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From the recent Ask Cryptic:
You know, I've been saying it all along in regards to the C-store, that it was a slippery slope, that it will turn into pay-to-win (which it has, with some of the best ships in the game being in the C-store, and the head and shoulders best escort in the game being C-store only), but not even I could imagine that Cryptic would sink so low as to consider a freaking lottery system for real money. This isn't pay to win. This is pay for the *possibility* of win, and like all slippery slopes it will only go downhill from here.
Cryptic, if people are prone to question your business practices, if people are prone to call you things like "greedy" and "money-grubbing", look at what you are doing and the direction you are going. Take a long hard look. The fact that you are even considering such a questionable practice shows just how low your view of your customers is. The fact that this thread is probably going to be moved, locked, and myself either banned or given a ton of infractions for pointing out the obvious doubly shows this -- you aren't interested in any kind of real critical feedback.
For the love of God, start spending time and money making this game better (hiring more than a skeleton dev team as opposed to using the boxed and lifetime sales to finance a whole new game would be a good start), and stop this insanity of fleecing your existing user base for as much as you can possibly can. It doesn't help the game population, and in the long run it will ruin this game financially when everyone tires of it.
I would love nothing more than for Dstahl to come in here and say, "Boy that was a stupid idea, never mind". Please Cryptic, prove me wrong.
While the details of the Duty Officer System are still being ironed out, we do anticipate three primary means of obtaining these crew... ...by purchasing new random lots of recruits from the c-store,
You know, I've been saying it all along in regards to the C-store, that it was a slippery slope, that it will turn into pay-to-win (which it has, with some of the best ships in the game being in the C-store, and the head and shoulders best escort in the game being C-store only), but not even I could imagine that Cryptic would sink so low as to consider a freaking lottery system for real money. This isn't pay to win. This is pay for the *possibility* of win, and like all slippery slopes it will only go downhill from here.
Cryptic, if people are prone to question your business practices, if people are prone to call you things like "greedy" and "money-grubbing", look at what you are doing and the direction you are going. Take a long hard look. The fact that you are even considering such a questionable practice shows just how low your view of your customers is. The fact that this thread is probably going to be moved, locked, and myself either banned or given a ton of infractions for pointing out the obvious doubly shows this -- you aren't interested in any kind of real critical feedback.
For the love of God, start spending time and money making this game better (hiring more than a skeleton dev team as opposed to using the boxed and lifetime sales to finance a whole new game would be a good start), and stop this insanity of fleecing your existing user base for as much as you can possibly can. It doesn't help the game population, and in the long run it will ruin this game financially when everyone tires of it.
I would love nothing more than for Dstahl to come in here and say, "Boy that was a stupid idea, never mind". Please Cryptic, prove me wrong.
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hey hey, they have Full Dev Team since day one of June. chill you don't need to flame Cryptic.
How many business that sell collectible cards are there? (from games like Magic and Pokemon to professional sports like Hokey)
I just can't wait to start collecting them.
PS: I hope a good trading system is also put in place so that we can trade our Duty Officer among ourselves.
The DOff system has been designed around maximising C-Store revenue.
A mandatory lottery, as the game will only be balanced around participation. The unregulated random element only makes the scam more apparent.
Fully expect the usual cryptos to leap to the defence and quell the dissenters. I'm sure they'll find themselves receiving the best 'cards' in their 'boosters', thus justifying the system in their eyes.
*sigh* Yep...
Because it's the exact same thing SWG pulls now, for the exact same reason. Except here, there's not even an excuse of having a seperate 'game' to play with the 'cards' - they're all directly performance-affecting.
IMHO, it would have been better if the C-Store had always just focused on small, repeat transaction sales but the mix of those with large and high dollar items and a monthly sub weighs down people's impressions of this game and makes the game more C-Store reliant by driving off players and forcing Cryptic to hit up remaining players for more.
And I think non-repeat sales, things that people buy once are too common and fail to provide a continuing return for Cryptic, forcing development time to be spent on more C-Store assets.
For example, instead of one accountwide Amazon-style Borg BO for 240 CP as an account wide unique BO?
One non-account wide, non-unique BO with the same art assets for 80 CP a piece, available in Sci, Tactical, and Engineering flavors. More continuing sales with less dev time spent in the C-Store at a lower entry pricepoint. But more potential sales overall for alts and for people who want all three or duplicates of one.
The Escorts in the C-Store are available via in game methods. One can be obtained through selecting it as a VA option, the other can be obtained by grinding your butt of for 500 marks of exploration. In fact, all of the endgame ships can be obtained in game, granted you have to grind for them if you want them. The exception being the Dreadnought which is either C-Store or get 5 subscriptions from your referrals to get it free.
