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General: Roper Update Interview
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
MMORPG.com's Garrett Fuller recently interviewed Cryptic's Bill roper about Star Trek Online, Champions and the future for Cryptic Studios.
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MMORPG.com:
Cryptic is fresh off the heels of Champions Online and Star Trek Online, do you have plans to continue with patches and expansions for these franchises?
Bill Roper:
Absolutely! We have very dedicated and zealous communities for both games that are excited by the updates and ongoing content we’re providing. Champions Online has the Super Power Patch currently in test which addresses numerous game play and balance concerns with the Melee and Supernatural Set, as well as some quality of life fixes to several missions, the Tailor, and overall UI. Star Trek has just launched the Season 1.1 update which adds a difficulty slider and injury system for advanced players, an optional auto-fire system, and new high-end ship weaponry. More updates and content is planned for the upcoming weeks and months, and the vast majority of what we’re doing is being driven by player desires and feedback.
Read the Roper Update Interview.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
"More updates and content is planned for the upcoming weeks and months, and the vast majority of what we’re doing is being driven by player subscription numbers falling off a cliff."
Fixed.
STO is CO with a trek skin, therefore subs are going into free fall by now as the miniscule content that was there is no longer enough to support enough players. The deception clear for all to see and Bill decides to try and put something in there to justify a sub to a trek MMORPG, too little too late me thinks Bill!
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis
Contents over rated.. obviously no one truly cares about it or the MMO developers would make some. They all have stated many times they listen to their community and make changes or place additions to increase the consumer enjoyment! So obviously no one likes content or requests it... Duh
"Sometimes people say stuff they don''t mean, but more often then that they don''t say things they do mean"
I remember I was excited about Champions but when I played it just didn't work out. Has the game improved any since launch ?
I got tired of companies like this back in EQ1 over 7 years ago. They talk about whats coming more then actually producing anything tangible and continually carrot dangle the sub base. How bout the fact that most of what is coming or came just after launch SHOULD of been in at launch in the first place.
I like the bit about "I think it's probably time to add some of the amazing things we've generated over the past several months to fuel more speculation as to what we may be doing next!"
Go, hype train, go. Bring us more investors!
I think people are going to pleased and a bit surprised with what we're doing in terms of the game, how we make it, and even how we sell and support it.
= FTP
Personally I haven't seen much degradation of traffic in STO. My guild keeps growing and I never have much of a issue getting a pvp match or a team for a pve misson. Perhaps in the higher end teirs I've seen some shifts in population but that seems fairly irregular at best.
I do however think they will have to keep making changes to keep what people are in the game and we all realize that. As does Roper.*Shrug* I have no plans to leave any time soon though.
Someone PM me when STO goes F2P because no way will i pay 15 a month to do nothing.
Is it just me, or does Roper's picture have him looking like the villain he truly is?
Also:
"While the casual game space that is attracting a lot of players via social outlets like Facebook are definitely interesting on many levels (I play a few myself), that style of game doesn't fit well with Cryptic's core INcompetencies"
MMO's played: Ragnarok Online (For years), WoW (for a few weeks only), Guild Wars, Lineage 2, Eve, Allods, Shattered Galaxy, 9 Dragons, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Star Trek Online (Got someone ELSE to pay for it), Champions Online (Someone else paid), Dofus, Dragonica, LOTRO, DDO and more... A LOT more. I've played good AND bad. The bad didn't last long. :P
I can't imagine how horrible a Forgotten Realms MMO would be if produced by Cryptic. Certainly can't say much about their current games, pretty much no content.
is bill roper actually on the same planet?
Playing: FFXIV
Future: wishing for SWG 2, World of Warcraft Classic
Played: Most current and extinct MMO's - 18 Years in....
Interesting Fact - I own 27 Tarantula's
Rant alert:
I am so tired of people bashing Bill Roper, I find it ironic that people bash him and praise Pos for what is happening in CO all the while the Supernatural, and Might changes, Vibora Bay all started when Bill Roper was in charge of development. Pos' creativty and knowledge will be in full control of the next adventure pack.
