Star Trek: Online

[Scout101]

Read what I wrote, rather than what you want to respond to. I even gave you my own example. I wanted to come back and play more, but I thought the price was too high. A 20% discount was enough to talk me into it, though. Huge uptick in new sales all of a sudden, what would YOU attribute it to? People were holding out at the $300 price, but lowering it got a lot more people through the door.

 

[Aeolusdallas]

Read what I wrote, rather than what you want to respond to. I even gave you my own example. I wanted to come back and play more, but I thought the price was too high. A 20% discount was enough to talk me into it, though. Huge uptick in new sales all of a sudden, what would YOU attribute it to? People were holding out at the $300 price, but lowering it got a lot more people through the door.

Well there are not a lot of games with lifetime subs but the few there are all seem to bround 300 bucks. And of course the sub price for monthly is the standard rate.

You can but the game at walmart for 10 bucks which is dirt cheap

 

[syberghost]

Read what I wrote, rather than what you want to respond to. I even gave you my own example. I wanted to come back and play more, but I thought the price was too high. A 20% discount was enough to talk me into it, though. Huge uptick in new sales all of a sudden, what would YOU attribute it to? People were holding out at the $300 price, but lowering it got a lot more people through the door.

People. Who like the game. Taking advantage of a sale.

Something they don't do if they don't like the game. Nobody says "man, this game sucks, I don't want to play this. Oh, wait, $240? Well, heck, it sucks and I hate it, but it's only $240!"

 

[Scout101]

That's an excellent strawman, but no one is actually arguing that, so don't bother knocking it down.

Again, read what I WROTE. I WANTED to play, liked it when I was playing before, and already had a 6 month sub I let lapse (because i didn't want to keep paying while waiting around for the game to come up with new content). Because of the discounted price, though, it made more sense to buy the lifetime sub NOW, though.

NO ONE is saying the game sucks, no one wants to play, I hate it, I'll buy it anyway. There's argument upthread about it not being PERFECT, and suggestions to improve it, but that's different, and not part of what I was saying here anyway.

The argument was just that the sudden uptick in lifetime sales is unlikely because people are just discovering the game, or deciding they love it all of the sudden, but because the price went down by 20%, so it pushed people off of the fence that were waiting around for the game to improve. They liked it well enough, but with the discount, makes more sense to buy now rather than go month to month or buy a lifetime sub later for full price.

Honestly, I feel like I was sorta "pot committed" to buying the lifetime sub, anyway. I bought the game for $40, and paid $75 for a 6-month trial sub. Liked it, but was going to wait for a year or so to let the game catch up, fix problems, add content, etc. I was $115 in and didn't have a game I could play. Adding another $300 didn't make a lot of sense, so I waited. Could always do it later, anyway. With the discount, at least it basically absorbed the $75 i had already paid, making it essentially like the original $75 was just me buying the lifetime sub earlier.

Sure it's just standard practice, but that part of the price structure kinda annoyed me. IMO, if you buy a non-lifetime sub, and then decide you want to upgrade to the lifetime one when it expires, seems like you should get a deal, or some of that money should 'count' towards the renewal price. Not forever, but maybe once you finish your first subscription, anyway. If I had been offered, say, $50 off the lifetime sub when my $75 6-month sub had run out, I'd have signed up months ago, and they'd have made more money off me that with me waiting for the sale. Not how it works, but if you immediately upgrade a shorter membership to lifetime, seems like you should get at least a little deal...

 

[syberghost]

That's an excellent strawman, but no one is actually arguing that, so don't bother knocking it down.

I posted the information that they'd seen a surge in Lifetimes because it is an indication people like the game. You were the one who jumped in to say it didn't mean what I thought it meant. You can't come back now and say I attributed the opposite of my position to you.

 

[Scout101]

That's an excellent strawman, but no one is actually arguing that, so don't bother knocking it down.

I posted the information that they'd seen a surge in Lifetimes because it is an indication people like the game. You were the one who jumped in to say it didn't mean what I thought it meant. You can't come back now and say I attributed the opposite of my position to you.

It DOESN'T really mean what you said, though. My point (not the thing you're arguing against) was that when you run a big sale, you'd expect the sales numbers to increase, right? Not really a shocker, or even all that interesting. People that were buying a month-to-month sub, or had let theirs lapse, decided to buy the lifetime sub because the price went down. Exactly what I did. I was going to wait a while longer to renew, because I wanted them to add more content first. Because of the sale, I bought now instead, and I can just do another character, or dick around while I wait for the game to catch up. With the lifetime sub, I'm not wasting time on the clock like I was previously.

If the surge in lifetime memberships had happened INDEPENDENTLY of the sale, it WOULD be interesting, and it would mean all the things you're saying it does. And then they could have fun digging into whether it was because of good press they'd gotten lately, word of mouth, changes in the last big Season upgrade, etc.

