[Sul-Matuul]

So this video was posted on Youtube and linked on r/STO for discussion and I think it's an interesting listen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhuE...ature=youtu.be

A few of the top end players had a chat about the recent r/STObuilds mess and how it relates to the in game bugs and also in general how the communication between Devs-Players is handled.
I don't normally link such videos or stuff related to the sort of drama going on this week as we're pretty much independent of the Reddit lot I guess. However I do think that the state of the game is something that all players should really be aware of and concerned with. And also related to that, the sort of things discussed about how good bug reports are filled and how we draw attention from the Devs also links in to how many of the larger fleets like UFP are run.
We are a big community here, 4 Fed fleets and 4 KDF fleets, that is a lot of players and we can make a difference if we all move as one.

So really i'd like to open up discussion on whether we as players and a fleet can do anything to help with better bug reports, or communications within the playerbase in general.
Let's try to keep it civil though, as i know the stunt this week annoyed a fair few people.

[Dragonscoils]

As the author of the "outrage" thread on Reddit I suppose I'll chime in. It was never my intention to be some sort of rallying cry to attack stobuilds I was simply voicing my annoyance.

On to the situation in general.

With my background in Flight Simming and professionally in Customer Service, I'm really on the fence about Cryptic and the players. On the one hand, in flight simming, which does have some similarities to this game, bugs can literally be dangerous. Most pilots practice and train on flight sim software and if a pilot thinks a plane operates differently from it's real world counterpart, things can go sideways fast. Literally. So personally, my standard for bug-free software is pretty high.

On the other hand, professionally I've usually worked for smaller sized companies, and can tell you that going all pitchforks and torches may not accomplish anything positive. The amount of time and resources available to Cryptic will always be less than the players. There are more active players in this fleet than there are PWE and Cryptic employees that work on Star Trek Online I'm sure. So I give them a LOT of leeway when it comes to timetables and bug-fixing.

Bottom line is what can we do individually regardless of any group efforts?
Provide informative and efficient bug reports, and keep in-game chat positive.

Thanks for the video Sul!

[Sul-Matuul]

Yeah you're right that firstly Cryptic probably don't have the resources to fix everything and it's foolish of some players to expect everything to work perfectly 100% of the time with such a small workforce in play.

I do think there are valid concerns about what gets through to Live servers though, especially when you consider we have access to and use a testing server for the very purpose of spotting bugs and issues in advance. Again Cryptic may not have the resources to handle these report, or maybe a pushy controlling parent company like PWE just tells them to drop content to Live without a care for bugs...who knows.

However I do think that in terms of community (as in all fleets, channels, subreddits etc.) we could all try to work together for some sort of bug report standard, a means of reporting that uses the same format so that all reports are accurate and contain all pertinent information.
That needs the Devs to interact with us too so that such a system is understood by both sides, and I'd prefer if they were more open than going to just a very limited number of mods on a single subreddit.

I do know that a standard bug report system has been suggested by the mods over at r/STObuilds in their discussions after this week's events.

[WelshAvenger]

My 2 cents...

You can have the greatest reporting system in the world but if there aren't enough devs to action them, we're stuck with the issues. If PWE/Cryptic's priorities don't include bug fixes, we're stuck with the issues.

I can't speak with any surety about the QA department in Cryptic, (if they even have one), but it seems like there are things being released that should never have gone live. So what if it takes two or three more weeks before you can release the next shiny thing, at least it won't need three or four days of patches and the unending complaints of unhappy players.

Cryptic seem to have a tumultuous relationship with their player base from the science nerf-gate in the early days of the game (I know that us science players took another hit with the nerf bat to grav well more recently effectively killing off science's greatest ability at the time), to the debacle that was delta rising. I know that the STO community is nowhere near as toxic as the EveOnline community but it can get pretty bad with cries of "Cryptic White Knight" and "H8r" being directed at anyone who has a view. No wonder the Devs became more distant after that.

Could they be more transparent about bugs and what needs to be fixed? Sure they could, it'd be the simplest thing in the world to write a monthly article about what bugs they're working on next. My guess is that they won't because nobody likes to admit just how broken something is or just how few staff they have to work on bug crushing. As the game is nine years old (give or take) the base code is bound to be a bit creaky. After all, there are still some bugs around from pre-Delta Rising. Powers needing to be clicked more than once to activate despite not being on a global cooldown with anything) Hazard Emitters, I'm looking at you!

I'd love for the team to be more responsive and interactive but I guess it'd need a big shift in Cryptic's methodology and they've shown us time and again that they're not willing or able to do it.

[Bridger]

I agree to expect that everything is working a 100% is foolish, but the reality is that all bugs that have been reported before the launch of a Season or Expansion goes live like they were on Tribble and many of them have been reported two months in advance.

The Bugbasher initiative created by Cryptic to get rid of bugs is dead because people are asking themselves why to report bug when they are not getting fixed.

Just look at the last glorious release of Cryptic the Beacon of Kahless or how I like to call it the "Beacon of Bull♥♥♥♥" if you want to play the game in slow motion there is nothing better than this.

What STOBuilds did and how they did it was wrong, but seriously it worked we are talking about it.