C-Store items as nice as they are don't give the player an advantage over other players, they may be pretty and have a trick up their sleeve but that's it, calling it pay to win in my opinion is wrong, as I said the c-store may give "nice stuff" but in the end in STO in my experience the game has always given players in game methods of getting these items. I think the C-Store Doff packs if added will be no different, nice fluff to add to your toon but in a few weeks you'll regret the purchase seeing the in game doffs you have are just as good if used correctly.
The last time I checked, the MVAM was not available in-game by any means.
You can't use your VA retrofit token for it either.
While it may be a bit over stated to say, "pay to win," he's still right. The best things in a video game must always be obtained through hard work, not 20 bucks.
What we need is a way to get these "trading cards" by grinding emblems. Making them c-store available is fine, sure, but make it like the melee weapon pack...restricted to uncommon.
1. A starting set based on your rank (Commons and Uncommons)
2. Longer Recruitment assignments
3. Certain specialized rare assignments (White, Green, Blue, Purple qualities)
4. C-Store Packs (fixed distribution of Commons versus distribution of Uncommons or better)
5. Achieving tiers in commendation categories (Green, Blue, Purple qualities)
6. Trading and the Exchange
Other methods, such as expending other types of in-game resources, are also being considered.
While you can certainly bolster what you have available via C-Store purchases, there are several other routes to gaining even the highest quality levels of duty officers (purples); my suspicion is actually that the C-Store will mostly be a route taken by collectors who are trying to collect all-Orion or all-Vulcan crews and similar rp-themed arrangements.
The higher qualities are also currently much rarer than comparable colored items in the game - this means that the most practical way of getting Blues and Purples will be through the assignment system and achieving tiers in the various commendation categories.
(As a note to the above, realize that rarity and quality are correlated, but not rigidly linked for duty officers - rarity is Common, Uncommon, Rare, Very Rare. Quality is White, Green, Blue, Purple. For the Federation, a Human of White quality is Common, while an Andorian of White quality is Uncommon. For the Klingons, a Klingon of White quality is Common, while an Orion of White quality is Uncommon. For assignments, quality and rarity is, however, linked, with Common always correlating to White quality, Uncommon with Green, and so on.)
As always, all of this is subject to change based on development considerations and what we observe on Tribble.
EDIT: Clarified current model of C-Store pack rarity distribution.
*twitch*
...yeah... that's not paying for power at all...
It should be noted that is also a guaranteed number of Commons.
thanks for clearing it up. looks good to me.
Can you elaborate on these points?
It is available for 500 emblems.
So I can grind one hour of OT at work and buy a couple ships for my entire account, or a month of grinding emblems in STO to get a single ship that only works on the one character.
Logic FTW :rolleyes:
Hint: The 500 emblem thing is only there to make you think that you have a choice, and to give you a comparison that makes the $12-20 dollar asking price not look completely ridiculous.
yes it is here ingame, and you'd need 500 emblems to buy the ship.
We have a winner.
1. You get a random team of players. --- here: DOffs
2. By playing games and winning tournaments you gain ingame credits to buy playerpacks. (like collectible card games) --- in STO these are the DOff missions and random loot, right?
3. You can buy the same playerpacks with real money. (In FIFA there were 3 sets with different possibilities of getting rare players.) --- This is the cstore in STO
Do I understand that correctly?
ROTFL Damned soda pop all over me monitor again. .....
(whispering) Would you like a tranquilizer?
Kind of reminds me of my junior high/high school days with the old school Star Wars CCG. There was this awesome card store near my house that not only sold you the prepackaged random packs but individual cards and did trades. Sadly that store is a Subway now. (Granted, the owner looked about sixty when I first started playing, so I think he simply retired rather than went out of business.)
My interpretation of this fixed common thing is that buying dofs in the C-Store = buying a booster pack of cards which has mostly commons with the rest split between uncommons and usually at least 1 rare.
Just imagine booster packs like in Magic...
They usually come with one rare 3 uncommon and 11 common.
Here you just probably know what rare card you will get and you will get random uncommons and commons...
And as always here in the forum people freak out as soon as the c-store is mentioned... we got 4 menthods of acquiring doffs and one method is c-store and we can trade... everyone goes batshit carzy because you can optain doffs in c-store...
Srsly people that tune gets old...
Only in this case, it's crewmen lol!
"Aw, you lucky b*****d! You got the Bajoran engie with +5 to plasma conduit cleaning!... I got the Pakled ship's counselor..."