Kael guesses that Weyoun and Polearm aren't account unlocks because the pack had to be made cheaper because the account boost isn't as much of a normal boost, so because the pack was cheaper they had to make the contents a bit cheaper. But he will ask the specific reason.
Legendary Vesta is called the Carnelian(?), its a stealth intel ship. Kael doesn't know what Legendary pack it will come in.
California class with be coming May 10th along with the Stormfall release
Turning off other players visuals in space is an ongoing conversation, big issue is finding a way to turn things off, but still getting the visual information you need to know whats going on.
We will have access to the new bridge. Kael isn't sure if it will be immediately at release, or come later like the the Klingon bridge.
The conversation last week about changing what the Dominion Wingmen ships look like started a longer conversation between Jeremy and Thomas after last week's stream. Kael isn't sure what conclusion they came to regarding if you can change them, what options you would have if they do, or if they get changed to look like the legendary Dom ship model permanently.
Tutorial revamp coming out May 10th alongside Stormfall release
The playable Farpoint alien ship was originally the winter ship before they used the Eisenberg class. Kael isn't sure how its going to be released now but he thinks it likely to be an event ship.
Cryptic is hoping to jump on the list of things people want added to re-engineering that was made a few months ago.
Cryptic has talked about ships with different seating, or a way to change a ships seating, but they have to find the best way to do that from a technical side, and a merchandising side.
Kael thinks craftable ships is an interesting idea, but its such a wildly different way of ship purchasing that it could disrupt the game so hes not sure they would ever jump on that.
Borg ship in Picard is far too big to be a playable ship. More likely that it would be something in an event/TFO like the Voth ship is
Gamma recruit will come to console when the next content patch drops on console.
Kael thinks the next event campaign event will be two events from now, not counting RAs in-between.
No ETA on when any removed missions will be coming back.
Cryptic would like to rework the old exploration system into something new but its pretty far down on the task list.
Thought behind making the Vesta Legendary was that they were reworking the tutorial, the Vesta is in it, and it has enough skins for it.
More dil sinks are coming, Keal isn't sure of the ETA for them though.
If they allowed BOFFs on Risa they would have to allow less players per instance on Risa, and since Risa is a social map made for players that wouldn't be good.
Kael was told about what Joseph Gatt did, and said he would let Al know(presumably so they can decide if they need to do anything about it)
Kael 100% officially confirmed the Pathyaeger is coming since Thomas wasn't on the stream!!!! (sarcasm)
They are putting more stuff in the Phoenix Box. Kael can't say when, but he has an idea on what that would happen.
A lot of the Star Trek TV show/movie songs have a lot of rights tied up with their composers. So Cryptic doesn't have access to them without paying extra.
TAS series rights are weird, but Kael thinks some of that has cleared up no that CBS/Paramount have re-merged, so Cryptic is looking into some of that stuff.
Kael has tried to, but was told not to, set up a meeting with various players, the CM, and Devs, because they had issues with similar things in the past where players would take the faith that Cryptic put in them and turn that into expecting/demanding things. When they did get the reports from the German community it was always stuff they had already seen on the forums/reddit, and was never anything really new either.
STO will never get an engine update in the terms of taking the whole game and putting it on a new engine. But STO will keep getting updates to the existing engine. Going to a new engine wouldn't even do what many people say it will. The game would still look/play the same, just on different code.
The Competitive TFOs were an attempt to being a larger PVP revamp. But since PVPers didn't like them because they weren't normal PVP, and PVE players didn't like them because they weren't PVE, it just wasn't popular so they didn't keep investing into it.
No current plans to release the 10th anniversary legendary ships individually.
Kael has been beating the drum on the elite Maco/Honor Guard uniforms not being available, will continue to keep beating that drum.
Keal doesn't think they would do a Dil to Lobi exchange since Lobi is supposed to be the lockbox thing.
Kael guesses that Weyoun and Polearm aren't account unlocks because the pack had to be made cheaper because the account boost isn't as much of a normal boost, so because the pack was cheaper they had to make the contents a bit cheaper. But he will ask the specific reason.
