[Sul-Matuul]

I just don't see guys like Borticus and Kael, whatever you may think of how they handle their primary job, being the kind of deep expert social scientists needed to really straighten out the in-game economy in a way that would create the longer term fix that players are asking for while not enraging the players at the same time.

I totally get this.
BUT...

I think a huge amount of the current player-devs relationship issues could be easily dealt with by these guys (and others too) if they just took a bit more effort in what they do when they interact with their customers.
Nobody is denying the coding is a spaghetti-like mess, that the economy is a ridiculously convoluted monster, or that the PWE overlords demand souls for their sustenance. The game is old and does have issues and fixing them whilst continuing to expand new ideas etc. is an absolute nightmare I'd imagine. But I think nearly everyone would agree that their relationship with the players (aka, their customers) is diabolical at best.

Put some care into getting communications accurate.
Make your interactions regular across all platforms.
Don't post public messages that tar all the players with accusations and just stir up a hornet's nest of resentment.
Own your mistakes.
Listen to your customer's needs and desires.
Stop answering player cries for explanations about changes/bugs/releases etc. with silence.

They might not have the knowledge to fix all the coding, or get the economy working better again. But they sure as heck should be capable of having a public face that the people paying their wages actually have faith in and trust. That would go a long way to making things feel less doomy.

[Dark]

Bort would probably have received less abuse if he didn't insultingly imply players are stupid idiots with a "knee-jerk reaction".

That math that supposedly justifies the prices... I don't know if the people in charge are being disingenuous and think we're stupid enough to be deceived, or if they are genuinely morons who believe their content is universally beloved and you only ever need 1 reroll.

I certainly don't condone abuse, but that was some terrible PR. Did he expect people to go "Oh, you're right. We were wrong and stupid with our 'knee-jerk' response."

[darthnovawave]

Yeah, they are really shooting themselves in the foot when it comes to community relations for sure, but I think that's a separate issue from this economy one. I don't condone the sheer toxicity on display by some of these players in how they are reacting to some of this stuff, but by the same token when it becomes a question of not if but what got messed up in just about every single media post being made, you'd think there would come a point where they'd recognize they need to take a hard look at what they can do to improve that process but it just seems to be getting worse, not better.

It is easy to just point a finger at Kael and the devs and say it is their fault for being lazy or incompetent, but for all we know it could really be a case of poor communication or poor tools being given to these guys to do their jobs. Cryptic was clearly caught flat-footed when the world went into lockdown last year and wasn't set up at all to have people working remotely, so it could be the case that they never really fully redesigned their work flows to fully and properly fact-check their information before releasing it. Us being on the outside looking in, it is impossible to really know where things are breaking down vs. when someone made a genuine mistake that's totally on them, but a lot of people just aren't willing to give these guys the benefit of the doubt. I'd have more hope that they are reasonably competent at their own day job than to expect them to be experts at their own job PLUS be an economics guru or something way outside the normal for what one would expect for a handful of programmers, artists, and other game developer specialists.

[Taku]

There's no DIL in the exchange. But there's a little more than 800,000 Zen for sale at 500 DIL a piece.

So . . . How's that DIL sink working so far?

[darthnovawave]

There's no DIL in the exchange. But there's a little more than 800,000 Zen for sale at 500 DIL a piece.

So . . . How's that DIL sink working so far?

In fairness, I saw it over 900000 last week before the patch. I wonder if that is more an effect of a relatively weak discount on the current key sale than the tokens being a hot new item though.

[Mack]

I mean, it's not like any new content is going to come anytime soon anyway. 4 episodes an year is what this game gets now. Even the players have resorted to running behind DPS leagues to have some sorta end-game and attachment to the only Trek game. Besides, its all about Zen anyway. You have zen and real $$, you get them traits.

I also feel bad for Bort and Kael in a way. They are the public managers of this game, and that's why they face the grunt of all the wrong decisions. But in reality, I don't think these guys have any decision making power. I think it's PWE - it's been obvious over the years of lack of investment on any other aspect of the cryptic team other than ship designing in all honesty.

STO is the perfect low investments - high profit // money making machine for PWE's other projects.