We are the Ferengi.
Life as you know it is over.
We will take the contents of your wallets for our own.
You will be forced to grind endlessly to merely survive.
Backstabbing and stealing from your peers is not mandatory... but then neither is eating.
You will be adapted to increase our profit margins.
Resistance is futile.
Now that I have seen the changes in actual play. I think the people at Cryptic Studio are morons.
Why?
The goal of any change for any product is to make the product better.
What defines a product is better?
A product is better when it saves the user time and money.
Why?
It is efficient.
Why is that important?
People have a limited amount of time to play a game and have a limited amount of money to spend on a game.
The concept of 'dilithium crystals' to use as one method for rewarding people for spending time to play the game, that is a good idea.
To use the dilithium crystal idea in place of the old badge system is a good idea.
To use the dilithium crystal system to restrict a players time to play the game is a bad idea.
Why?
Because it does not establish value.
Why is that important?
The paying player in any system of payment for a video game has to know that if they put 168 hours a week into playing the game, there is going to be a sufficient manner of reward.
Why?
That's human nature.
Think of the game as a Putt-Putt Golf and Games facility (The poor mans casino). People go there after work and towards the weekend because it is cheap and keeps the kids busy and out of trouble.
At many Putt-Putt facilities, you win tickets to get a bunch of free things that normally people would not buy anywhere else because it is a waste of money and the products have no real value. But it was fun to see how many tickets you can win at skeeball so that you can go there at the end of the night and show off to other people, you can get more TRIBBLE then they can for the same investment.
Now imagine you going to the Putt-Putt facility and all of a sudden it is under new management. Now the management says you can play all the skeeball you want but after 15 minutes we are going to stop giving you tickets for playing. Then when you walk up to the counter to cash in your tickets all the items are labeled with the amount of tokens beyond what you can win in 15 minutes worth of playing skeeball.
Then these morons decide to put a second price up that says, we will sell it to you instead for cash.
The place just went from a respectful place of business to a shady place.
This whole new system coming out seems more like 'how many ways we can rip off the customer before they go somewhere else' than it is about 'how many ways can we give the customer a reasonable value' for the money they plan to spend.
What makes Star Trek Online valuable?
A person pays 15 dollars a month and then spends 672 hours flying around in a fake starship collecting TRIBBLE and occasionally fighting aliens. Sure when you first start to play the game your first 72 hours is doing the crappy story missions the game designers made. However, once you play all the story missions, you realize they have nothing to do with Star Trek.
All the stories have one plot method, your ship is sent to kill someone to prolong a war that will never end.
What method did Cryptic Studio develop to encourage a person to spend all there valuable time and money?
Congratulations, you now can spend 15 minutes a day exploring for for a crappy crystal worth 1,440. So in 8 days (192 hours) when you reach your limit, you can use it on nothing.
I think here is the big picture the morons at Cryptic fail to understand.
The exploration missions are a series of missions that require a player to complete 3 missions to get the reward. Then the accolade which is tide to the reward is also rewarded to show how many exploration missions you have completed. So your badges will correlate with your achievement. Also the countdown meter on the mission journal reports the completion by the same method.
This means a player when a player journal shows you have completed 9 Arucanis exploration missions, you in actuality completed 9 times 3 missions. That is 27 missions for you people that find math difficult to do.
Also, your ability to grind diplomatic mission xp, and skill points xp and accumulate starfleet merits to train people come from that too.
In case the morons cannot follow my point, you have just hinder the players ability to make advancement in the game because if they do exploration missions while the cooldown period is going on, that time they are spending is not accounted for.
Not only have you lost energy credits, skill points, diplomatic xp, resource gathering, junk pile accumulation to buy other TRIBBLE with, they have restricted the players time to 15 minutes.
I see all kinds of people writing about 'farmers'. That's a bunch of TRIBBLE. By putting this method in all you have accomplish is restrict the players ability to get anything done in a reasonable amount of time.
To prove a point, make PVP a daily event. Once people do there pvp, they can't PVP for 24 hours. Then see what happens.
I do not see how that will encourage people to buy things from the C-Store.
The whole reason people buy things off the C-Store is to make the time spent on the ship better or more enjoyable.
