test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Dilithium: Where It Should Be and Where It Shouldn't and Other F2P Issues
System
Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
TL/DR: DOOM, with hope and advice.
As the title suggests, this blanket use of dilithium in its current state is going to destroy STO.. and by destroy I mean turn it into a neverending grindfest that is impossible to achieve, thus turning away your current, loyal community.
I know you're trying to hinder what we can accomplish without buying from the C-Store so you can afford the heavy costs of a MMO, but you just made the game not fun in a big way. I don't remember exactly how many days of doing every single daily available to us it would take for us to get a single purple weapon at maximum level, but I know it was in the double digits.. and that is just unexceptable unless you're planning on selling Refined Dilithium in the C-Store at a ridiculously low price. By low price I mean it shouldn't cost me more to outfit all 21 of my characters and their BOs than I already spend per year on the C-Store without having to be a slave to it: $240. That is $240 I pay per year in addition to the Lifetime subscriptions I gave you, for two accounts. $240 is more money per year than a $15 fee per month. Consider that when you balance the costs of Dilithium (and knowing your business model I'm going to assume you'll be selling unrefined dilithium, which brings me to my next issue).
To put it bluntly, unlimited refinement for gold members or GTFO. It seems you have forgotten "gold members" in your persuit of a business model supported by F2Pers. We are flat out punished for paying to play this new system. A 800 Dilithium per month stipend you say? I have your 800 Dilithium stipend right here: a single, blue quality, Commander ranked Phaser Beam Array costs 21,600 Refined Dilithium.
21,600 Refined Dilithium.
Refined Dilithium.
Refined.
First off, why does a single weapon in the middle of the leveling process cost more than an entire equal level ship?
Second, why are we paying that much for either? Not only should we get enough Refined Dilithium to be able to purchhase our next ship at Promotion, but we should have enough left over to buy a handful of upgrades! That extra stuff you're forcing us to grind (and yes I use the word force) should be to complete outfitting our ship around the midddle of our rank. Or change it so that the blue quality (AKA "leveling")equipment sold at ESD and First City (notice: not the purple stuff) uses Energy Credits instead of Dilithium. At Commander 1 I have 27,268 Energy Credits. That's after selling and missioning my perfectly waxed butt off. A single EPS console goes for 50k on the Exchange. Ya, that's going to be an issue when people are in the middle of leveling.
Now as for where Dilithium -should- be: endgame. While I hate the idea of grinding, it is going to be the foundation for wrapping up endgame motivation in a neat little package. That said you should throw dailies out the window right now. MMOs are now realizing the mistake of making progression be based on forcing people to log in every single day. Instead of getting the jump on this issue and modernizing yourself, you just took this game back 5 years. If you don't log in every single day and do every single daily available to you, you won't see a single fully equipped character (in a game that is not supposed to be about how powerful your equipment is) for up to a year. Why not just use white quality equipment you ask? Because I do it for the aesthetics. That purple stuff is the only way of developing a uniformed theme for a character. That's what STO -USED- to be about: customizing your experience to your tastes.
Now I'm just getting lost in my own rants though. There are several notes you should take from this, Cryptic:
1) Learn from your cousin MMO (Champions Online). Develop a F2P experience that does not worsen the gameplay of those that do not purchase from the C-Store. Make people who pay have a more enjoyable experience than what was already there, and let the F2Pers have the "normal" experience. An example of this is boosts to gameplay (GAMEPLAY THAT WAS NOT NERFED DOWN TO CREATE THE ILLUSION OF BEING BOOSTED AFTER A PURCHASE) As it is right now everyone is going to be buried in an unfun, tedious, endless, time consuming grindfest no matter if they pay to play, buy from the C-Store, or are a frugile F2P hermit.
2) Create big incentives for purchasing from the C-Store and for subbing. Nice things. Things that make our experience more enjoyable, not things that make our experience more bearable. Very different. Things such as Unlimited Refined Ore per day, Ore boosts, money boosts, experience boosts, continue the fluff such as Veteran Reward costumes etc, or even make certain aesthetics P2P. Nerfing the current experience to make us feel like we need to buy from the store (and by we I mean the "gold" members) to make the game not as terrible is going to destroy this game.
3) Don't be afraid to divert from what people expect a MMO to be. STO doesn't need carrots on sticks. Leave the grind treadmill to someone else (and there are many.. many, many, many someone elses). STO should be about what's past that next star, not what's past that next purple. I joined up and stayed with STO because I wanted to have vast visual and mechanical customization over my character, their crew, their ship, what they did, where they went, and ya I heard it in another thread: almost like The Sims: Star Trek... if The Sims ever let you explore new worlds with a crew and a ship *COUGH* I hope you are taking another look at exploration soon *COUGH*
I sure as hell didn't join up to grind loot and fight bosses in raids. There are 65783265987603257803235 other MMOs that are about that.
Edit: Removed my former distateful endiing word. Instead I shall leave you with a rude gesture. /rudegesture.