I'm going to call BS on this one. The boost is laughable at best and using that as an excuse to make the pack cheaper is just ludicrous. They could have simply dropped the boost entirely and made the stuff account wide to provide value.
Kael doesn't know if the SNW Enterprise is different enough from the DSC version to warrant it getting a new version in-game.
Next event campaign event is after the next content drop.
Kael believes the legendary Vesta comes out after the May 10th content drop, though the Cerritos comes out May 10th.
New Odyssey bridge will not be playable at the release of the new content, though it should come later
Cerritos is in the Infinity Box, and more Lower Decks content is coming, like the stuff shown off at Mission Chicago.
Very promising conversation with Nickelodeon regarding Prodigy happened at Mission Chicago.
No uniform updates currently planned
More information regarding Phoenix Prize Pack changes/updates soon
Quad Polaron Cannons not being upgradeable/reengineerable is a bug.
Cryptic recently did a company wide meeting with Gearbox to show off what they were working on and see what Gearbox was working on.
How ships are released is something Cryptic determines, its not imposed on them by CBS in what way most ships get released.
The issue with the Pakled clump ship is that, because its made up of different ships, and all of those are normally different materials, to make it work they would have to make one material that can't be changed. So no Type 5, 6, 7A etc(this was talked about by Thomas at Mission Chicago)
Kael talked about/showed off why we don't have playable Borg Cubes. There is no obvious front, and flying just looks really weird.
We are closer to DSC Andorians then ever before, but still not that close
No information on when Picard S2 badge will come to the game.
Adding DSC characters to Temporal Recruits would be difficult since many objectives for Temporal Recruit happen during TOS missions so they would have to completely redo those/find some way to make them work.
Kael doesn't know if the old intel ships will be able to use the Legendary Vesta's new intel hull material
No plans for a DSC recruit event.
There have been discussions about buying something to make character ships account unlocks but Kael doesn't see it as likely to happen due to concerns over what they would do to sales of certain things.
Kael will ask about making the Pink Vanity shield available again in some way.
We probably wont see any SNW content any time soon.
Grudge will be available as a pet soon.
Next release is two new missions, one new TFO, and the Fed tutorial revamp.
Team is aware and working on the issue with DSC and other characters being unable to progress through Kobali Front
Honestly I kind of want a borg cube now after watching that. Kael put a borg cube costume on the new Legendary Jem'Hadar ship, then was showing off the cube executing barrel rolls and pretty extreme banking as he blotted out most of the screen zoomed all the way out from the ship.
Honestly I kind of want a borg cube now after watching that. Kael put a borg cube costume on the new Legendary Jem'Hadar ship, then was showing off the cube executing barrel rolls and pretty extreme banking as he blotted out most of the screen zoomed all the way out from the ship.
I don't get the excuse, there has to be more to it...people never had problems flying spheres and cubes in sfc3. The Borg ships had many weapon arcs for all angles but the meta would be gearing a sphere prime with only forward weapon so you're able to stack as much armor and the strongest weapons..so players intentionally flew forward arc only spheres just fine.
I don't get the excuse, there has to be more to it...people never had problems flying spheres and cubes in sfc3. The Borg ships had many weapon arcs for all angles but the meta would be gearing a sphere prime with only forward weapon so you're able to stack as much armor and the strongest weapons..so players intentionally flew forward arc only spheres just fine.
Here is a screenshot from Kael's demo. This is with the zoom setting backed all the way out, so scaling is definitely a problem. The other big aesthetic thing he mentioned was that Borg Cubes don't really bank when they move which is different from how current ships move when you fly them (this was a re-costumed pilot ship, so it was an extreme example in the video). The third thing cited was the "which way is front" issue, as Borg cubes don't really have obvious inherent features that call out which facing is which.
Posted Sat 23 Apr, 2022 4:54 AM –
Last edited by Sorotia; Sat 23 Apr, 2022 4:59 AM.