The badge system in place now is actually better then what you are proposing with the dilithium crystal.
So, with this system we get less playing time, less reward, and have to spend even more money to get what we could afford before only at a slower rate.
That proves my point, only a moron would say that system is better. Then spend the next 3 months swearing up and down it is better.
All I see is a bunch of Cryptic employees out of a job in 4 months when they fall short of their revenue prediction curve. What will be a hilarious outcome is is these employees are astonished they got fired. Most people can see this coming, and are willing to pay 15 bucks a month to see people get fired , when all along they thought they were making a better product.
By making the exploration a daily mission you have created an antagonistic tool to allow people to enjoy the game they love. An antagonist is a device the blocks or hinders another thing. Exploration missions in this game are the 'bread and butter' missions for the player who has a long term investment in playing this game. You have just eliminated that aspect of the game. :mad:
Where I sat down today excited about playing the game tonight, now with this I don't want to even log in the game. :mad:
I always wondered what it was like when SWG had that conversion thing, now I know.
Again I ask, who is responsible PW or Cryptic? CO's FTP was much smoother than this was it Atari or Cryptic then? I love STO, I want it to be around for a long time, but these economic changes are too stark. Streamlining merits, emblems, and that is a good idea, but there is too many moving parts. Why did ships have to be thrown in?
Just seems to be way more anger in these posts, and not enough people staying calm and trying to live up to the ideas that Star Trek represents.
I'll admit, I have had some trouble as well in that regard but the stigma is there. Cryptic may call it Dilithium or they may call it Cryptic Points. But whatever the designation is, it is money. And via pennies per day or via larger transfers into their account, players must earn it.
In their desire to implement economic reform, they have let the situation concerning those who already make recurring financial contributions languish to such a degree that it has deteriorated into what this thread, and several others, have become. Their silence on that front has created a festering wound and these continued 'enhancements' to the game are only pouring salt into that wound.
They need to sit down and repair that damage.
First and foremost, they cannot continue to take anything more away from a subscriber. Things that have been promised get delivered.
The second point would be to return to their initial promise that the gameplay experience for subscribers would not change. That includes subscribers not being charged money to purchase their leveling escort, science, and cruiser vessels, whether it be their first or their third. Energy Credits? Sure. Money? Definitely not.
Lastly, provide a global discount (I suggest 20%) to all purchases that require the use of dilithium. The only exception to this should be your exchange rate into Cryptic Points. This would help to alleviate the sting of this new economy. If this means people who are not subscribed subscribe for a month to make mass purchases, so much the better. They're paying for a time-limited club membership and those that don't want to don't have to. Perhaps, after a month of having a discount and not having to grind dailies, the most boring missions of any MMO to purchase their ships, they may want to stay.
It's true, if the economy that was just released doesn't have drastic changes before the December release, even people like me who have paid for the game non-stop since day one might walk away. I just really want to remind people that this is what, week 2 of the beta? We still have months of testing to go before the final build, and the almost daily Path to F2P Dev Blogs are showing that they are trying, not flat out ignoring us.
Just seems to be way more anger in these posts, and not enough people staying calm and trying to live up to the ideas that Star Trek represents.
It's that Star Trek I think many of us are so sad to see die as these new economic changes come in.
Gene would cry.
This is, IMO, killing his vision - it's putting the final nail in the idea that the Federation would provide.
Thanks GN - but I can't believe I'm saying this....
I'm losing hope they're going to get it right. They have a completely separate game that apparently works well and they don't appear to be doing anything at all like it.
This game is heading towards a fundamental - neigh - a PARADIGM shift that this franchise should never have to face as it's core is everything BUT based on a fluctuating economy.
I doubt Kirk EVER had to go schlep around the galaxy to get ore to refine into crystals so he could beg for a new ship from the Fleetyards.
By the way, they said we were testing the "Silver" members content. Then why are we not locked for how many Bridge Officers we have? I thought this was supposed to be 5, but I have 7 currently with 3 more open slots yet to fill... I have also notice some other "Gold" member only stuff on Tribble...
I read back in several posts saying, "Remember, we are testing the silver member stuff and in no way is this what is set for the gold members"...
