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New stuffs in my CO? How bout that.
guardiannexus
Posts: 142 Arc User
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Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
If you notice, Neverwinter's comment section is not locked.
Lockboxes are how they pay for new mission content. I dont have a problem with that, because I dont have to buy them, but I still get to play the new content.
Also...
I agree with this because, well... The developers have specifically stated, right here on these forums, that the keys was the most profitable thing they've ever done. Remember that.
Thus, it should be of little surprise to anyone here that lockboxes are here to say, the slot-machine style of payment is immensely profitable, and PerfectWorld / Cryptic is hardly the first nor last game company that has shifted to an increased focus on gambling in F2P games (Valve and EA have been doing it for years in some of their F2P games, way ahead of this game). As the saying with casinos goes, "The house always wins!"
The prevalence of lockboxes doesn't concern me as much as broken stuff (software bugs, exploitable glitches, missing or imbalanced rewards v. the effort needed to succeed, imbalance of pay-to-win where it's gone to being too much pay-to-win that the game is boring) and the lack of new explorable content (Zone stuff, other new maps, and new story-driven / plot-based content).
Consolidate the currencies! (Please!)
Does your Champion have a theme song? (share it!)
Got a funny in-game screenshot? (share it!)
Please fix the Overdrive energy unlock! (Should help promote thematic build diversity!)
I'm done with this game. You might see me again if they ever add Foundry.
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
-__-
Wouldn't that new tron suit be a better costume set than become device?
Weren't we told only initial vehicles would be become devices, but not the final product?
That tron bike is pretty sweet, too bad it doesn't do the light trail, or allow color changes.
If there is a new studio (cryptic north) working on champions, why are they putting out the same things that killed the game rather than working on things to fix it or make it better
For a superhero game, new powers, costumes, and travel options are kind of a big deal, Why aren't we getting any?
* Zero from BL2 not the pretty boy from Rockman XD
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
There is a 5% chance said opinion will be both snarky and funny. Good luck!
So the costume fix was because of the become device. Too bad its not a costume set. I'd like to get that skin and helmet as unlocks.
You and me both, sister. You and me both.
That's what I'm wondering.
if its permanent, then color me thrilled and it a good sign of cryptic north finally moving forward and i will be positive as can be.. if its temp i will probably delete co off of my computer because that would use up their last bit of goodwill with blinkered stupidity.
Are we ever going to see a new set in the C-store ever again?
I will not be spending any money for a lottery. To may, or may not be given anything.
Yet another event going on my /ignore.
*shrug*
There's nothing like subtelty and THIS is NOTHING like subtlety
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...and they are only in cloth. Yay for incompetence!
Click here to check out my costumes/milleniumguardian (MG) in-game/We need more tights, stances and moods
Cloth is cheap. Much like the half-assed updates we get! :biggrin:
"There is only one way to support a PFF tank: Send Cyrone lots of money weekly... because he's the only one to successfully be a true PFF Tank." - chuckwolf
Yes, their baffling choices have turned me into a frikkin conspiracy theorist.
Of course, if picking their nose were the only thing they offered for purchase, then picking their nose would be the most profitable thing they've ever done...
If they had done anything else worth speaking of over the last year (and more), that statement might be more than than a self-fulfilling prophecy. (And no, nobody gives a damn about Z-Store vehicles, the best ones are the ones for Drifter Salvage and that's locked behind the lockbox con paywall.)
This is something I agree with. When I'm told that the lockboxes are profitable, I have to ask 'compared to what?'. I would like to see if the Nighthawk lockboxes were more profitable than the Nighthawk costume set.
Otherwise, it's just as you say. If all my bar sells is Budweiser and we don't serve hard liquor, wine, or other brews- I can't say 'Budweiser is my most successful product' compared to anything else.
One could expect that if lockboxes are THAT profitable, CO would see an improvement. Right?
Keys and lockboxes aren't a problem. Lack of anything else is. Not even half-assed alerts were expanded with new ones.
It looks like CO is kept only as their R&D project for new developers and it needs only enough profit to pay its upkeep.
Now this is what really pisses me off about the state of development here.
Look, Cryptic, there's an implicit bargain here. If you're not going to give us quantity, we had better receive quality. That doesn't just mean that the UV maps are correct and the new costume meshes fit the character mesh.
