Star Trek Online Discussion Thread (now free to play!)

[J. Allen]

Eh, I'm fine with most of it. If I had a LTS, I'd still be fine with it, as my sub was to pay for lifetime access, not anything else, and if one has had their sub for about 18 months or more (and paid the $299 price), they're playing for "free" in a sense, as they're no longer adding money to Cryptic's coffers every month. The ones who should be a bit annoyed would be the Gold Members, who are still paying monthly fees, and all they have to do, really, is quit paying a monthly and just buy from the C-Store, because those microtransactions will likely make them more money than subs ever will.

For me, the only annoying aspect of STO is that Galor ship spam. Yeah, great, someone found one, that's cool. Quit interrupting my alert messages system to tell me.

[backstept]

J. Allen wrote:

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For me, the only annoying aspect of STO is that Galor ship spam. Yeah, great, someone found one, that's cool. Quit interrupting my alert messages system to tell me.

yeah . . . several times last night I thought "Oh hey, another of my doff assignments is done-- oh . . ."

[JRS]

Rocketeer wrote:

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I picked up a few green boxes which I'll probably sell on the Exchange. I refuse to purchase a key to unlock them.
...
I'm afraid that instead of quality content, we'll mainly see sales gimmicks coming down the pipe. The 2nd anniversary was a big letdown. Even the Odyssey mission was a farce. I think that as some of you have said, when the newness wears off many of the f2p players will jump ship. .

I was bit disappointed about the 2nd anniversary event myself. Now I know that I am newbie still to this game but they could have putt something else to the gift boxes than shield batteries..not very creative. Some special costume pieces or weapons would have been nicer idea.

This Galor-class thing...I understand that Cryptic has to make money but is it really necessary to spam everybody of getting the ship, considering they recently scaled down the texts that inform about XP and so on?
And why Galor? It does not make much sense Trek-world vice that Fed officers would be flying with those.
And what if there will be in couple of years time a Cardassian faction to play with( after the rumored Romulan one) then everyone will have the ship anyway(or not?)
If they want to make money, why not make storyline mission packs that one could unlock via C-store?

I was bit disappointed of the lack of "fanfare" of the fact that you get to level 50. This is the first time that I have reached the level cap in a MMO and I was surprised to get that far so fast.
I am not saying that the game should be more difficult but I would like to see more content in the future.
Do not get me wrong, I do like the game a lot and its very fun game..and I do have still my engineer and science character to play with, since they are just past tutorial.

[Scout101]

With the points you get on the DOFF missions, you don't even have to play the game to get to level 50 in a couple weeks. I've got a toon that I played long enough to get into the DOFF system, and then just rotate assignments once or twice a day when i log into the others. Max level, never left the Sirius system. My max level Klingon character has only run the KDF-specific missions (there's what, 9-10 total?).

The DOFF system is kinda fun, but they shouldnt be giving so many points. There are so few missions in the regular system, you should at least have to play all of them to reach the cap.

[syberghost]

intrinsical wrote:

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I have seen enough MMO companies to recognize the symptoms.

Yes, it is a rough time for everyone, Cryptic and players alike. It is inevitable given that Cryptic made a loss of 5.3 euros (~4 million USD) last year. Just looking at STO alone, it currently has less than 50,000 gold subscribers at this moment (frankly, looking at the amount of content and art assets STO has, I can tell needs at least 150k subscribers). Just doing some simple math, 50k x USD$15 x 12 months tells us STO's revenue is under 1 million at this point in time. If I assume roughly similar figures for Champions Online, that gives Cryptic a revenue of 2 million. This isn't even enough to cover last year's loss.

If I am not wrong, Cryptic is in fire fighting mode right now. They are doing what they need to do to get through this rough period, even if it means they have to jack up prices and employ all sorts of slightly unscrupulous marketing tricks to get the money they need to survive. If not, I can guarantee you that one year down the road both CO and STO will either be in yet another year of hell, get shutdown or get sold to some other game company.

You just read financials that said Cryptic took in $7.2 million in revenues, then did math from that which indicates less than $2 million in revenues? You should probably go over those figures again.

[Scout101]

Of course, if the financials are in much better shape than that (and suspect you're right), then the blatant money grabs look even worse, don't they?

Needing money to stay afloat is one thing, making it the priority over long-term satisfaction when you're in the black is entirely another

[intrinsical]

syberghost wrote:

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You just read financials that said Cryptic took in $7.2 million in revenues, then did math from that which indicates less than $2 million in revenues? You should probably go over those figures again.

I am not writing an official report with well researched numbers.
The 50k subscribers is a guesstimation I came up with based upon a 2010 subscription chart I saw at http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-3.png

Besides, the 2 million figure is just my guesstimation of subscription revenue for the two MMOs and does not include other revenue streams Cryptic may have from other games and businesses (eg, residual royalties from CoH's sale to NCSoft?). It was merely meant as a possible explaination for Cryptic's lock box money grab.

[Aeolusdallas]

Scout101 wrote:

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Of course, if the financials are in much better shape than that (and suspect you're right), then the blatant money grabs look even worse, don't they?

Needing money to stay afloat is one thing, making it the priority over long-term satisfaction when you're in the black is entirely another

Does the basic concept of F2P games escape your understanding?

The C-Store is HOW they now make their money. There is no blatant money grab.

[Scout101]

Aeolusdallas wrote:

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Does the basic concept of F2P games escape your understanding?

The C-Store is HOW they now make their money. There is no blatant money grab.