So far I no longer believe these statements as there is too much "mixing" of gold and silver member content... Heck, at this point we might as well not even have two codes to this game for gold and silver members. Just combine them. (Its going to happen eventually. Might as well be sooner than later...)
the retrofits might be in the plain old space dock ship store.
turns out you can buy white boffs in space dock, they now cost 240 dilithium each though. extremely minimal station power customization is available though :rolleyes:
Now compare that to the amount of Dilithium we get for a daily. Would be helpful if the exploration dailies actually would give Dilithium and not only skill points, just so we are able to get Bridge Officers. There are quite some officers on the Exchange for the Feds to look for abilities, but the KDF will probably be a little short here now.
Now compare that to the amount of Dilithium we get for a daily. Would be helpful if the exploration dailies actually would give Dilithium and not only skill points, just so we are able to get Bridge Officers. There are quite some officers on the Exchange for the Feds to look for abilities, but the KDF will probably be a little short here now.
So wait... *Bridge Officers* now have to be bought with dilithium too?!
I'm going to call CBS and demand they pull the license if that's the case!
While I won't say the dilithium economy couldn't use some tweaking, which is the purpose of testing and whatnot, it looks to me like they're trying to make Very Rare equipment... well, Very Rare.
I applaud the goal, but if it's going to take this much to obtain Very Rare equipment, I'd suggest increasing the amount of bonus damage that rarity provides. As it stands, the differences in bonuses from rarity isn't terribly impressive.
Actually I am all for making very rare equipment very rare, only if I can mount the common stuff. Add phaser cannons to the common venders already.
By the way, they said we were testing the "Silver" members content. Then why are we not locked for how many Bridge Officers we have? I thought this was supposed to be 5, but I have 7 currently with 3 more open slots yet to fill... I have also notice some other "Gold" member only stuff on Tribble...
I read back in several posts saying, "Remember, we are testing the silver member stuff and in no way is this what is set for the gold members"...
So far I no longer believe these statements as there is too much "mixing" of gold and silver member content... Heck, at this point we might as well not even have two codes to this game for gold and silver members. Just combine them. (Its going to happen eventually. Might as well be sooner than later...)
No.. they've said the exact opposite. We were all granted Gold status for testing here. This is how the game will be for subs and LTSers if they were to launch now. Thank GOD we still have several months for them to fix the fubar mess we have right now.
So wait... *Bridge Officers* now have to be bought with dilithium too?!
I'm going to call CBS and demand they pull the license if that's the case!
Since they removed Merits/Honor you can buy the common BOffs for 240 Refined Dilithium each and it looks like training will cost EC (once it is working). So atm bying officers is the only way to train some of the basic abilities.
Whelp, I rarely if ever post on forums, being the "silent majority" that D'Angelo mentions, and I have some major concerns.
First : We should not have to grind for our "free" and "basic" ships. Extra ships that take our fancy, yes, but not ships we already get for free on holodeck. We were told that gold players would not lose anything they already get on holodeck. Quite simply, you lied Cryptic.
Second: Dilithium Grind. All I can say is "Really Cryptic? Really?" I guess we all know who's pulling the strings now Perfect Worlds don't we. I see you grubby fingers all over this. You watch, I'll get a warning or infraction for this post.
Third: Linear Scaling Missions: If your going down this path. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD HAVE SCALING REWARDS FOR THE MISSIONS. Getting Mark 2 gear from missions at Commander 5 while being in a Connie Refit because I couldn't afford to upgrade my ship is not my idea of funny.
That said. I LOVE the Duty officer system, Heretic is now my favourite Dev at Cryptic (sorry CapnLogan). But that said, I could not recomend this game to other people at the moment. Hell I even talked my brother out of buying a Lifetime Sub, I'd rather he wait and see what happens before do puts that kind of money down.
This goes down right after Dan left, maybe he knew it was coming and decided not to be a part of this exploitation of paying customers
After seeing the train wreck that's coming on Tribble, I think it's time that trekkies and trekkers got together and contacted CBS and whoever else we have local and national that deals with the conventions and send so many complaints that CBS has no other option but to listen.
