Sadly, the credit cap has not been specified. I think that is currently being debated.
Thanks for the quick reply.I hope that this will be announced soon since i just sold some stuff and dont want that money to be gone if i dont resub & come back later (like it was in Age of conan )
When the monthly c-store stipend begins, will c-store points be interchangeable between STO and CO?
"Promotional Points differ from Cryptic Points in that they can only be used in Star Trek Online. Cryptic Points, however, may be used across all Cryptic Studios' games."
---taken from [?] next to Monthly Stipend entry in F2P Features Matrix---
Haven't read through the thread yet, so this may have been asked already...
Is there any possibility of combining the CO and STO stipend when STO goes F2P This has been suggested by a few people elsewhere on the forums here, and I agree that combining them would give another reason for Silvers to upgrade their accounts to Gold.
"Promotional Points differ from Cryptic Points in that they can only be used in Star Trek Online. Cryptic Points, however, may be used across all Cryptic Studios' games."
---taken from [?] next to Monthly Stipend entry in F2P Features Matrix---
Yeah, I read that too.. I'm asking if there is any room for discussion to make it possible... later?
From the Matrix it states:
Clarification please. More slots purchasable/earned/unlocked?
- Currency sellers can buy a 2 euro cstore purchase and be allowed to spam channels and whispers??
- Currency sellers can afk for 20 hours and then spam mail you about their great offers???
- Currency sellers can drop spam topics all across the forums just because they made a cstore purchase???
Thanks.
You can't be afk for 20 hours, its autokick (I think), and i think its active gametime they are counting, not AFK time
If you've got questions and are looking for some clarifications concerning Star Trek Online's transition to a free-to-play model, this is the place to ask them.
I have a question.
You say this here thread is to ask questions about F2P, well, that kind of implies there would be some answers.
So, where are the answers?
It's been ten days since this thread was started and not a single question was responded to by Cryptic.
Now that Cryptic is part of PW, will I be able to use Perfect World Cashcards, that are easily found in mini marts, walmarts, target, and other gaming/technology stores to use for my subscription instead of having to bill my credit card?
Dsthal said this could be a possibilty in the future, but not at the present.
I have a question.
You say this here thread is to ask questions about F2P, well, that kind of implies there would be some answers.
So, where are the answers?
It's been ten days since this thread was started and not a single question was responded to by Cryptic.
To be fair, they did say this is where you can get answers for F2P questions. But they never specified from who.
If you've got questions and are looking for some clarifications concerning Star Trek Online's transition to a free-to-play model, this is the place to ask them.
Hi! I am new to this game, i started playing 3 days ago. I purchased the game(got 400 CP), monthly subscribed but once all this F2P goes live is much better(cheaper) to just buy CP (1000 CP is around 12$) and monthly stipend will be 400 CP (SUB price is around 15$.) What am i missing?
I don't care about mail, or inventory slots, don't care about character slot (can always buy them in C-Store).
I am not against F2P , just wondering if it's more worth it that way?
P.S. I am not English native speaker, sorry for errors in above text.
I dont think you are missing anything in that assumption. Free to play is designed to make it so you can play fairly casually for a very small amount of outlay to give you what you want, so for 1000CP per month you could be quite happy. It is only if you are a hardcore player where things can start to become pretty expensive and subscriptions of one form or another seem attractive.
(09-06-2011, 11:54 AM)
If you've got questions and are looking for some clarifications concerning Star Trek Online's transition to a free-to-play model, this is the place to ask them.
After reading through the Matrix for F2P, I do not see a Real Serious reason for the Average Player to think about Investing $300 for the Purpose of Going Gold. I do not know what other options might be available for Game Changing Items or Content, But, IMHO, there should be a Clear Cut Division between Gold and Silver Players that would MAKE Silver Players Really WANT to GO GOLD!
The Matrix, as it now reads is not that tipping point that I would like to see. What Item, or Items in that Matrix that are Gold Only, would make ME want to Invest in the game?? The 400 Monthly C-Store points is a step in the right direction....