Shipping the SOCRATES costume parts cloth-only tells me that whoever made them was only half-thinking about what the theme of the event is. OK, it looks like Tron. Mission accomplished, right? Nope, because apparently, nobody considered how these new parts would be used, and what characters would make best use of them. The event is all about technology and artificial intelligence, so you'd expect android and power armor-themed toons to use these costume parts. That means metal, right? Common sense would tell you that.
It bothers me that we've been getting costume parts with missing finishes ever since STO and NW went on their poaching spree. Not only because of the skeleton crew we're stuck with, which is an accepted fact at this point, but because STO and NW don't offer multiple finishes on costume parts in the first place. This is one of the things that makes CO unique within Cryptic, and it's become another afterthought.
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
You guys might be forgetting that we had three years (two?) of the C Store with everything but lockboxes. They did try everything else, and it's quite obvious that the sales of lockboxes/keys blew everything else out of the water, most likely especially in the investment to return ratio.
As opposed to what? Lockboxes did well in STO, and there was no measure for comparison on CO. There was no lockbox bounced off anything else. We're just stupid because they throw lockboxes out there with half a costume thrown in there and we want it so bad we're willing to play their game.
People DO buy costumes. Cryptic PWE just found their easy money and we're dumb enough to buy into it.
We'll pay for costumes outright. However, we can't say 'Lockboxes do better' when EVERYTHING is in them, and NOTHING is for sale.
When they introduced lockboxes and keys, that started outselling everything else they had ever produced. It's simple business economics that they should continue with what started making money.
By way of comparison, if your local grocery store stocked the same items for years, but sales suddenly exploded when they added, say, Brown & Haley's Mountain Bars to their inventory, would it not make sense for the store to devote more space to the Mountain Bars, which sell well, than to, say, Granny Smith apples, which might be good for you but are not as profitable? And would it really make sense to complain that the sales figures are "meaningless" because Mountain Bars hadn't been in the inventory when sales were low?
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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if they have to buy lockboxes, fine, whatever some people seem to enjoy them, but how long has it been since we got a purchasable costume set. People like to trot out the "keys make money" argument, but be honest, have keys made your game more fun? it has not financed any new permanent content and the temp content has been miniscule. Yes, from a pure business argument keys are good money, but what benefit is that for the customers. traditionally what has been good for business has been bad for consumers, thats why we have anti-monopoly laws.
towards the end of coh backalley brawler came on to show that a feature that we loved, power customization, was not a big financial boost for paragon, but it was something they did for the customers. what has cryptic done for us lately, outside of not closing down. another trickle of content locked behind a non-deterministic method to get it.
This has to be the dumbest analogy I have seen/heard in a good while, yeah mhm right, except when you buy the Mountain Bar you are guaranteed a god damned Mountain Bar, not a stupid piece of candy worth one cent.
Oh so the store replaces it's stock of Mountain Bars with Mountain Bar chance boxes, where only a select few actually contain Mountain Bars, but hey, it only costs one fourth of the price, only one could buy a hundred of these boxes and get nothing more than a few pieces of candy worth f**k all. Oh but look, more people are buying them, hence more profit, that makes it ALL OKAY!
Well done Jonsills, well done! -___________-
Actually there is a comparison.
CO sold items sets directly. Cryptic knows how much money it cost to produce said items and how much revenue that they produced.
CO has now sold items through lockboxes. Cryptic knows how much money it cost to produce said items and how much revenue they produced.
When the items in each scenario are, in general, comparable then the results are as well. If a costume, or whatever, generates more revenue when sold through lockboxes than a costume, or whatever, sold directly the results speak for themselves.
I don't like them any more than anyone else, but these results are driven by the customer base. Cryptic's only goal with this sort of thing is to maximize revenue. If the customer base makes one method more lucrative for the company, the company will act accordingly.
Had grab bags, which predated lockboxes in CO (seemingly to test the waters) failed utterly CO might not see lockboxes as the primary means of introducing purchasables today. Of course CO might not be around today either, we don't know.
Of course its, "OKAY." Their property, they can sell it how they like. I don't like it, you apparently dont like it, but its not our property.
'Caine, miss you bud. Fly high.