CBS has a site http://cbs.promotionexpert.com/cbsconsumerproducts/generalinfo.html that you can get general information about the licencing and I suppose we could probably use that to register complaints about the Ferengi in charge here at Cryptic. This has the potential to damage CBS' IP and I know they won't stand for anything that could lose them money.
When all you've got is a cricket ball, there's only one good thing to do with it.
Throw it through someones' window
Well Cryptic are a little far away for that. So I'll just not bother with trying to help with the testing any more. It's clear Cryptic don't really want us to.
So I just got my Klingon toon to Commander, do the promotion ceremony, and get a whopping 8,000 dilithium, which leaves me only 92,000 short to get my commander ship. Not only that, but cryptic's response to no Klingon content, raise your starting level as a klingon and make you grind at a snail's pace. Not enough klingon players online to even try out the klingon mirror pve event. I can't wait for f2p. DC Universe f2p that is. The end of the month won't get here fast enough for me. As for this game, I don't even know what to say anymore. Everything has already been said except: All hands, this is the Captain. Abandon Ship, I repeat Abandon Ship!!!
So I just got my Klingon toon to Commander, do the promotion ceremony, and get a whopping 8,000 dilithium, which leaves me only 92,000 short to get my commander ship. Not only that, but cryptic's response to no Klingon content, raise your starting level as a klingon and make you grind at a snail's pace. Not enough klingon players online to even try out the klingon mirror pve event. I can't wait for f2p. DC Universe f2p that is. The end of the month won't get here fast enough for me. As for this game, I don't even know what to say anymore. Everything has already been said except: All hands, this is the Captain. Abandon Ship, I repeat Abandon Ship!!!
A wise Klingon proverb ... "Only a fool fights in a burning house."
Cryptic may be foolish enough to not realize the we players are NOT fools.
All we had left was hope and that hope is inside that burning house and almost lost to us.
After reading through 36 pages of mainly angry posts, (more no doubt by the time I finish typing), I feel I have to comment...
Whilst I understand the anger is mainly because we care passionatly about the game, it is just that a game... We have had it too easy for too long... It is indicative of the all too common attitude these days of "I want it all... & I WANT IT NOW"... That is why this planet is in such a mess at the moment...
Mr. D'Angelo & the others at Cryptic... IMO, you need to address immediatly the following :-
Make good on the F2P matrix statement that ALL basic ships would be obtainable at rank-up.. Do this either by giving back the "ship token", or ensuring enough Dillithium is awarded... with no need to grind for it.
Reduce (slightly) the cost (in Dillithium) of the higher end equipment... again reducing the amount of grinding.
Lastly... more pre-patch communication, via maybe daily Engineering reports, this will forstall alot of the post-patch "angst" that you are currently receiving...
To the STO community, to which I both respect & not wish to upset anyone, I say this :-
Play-test-enjoy the game as best you can, until the Dev team iron out all the wrinkles...
It is possible to reach end-game with the weapons etc. that the basic ships come with, you all know that, as I'm sure you've played the game... The story arc missions give us better equipment along the way..
You don't even have to get too far into the "arc" as the XP is boosted (temporaily).. I enjoy the game more when I have to work for my upgrades anyway, rather than just one-shotting every npc I find...
Please remember this is still "work-in-progress", & changes to the structure of the game takes time to implement... (the Devs are people too, and like the rest of mankind, they make mistakes)... so hold off on the venom & doom predictions until this goes "live"... IF it is a mess at that stage, then I too will be screaming "wtf" along with the rest of the community... I do not want to see the servers turned off, as I'm sure Cryptic doesn't...
I apologise if this in any way seems patronising to anyone, that is not my intention... I respect each & every one of you... Live long & prosper... :cool:
Comments
From this time forward, you will service us.
It sure feels like its going that way.
I'm holding out hope.... but all the same I just hope I don't have to live to see *another* Trek game die.
I already watched online play of Elite Force (and EF with the RPG-X mod) die a slow painful death.
It wasn't fun.
Life as you know it is over.
We will take the contents of your wallets for our own.
You will be forced to grind endlessly to merely survive.
Backstabbing and stealing from your peers is not mandatory... but then neither is eating.
You will be adapted to increase our profit margins.
Resistance is futile.