Still stand by what I said, if SFC3 could do I think they could with some work...I feel like it was the excuse for them not to make a Cooperative sub faction...even if they said no to the cube other Borg ships could be flown...I mean we're able to fly Undine, Hur'q, and other ships just fine
They're fighting the Borg cube but see how the ship as a slider which shows where it's turning...that's how you answer problems like the spheres and cubes having no defined front for players
Jeremy hopes this is the first of more regular Phoenix Box updates. Planned for once every 6 months. New items will not be drawn just from past event rewards.
Not likely to create new items explicitly for the Phoenix Box because that was never the design for it.
Removal of the T5 ships was based on the idea that putting non-end game ships in such a high prize position was disingenuous. Also because Cryptic has been removing T5 versions of these kinds of ships from the game when they put out T6 versions, so did it for these as well. Some of it is for business reasons, they want people to have a reason to buy the T6 ships, but also to prevent player confusion for being recommended X ship, and buying the T5 version on accident. Both monetization, and what they felt was best for players, lined up in this case, so it made sense to do.
While STO has been doing exceptionally well the last few years, Cryptic isn't just sitting on piles of cash. Things cost what they do because thats whats needed to keep the game running. They also point out that the often made criticism that they are "forcing" you to spend money because you need these things doesn't really hold true since nothing in the game is so hard that you need the best/most expensive things to do well in the game.
Jeremy states that sitting at the exchange cap for long periods of time hurts revenue for Cryptic, and has been bad for Neverwinter as well.
Any items that move from Mudds into the Phoenix Box will remain account unlocks if you previously bought them from Mudds, but if you get it via the Phoenix box it will be an character item.
Removal of T5 ships meant there was nothing in that tier so they eliminated it, pushing every tier down one.
Token downgrading still works between tiers.
Due to eliminating one tier, epic tokens no longer convert into as many upgrades. This was on purpose, and helped them not have to nerf the upgrade more then they did.
Eliminating a tier means your chances of getting an epic token have gone up. Can't talk about exact odd because of company/business wide need for consensus before they can give it out. Took the old odds for the purple tier, and made the ultra rare odds are higher then that. Every tier, except the lowest, has its odd improved.
The Phoenix Box is no longer serving the purpose it was originally meant to serve. That doesn't mean its bad/failing. Once you put out a feature into the wild its no longer really yours anymore you have to see how players are using it, and reinterpret/see what was you need to adapt.
Phoenix Boxes were never meant to be the way you got these items. It was made as a dil sink for people who weren't involved with fleet systems, which were the primary dil sink at the time. Intended for people to buy them maybe 1-2 a play session, with the idea they might get something really cool out of it. This is why the Phoenix upgrade was made so efficient. But the Phoenix Prize pack was originally a limited event, so it was difficult for the average player to buy more then a dozen or so during that. Making the Box always on has eliminated getting upgrades from elsewhere in the community, which wasn't the original purpose of them. Changes here are meant to pave the way, not 100% achieve, adaptation.
People relying on dil whales for fleet projects meant that a lot of dil began building up in the economy, the Phoenix Box was made to deal with this. This was also around the time the upgrade system was introduced, and Cryptic found that upgrades quickly became the biggest dil sink in the game until they introduced the Phoenix prize packs which caused the amount of dil spent on upgrades to drop. Making Phoenix Boxes permanent made it drop even more to the point its almost a non-factor. Changes to upgrades made to help bring back that dil economy. This is not the end solution, its a step on the path.
One off things you buy once, like the vanity shields, aren't good dil sinks. Last time they ran the shield event it sank hundreds of billions of dil from the economy, which is insignificant. The playerbase earns that quicker then we imagine.
Jeremy shows off a spreadsheet showing the current/changed values of upgrades. See attached
Jeremy thinks enhanced upgrades are garbage and want to improve them.
Under current values the Phoenix upgrades were 80% more effective then Superior upgrades, under new values they are 30% better. Still the best, just not so overwhelmingly so.
In order to have a healthy upgrade economy the Phoenix upgrades were a huge issue to work around. The changes make it easier to work with, and in the long run can make more meaningful/impactful choices that are felt more in regards to making upgrades available in different places, making R&D feel better, making loot feel better.