I'd like to chime in and agree with many other players. I don't think there's enough incentive for players to join Gold Membership. $5 worth of CP for a $15 sub? Foundry access? Some very minor storage improvements?
... So my question: How set in stone is the F2P Gold/Silver Matrix? Is there consideration to nerf Silver or buff Gold?
One thing I would really love to see is getting rid of the RALH/UH business and having levels 41-50 all be one Rank called Commodore.
I'd just be happy if they just went back to "Rear Admiral" for 41-50 and ixnay the lower/upper non-sense. Commodore would be nice, but STO veto'd that long ago and it's one of those things that they've dug there heels in.
Does FTP mean less new content? Less income = less work = less new content right?
F2P usually means a much bigger income, just look at Champions Online or LoTR, which tripled their profit when they made the switch. Free to play means more players interested in trying the game and more players willing to throw down the cash for unique ship skins, extra character slots and so forth.
Frankly, it's really an option that should have existed from the start and most likely only didn't so they could get as much money from subs as possible first.
I believe that one player already posted elsewhere that Access to Tribble would remain only for Gold, or Paid Members?? I don't recall specifically where though....
Right basically i need to know as sto is becoming free to play now Can i cancel my Lifetime membership And get a refund or will crypic only allow me to cancel my sub and not give me a refund? I need help here urgently,
I will start by saying I have only just started my STO experiance (Tutorial Mission)
I realy feel that the Gold/Silver matrix presented to us is a real fail to those that sub and LTS. There is Zero incentive to got to Gold. I have come from 4 other MMOs that have done the upgrade to F2P so I feel I have a good idea of what fails and what succeds reguarding sub types.
Firstly I feel there needs to be more than just Gold/Silver. I can think of 4 diferent sub types of which only 3 are realy nesecery. LTS, P2P, "I have spent money on this Game" and Freeloader.
LTS and P2P can be wraped up in one but I think there is room to list them seperatly. But basicaly thay are as now, unlimited content access.
"I have spent money to play." is for retiring P2P accounts and for those that have actualy payed for C-Store Points to spend in game, not for people that have earned then in game for free or gained them any other way than spending their own hard earned money on points.
And of course Freeloader is for those that havent spent a dime on the game. They realy needd to be treated differently to those that have.
Now Dungeons and Dragons Online (DDO) and Lord of the Rings Online (LotRO) realy got this balance right between accounts. I also payed Pirates of the Burning Sea (PotBS) and they did prety much what STO is doing here. Well a little more actualy. And, they basicaly failed. Thye went F2P because numbers where dting fast, and sure they got alot of new subs for doing it but money did not increace, the bame got boring as those numbers turned out to be current players multisubbing for crafting benifets anf canceling their subs doe to not needing to pay to play the content thay already had access to. So moral to the story is do not give away your entire game for free, hold back and make the free players work for end game content.
Now for Ideas. (Based on previous experiances.)
Missions. There is no way these should all be free. No way what so ever. This is the purpose of playing the game (That and PvP). DDO gives away all content for the first 3-4 levels of your characters life and then sparadic bits here and there progressivly getting less and less per level up to L16, Max level in the game is L20. You buy the rest and the best missions in pack eather associated to a story arc or connected to a location. They have heaps of them. LotRO is a game where you travel the land and is broken up in to maps, Each map is bought and you have access to all content on those maps, They give away the 3 starting maps and the 4th map along the story arcs path. They also give the entire main story arc away for free, which travels most maps and you can PvE freely anywhere you want. Still lots to buy. Oh and they also have defence stile group instances and raids that you have to buy. So lots of content to get. And plenty of people willing to pay for it after the hours of fun the first 4 maps give along with the 2 free skirmishes. PotBS gave everything away, not gust the main story arc but every thing and there was plenty of opertunity to break down all the sub missions in to sets based on their location. Just compleat fail on their behalf.