Also why are people bashing Roper for what happened to STO he was working on Champions Online. That was not his cluster****.
Another Cryptic MMO on the way? Ill definately be buying that.
/sarcasm.
People 'hate' on Roper because hes the face of the company. If he werent so obsessed with being a rockstar developer, then nobody would mention him.
I saw the title and thought....Hmm the comments will be nothing but bitching about Roper, STO, CO, Cryptic. And what do I find, 2 pages of exactly that.
Interesting to see exactly what's next from cryptic ~ it's their business to run, if some don't like it good for them, I'll keep an open mind and see when it comes.
How can they even talk about the Champions IP when they took the PnP setting and ran it over with a mulching lawnmower? It doesn't even use the Hero system and half the characters are virtually unrecognizable.
Bad interview, it doesn't ask any difficult questions and all of them allowed the guy to respond in platitudes, so basically nothing was accomplished and there were no answers I couldn't have imagined the answers to myself.
The entire read was a bit boring until I hit the bit about DnD: Forgotten Realms. Please God tell me that Cryptic doesn't have DnD rights.
Bill Roper , took a game that was impossible to fail with : Hellgate London
And he did unthinkable, he ruined it. And he ruined it so much that his company even lost rights to the game. They didnt just bankrupt.
And again - HGL was a sure shot. It was like Having Michael Jordan play for your highschool team , and than loosing the game.
So yes, People tend to associate Bill Roper name with failure
He sucks at Management that is for sure, but failure not by a long shot.
Also of course he is the face of the company he is Bill Roper he was behind some of the gaming worlds masterpieces such as Diablo, and StarCraft. After that he doesn't even need to try and be a rockstar developer, he became one overnight.
EDIT: I hate the new comment system on this site, stick to forum.
Corruption has a face. Guess which one?
"I'm not cheap I'm incredibly subconsciously financially optimized"
"The worst part of censorship is ------------------"
It's sad when money takes over all other motivations in creating something you really love. It is usually the death of things. At least Cryptic is earning the repuation they deserve and I couldn't imagine a better place for this hack to work. I have more fun reading about their failures than playing any game they've worked on in the last 5 years.
There is nothing Cryptic could do at this point to make me pay them another dime.
Their games are always the exact same crap in a different skin. Garbage is garbage no matter how you package it...
Wow, and all anyone has to do to see how far fetched you're being is to just go look at their fleet recruitment sections and see all the dead and inactive fleets that used to have thousands and thousands of members, especially Klingon fleets.
Or ask anyone else that logs in regular about the hours long waits to get enough players for PvP matches.
Or just how empty it looks flying around Sol sector space.
"The game is getting to be a ghosttown" is kind of cliched these days, but the rate it got to that point with STO was clearly a new record, and it's only getting worse day by day.
The Cryptic line about "player driven content"? Ya, total horsepucky.
What it is is poor rubes paying for Cryptic to develop the game for 9 months to a year to get it to a point it should have been at release. They don't listen to the players at all. They just throw up what they were going to anyway, and since the game is so devoid of content, and thus the few people left playing are desperate for anything and are telling them what is needed, it's very easy for them to cite some thread that had requested something like it. There ya go! Player driven content!
I have heard Cryptic describe their toolset on numerous occasions as "amazing". Well that is kind of a false claim "amazingly simplistic" may seem to fit the description of what they produce, either that or again they have the most unimaginitive people in the industry when it comes to actual dynamic, interesting, and varied content. Both STO and CO as I know them are by far the most simplistic of any mmo out there, there are no different ways to play either game than what would be considered the standard casual playstyle and that is pathetic given the claims we are so often forced to listen to from them.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
Wrong. He took TWO games that were impossible to fail with, Hellgate: London and Mythos, and lost the rights to BOTH IPs. That turns a simple failure into an epic one. To say the man is incompetent would be akin to calling Caligula 'slightly eccentric'.
He should be cleaning bathrooms for a living, not developing games. In fact, I don't think I could trust him to do THAT properly.