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Tired of ships on the C-Store
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Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
I almost posted this in reply in the MVAM Escort feedback thread, but realized that it would be off-topic. I'm voicing my opinion here then.
When the MVAM was introduced as a console, I was hoping for more game progression such as hopefully some crafting method to obtain it (Even though the Delta Flyer crafting is still MIA) perhaps even a little quest line to help "test it." What we were offered was another cash grab for players to get something.
IMO, If every-single new ship or art release is going to end up on the C-STORE get rid of the subscription fee. It makes absolutely no sense. I have to pay almost $19 to have ship bundles like the D'Kyr or the retrofits. That's over one month's worth of subscription! So if I continue playing, you're going to get my money anyway, why charge me more?
The flip-side of buying via emblems is just such a grind. It will take me months to gather enough to buy all the available ships via in-game only. That's not very reasonable if I want to take a more relaxed approach to my gaming. By the time I have enough emblems the "Monthly ship release" comes around and I need to start the grind again. Why can't these art assets be budgeted from the subscription? Or made cheaper?
The choice: A month of game-time at all or a month of grind
And don't get me wrong, I understand that you're not simply putting everything on the C-Store. I think the team has done a magnificent job with the Weekly and the Season updates. But the C-Store works best for cosmetic little things. Ships do not belong in the store.
Besides, this micro-transaction economy model works well for FREE TO PLAY games, not subscription-based.
PLEASE! Fill the C-Store with Avatar/bridge costumes, pets, even the consumables bonus xp things. NOT FUNCTIONAL SHIPS. And if you MUST have them on the C-Store, I think $10 for a ship is a more reasonable price, $5 for the shuttles. Most of these ships take about a month or two for the team to get them to tribble. Sometimes more. Subscribed players payed during that time. If we fraction that subscription fee, we have payed some of those "Atari Points" and emblems through our monthly fee. PLEASE lower the price at the very least. Or remove them altogether and give me fun ways to get them in-game.
A matching emblem cost to more casual 300 or so would also be reasonable. I can get my ships in a more reasonable time frame, and I can have money to pay the subscription for another month.
When the MVAM was introduced as a console, I was hoping for more game progression such as hopefully some crafting method to obtain it (Even though the Delta Flyer crafting is still MIA) perhaps even a little quest line to help "test it." What we were offered was another cash grab for players to get something.
IMO, If every-single new ship or art release is going to end up on the C-STORE get rid of the subscription fee. It makes absolutely no sense. I have to pay almost $19 to have ship bundles like the D'Kyr or the retrofits. That's over one month's worth of subscription! So if I continue playing, you're going to get my money anyway, why charge me more?
The flip-side of buying via emblems is just such a grind. It will take me months to gather enough to buy all the available ships via in-game only. That's not very reasonable if I want to take a more relaxed approach to my gaming. By the time I have enough emblems the "Monthly ship release" comes around and I need to start the grind again. Why can't these art assets be budgeted from the subscription? Or made cheaper?
The choice: A month of game-time at all or a month of grind
And don't get me wrong, I understand that you're not simply putting everything on the C-Store. I think the team has done a magnificent job with the Weekly and the Season updates. But the C-Store works best for cosmetic little things. Ships do not belong in the store.
Besides, this micro-transaction economy model works well for FREE TO PLAY games, not subscription-based.
PLEASE! Fill the C-Store with Avatar/bridge costumes, pets, even the consumables bonus xp things. NOT FUNCTIONAL SHIPS. And if you MUST have them on the C-Store, I think $10 for a ship is a more reasonable price, $5 for the shuttles. Most of these ships take about a month or two for the team to get them to tribble. Sometimes more. Subscribed players payed during that time. If we fraction that subscription fee, we have payed some of those "Atari Points" and emblems through our monthly fee. PLEASE lower the price at the very least. Or remove them altogether and give me fun ways to get them in-game.
A matching emblem cost to more casual 300 or so would also be reasonable. I can get my ships in a more reasonable time frame, and I can have money to pay the subscription for another month.
Post edited by Unknown User on
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My point is about the functional items that end up on the C-Store and are way too overpriced in-game. I don't think it is fair grind. And the C-Store alternative seems like too much of a cash grab.
IMO its even too generous that they give you the option of buying them.
But seriously, at the moment they are what you would call endgame ships and in other MMORPG's it takes A LOT of grinding to get one.
