast" majority of whom you speak have already communicated with their wallets, as it should be.

| 1 | 2 | Most Recent | Next 20 Comments

Star Trek Online Advisory Board gets its own FAQ

Reader Comments (28)

Posted: Apr 8th 2010 9:14AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Apr 8th 2010 9:21AM Snichy said

Posted: Apr 8th 2010 9:30AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Apr 8th 2010 10:02AM Ringu said

Posted: Apr 8th 2010 9:33AM Thac0 said

Posted: Apr 8th 2010 10:51AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Apr 8th 2010 11:01AM Thac0 said

Posted: Apr 8th 2010 1:06PM Teh Jer said

Posted: Apr 8th 2010 9:57AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Apr 8th 2010 10:10AM Ringu said

Posted: Apr 8th 2010 11:47AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Apr 8th 2010 12:29PM Ringu said

Posted: Apr 8th 2010 10:21AM KorbenDallas said

Posted: Apr 8th 2010 11:37AM Snichy said

Posted: Apr 8th 2010 11:55AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Apr 8th 2010 11:40AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Apr 8th 2010 12:33PM Ringu said

Posted: Apr 8th 2010 12:51PM Krag said

Posted: Apr 8th 2010 11:54AM Harley Dude said

Posted: Apr 8th 2010 6:56PM Graill440 said

Info

Description

MSRP

Release Date

Genre

Developer

Publisher

Rating

Breaking News

The Secret World launch delayed to July 3rd

Featured Stories

The Mog Log: The Legacy rewards and what they mean

The Tattered Notebook: The passing of Ribbitribbitt

The Firing Line: PlanetSide 2's Matt Higby on the MMOFPS revolution

Engadget

Joystiq

WoW

TUAW