Now after taking a skimm through the C-Store I did not find the content to plentyful. Not much there at all realy in comparrison to the other games. So I do not see my self or others buying much from there in the long run. Especialy if they are makeing more of the races free and even more unlocable through ingame achievements. Unlocking ingame only realy works if there are multipule servers availabe to play on (as in a list to select from at login, unlike STO) as the unlock should only be for that server and therefor still giving an incentive to actualy buy the item for access to all servers.
So not all reaces should be free or unlocable, infact, as there are only 3 classes, a majority of them should have to be bought. And, Alien should definatly be LTS/P2P only. Also some form of multiclassiing for them.
Limitations on Cosmetic slot, Bags, Banks, Money are common amungst everyone and are normaly quite diferent between sub types, LotRO for example Freeloaders only get 2 characters, are caped at 2 gold and no bank, "I have Payed" get an aditional character, are caped at 5 gold and no bank, P2P have access to 10 characters, unlimited gold, Bank and they even get a wardrobe just for their clothing items. See the massive diferances there.
Reguarding downgrading from P2P to "I have Payed" you keep everything you have unlocked and everything yoy have bought, EVERYTHING. If by chance you find yourself in a situation where you have access to less character slots than you have actual built characters they you will have access to the first characters used up untill you reach you character limit. Others will stay on your account but will be locked to you untill you buy the extra slots needed for them. Or you re sub.
I like you do not want this game to fall flat on its face because of this. So I say they realy need to rethink how they are going to do this. And do not be affraid to charge us for lots of things cause we will buy it. Some will buy it all. Oh and nomatter what you do make sure the total cost to buy everything in the game is more than the cost of LTS or there is no point what so ever and they should get the difference refunded to them even if it is in the way of C-Store points.
I think I have said everything I have to say. I am porbably mission some vital point but it is 4:30 am and I have just spent 2 hours reading this thread. I am looking forward to the progression to F2P. I just hope they do it right.
If you've got questions and are looking for some clarifications concerning Star Trek Online's transition to a free-to-play model, this is the place to ask them.
So... a lot of people are talking about F2P (free-to-play) business model encouraging a P2W (pay-to-win) mentality, both in players and the developer studio itself. How does Cryptic intend to combat this phenomenon?
can i access my toon on another computer with the f2p model? like if i were to download the game on another computer somewhere else could i log in with my subbed toons name and have access to that account on that computer?
Please don't turn STO into a Cash Shop W****! You want to point at games, how about Guild Wars? Buy the box, play free forever! Vanity items in the cash shop, new chapters every 6 months. Now Guild Wars 2, same business model. Over 7 million copies of Guild Wars sold! The cash shop brings in money because people love the game, love the content, and are buying costumes and such because they WANT to support the game!
Turn STO into another eastern cash shop, pay to win, pay for everything game, and I'm gone.
I'm very concerned STO might go this route with the PW buyout. I've played PWI, here's just two examples of how ridiculous they're cash shop is:
Mounts cost between $5 for the lowest (and slowest) up to $40 for the most expensive. But no mount is at it's highest movement speed when you buy it, you must buy speed upgrades. Speed upgrades raise your mounts travel speed by 0.5 for each upgrade. A 1.5 speed upgrade (the max you'll need to buy for any mount) will run you an additional $110.00.
Costumes are sold at varying prices from $5 on up, each costume piece is randomly colored at purchase time, so the odds of you getting every piece the same color is very remote. You can buy a 10 pack of dye for a little cheaper than the specific colored ones, but they are mystery dyes that will again color things randomly. At a fluctuating price of about $2 - $5 (don't know if it stabilized, left that game long ago) per dye, you'd think oh, a 5 piece costume $10 -$25, nope. Each piece requires anywhere from 4 to 15 or more dyes to color 1 item!
Comments
Thanks for the quick reply.I hope that this will be announced soon since i just sold some stuff and dont want that money to be gone if i dont resub & come back later (like it was in Age of conan )
"Promotional Points differ from Cryptic Points in that they can only be used in Star Trek Online. Cryptic Points, however, may be used across all Cryptic Studios' games."