Phoenix boxes were a dil sink because of the upgrades. The top tier prizes in the epic category were never big dil sinks because they are things you only need to buy once per character. Things like upgrades, which you always have to buy, are always better sinks.
Any upgrades you currently have wont be changed, they just wont be available from the box anymore.
Making a new fleet holding is probably not within the scope of the team they have now because they are all busy making new ships, items, missions, etc. Fleet holding conversations happen on a regular basis because theres many people on the team who like fleet holdings.
Last time Jeremy sat down with Al, and did some armchair math on a new fleet holding, doing a new fleet holding would mean no new content for two seasons. No new missions, no revamps, lowered ship releases, using the old templets of what they would add in a fleet holding. This did lead to a conversation about if theres another way to do fleet holdings/something they can do smarter/better/more streamlined to make it not have such a cost. Conversation didn't come to any conclusions, but the conversations did start. Possibly doing what amounts to a new store with no environment, but nothing is planned/decided on.
While STO is doing very well its unlikely theres going to be a ton of investment to turn it into something its not by hiring a bunch of new people. Gearbox hired Cryptic for what they are, not to change them, so its not in their best interest to change the way STO is developed now.
You can no longer buy another box by using 10 green tokens because it figured into the math of the upgrade changes, and usage stats for it weren't very high.
Jeremy's intention is that all the BOFFs are in the same tier, all the DOFFs are in the same tier, etc.
Jeremy did the math of upgrading tokens as a dil sink and it was really ugly and terrible, and the part of Jeremy as an STO player felt terrible looking at it. It was something like 200 token to go up one tier, or it would require skewing the odds to where you got the lowest tier token 98% of the time.
Jeremy did ask players if they know of any items that are old, and are no longer available anywhere, as those might be things they could add to the Box.
Kael respond to a question as to why every update that isn't content seems to be about discouraging free to play players. "Its because of a psychological phenomenon coming from being on the internet and dealing with negativity that comes around certain things. When you see something in a blog, like phoenix tokens are going to be less effective, your first though is this is horrible, and going to ruin everything, because it's not as effective anymore. But the actual math, as Jeremy showed [us] before is not as doom and gloom at all. But our initial human reaction, [his] too is this is awful and they are ruining the game. When you those initial reactions its important to engage with them, and figure out why you are having those reactions. It could be because the tokens are being less effective, but it could also be your having a terrible day, or something else is going on in your life as well. Not to say your reactions aren't legitimate or valid, [he's] saying theres other things that could be contributing to them as well. And then if you go somewhere to like the subreddit, or the forums, and theres a whole bunch of other people who are also upset, its very easy to latch on to the first thing you read and say your right Cryptic is killing the game, and then your brain seizes on that because it doesn't want to examine where those feelings might be coming from. This is actually how a lot of the rage YouTube creators, who are constantly making the Alex Kurtzman is getting fired tomorrow videos, make all of their money. Because someone gets upset about like the Klingons look different, thats not how I remember Klingons looking like, I am not upset because its different. and isntead of engaging with that reaction they log onto YouTube and YouTube immediately shows them a video of the Klingons look different and its because these creators don't care about you as a human being and probably want you to die. And then that sticks in your brain, and it fires up the rage machine."
Kael also said he is proud of the community for the maturity they handled the announcement about the changes, no ones threatened their lives over it.
Jeremy answer that yes, this does make it harder for new players to upgrade their stuff, but they are doing it not because they want to screw over new players, but because they need to make changes to the economy, and unfortunately if they aren't economically powerful enough to offset those changes, its up to them to decide if these changes are enough to make them stop playing, or if they feel like they want to work harder, of it they want to accept that their spending power is reduced in that regard. Its not something they can look at those players and make specific allowances for when its a game wide economy. Jeremy says he isn't looking at individual players, r sample sizes of 5 boxes or 10 boxes, when making these changes. Hes looking at players who are spending literal billions on this and seeing what their experience is like. Or not even on an individual player's perspective but looking at the top 200 spenders and seeing what their economy looks like. This is devoid of people, and he admits it seems callous, but when dealing with economies you can't afford to hyper focus on individual's experience. So when they make decisions based on those game wide things, Jeremy comes back on a 2nd pass and say "how will the player respond to it, and is there anything they can do to message it clearer, to make sure they understand why their spending power is being impacted, or understand why there sacrifice as you might call it is good for other people or the game as a whole.