Were these also the years that we were getting actual content, powerset reviews, and other things? I think that was called 'Pre-PWE'. I'm seeing a correlation. Maybe not causation, but a correlation.
Bad comparison, assessment is faulty. They were not releasing the same products via grab bags as they were selling in the C-Store. By this, I mean 'X' was sold in the C-store, and 'Y' was grab bag. 'Y' made more money- however these are different products. If 'X' sold better in a grab bag than it did in the C-store, the assessment would have merit. However, it may have less to do with the method of sale and more to do with the product.
-More- Space, not the entire store. However, I don't see the grocery store throwing out Granny Smith apples and replacing all their stock with Brown & Haley's Mountain Grab Bags (where it might have nuts, might have chocolate, or it might be a fossilized caveman turd).
The part that makes me want to vomit- and if I could find it, I would- I distinctly remember us being told that we would continue to see Costumes added to the C-store after the grab bag madness. That stopped at Nighthawk.
REALLY? They really need to pay you for being such a good company soldier and completely ignoring that
1. The first 2 years of C-Store were "pay even moar in a P2P game". There wasn't even a monthly stipend. And many people (the ones that CO's shortcomings hadn't driven away, anyways) still had everything there was before the game went F2P.
2. The next year was "yeah, we so are not going to sell the one thing former players actually want in F2P, namely away to actually play their old characters under F2P properly, screw those cheapskates". (They still don't, freeform slots are new characters only.)
[2b. Oh, and name anything but lockbox con keys a LTS owner could possibly still buy - stipends by now should cover everything else there ever was and then some.]
3. After that was "hey, we wont bother putting anything new in the Z-Store, you must buy into the lockbox con to get the new costume pieces".
If there's one thing they NEVER ****IN' TRIED, it's actually selling lockbox con keys next to something new people would want. (Do not point at the Z-Store vehicles, everyone knows the nicest ones are in the Drifter Store, which requires salvage, which requires partkaing in the lockbox con).
Oh, that I won't dispute. A good con always beats honest business in ROI.
Yes, during the time that Cryptic was being acquired (I'm pretty sure), we started getting lockboxes. This was absolutely at the time when we were still getting directly-sold costume sets. If I'm remembering correctly, the first lockbox/grab bag was the Halloween one. I'm pretty sure that things like the new Power Armor set came after that, but feel free to correct me on that because I'm not completely sure.
The fact of the matter is that they know how much money they put into the game, and how much they get back. They're not making these decisions all willy-nilly. We've got (supposedly) a skeleton crew working from lockbox money, and that's sustaining the game. While I certainly would love to see a costume set in the C Store, if that means half the team has to be cut because they made way less money from the costumes, then I'm begrudgingly okay with their practices.
The situation completely sucks, but the alternative is probably just shutting the game down and putting the rest of the team on other games. I don't want that, even if I hardly have reason to log in anymore.
You know how people have been saying for a long time now that there's not much that you get out of a subscription, and that everything seems to be tailor-made for new players? Remember how they remade Westside like a million times? All that to say this - they likely make more money out of churning players in and out than they do by giving goodies to veterans. Right now, bottom line is all that matters to them, and currently bottom line is that the game is doing well enough to support itself and that's good enough. They don't wanna make you happy, they wanna make their wallets happy.
I'm pretty sure this is completely untrue. The first lockboxes were sold alongside other things in the store, I'm pretty sure. I'd love if someone could dig up the dates.
Also read my previous post and reassess my "good company soldier" status. And how much I think they care about Lifetime subscribers.
Not being a jerk, but I'm correcting you.
The first grab bag was a services grab bag.
Then the Halloween one.
Then the Cursed.
Then the Mountain.
We were getting costumes.
We got the Power Armor set, and I don't think there was a grab bag around this time yet.
Then we got Nighthawk Grab Bag and costume set. The grab bag had the incentive of possibly getting a costume set, a vehicle, or some of the gadgets.
After this, we got the Takofanes lockbox just before Halloween. That's when I saw the keys in the store and was like 'WTF is this?'
After that, we have had NOTHING but lockboxes to get costumes.
So the comparison was done ONCE. There was still a flawed method there, simply because most people were trying to get the vehicles because they were brand new and not just the costume sets.
Take the damned costumes out of the bags and sell them again, please. Leave the mods and 'awesome' vehicles in grab bags.