---taken from [?] next to Monthly Stipend entry in F2P Features Matrix---
Is there any possibility of combining the CO and STO stipend when STO goes F2P This has been suggested by a few people elsewhere on the forums here, and I agree that combining them would give another reason for Silvers to upgrade their accounts to Gold.
ETA:
Yeah, I read that too.. I'm asking if there is any room for discussion to make it possible... later?
From the Matrix it states:
Jolan'tru
You can't be afk for 20 hours, its autokick (I think), and i think its active gametime they are counting, not AFK time
There will be a bot out first day that will automatically move you around enough to get past auto-kick.
I have a question.
You say this here thread is to ask questions about F2P, well, that kind of implies there would be some answers.
So, where are the answers?
It's been ten days since this thread was started and not a single question was responded to by Cryptic.
Dsthal said this could be a possibilty in the future, but not at the present.
To be fair, they did say this is where you can get answers for F2P questions. But they never specified from who.
Not necessarily. They are counting on many more people signing up who normally wouldn't play, and them buying oodles of things in the C-Store.
Where's the place they get answered?
Nah, Commodore would be 64-128!
I don't care about mail, or inventory slots, don't care about character slot (can always buy them in C-Store).
I am not against F2P , just wondering if it's more worth it that way?
P.S. I am not English native speaker, sorry for errors in above text.
- When will some Answers start Arriving?
Ya know the Yellow Title kindThe Matrix, as it now reads is not that tipping point that I would like to see. What Item, or Items in that Matrix that are Gold Only, would make ME want to Invest in the game?? The 400 Monthly C-Store points is a step in the right direction....
... So my question: How set in stone is the F2P Gold/Silver Matrix? Is there consideration to nerf Silver or buff Gold?
I'd just be happy if they just went back to "Rear Admiral" for 41-50 and ixnay the lower/upper non-sense. Commodore would be nice, but STO veto'd that long ago and it's one of those things that they've dug there heels in.
Heh. Nice pull.
F2P usually means a much bigger income, just look at Champions Online or LoTR, which tripled their profit when they made the switch. Free to play means more players interested in trying the game and more players willing to throw down the cash for unique ship skins, extra character slots and so forth.
Frankly, it's really an option that should have existed from the start and most likely only didn't so they could get as much money from subs as possible first.
How exactly do we get to the Tribble F2P server for testing?
Thanks...
Check Here: http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=134794
Once Tribble is reconfigured for F2P Cryptic will choose people to test the beta. Until then we wait.
Thankyou
tom
I will start by saying I have only just started my STO experiance (Tutorial Mission)
I realy feel that the Gold/Silver matrix presented to us is a real fail to those that sub and LTS. There is Zero incentive to got to Gold. I have come from 4 other MMOs that have done the upgrade to F2P so I feel I have a good idea of what fails and what succeds reguarding sub types.
Firstly I feel there needs to be more than just Gold/Silver. I can think of 4 diferent sub types of which only 3 are realy nesecery. LTS, P2P, "I have spent money on this Game" and Freeloader.
LTS and P2P can be wraped up in one but I think there is room to list them seperatly. But basicaly thay are as now, unlimited content access.
"I have spent money to play." is for retiring P2P accounts and for those that have actualy payed for C-Store Points to spend in game, not for people that have earned then in game for free or gained them any other way than spending their own hard earned money on points.
And of course Freeloader is for those that havent spent a dime on the game. They realy needd to be treated differently to those that have.
Now Dungeons and Dragons Online (DDO) and Lord of the Rings Online (LotRO) realy got this balance right between accounts. I also payed Pirates of the Burning Sea (PotBS) and they did prety much what STO is doing here. Well a little more actualy. And, they basicaly failed. Thye went F2P because numbers where dting fast, and sure they got alot of new subs for doing it but money did not increace, the bame got boring as those numbers turned out to be current players multisubbing for crafting benifets anf canceling their subs doe to not needing to pay to play the content thay already had access to. So moral to the story is do not give away your entire game for free, hold back and make the free players work for end game content.