No new shields being added in this events, and no plans to run the event on consoles. Jeremy is talking to lead producer Jared to see what they need to do, if they want to run it at current prices, etc.
Not being able to gift zen items to others has back end issues regarding being able to play through Steam, Epic, etc.
Jeremy might post the spreadsheet he made on his twitter for people to use themselves. If not he will post an apology.
Experimental starship upgrades will only be available in the Phoenix Box during the event. The prices are highly modified because the changes in odds. Jeremy couldn't find a good way to reconcile the old and new odds for the token, and prices. Jeremy says just try to mind wipe yourself on how much you used to spend on these. Jeremy admits that its a crappy way to say it, but the old prices were too generous then the intended design. Used to be you could buy two upgrades for one UR token, when they should have been charging two tokens for one upgrade at minimum. Prices are going up, but they are making them available at more tiers which Jeremy hopes is a way for people to sink their unused tokens. Built off of Jeremy asking on twitter about why people weren't using their tokens, and a database scrub that revealed they had about 20 million unused uncommon tokens across the playerbase.
The upgrades will be available a lower tiers for different price points. For 100 rares(previously greens now blues) tokens you can get one upgrade. For 20 very rare tokens, and for 5 ultra rares, you can still get them. Still overly generous compared to the price point they wanted but its a limited time event. Jeremy does clarify, based on a comment in chat, that the prices are not built off of the respective odds for each kind of token, and purposefully so. The costs are just based off of dollar value translations they are happy with. Its only available at rare(previously green tokens) because they know they can afford to price it at 100 tokens since people are sitting on literally millions of them. Main reason they are adding them at different tier is to try to sink out as many tokens as they can. The more tokens they let sit in the economy the worse the economy gets like in any economy.
These same changes will be coming to console, despite consoles DilEx not being in the same situation currently because its better for them to go out on console so they can serve as a preventive measure.
The pricing for the vanity shields is not only based on a conversion of dil to zen, but also zen conversion to EC via the use of master keys.
Jeremy believes it would be rude to put the vanity shields on consoles at the same price point because they wouldn't be factoring in the differences in the economy on consoles by doing so.
Blog for Cali class will come out tomorrow.
Seleya Ceremonial Lirpa and the Kri'stak Blade will be made ugpradeable, even the old zen store ones.
Changes will likely come to console in late June, may come with the console release of Stormfall in early June.
Further fixes to intel powers/bugs from the new changes has taken a back seat because of the upcoming season release. Will have to wait until after release.
Jeremy and Jared did talk about possibly moving stuff from Phoenix into Mudds, to make it aco♥♥♥♥ unlock, but they were like "ugh?" and wanted to focus more on getting more in the box before thinking about that taking things out.
CBS got really secretive about SNW with Cryptic, and gave them things really late by their normal standards which made doing anything for the SNW premier difficult.
Jeremy's favorite looking ship is the Na'khul science vessel. Hes partial to science vessels. Favorite ship to fly is the Sommerville.
Kael states, in response to a question, no one was asked/forced to stay late/crunch for this season. Some people did of their own will however. Jeremy says the leadership at Cryptic is very proactive about making sure they aren't being overworked.
If they said it sucked out hundreds of billions of dilithium and barely made a dent, things in the background must be far worse than they're letting on.
If they said it sucked out hundreds of billions of dilithium and barely made a dent, things in the background must be far worse than they're letting on.
With 4 789 274 Zen on the Exchange that means there is also 2 394 637 000 Dill there so not sure what to think about that statement.
