Season 4 has launched at Star Trek Online, and it's not without problems. There are bugs, the Foundry had to be turned off, the PvE queues aren't working as expected, and so on.
But the biggest problem is not one of Cryptic's making. The biggest problem, in my mind, is the rotten behavior of many players on the STO forums.
I do understand and support the right of a customer to complain about something they don't like. But nothing gives anyone the right to be nasty about it.
Cryptic has been accused of lying about things, breaking promises, laziness, shoddy work, and on and on. Mean-spirited accusations without any proof of intent to dupe the poor customers and cheat them out of their money.
There is, unfortunately, a long history of disappointments associated with this game. That much is irrefutable. But the Dev Team under Daniel Stahl's leadership has made, in my opinion, heroic efforts to reach out to the community to try to make things better. Some people call this"spin" and dismiss it as insincere. I don't think so. All the indications I have seen are that Cryptic is trying diligently, with varying degrees of success, to improve the whole game for everybody. There are business realities that they are forced to deal with and there are technical challenges that are not as trivial as some players would like to make them out to be.
I think the Dev Team has over all displayed exemplary conduct under a great deal of stress. Unfortunately the same can not be said of many of the players on the forums. Their fingers are on the firing studs, just waiting for Cryptic to make a mistake so they can blast them. It's enough to tempt me to despair that the attitude of the forums will ever remain civil.
I wonder sometimes how many of the people playing STO really get Star Trek. Do they understand that it represents certain ethics and ideals? How many episodes were about "Doing the Right Thing"? About taking the time and making the effort to understand others? To try to make peace before firing a full spread of Photon Torpedoes?
I see this as not just a problem for Cryptic and for STO, but for our whole culture. Where are the ideals? Where is the love for our fellow man? Why are we so quick to lash out when something interferes with our self-gratification? Why so quick to assume the worst about others? Where is the patience? The kindness?
The ugliness is on the surface and raw. But there are points of light, people out there who are willing to help each other and to do what's right. They're underappreciated, to be sure. They aren't as obvious as the others lashing out. But STO, and the world, could use a lot more of them and a lot less bitterness and selfishness.
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Nice post, Bluegeek. I have witnessed a similar ugliness amongst college students who have illustrated to me a type of consumer entitlement attitude I like to call "the drive-thru window approach to higher education." Many college students expect that they should be handed their academic degree with a respectable GPA despite the fact that they've only made a mediocre effort (at best) in their studies. From their viewpoint, they (or their parents) are paying a sizable sum of money to attain their college degree; therefore, they should automatically be entitled to that degree, received from a dutiful employee (or instructor) who simply hands the purchased cultural capital to them through the service window of academia. The same may be said of any sector of the experience economy wherein a social sphere is bounded by both experience provider and user/community member. Any MMORPG fits this bill, and far too often members of the player community forget that they, too, are responsible for fostering a pleasant gaming experience, which, on the (final) frontier of online virtual realities, often requires a good deal of patience, respectfulness, and willingness to suffer the advantages and disadvantages of development and experimentation.
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