Thank you, Captain Obvious. Unfortunately for your snarky response, that has nothing to do with what I said. The comment was about IMPLEMENTATION of said store, not complaining that it EXISTS. Not sure how you got there from that. The complaint was about making it such a driving factor that it kills long-term potential, customer satisfaction, etc. Plenty of ways to make that same money without pissing everyone off.

2 year anniversary, FEs coming back after long hiatus, tons of new players that should be excited about the game, right? Why do things feel more negative now then they have in a while?

For example, just SELLING this ship instead of making it a exercise in gambling with poor odds would make everyone that bought it satisfied, and those that didn't would be fine with that choice as well. With the system they went with instead, you've got people that are trying to get it, spending lots of real money to attempt it, and getting pissed they can't get it. And the consolation prizes are crappy enough that it's more insult than consolation.

Plenty of ways to make money, but they're currently favoring short term gain over long term viability. Not usually the best way to go. Completely disagree that the constant spam ISN'T a blatant money grab, though. Not really any other way to justify that one.

These grab bags, along with almost constant spam across the screen about people winning (odds are great, play now!) are frustrating, annoying, and take you out of the game. And just generally leave a sour taste in your mouth when it should be one of the best times since initial launch...

[Aeolusdallas]

CBS doesn't want them just selling them. They are allowing them as long as they are rare. You "solution" would mean no one gets them.
Why are you getting so upset? No one is forcing you to spend any money at all. You can play the entire game without spending any money if you wanted too.

[Scout101]

The lifetime sub i bought a year or so ago kinda locks me in there, doesn't it? You're hundreds of dollars too late for that. And I'm NOT buying the keys for the boxes, as the contents are total crap (aside from the ship), and mostly useless to anyone at or near max level in the first place. Even changing the contents of these boxes to fun or useful items would have been a start, but they are basically all garbage other than the ship. That's why you can pick them up for nothing on the exchange.

I DO wish I could turn off the constant spam, though. Guess I could disable all system messages, but seems like there's negative consequences to that, like not getting announcements that downtime is about to happen.

I'm unhappy because it gives me a shitty feeling about the overall direction of the game, and whether the new attitude towards the players post-F2P is going to kill the game in the long term.

[intrinsical]

Scout101 wrote:

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These grab bags, along with almost constant spam across the screen about people winning (odds are great, play now!) are frustrating, annoying, and take you out of the game. And just generally leave a sour taste in your mouth when it should be one of the best times since initial launch...

If you think that's bad, wait till you see what some other MMOs have done to drive customers away.

F2p-wise, EverQuest 2's is probably the worst of the bunch where anything beyond the most basic gameplay is locked behind a pay wall.

The most memorable one for me is the infamous EverQuest Gates of Discord saga that caused me to stop subscribing to MMOs for several years. Imagine you and your 100 strong top end EverQuest guild have just spent a year working really hard to unlock the best possible gear the last expansion pack had to offer. You and your guildmates now own the absolute best possible gear the game has to offer. Now SOE releases a new expansion pack called Gates of Discord and suddenly every single top end guild including your own get their asses wiped by the very first, weakest raid boss in the new expansion pack. Now imagine how the entire playerbase feels when the best of the best players are getting their asses wiped. During the first three months, I saw corpses everywhere in the new expansion pack. I think at least a quarter of the playerbase, including many top end players, simply quit the game en masse and the CEO of SOE had to publicly apologize and promise to tune things down.

[Haggis and tatties]

Scout101 wrote:

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The lifetime sub i bought a year or so ago kinda locks me in there, doesn't it? You're hundreds of dollars too late for that. And I'm NOT buying the keys for the boxes, as the contents are total crap (aside from the ship), and mostly useless to anyone at or near max level in the first place. Even changing the contents of these boxes to fun or useful items would have been a start, but they are basically all garbage other than the ship. That's why you can pick them up for nothing on the exchange.

I DO wish I could turn off the constant spam, though. Guess I could disable all system messages, but seems like there's negative consequences to that, like not getting announcements that downtime is about to happen.

I'm unhappy because it gives me a shitty feeling about the overall direction of the game, and whether the new attitude towards the players post-F2P is going to kill the game in the long term.

I bought 20 of these keys for two charactors, i had assumed at least i would get 20 diffrent things...what i did not expect was to pick up the same thing 6 times(DS9 uniform), consumables and skill boosts........that was what i got for my 1800c points.....no doubt enough to have bought the Galor if they had just put it on the store.

I now just ditch the boxes when i pick them up....once bitten and all that.

[JRS]

new slot for each data type, a few different ship sets (Aegis, borg, breen, MACO or Omega if you're lucky), all the unique weapons you get (things like TOS weapons, special lirpas, anything that levels with you), Anniversary events, maybe even a few rare food samples and other unique commodities, and then couple extra torpedoes and weapon types if you need to change your loadout. My bank has been maxed for a while.

I got bored of all those data samples taking space from new consoles and weapons, so I yesterday crafted some shield generators and but all the rest data stuff to the BBS fleet bank, as much as I could fit there.
I am planning to do so in the future also. I am not really into crafting(did not do that on Champions Online either) and I honestly will rather use that time for the daily missions.
This way ppl of the fleet have bit more things to craft with and I have hopefully bit more room in my bank

[Rocketeer]

backstept wrote:

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yeah . . . several times last night I thought "Oh hey, another of my doff assignments is done-- oh . . ."

I didn't realize that the system alert messages were part of the HUD display. Once I realized that, I moved it off to a corner. Still bothers me but a lot less...

***

Scout, I lifted the chat box about a quarter of an inch and slid the system alert under it. It's a lot less distracting now.