Anyone know hoe much the dilithium hortas are selling for on the exchange becuase thats the only thing from the boxes I care about.
Star Trek Online Discussion Thread (now free to play!)
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Normally I don't pay to much attention to Scout, or really anyone that complains alot. (Not that I don't acknowledge you Scout, just that I hear the same things here, on the STO forum, and the STO facebook page. Gets old, ya know?)
But in this case, I gotta agree. The key thing is kind of a cheap shot. Either make it a CStore item, or make it available in game. Right now, with the box in game and the key in the CStore, it just feels kinda half-assed.
And for me, yeah, this is the first thing I have a problem with. The few times I've needed to contact CS were during the open beta and shortly after launch, and they've been taken care of. I don't seem to have nearly as many bugs as others do. About the only thing right now is that I can't buy forge slots. But that might simply be because I'm full on characters.
But in this case, I gotta agree. The key thing is kind of a cheap shot. Either make it a CStore item, or make it available in game. Right now, with the box in game and the key in the CStore, it just feels kinda half-assed.
And for me, yeah, this is the first thing I have a problem with. The few times I've needed to contact CS were during the open beta and shortly after launch, and they've been taken care of. I don't seem to have nearly as many bugs as others do. About the only thing right now is that I can't buy forge slots. But that might simply be because I'm full on characters.
I picked up all 4 of mine for about 20,000 EC each on the exchange last night. No idea what they are going for now.
Thanks.
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.
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.
I'd grab more of those things, but we need to get our banks expanded. It was fine at launch, as it kinda grew with you as you went, but now that we're not getting more slots with rank, and people have been here 2+ years, it's running out.
One 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.
Would be nice if we got a few more slots to acknowledge the bloat as time goes on. Eventually going to have to start throwing away things that we can't reclaim, which sucks. Or they could make the data samples go to the currently wasted Cargo Hold in your ship, so you can get them out of your bank...
One 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.
Would be nice if we got a few more slots to acknowledge the bloat as time goes on. Eventually going to have to start throwing away things that we can't reclaim, which sucks. Or they could make the data samples go to the currently wasted Cargo Hold in your ship, so you can get them out of your bank...
Thought they told us they were a huge money maker, and everything was good?
Honestly, I get that they have to make money. Would just be nice if they did it in such a way that it added to the game instead of increasing angst and pissing everyone off by being blatant about it. Hell, just putting things in the bag that you'd WANT would be a good start. The ship is desireable, but pretty rare. Everything else is either garbage or just not usable by the players at the rank receiving it. Which is why you can buy basically everything in the bag BUT the ship for really cheap on the exchange. For almost no money, I bought the DS9 uniforms, a horta, and one each of the samples and commodities packs, just to see what's in them. Not going to fool myself into thinking I'll win a ship (despite the constant spam hinting otherwise), and that's basically everything in the GOLD mystery boxes, right? Wouldn't pay 100 CP for any of those things, and bought them for minimal EC instead because everyone else feels basically the same way.
make them fun, unique things, and you've got something. Not one ultra-rare and a bunch of garbage. They could have just sold the ship, made about the same money, and garnered good will. Instead they made it a lottery, and played to people's gambling instincts. Same number of ships go out in the end, but now you've got a couple happy players and a ton of pissed ones instead.
They won't give away free bank slots past VA since they sell additional bank and inventory slots on the c-store. They've made it so that if you want more room, you'll have to buy it. Same with the ships and BOFF slots. If they have another BOFF as a rare reward (like the Reman and Breen Boffs), I'll either have to give up one of my other BOFFs or buy more BOFF slots. I'm also maxed out to the point where I want to just get rid of my excess data samples just to make room.
Cryptic could probably squeeze out some more cash from people if CBS was being anal about canon, becuase then they could pu this stuff in the C-store and likely sell it by the truckload.
I saw two groups of people on the chat last night. Half the people were looking for a way to turn of the SPAM and half were salivating at the mouth, asking where they could unlock this Galor ship. So as far as a marketing technique it appeared to be working. It just upset me because I actually went on a mission and all throughout the exploration and fighting I was constantly getting a system alert that some other player just unlocked a Galor ship. It just totally ruined any hope of getting immersed in the game.
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 don't feel good about the stipend either. I'm still missing my first month. That plus the fact that as Scout pointed out, many prices have doubled, making the stipend worthless.
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. And then what will Cryptic do when the only ones left are disgrunted players that have been abused and neglected by the company.
And you can't complain without offering a solution and here's one of my ideas. Put BOFFs and possibly DOFFs of some of the characters from Star Trek in the C-store. I would pay good money to have a Scotty on my cruiser. Bind them to the player or character so if another player wanted one he'd have to buy if from the C-store.
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 don't feel good about the stipend either. I'm still missing my first month. That plus the fact that as Scout pointed out, many prices have doubled, making the stipend worthless.
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. And then what will Cryptic do when the only ones left are disgrunted players that have been abused and neglected by the company.
And you can't complain without offering a solution and here's one of my ideas. Put BOFFs and possibly DOFFs of some of the characters from Star Trek in the C-store. I would pay good money to have a Scotty on my cruiser. Bind them to the player or character so if another player wanted one he'd have to buy if from the C-store.
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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.
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 . . ."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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...
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.
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.
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