Because the surge comes at the same time as a 20% price reduction, just arguing that it doesn't say quite as much as you implied. Yes, means people intend to keep playing the game. Yes, converted some month-to-month guys and some inactive guys to lifetime sales. That's about it.

Would be MUCH more interesting if that sales jump had been independent of the 20% off. And maybe the surge happened a few weeks before the sale, i don't have that info.

Can you at least stop responding to the non-existent argument that people hate the game? No one is saying that...

 

[Bishop76]

Would be MUCH more interesting if that sales jump had been independent of the 20% off. And maybe the surge happened a few weeks before the sale, i don't have that info.

Can you at least stop responding to the non-existent argument that people hate the game? No one is saying that...

Thank you! And yeah, the jump in sales is indicative of nothing more than a drop in price.

 

[Scout101]

Glad we settled that one It does mean people like the game, but really seems more a function of the price drop. Without that, it would actually be a really interesting stat, and they'd want to do a lot of work figuring out what is driving it. With the 20% sale, pretty obvious what the driver is.

Anyway, back on my other question (about endgame and rankings): wonder what percentage of INACTIVE accounts are highly ranked (RA or higher). Granted, that number will be skewed by people that tried a 10 day trial, or bought the game cheap and didn't play past the free month, etc. Just wondering how many of the inactive subs are inactive because of the lack of advanced content.

The argument that the majority of accounts are mid-ranked, so make more content/improvements for them first, makes a lot of sense, but wondering to what extent they are losing the people at the end by not putting more effort there as well, instead of playing with the graphics or adding more uniform variants.

I'd bet that of the INACTIVE accounts, a pretty large majority are either ranked LT or lower, or RA and higher. Either people that didn't like it and quit, or those that DID like it, but the game ran out of interesting things to do, so they quit rather than just grinding out more characters. After a while, you either have to delete characters or pay for more slots anyway, so only so long you can do that. And with so many "scan 5 things, last one being by the donut-shaped asteroid", or "kill 5 waves of bad guy" missions, it really IS a grind. Hoping the push to get more developers will lead towards a massive push for more episodes (even beyond the weekly stuff, which is amongst the strongest in the game).

 

[Aeolusdallas]

You know in most MMO including WoW people can and do get to max level in a couple of weeks. That is just how some people are.

I for one never rush to the end but for many the game doesn't start till the max out their characters.

 

[Scout101]

Can't really speak to that, as this is my first 'real' MMO experience. I just know I wasn't rushing or grinding, and got there in about 5 months. Not much for the BS with guild (or fleet, i guess) politics and drama, so it's a lot of flying around doing daily defense type missions. Maybe that just needs a revamp for some sort of better quest-type system that allows you to do more interesting things once you hit max?

There's tons of room, as they can add sectors, and half the planets on the map you don't visit, or don't use more than briefly anyway...

 

[syberghost]

Can you at least stop responding to the non-existent argument that people hate the game? No one is saying that...

A couple of people have been, actually, in this thread and elsewhere.

 

[Scout101]

It's 155 pages, I'm sure that's said somewhere. Wasn't in the discussion between the two of us, though, and that's what you were responding to. And you were ignoring what WAS being said in order to fight some other battle no one else can see...

Anyway, moving on.

 

[Bishop76]

This is a really easy game to level quickly while playing casually. Hell, when I just came back for this month, I went from RA5 to VA just by playing through the 2 episodes that had come out. I had my RA5 in about a month of very casual playing and tried doing the dailies and such, but there just isn't any endgame content that's all that compelling, as you've said, Scout. I think it's a trend in MMOs now to cut back on the grind and let people level organically with the content, cutting out grinds almost completely. It's okay, but you really have to have an awesome endgame at that point.

 

[syberghost]

Yeah. The problem that they're in is this; solid endgame content that's not grindy is labor intensive, but is experienced only by the people who've reached endgame. Midgame levelling content is labor intensive, but does nothing for the people who've reached endgame. In order to give proper attention to both, they need more people.

They're finally getting them, but it'll be a while before we the players see any benefit.

Not only that, but there's the question of Klingon Kontent. It takes just as much work to make a Klingon mission as it does to make a Federation mission, but 88% of the playerbase will never see that Klingon mission. But if you give that content only 12% of the development time, it takes 8 times as long to make the same amount of content. But, you can't ignore them either, because people who aren't being served make more noise than people who are, and if even 1% of your playerbase are up in arms on the web, it looks like the whole playerbase is in revolt.

 

[Dancing Doctor]

There's tons of room, as they can add sectors, and half the planets on the map you don't visit, or don't use more than briefly anyway...

That's one of the most annoying things for me. I'd love to be able to go back and explore Cardassia or Bajor, or Argelius. I spent more time on the various starbases and on my bridge than anywhere else.