Now for Ideas. (Based on previous experiances.)
Missions. There is no way these should all be free. No way what so ever. This is the purpose of playing the game (That and PvP). DDO gives away all content for the first 3-4 levels of your characters life and then sparadic bits here and there progressivly getting less and less per level up to L16, Max level in the game is L20. You buy the rest and the best missions in pack eather associated to a story arc or connected to a location. They have heaps of them. LotRO is a game where you travel the land and is broken up in to maps, Each map is bought and you have access to all content on those maps, They give away the 3 starting maps and the 4th map along the story arcs path. They also give the entire main story arc away for free, which travels most maps and you can PvE freely anywhere you want. Still lots to buy. Oh and they also have defence stile group instances and raids that you have to buy. So lots of content to get. And plenty of people willing to pay for it after the hours of fun the first 4 maps give along with the 2 free skirmishes. PotBS gave everything away, not gust the main story arc but every thing and there was plenty of opertunity to break down all the sub missions in to sets based on their location. Just compleat fail on their behalf.
Now after taking a skimm through the C-Store I did not find the content to plentyful. Not much there at all realy in comparrison to the other games. So I do not see my self or others buying much from there in the long run. Especialy if they are makeing more of the races free and even more unlocable through ingame achievements. Unlocking ingame only realy works if there are multipule servers availabe to play on (as in a list to select from at login, unlike STO) as the unlock should only be for that server and therefor still giving an incentive to actualy buy the item for access to all servers.
So not all reaces should be free or unlocable, infact, as there are only 3 classes, a majority of them should have to be bought. And, Alien should definatly be LTS/P2P only. Also some form of multiclassiing for them.
Limitations on Cosmetic slot, Bags, Banks, Money are common amungst everyone and are normaly quite diferent between sub types, LotRO for example Freeloaders only get 2 characters, are caped at 2 gold and no bank, "I have Payed" get an aditional character, are caped at 5 gold and no bank, P2P have access to 10 characters, unlimited gold, Bank and they even get a wardrobe just for their clothing items. See the massive diferances there.
Reguarding downgrading from P2P to "I have Payed" you keep everything you have unlocked and everything yoy have bought, EVERYTHING. If by chance you find yourself in a situation where you have access to less character slots than you have actual built characters they you will have access to the first characters used up untill you reach you character limit. Others will stay on your account but will be locked to you untill you buy the extra slots needed for them. Or you re sub.
I like you do not want this game to fall flat on its face because of this. So I say they realy need to rethink how they are going to do this. And do not be affraid to charge us for lots of things cause we will buy it. Some will buy it all. Oh and nomatter what you do make sure the total cost to buy everything in the game is more than the cost of LTS or there is no point what so ever and they should get the difference refunded to them even if it is in the way of C-Store points.
I think I have said everything I have to say. I am porbably mission some vital point but it is 4:30 am and I have just spent 2 hours reading this thread. I am looking forward to the progression to F2P. I just hope they do it right.
Good Morrow everyone.
Turn STO into another eastern cash shop, pay to win, pay for everything game, and I'm gone.
I'm very concerned STO might go this route with the PW buyout. I've played PWI, here's just two examples of how ridiculous they're cash shop is:
Mounts cost between $5 for the lowest (and slowest) up to $40 for the most expensive. But no mount is at it's highest movement speed when you buy it, you must buy speed upgrades. Speed upgrades raise your mounts travel speed by 0.5 for each upgrade. A 1.5 speed upgrade (the max you'll need to buy for any mount) will run you an additional $110.00.
Costumes are sold at varying prices from $5 on up, each costume piece is randomly colored at purchase time, so the odds of you getting every piece the same color is very remote. You can buy a 10 pack of dye for a little cheaper than the specific colored ones, but they are mystery dyes that will again color things randomly. At a fluctuating price of about $2 - $5 (don't know if it stabilized, left that game long ago) per dye, you'd think oh, a 5 piece costume $10 -$25, nope. Each piece requires anywhere from 4 to 15 or more dyes to color 1 item!