(All that being said, the new bike looks pretty sweet)
How about they do like STO and release both? In STO, there are cool new ships released via lockboxes AND cool new ships released in the C-Store. STO still releases ships and *costumes* to the C-store. It's not either/or over there. They have added vehicles to the store, not to discount that. But what about new costume sets or powersets?
Yes, we can see the logic from the sales side of things--for those who have more dollars than sense. I don't have the money to throw away on junk lockboxes in the hopes of getting something I actually want.
When I pay for something, I want to *know* exactly what it is that I am getting. I played the lockbox game for a while and received nothing of value to me.
No, what they have done is found a quick and easy way to make more money by delivering very little.
Well, when you charge twenty five dollars for a starship (Star Trek Conline- I mean Online), or fifteen dollars for a jet (in the case of Champions), no wonder they aren't selling as well as they could.
If you split those prices in half then more people would buy them, you'd have more of a money in-take, hence not having to use sly con artist tricks such as lock boxes to use as a basic source of funding for the game.
I mean for crying out loud, for the price of one of those starships I could go and buy Mortal Kombat Komplete Edition on steam at full price.
Microtransactions my a**.
Justifying business practices such as this is beyond idiocy.
The Z-Store is not implemented very well, so why would anything other than keys and boxes be profitable? Considering you can't use vehicles for half of the content in the game, they could have just made them $5 mounts that are per character. They'd be cheaper and faster to develop with none of that mod nonsense. You know people would collect them on their mains and probably a few for their favorite alts. That's what I'm doing with my Rift main. I will probably buy most of the special mounts ($7-10 each) for my main and the 130% and 150% mounts ($2-5 each) for my alts so I don't have to waste time getting the plat for them. CO could have made the special travel powers per character instead of $5 account-wide.
At this point, I don't see myself spending any of my money on this game unless it actually gets proper development by the end of the year. There is no reason why CO should not be positioned to be THE superhero MMO of choice. It's not like there's a lot of competition, but what is there will be outclassing anything CO can do sooner or later. I don't even bother telling people I play CO any more since the only response I ever get is "what's that?"
The population is very low and something needs to be done to bring and keep new people in. I may not be a business major, but I'm pretty sure it's hard to make money if you don't have customers.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
The lockbox con came to CO with the Takofanes boxes (see old announcement), and the only legitimate new item added to the Z-Store at that time was another Flight reskin (a very cornercase one at that, shadowy Halloween themed).
I'm pretty sure if they had put interesting new stuff in the Z-Store (Legions at 1.500 Zen, maybe?) and the Flight reskin in a con box, the interest in keys would've died on the spot.
Obviously, they didn't actually try that kind of head to head comparison, as it might have invalidated their "argument" for why the lockbox con is a must.
EDIT: Grab bags were a precursor, generally with the same problem that there was nothing else worth mentioning new in the then still C Store at the same time.
EDIT 2: Oh, and comparig grab bags with the con boxes is apples and oranges. I recall the Mountain bags actually giving some of what people where other instead of the umptillions useless mod. Grab Bags were hones business next to the current con boxes.
Thanks for the timeframe.
Since we don't know their actual numbers or their methods, I'm not inclined to say anything they did is flawed. I don't like what they're doing, but I'm not going to pretend I know what's good for the company from the outside.
Oh, okay. Since you seem to know what exactly is selling in the store and what isn't, why don't you save us all the trouble of discussion and just give us in dollar amounts how much each thing in the store is selling. Thanks!
Lockboxes and grab bags are not apples and oranges. The only difference is in how they were obtained. The Halloween lockboxes had permanent become devices that were the "chase" items, just like costume pieces, vehicles, and Legion gear are the "chase" items now. Lots of people were after those, so you can't say that there was nothing worth mentioning in them.
Grab bags were largely avoidable. Just don't open the C Store, and you don't have to think about them. Putting them in as in-game drops, they're in your face all the time, and drive the impulse buy. That's the only difference between a grab bag and lockbox.
A. They don't appear in normal drop tables, so you could easily ignore them.
B. There was often a mission that let you get a free one, a daily one no less that could be done by your alts too! (this is how I got my two FF slots)
C. The bags actually had decent stuff in them sometimes, with no crap prizes... well, that's arguable, the Service Bag had some lame ones like the free costume change token.