Loyal Cryptic Customer,
- Christophe
As the title suggests, this blanket use of dilithium in its current state is going to destroy STO.. and by destroy I mean turn it into a neverending grindfest that is impossible to achieve, thus turning away your current, loyal community.
I know you're trying to hinder what we can accomplish without buying from the C-Store so you can afford the heavy costs of a MMO, but you just made the game not fun in a big way. I don't remember exactly how many days of doing every single daily available to us it would take for us to get a single purple weapon at maximum level, but I know it was in the double digits.. and that is just unexceptable unless you're planning on selling Refined Dilithium in the C-Store at a ridiculously low price. By low price I mean it shouldn't cost me more to outfit all 21 of my characters and their BOs than I already spend per year on the C-Store without having to be a slave to it: $240. That is $240 I pay per year in addition to the Lifetime subscriptions I gave you, for two accounts. $240 is more money per year than a $15 fee per month. Consider that when you balance the costs of Dilithium (and knowing your business model I'm going to assume you'll be selling unrefined dilithium, which brings me to my next issue).
To put it bluntly, unlimited refinement for gold members or GTFO. It seems you have forgotten "gold members" in your persuit of a business model supported by F2Pers. We are flat out punished for paying to play this new system. A 800 Dilithium per month stipend you say? I have your 800 Dilithium stipend right here: a single, blue quality, Commander ranked Phaser Beam Array costs 21,600 Refined Dilithium.
21,600 Refined Dilithium.
Refined Dilithium.
Refined.
First off, why does a single weapon in the middle of the leveling process cost more than an entire equal level ship?
Second, why are we paying that much for either? Not only should we get enough Refined Dilithium to be able to purchhase our next ship at Promotion, but we should have enough left over to buy a handful of upgrades! That extra stuff you're forcing us to grind (and yes I use the word force) should be to complete outfitting our ship around the midddle of our rank. Or change it so that the blue quality (AKA "leveling")equipment sold at ESD and First City (notice: not the purple stuff) uses Energy Credits instead of Dilithium. At Commander 1 I have 27,268 Energy Credits. That's after selling and missioning my perfectly waxed butt off. A single EPS console goes for 50k on the Exchange. Ya, that's going to be an issue when people are in the middle of leveling.
Now as for where Dilithium -should- be: endgame. While I hate the idea of grinding, it is going to be the foundation for wrapping up endgame motivation in a neat little package. That said you should throw dailies out the window right now. MMOs are now realizing the mistake of making progression be based on forcing people to log in every single day. Instead of getting the jump on this issue and modernizing yourself, you just took this game back 5 years. If you don't log in every single day and do every single daily available to you, you won't see a single fully equipped character (in a game that is not supposed to be about how powerful your equipment is) for up to a year. Why not just use white quality equipment you ask? Because I do it for the aesthetics. That purple stuff is the only way of developing a uniformed theme for a character. That's what STO -USED- to be about: customizing your experience to your tastes.
Now I'm just getting lost in my own rants though. There are several notes you should take from this, Cryptic:
1) Learn from your cousin MMO (Champions Online). Develop a F2P experience that does not worsen the gameplay of those that do not purchase from the C-Store. Make people who pay have a more enjoyable experience than what was already there, and let the F2Pers have the "normal" experience. An example of this is boosts to gameplay (GAMEPLAY THAT WAS NOT NERFED DOWN TO CREATE THE ILLUSION OF BEING BOOSTED AFTER A PURCHASE) As it is right now everyone is going to be buried in an unfun, tedious, endless, time consuming grindfest no matter if they pay to play, buy from the C-Store, or are a frugile F2P hermit.
2) Create big incentives for purchasing from the C-Store and for subbing. Nice things. Things that make our experience more enjoyable, not things that make our experience more bearable. Very different. Things such as Unlimited Refined Ore per day, Ore boosts, money boosts, experience boosts, continue the fluff such as Veteran Reward costumes etc, or even make certain aesthetics P2P. Nerfing the current experience to make us feel like we need to buy from the store (and by we I mean the "gold" members) to make the game not as terrible is going to destroy this game.
3) Don't be afraid to divert from what people expect a MMO to be. STO doesn't need carrots on sticks. Leave the grind treadmill to someone else (and there are many.. many, many, many someone elses). STO should be about what's past that next star, not what's past that next purple. I joined up and stayed with STO because I wanted to have vast visual and mechanical customization over my character, their crew, their ship, what they did, where they went, and ya I heard it in another thread: almost like The Sims: Star Trek... if The Sims ever let you explore new worlds with a crew and a ship *COUGH* I hope you are taking another look at exploration soon *COUGH*
I sure as hell didn't join up to grind loot and fight bosses in raids. There are 65783265987603257803235 other MMOs that are about that.
Edit: Removed my former distateful endiing word. Instead I shall leave you with a rude gesture. /rudegesture.
Loyal Cryptic Customer,
- Christophe
Post edited by Unknown User on
0
Comments
Amen to that. I'd go back to WoW if I wanted to grind all day and MAYBE get a gear item if you can find a group to do a STF.