Why?
The goal of any change for any product is to make the product better.
What defines a product is better?
A product is better when it saves the user time and money.
Why?
It is efficient.
Why is that important?
People have a limited amount of time to play a game and have a limited amount of money to spend on a game.
The concept of 'dilithium crystals' to use as one method for rewarding people for spending time to play the game, that is a good idea.
To use the dilithium crystal idea in place of the old badge system is a good idea.
To use the dilithium crystal system to restrict a players time to play the game is a bad idea.
Why?
Because it does not establish value.
Why is that important?
The paying player in any system of payment for a video game has to know that if they put 168 hours a week into playing the game, there is going to be a sufficient manner of reward.
Why?
That's human nature.
Think of the game as a Putt-Putt Golf and Games facility (The poor mans casino). People go there after work and towards the weekend because it is cheap and keeps the kids busy and out of trouble.
At many Putt-Putt facilities, you win tickets to get a bunch of free things that normally people would not buy anywhere else because it is a waste of money and the products have no real value. But it was fun to see how many tickets you can win at skeeball so that you can go there at the end of the night and show off to other people, you can get more TRIBBLE then they can for the same investment.
Now imagine you going to the Putt-Putt facility and all of a sudden it is under new management. Now the management says you can play all the skeeball you want but after 15 minutes we are going to stop giving you tickets for playing. Then when you walk up to the counter to cash in your tickets all the items are labeled with the amount of tokens beyond what you can win in 15 minutes worth of playing skeeball.
Then these morons decide to put a second price up that says, we will sell it to you instead for cash.
The place just went from a respectful place of business to a shady place.
This whole new system coming out seems more like 'how many ways we can rip off the customer before they go somewhere else' than it is about 'how many ways can we give the customer a reasonable value' for the money they plan to spend.
What makes Star Trek Online valuable?
A person pays 15 dollars a month and then spends 672 hours flying around in a fake starship collecting TRIBBLE and occasionally fighting aliens. Sure when you first start to play the game your first 72 hours is doing the crappy story missions the game designers made. However, once you play all the story missions, you realize they have nothing to do with Star Trek.
All the stories have one plot method, your ship is sent to kill someone to prolong a war that will never end.
What method did Cryptic Studio develop to encourage a person to spend all there valuable time and money?
Congratulations, you now can spend 15 minutes a day exploring for for a crappy crystal worth 1,440. So in 8 days (192 hours) when you reach your limit, you can use it on nothing.
I think here is the big picture the morons at Cryptic fail to understand.
The exploration missions are a series of missions that require a player to complete 3 missions to get the reward. Then the accolade which is tide to the reward is also rewarded to show how many exploration missions you have completed. So your badges will correlate with your achievement. Also the countdown meter on the mission journal reports the completion by the same method.
This means a player when a player journal shows you have completed 9 Arucanis exploration missions, you in actuality completed 9 times 3 missions. That is 27 missions for you people that find math difficult to do.
Also, your ability to grind diplomatic mission xp, and skill points xp and accumulate starfleet merits to train people come from that too.
In case the morons cannot follow my point, you have just hinder the players ability to make advancement in the game because if they do exploration missions while the cooldown period is going on, that time they are spending is not accounted for.
Not only have you lost energy credits, skill points, diplomatic xp, resource gathering, junk pile accumulation to buy other TRIBBLE with, they have restricted the players time to 15 minutes.
I see all kinds of people writing about 'farmers'. That's a bunch of TRIBBLE. By putting this method in all you have accomplish is restrict the players ability to get anything done in a reasonable amount of time.
To prove a point, make PVP a daily event. Once people do there pvp, they can't PVP for 24 hours. Then see what happens.
I do not see how that will encourage people to buy things from the C-Store.
The whole reason people buy things off the C-Store is to make the time spent on the ship better or more enjoyable.
The badge system in place now is actually better then what you are proposing with the dilithium crystal.
So, with this system we get less playing time, less reward, and have to spend even more money to get what we could afford before only at a slower rate.
That proves my point, only a moron would say that system is better. Then spend the next 3 months swearing up and down it is better.