I was never able to get a 1st rate ship in Pirates of the Burning Sea because of the heavy grind required, and as a casual player in runescape it took me years to get some of the best armor in the game.
Though I don't agree fully with the first post in this thread, I do agree with the general sentiment. I'm not a huge fan of C-Store Ships, but I can't help but feel that the 500 emblem cost put in game is prohibitive to the typcial player, now if all these retrofit ships are put into the game and available using the VA level token then that'd be fine, but they're not.
The Nebula and the Vulcan Science ship are a bit more friendly, you can grind both Marks of Exploration and Emblems for these and with the trading at BG Omega these are definitely more accessible. Just by running your B'tran daily you can grab these much quicker, combine with other emblem grabs and it's quite reasonable.
Things like the Excelsior and the Garumba (and I suspect the other KDF ships but tbh I don't know on them) are 500 emblems, now that really is a long time for most players, I would honestly think that 300 would be a much more reasonable amount. I'd be in full support of keeping C-Store accessability (tbh, 1200 points to remove the grind for all characters isn't bad, I have 3 VA's, that works nicely, if you have one it stings more) but how about making them a bit less grindy in game, say a 350 Merits price point?
None of these ships are MANDATORY to complete the game, or even to stay competitive with people who do... thats why they balance them.
I find this method to be far preferable to say... releasing a supplement. For example:
CoH released City of Villains as a seperate supplement, and the newest addition seperately. Also, they sell all the neat extra powers/emotes/costumes in their store that you have to purchase seperately.
Guild Wars has released SEVERAL new supplements that you CAN'T play at ALL unless you buy them.
World of Warcraft is the same thing... you can't even play the extra content unless you buy the supplement.
We have been fortunate enough not to have to succumb to this wily business practice, and instead are given all extra GAME content for the price of our subscription. If you really want Cryptic to follow the other MMO giants, then logically all the weekly episodes, new ships, new costumes, new add-ons should come in a whole seperate supplement once every few years.
Personally... I prefer the way things are going. Getting new content every week or so keeps me excited about the game, and keeps me guessing about what is coming next. I like it this way.
You feel cheated? Well imagine if they came out with NOTHING for the next year and a half, and then announced they would be selling a brand new supplement for $40-$60 bucks.
No thanks... I like that I can buy what I want in doses, rather than be forced to buy a bunch of extras that I don't want or won't ever use.
I completely agree.
I was having a conversation with a fellow fleet member about the stupid pricing on ships ingame (via 500 emblems) vs the almost forcable method Cryptic is taking with buying ships from the C-Store.
would not be much of a grind if it was fair.
people always want stuff easier and quicker than what its being offered at. id love it to be less, but i dont think it should be.
i would however prefer if emblems were on an account basis so they all go into one pool like atari points, then you can build up your emblems via different characters. that would make the grind slightly less arduous.
I disagree entirely. There are numerous methods for gaining emblems. Your typical Vice Admiral can earn 10 emblems a day doing B'Tran and Deferi dailies. They can earn even more emblems if they run through a Fleet Action or other repeatable content that awards them.
Out of these 2 quotes about grinding, I like the 2nd quote better. I consider myself a casual player as well but I am willing to grind to get the "high-end" stuff, not just have it handed to me since decreasing the amount of emblems to get them would do that.
I have played Burning Sea and it is hard to compare it to STO because Burning Sea has a living economy. You're not SUPPOSED to be able to get a 1st rate just like that. 1st rates were to be built as a fleet effort. Other than playing in a group, STO doesn't offer that level of player interaction. You each get the same amount of points at the end.
Not to clone Burning Sea, but perhaps we just need a similar option in STO. Production lines will help alleviate the problem. If I am "grinding" for say dilithium, while a fleetie is "grinding" for deutirium, then we get together and build a Defiant that's one thing. That's how Burning Sea works. Not everyone sitting though a month and grinding 500 emblems that really don't feel like they have meaning.
But anyhow, the point is the value. Something needs to give and something needs to be revised. We were promised that only cosmetic items will be added to the C-Store. Ship-parts like the Hephaestus costume is acceptable. A fully functional vessel is not.