D. They don't stop you from getting anything else in the game.
Lockboxes and keys are unacceptable because:
1. They appear in normal gameplay and are substantially harder to ignore since you'll find them among normal loot. That feeling you get when you see an Alert boss drop something, only to find out it's a lockbox... ugh. Thanks for making them White quality, at least!
2. There are no daily missions for free keys. Well, unless you cap out your Questionite over two characters and trade it for Zen, but it's very time consuming and relies on a player-run economy that is subject to change. This may get easier or may get harder!
3. The boxes are full of crap nobody wants. R3 and R4 mods? Lower-end vehicles? Mercenary gear?! Why would you put R3 and R4s in there?! I can find those on a casual stroll across Monster Island! I can directly buy crap vehicles from the Z-Store!
Finally, my completely free HEROIC gear is better than Mercenary gear!
4. They are the only gateway to legacy costumes, devices and action figures. Good luck to you completionists out there!
6. The quality of the costumes within is often dubious, with no texture options and bad proportioning when using body sliders. Even the good stuff is an obvious rush job!
Let's face it. The Nighthawk Grab Bag was the last good chance item to ever grace CO. The costume set was even available outside of the bag! I can safely and definitively say (for myself) that all of the other lockboxes have been complete and utter wastes of time that have only created new problems for CO, via vehicles being "too powerful" or "too weak", along with all of the broken costumes that very few people are going to have access to in the first place due to their absurd rarity.
Here's an analogy for you: A grocery store has sold all of its good stuff for the longest time, and suddenly one day you walk in and everything's in a box, each box marked $10. They are all the same size and shape, no matter the contents. You try your luck, and you get a 6 pack of ramen worth $5 and a generic 2 liter of cola worth $1. You look at the advertisement and see this store advertising greatness such as $20 steaks in these $10 boxes. At the bottom of your box you find a gift card worth 2 Lucky Points, which you can use to purchase special food from a special store across the street.
It takes at least 50 Lucky Points to buy a nice pizza. Have fun!
Oh yes, and the store's advertisements constantly advise you to go try their wholesale food place, urging you to buy a $299 membership that gives you a bunch of spiffy things, none of which help you at your previous favorite store.
... time to go find a new store, I guess?
Yes, they are. Case in point: Mountain Grab Bag. It actually guaranteed a costume piece and was argueably the last somewhat honest store item before the entire business model switched to a "honestly, it's not gambling" con thats honestly not gambling because really, you are guaranteed at least <insert suck-**** mod of choice here>.
Aside from that, see new sig.
Did I state I know exactly what is selling on the Z-Store, no, no I didn't.
However you stated Lock boxes were the only thing selling on the Z-Store that funds the development team, huh, makes you wonder how the game even lasted before those little con boxes were introduced, I mean it wasn't at all the hundreds of other items, sets and services available through the C-Store, oh no, not at all.
Japan has these, but the difference is, you pretty much know where you're going with it. They show up in some of the major arcades, which is fine.
Difference here is 2 things.
Asian designed gambling is designed to scam. Its a profit scam. When you go buy one of those boxes call it luck all you want, that gold watch you just won is actually painted.
2. We aren't an asian market. And quite frankly, I'm gettin pretty sick of the korean and asian market for business routines and their mmos as a whole. Most of these asian based business routines and games outside of china and japan only last what....3 years? Maybe 2 before it gets traded off to someone else, maybe 1 if it was a stupid idea, but they go broke trying to lobby for it in the first place.
3. I was poking at Korea, because I can't think of a single franchise off hand in korea that has lasted since 2005 using the Gachapon method of microtransactions. Yeah....not even Fiesta, since outspark quit. ******** would count if Nexon actually made any kind of significant amount of sales internationally. And as for the rest.....I can't think of any that currently stand today with enough population to succeed.
Gachapon being pretty much the same as these boxes, except you don't really get anything. Difference being in a gachapon system you pay say 5-10 bucks for this box thing, the catch is you don't know which of the 5-10 dollar value things you're gonna get, but you know for certain that you will definately get a 5-10 dollar value thing. So you end up opening a couple more to get the exact 5-10 dollar value thing and sell the extra stuff you don't want.
This lock box method is actually like 100 times worse than a gachapon lol.