All I see is a bunch of Cryptic employees out of a job in 4 months when they fall short of their revenue prediction curve. What will be a hilarious outcome is is these employees are astonished they got fired. Most people can see this coming, and are willing to pay 15 bucks a month to see people get fired , when all along they thought they were making a better product.
By making the exploration a daily mission you have created an antagonistic tool to allow people to enjoy the game they love. An antagonist is a device the blocks or hinders another thing. Exploration missions in this game are the 'bread and butter' missions for the player who has a long term investment in playing this game. You have just eliminated that aspect of the game. :mad:
Where I sat down today excited about playing the game tonight, now with this I don't want to even log in the game. :mad:
Thank you.
But other than that, yeah...good points.
Again I ask, who is responsible PW or Cryptic? CO's FTP was much smoother than this was it Atari or Cryptic then? I love STO, I want it to be around for a long time, but these economic changes are too stark. Streamlining merits, emblems, and that is a good idea, but there is too many moving parts. Why did ships have to be thrown in?
No you dont; not even close.
Fall of Space Rome?
I'll admit, I have had some trouble as well in that regard but the stigma is there. Cryptic may call it Dilithium or they may call it Cryptic Points. But whatever the designation is, it is money. And via pennies per day or via larger transfers into their account, players must earn it.
In their desire to implement economic reform, they have let the situation concerning those who already make recurring financial contributions languish to such a degree that it has deteriorated into what this thread, and several others, have become. Their silence on that front has created a festering wound and these continued 'enhancements' to the game are only pouring salt into that wound.
They need to sit down and repair that damage.
First and foremost, they cannot continue to take anything more away from a subscriber. Things that have been promised get delivered.
The second point would be to return to their initial promise that the gameplay experience for subscribers would not change. That includes subscribers not being charged money to purchase their leveling escort, science, and cruiser vessels, whether it be their first or their third. Energy Credits? Sure. Money? Definitely not.
Lastly, provide a global discount (I suggest 20%) to all purchases that require the use of dilithium. The only exception to this should be your exchange rate into Cryptic Points. This would help to alleviate the sting of this new economy. If this means people who are not subscribed subscribe for a month to make mass purchases, so much the better. They're paying for a time-limited club membership and those that don't want to don't have to. Perhaps, after a month of having a discount and not having to grind dailies, the most boring missions of any MMO to purchase their ships, they may want to stay.
And if not, you still have their money.
It's that Star Trek I think many of us are so sad to see die as these new economic changes come in.
Gene would cry.
This is, IMO, killing his vision - it's putting the final nail in the idea that the Federation would provide.
Thanks GN - but I can't believe I'm saying this....
I'm losing hope they're going to get it right. They have a completely separate game that apparently works well and they don't appear to be doing anything at all like it.
This game is heading towards a fundamental - neigh - a PARADIGM shift that this franchise should never have to face as it's core is everything BUT based on a fluctuating economy.
I doubt Kirk EVER had to go schlep around the galaxy to get ore to refine into crystals so he could beg for a new ship from the Fleetyards.
I just hope someone make a patch to make it offline playable after wards. I really like this game.
<---- see my avatar
I read back in several posts saying, "Remember, we are testing the silver member stuff and in no way is this what is set for the gold members"...
So far I no longer believe these statements as there is too much "mixing" of gold and silver member content... Heck, at this point we might as well not even have two codes to this game for gold and silver members. Just combine them. (Its going to happen eventually. Might as well be sooner than later...)
Now compare that to the amount of Dilithium we get for a daily. Would be helpful if the exploration dailies actually would give Dilithium and not only skill points, just so we are able to get Bridge Officers. There are quite some officers on the Exchange for the Feds to look for abilities, but the KDF will probably be a little short here now.
So wait... *Bridge Officers* now have to be bought with dilithium too?!
I'm going to call CBS and demand they pull the license if that's the case!
Actually I am all for making very rare equipment very rare, only if I can mount the common stuff. Add phaser cannons to the common venders already.
No.. they've said the exact opposite. We were all granted Gold status for testing here. This is how the game will be for subs and LTSers if they were to launch now. Thank GOD we still have several months for them to fix the fubar mess we have right now.