 

[Scout101]

I could see the Foundry thing taking a lot of that stress off, once it goes live. That will at least give people more missions to do, which takes the load off of the STO guys to deliver. They still need more developers to push stuff out quickly, and figure out what to do with people currently stuck at the end, but this will at least keep the quiet for a little while while they get programming.

Honestly not sure how long it takes to build a level, especially if you can leverage off of existing maps for the most part, or at least reuse textures and general designs to get you started. I guess once the Foundry takes off, we'll know. Could probably even run contests that take the "Best" of the foundry missions and essentially makes them 'real' missions as well. Structure it so that it has to fit with what's already released if they want their mission considered, and offer in-game rewards to the ones you keep. Then you basically have a loyal army of nerds basically working for free!(well, cryptic points, or a special weapon, uniform, whatever).

That could essentially take most of the load for Weekly episodes off the staff for a little while, so they could tweak the BIg Picture to work better. Something like bulking up the Diplomatic Missions to be a bigger part of the game would be an easy way to reuse maps and planets without doubling the work. Make it so things could occasionally break down into a fight no matter what you do, but give options to work around things to different outcomes, etc.

Maybe put the a whole category for those special Foundry-created missions I mentioned to be playable as the missions in the Exploration sectors? Great spot to dump the creative one-off missions that don't really fit the grand scheme, but still might be fun. Better than fighting 5 ships or delivering supplies only. Those are boring enough that I almost never enter those sectors. If you could find actual MISSIONS out there occasionally, might be a fun use of those sectors.

Just spitballing ideas, things that might either improve things, or be fun for those stuck at the end without much going on. Since the "vast majority" of players aren't maxed out, you can't even join up with a lot of people to do the Fleet games that are supposed to be killing time for us...

 

[syberghost]

I could see the Foundry thing taking a lot of that stress off, once it goes live. That will at least give people more missions to do, which takes the load off of the STO guys to deliver. They still need more developers to push stuff out quickly, and figure out what to do with people currently stuck at the end, but this will at least keep the quiet for a little while while they get programming.

Yep; in fact some of the best stuff on the Foundry in Test is ALREADY in the works of being moved into the game as live episodes, they've been contacting the authors and working out the details.

 

[Dancing Doctor]

Oh GOD, I HATE the STFs...

 

[Scout101]

There's tons of room, as they can add sectors, and half the planets on the map you don't visit, or don't use more than briefly anyway...

That's one of the most annoying things for me. I'd love to be able to go back and explore Cardassia or Bajor, or Argelius. I spent more time on the various starbases and on my bridge than anywhere else.

Yeah, haven't actually beamed down and explored a lot of planets, because it just hasn't come up. Have we even ever done anything with Earth?

More I work it over, the more excited I get about using the Foundry for cheap/free labor. If you have weekly contests to design things (usable missions that could join the current maps, random missions for Exploration sectors, as well as things like designing planet locations to walk around, but without missions attached), you could probably triple the output pretty quickly, and just need a few people to debug/simplify the results. That adds a ton of planet locations (have a 'design San Fransisco' week) with little strain on the development team.

And just look around this board, there's plenty of people that love to do this. And the system to create stuff is about to exist, seems like a great next step, and logical use of that resource...

 

[Dancing Doctor]

There's tons of room, as they can add sectors, and half the planets on the map you don't visit, or don't use more than briefly anyway...

That's one of the most annoying things for me. I'd love to be able to go back and explore Cardassia or Bajor, or Argelius. I spent more time on the various starbases and on my bridge than anywhere else.

Yeah, haven't actually beamed down and explored a lot of planets, because it just hasn't come up. Have we even ever done anything with Earth?

Nope, not yet. You get to beam down to Vulcan and solve a diplomatic mission. And you can beam down to Andoria and "experience the possibility of being challenged to an ushaan. You can beam to Earth Spacedock, Deep Space K-7, Starbase 39-Sierra, Deep Space 9, and Drozana Station. You beam down to planets pretty much only if there's a mission, or if it's a Player-vs-Player arena.

More I work it over, the more excited I get about using the Foundry for cheap/free labor. If you have weekly contests to design things (usable missions that could join the current maps, random missions for Exploration sectors, as well as things like designing planet locations to walk around, but without missions attached), you could probably triple the output pretty quickly, and just need a few people to debug/simplify the results. That adds a ton of planet locations (have a 'design San Fransisco' week) with little strain on the development team.

That would be freaking awesome. The locations on the planets are pretty...bland, to put it nicely. When you *can* beam down, that is.

My question is why, when you want to visit the Bridge, you beam in and out of the ship. Is the character like floating behind the ship or something? And why do you have to beam in to the Observation Lounge (and why can't you visit the Observation Lounge during non-First Contact missions)?