Ships are the stars of Star Trek, and, if they're going to have special abilities as some of them do, then they should be relatively easy to obtain in game. It should not take a month of grinding to obtain a new ship unless that ship is somehow uber-powerful, in which case you couldn't have it in the C-store by their rules anyway.
Burning Also has a game store. Browsing through you can see cunsumables, pets to carry on your shoulder or follow you, summonable allies, xp boost items, unlockable questlines and such. Now you can go to their store and buy a deed for a ship or a deed for a refit, but you can get those from their auction house by buying it from other players; THAT THEY BUILT (Or stole or scavenged)!
Since Starfleet doesn't work like the Market competition of the Caribbean, the only option would be to have Fleets own shipyards and construct ships from the players. Move the emblems to a "Fleet Emblem bank" that way when you "grind" emblems they go to your fleet instead (Similar to guild XP in WoW Cata). Your fleet officer can then "buy" or unlock a new class of ship to craft in the fleet yard. That way all that grinding becomes a group effort and we get rid of the C-Store shenaningans. I mean, dammit Jim, It's an MMO!
But don't make us pay more. Once again that is F2P economy
Oh you're absoloutely right, I can't deny that there are plenty of options to get them, but we're told again and again that this is a casual game, and I think Dstahl himself even pointed out that the average number of Emblems acquired during a day for people was something like 8-10, now assuming the person plays every day that's still about 2 months. Seems quite a lot to me.
Perhaps it would be feasible to allow fleets to pool emblems together as a fleet into the bank and portion them out in the same way we do Energy Credits now. THat could provide an interesting mechanic for the future, that way as bigger ships come into the fray (and let's presume that they could with the level cap increase we'll eventually see) fleets could either pool together to buy larger ships for players, or people can buy them on the C-Store, or grind for months to get them.
Surely this w ould encourage the multiplayer element of the MMO we all love?
PS: On a side note, I desperatley disagree with the MVAM going onto the C-Store - whereas the Intrepid etc are lower tier retrofits this is essentially us buying a new power for the existing T5 Escort. This should really be in game only
QFT
Love it
By the time I grind the Prometheus MVAM "refit," I gotta start grinding the Oberth or something.
No thank you. All this would do is cheapen the reward of the accomplishment and make the ships way, way too easy to obtain.
It is already far too simple a task to grind out 15 to 20 emblems daily. The C-Store is for the "must have now!" crowd. Emblems are for those who do not want to spend real cash.
On the contrary, this opens a whole lot of possibilities and in-game content. I mentioned unlocking the ship's class to be crafted via emblems, not actually making the ship.
EXAMPLE:
It is later this year and we have Fleet Starbases. Your fleet has just constructed a Shipyard facility add-on. Your facility comes with "recipes" for all the non-special ships up to Captain level. Your fleeties want the Admiral Excelsior which costs say 1200 Fleet Emblems to unlock.
You gents group and do STFs and Weekly episodes together and get 1200 points. Then your officer goes and unlocks the Excelsior for crafting.
But you need the actual components, so your fleet hits Memory Alpha and crafts the Impulse drives, warp core, phasers, and so on. Simply bring your components back to your fleet shipyard and construct your Excelsior.
We've added more reasons to group in fleets, more crafting to do, and option to perhaps add mining as resource collecting, more to do in fleet bases, and more that I can't think of.
Then officers can restrict, like tab access, the level of ships that you can craft at the facility. Or "Clearance" levels for the technology.
Or something along those lines.
I would like to buy them if they were. Too be honest, i would have made the Vorcha Refit and the Fed Rec Science Vessel C-Store items.
The Nebula, and the Tac Carrier should be free (even though I bet Cryptic couldn't give the Tac Carrier away anyways).
These ships cost twenty five dollars, fifteen dollars less than a expansion. They are also just more of the same. They aren't really any better and you just get the to the same old content that was boring ten months ago.
It seems like the only thing they fund is more c-store content.
I really don't think five quest every two or three months is very much gaming content at all.
I think they are laughing all the way to the bank that people would actually buy them.
Again, not going to happen. What you are essentially looking for is to make Emblem grinding easier by spreading the effort out over multiple people, thereby making the items way too easy to obtain.
For example, what would be faster? 1 person grinding out 500 emblems solo or a large fleet of people grinding them?
What you are proposing penalizes smaller fleets and individuals who do not want to be in a fleet.
The emblem requirements for these items are just too high right now and its not very practical to get them.