Since they removed Merits/Honor you can buy the common BOffs for 240 Refined Dilithium each and it looks like training will cost EC (once it is working). So atm bying officers is the only way to train some of the basic abilities.
First : We should not have to grind for our "free" and "basic" ships. Extra ships that take our fancy, yes, but not ships we already get for free on holodeck. We were told that gold players would not lose anything they already get on holodeck. Quite simply, you lied Cryptic.
Second: Dilithium Grind. All I can say is "Really Cryptic? Really?" I guess we all know who's pulling the strings now Perfect Worlds don't we. I see you grubby fingers all over this. You watch, I'll get a warning or infraction for this post.
Third: Linear Scaling Missions: If your going down this path. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD HAVE SCALING REWARDS FOR THE MISSIONS. Getting Mark 2 gear from missions at Commander 5 while being in a Connie Refit because I couldn't afford to upgrade my ship is not my idea of funny.
That said. I LOVE the Duty officer system, Heretic is now my favourite Dev at Cryptic (sorry CapnLogan). But that said, I could not recomend this game to other people at the moment. Hell I even talked my brother out of buying a Lifetime Sub, I'd rather he wait and see what happens before do puts that kind of money down.
This goes down right after Dan left, maybe he knew it was coming and decided not to be a part of this exploitation of paying customers
CBS has a site http://cbs.promotionexpert.com/cbsconsumerproducts/generalinfo.html that you can get general information about the licencing and I suppose we could probably use that to register complaints about the Ferengi in charge here at Cryptic. This has the potential to damage CBS' IP and I know they won't stand for anything that could lose them money.
again
http://cbs.promotionexpert.com/cbsconsumerproducts/generalinfo.html
Well Cryptic are a little far away for that. So I'll just not bother with trying to help with the testing any more. It's clear Cryptic don't really want us to.
A wise Klingon proverb ... "Only a fool fights in a burning house."
Cryptic may be foolish enough to not realize the we players are NOT fools.
All we had left was hope and that hope is inside that burning house and almost lost to us.
Whilst I understand the anger is mainly because we care passionatly about the game, it is just that a game... We have had it too easy for too long... It is indicative of the all too common attitude these days of "I want it all... & I WANT IT NOW"... That is why this planet is in such a mess at the moment...
Mr. D'Angelo & the others at Cryptic... IMO, you need to address immediatly the following :-
Make good on the F2P matrix statement that ALL basic ships would be obtainable at rank-up.. Do this either by giving back the "ship token", or ensuring enough Dillithium is awarded... with no need to grind for it.
Reduce (slightly) the cost (in Dillithium) of the higher end equipment... again reducing the amount of grinding.
Lastly... more pre-patch communication, via maybe daily Engineering reports, this will forstall alot of the post-patch "angst" that you are currently receiving...
To the STO community, to which I both respect & not wish to upset anyone, I say this :-
Play-test-enjoy the game as best you can, until the Dev team iron out all the wrinkles...
It is possible to reach end-game with the weapons etc. that the basic ships come with, you all know that, as I'm sure you've played the game... The story arc missions give us better equipment along the way..
You don't even have to get too far into the "arc" as the XP is boosted (temporaily).. I enjoy the game more when I have to work for my upgrades anyway, rather than just one-shotting every npc I find...
Please remember this is still "work-in-progress", & changes to the structure of the game takes time to implement... (the Devs are people too, and like the rest of mankind, they make mistakes)... so hold off on the venom & doom predictions until this goes "live"... IF it is a mess at that stage, then I too will be screaming "wtf" along with the rest of the community... I do not want to see the servers turned off, as I'm sure Cryptic doesn't...
I apologise if this in any way seems patronising to anyone, that is not my intention... I respect each & every one of you... Live long & prosper... :cool:
Yes, It's a game, not a part-time job where I pay my employer
How many times was it stated in these 300 some posts, that the Removal of the Free Ship on Promotion is BAD Move.
I think I may edit this later with as many quotes as I can fit in or even start a "Free Ship Taken Away, Cryptic Reverse's on Word" thread.
Sadly this is to little surprise to a large portion of the population.
Business Ethics.... a contradictory term if there ever was one.
it shows they're at least listening to all this feedback. that should help a little bit