“He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes;
he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever” ~ Chinese Proverb
They kept mentioning Magic's failings I think the hit from that is bigger than they are saying that said they have still managed to bring in Kate Mulgrew for this stuff and I do not think that will have come cheap I suspect these have been on the cards for some time and the Gearbox takeover has not changed it. Hopefully, over the next year, we will get a better idea of Gearbox's direction for it.
Ten forwards back not seen or watched as I did not realise it was back till I saw the Reddit post notice on it, try and watch later and see if anything interesting in the mean time here is a copy the Reddit one
Ten Forward Weekly 08/06/22
Kael doesn't know exactly what broke the server yesterday. It was an object DB crash. One of the technical programmers who monitor such things over at Gearbox San Francisco sent out an email that just said "Holodeck is down, I'm investigating". Kael and one of STO's producers were laughing about the email because it didn't tell them what happened.
Kael took down notes about Reman Captain infiltrator trait not stacking with BOFF version, and Voyager's view screen being missing during the "Escalation" mission.
Kael will ask about being able to replay the tutorial rather then having to make a new character to see the revamps.
Kael is pushing for more colors to be unlocked for more item pieces. He recently learned its not as big a deal as he originally thought, but its still a process.
Cryptic wants to do the Protostar, but there issues where they have to make sure that Nick is OK with putting they're stuff in a rated T game.
Kael will make sure Thomas knows the Borg juggernaut textures are broken.
Console has gotten 3 red alert in 6 weeks because it was requested that they move some dates around on console, and if they just moved things around as is there would have been a big blank space no event section, and they wanted to make sure console players had something.
Blogs this week were a bit late due to him being in COVID quarantine for a few days, which prevented him from getting to his house to get his computer running.
Cryptic is looking at fleet projects as a potential way to help the dil issue, among other things. Not sure about what work has been done on them in the last couple weeks hes been gone, but it has been worked on.
Kael will ask about getting more badges added to Mirror Coalition uniform.
Consoles haven't gotten the dil vanity shield event because the prices of those shields was calculated based on the PC economy, and it would be unfair to console users to make them pay the same price. They are looking into getting it done though.
Next ship sale for the zen store is coming soonTM.
Cryptic is working on getting some new hair options soon.
One time purchases like the dil for vanity shields isn't a good way to bring the dilex down, and they need something more sustainable then that.
No ENT era stuff planned currently.
Kael thinks a chat suggested server wide diltihum donation event is an interesting idea.
Grudge pet coming soon Kael thinks
Kael isn't sure they will do a new battlezone any time soon. Trying to fine tune the Tzenkethi battlezone was a "monstrous" experience so players had fun with it, and they haven't really jumped back on the idea of BZ since.
Kael has repeatedly suggested that they remove injuries from the game since they serve no real purpose, but the decision isn't up to him.
Cryptic cant just up the alt cap because of server drain issues.
Kael will ask about Fed Orions in the next character meeting.
Cryptic has the intent to add the new Fed bridges as playable, Kael doesn't know when that will happen.
Klingons cant go onto ESD because the NPCs would attack/try to kill you.
Playable DSC Andorians is closer then any other playable race people mentioned tonight, but Kael has no exact date.
There is a pretty good chance cross faction teaming will come at some point. Cryptic is looking into it right now.
Terran arc goes through next anniversary(so two more releases/2-4 missions)
Keal has heard about the hull vanishing issue, and Cryptic is looking into it.
Kael took down notes on Korfez being bugged, and spawning more Vaadwaur then it should.
Kael believes the Shi'kar will completely morph into the new one if you have the old skin on when it get changed.
Kael doesn't think they will ever unlock all races/costumes for all factions/races because Cryptic has a number of people who are very protective of canon.
Stormfall is coming to console soon, but Kael can't be more specific then that.
Jeremy is looking at modifications to the higher tier crafting to make a possible dil sink.
Kael will pass along the request to have consumables stack higher then 20.
[*] Kael doesn't think they will ever unlock all races/costumes for all factions/races because Cryptic has a number of people who are very protective of canon.
They know full well people have ways to unlock the tailor and use most costumes regardless of faction so I don't get why they won't just fully unlock the tailor fully and allow all costumes for all factions.