I'd be curious to hear from someone at Cryptic what the ratio of "buyers" to "emblem grinders" are with regards to c-store purchases. Is anyone grinding these items out? My gut feeling here is that its something like a 1 to 50 ratio (or higher) ratio here.
-- Z
These people do not care for 'value for money' calculations, they do not care that they are being milked by cryptic. Their desire to have everything even remotely interesting in the game knocks their common sense out cold. They don't think or care about the fact that on the bottom line they are paying twice as much as for any other subscription based mmo.
This is where the Star Trek IP really pays of for cryptic. There is this huge crowd of people who will pay anything for whatever has a Star Trek sticker on it and cryptic is cashing in on them, massively. Every two weeks, like clockwork, the company releases an other little gadget for around 10$ on average, and people buy it, they line up to shell out the cash. They even supply the company with more ideas on what they would pay even more cash on top of their subscription.
As is also obvious in this topic, these people really hate to be shown the truth/the cash grab that the c-store is and react angry to say the least if somebody points it out. Maybe they are angry at themselves for not being 'stronger', not being able to withstand the 'must have everything no matter the cost' urge.
But fact is they will fight like zealots to protect the c-store. You will hear arguments like "you don't 'have' to buy xyz, just don't do it". The question they will never answer properly there is, what actually is necessary. I mean hey, we can fight borg cubes etc. in T3 ships so we don't 'need' any higher tiered ships at all. We don't 'need' weekly episodes, we don't 'need' STFs, thinking about it, we don't 'need' missions at all, we can level up with deep space encounters, right. So time to put all those things in the c-store. If you want them, buy them but don't dare complaining about it because after all you don't 'need' them, right.
Oh an other funny c-junk defense we keep hearing is the "microtransactions are common, they are here to stay, get used to it!". Right, name one (non-cryptic) pay to play game with an ingame store as extensive as STO's... and the silence strikes.
The bottom line is, STO what can be called a "pay double to play" game. Or as someone else put it a while ago: It is not a question of arguments and reasoning regarding how it could or should be, what has and what has not got a place in the c-store. The company is making money with the current cash-grab method and from a business stragey standpoint I can't fault them for it, not one bit. They found a way to generate a massive revenue stream with very little effort/cost. If I had a business opportunity... or I should say similar customers to exploit in a same way, I would definitely do it.
And thanks to all the gullible people who keep firing their credit card details at cryptic they can and will stick with it too, period.
Personally I bought a collectors edition and a lifetime subscription (ok, plus added one of those 2.50$ amazon download things to my account since the person i intended to gift it to didn't want it) and that's it. They won't see another cent from me, I won't support the pay-double-to-play business model. Create a game that is able to attract (and hold onto!) more/enough subscribers and don't keep trying to milk me for that ever looming additional buck on top of the standard subscription fee.
Of course eventually the non-store content will be so tiny in comparison and/or the c-store stuff will be so much better/stronger/more interesting that logging in with just having a normal subscription/LTS won't be worth it or interesting anymore but yeah well maybe that day won't come all that fast (it will inevitably come though) and I can get the full worth out of my LTS but we shall see.
ps: watch for upcoming hillarious "you only bought an LTS, you aren't paying anything anymore now, you are not supporting the game! Stop being a burden, go and buy c-store stuff to do your part and support the devs like all the good c-store-altar praying people!" Could the supporters of this argument please explain the point of a lifetime subscription to me, from a customer's standpoint?
Additional note: people who criticize the c-store on the official forums receive warnings/infractions or whatever they call it at the time for doing so. Which naturally results in a much "prettier" picture in terms of acceptance level of the c-store concept when it comes to it's representation here on the forums.
Why do I keep doing it then? Well, until will have stacked enough warnings etc. on my account to get banned I am sure I will already have lost interest in the game.
Hate to tell you but for me personally, your assesement is entirely wrong. I fully understand what the C-Store is. I have not bought every item in the C-Store, nor do I ever plan to. I also fully understand that Cryptic is unlikely to to earn any further income from a lifetime subscriber such as myself unless they have a C-Store.
This way it becomes like a ship costume, could last for a set period of time, and you would have to buy more...one holo per ship appearance saved.
This would also end the problem of having to set up "ship refits" for desired vessels all the time. Instead you just buy holos to save the ship appearance of your choice.