Cryptic you made a promise that Free-to-Play transition would not cause Lifers and Subbing customers to loose anything. You stated we would loose nothing. We have lost. Not getting a free ship on Rank up is loosing something. You breeched your contract with us at least on a moral if not legal level.
Fix it! 21k refined dillithium for one item? Over priced and under fundeded. Doing the dam Exploration dailies gave a whopping 1440 refined dillithium (thanks god it was refined) at that rate i would have to do 10+ dailies to get one weapon. Compare with the badge system at the same rank i am now (Commander) 10 dalies would yield 750 badges and given the pricing at that level I could out fit nearly my entire ship.
That's a huge and I mean huge discrepency.
Prices need to come down!
Allotements of Refinded dillithium need to go up!
Gold members should have some kind of Dillithium advantage for paying for this game. Subscribers pay 15 bucks a month. Lifers gave you 240 bucks up front on trust. That was an investment. Investments should pay dividends. This one was but the current pay suggests a loosing scenario.
Cryptic has been saying that trading dilithium for C-points is the plan for earning stuff from the C-Store without having to pay for it yourself. The problem I'm seeing is with the current setup is who's going to want to trade their dilithium for C-points when they have to grind for days just to buy a photon torpedo launcher? With the current crazy prices people looking to exchange dilithium won't be able to afford to until they hit the level cap and they aren't going to be buying unless they can get large quantities of C-points for what they spend weeks grinding out. Meanwhile the people looking to buy dilithium aren't going to be selling the C-points that they paid real money for unless each C-point brings in large chunks of dilithium.
Right now on Holodeck I can do any exploration cluster mission for 75 Badges of varying marks, as many times a day as I want. If I have the spare time I can outfit an entire ship and crew of boffs in a day or less from the stores that take Badges of Exploration. This is impossible under the current dilithium system on Tribble.
Devs, if 75 Badges of exploration = 1440 dilithium, then go take a good hard look at what you can buy for badges of exploration on Holodeck. Adjust the dilithium prices accordingly.
Either the prices on items need to come down to a fraction of their current cost in dilithium, or the amount of dilithium we can earn and refine per day needs to go up drastically. Because if things stay the way they are this economy is going to be broken beyond repair the second it hits Holodeck.
Half is a fraction...
Seriously though, you have a point. One Green Mk X torp launcher is 63 Marks. So, that would make the same worth about 1210 dilithium, all things being equal.
The devs definitely need to balance the new economies more. The discount token thing was a good step in the right direction, but it was only a step, the journey is no where near complete.
Agreed. I am getting a bad vibe that our destination will not be too far from where we are now.
Stephen D'Angelo
Executive Producer
Star Trek Online
cool, i know getting a balance right is not easy.
i do honestly 100% believe that things have been too easy to get in the last 18 months, and making things a little harder is, in my opinion, good for the game and adds value to these items rather than just another purple item to add to the stack. dont make stuff too easy.
its good to make dilithium valuable and worth people time or to have them converted to c-points, but weapons should not be costing as much as a starship. that is over the top.
Heh, this seems a little funny after my post regarding the possible extra 0
thanx for letting us know you guys agree sometihng needs to be done. We all appreciate it
This is how much of it I believe after almost 2 years of dealings with Cryptic
I am very sorry but as my sig says, your credibility as a company is shot and you need to start paying more attention to rebuilding confidence and trust than fiddling with a broken f2p system.
The statements that we would notice few changes and we would not be losing anything seem to be nothing more than a misdirection to buy time until the changes are implemented against our collective will.
I am not stating this as an attack but so that you can actually SEE how much faith has been lost in Cryptic by this community.
Revo, as fast as you level up in the game it becomes a constant gear chase, get geared for Lt. CMdr then poof you spend half of Commander with LtCmdr gear while you run around to gear at the Cmdr level. The whole thing is a problem of the leveling pace in this game and the problem with that is there is not enough story content to keep you entertained while leveling. So what did they decide to do? Rush you through leveling to end game and make the gear easier to get.
Cryptic has two choices here but first off, I am not against F2P, just that they are not ready to take STO F2P.
Slow the pace of leveling down:
Add more lower level content
Can have gear a little harder to obtain
Better seperation in rarity
Keep the current pace:
Develop an array of endgame features
More STF, Fleet Actions, Events etc....
More feature systems like the Foundry and the Doff system to keep endgamers occupied
Those are just the things off the top of my head. Regardless, there is not enough mission style content in this game to support two factions at either a slower paced leveling or fast paced end-game. For the F2P I mostly expected we would see this mission-type content fleshed out more.
I do not believe that the current levelling pace is to be permanent, rather, it has been dramatically sped up to test as much as possible in the time allotted. It should be evened out quite a lot as the testing continues and as they come to their senses with the dilithium vs cstore issues.
It adds a needed EC sink, plus the concept of Boffs consuming Dilithium makes me suspect we are trying to poison our Boffs since isn't Dilithium somewhat toxic? Although since there are Boffs that are purchased in the C-store, I can see a reason why acquiring new Boffs via a vender can cost Dilithium. So why not set it up like this. Common quality (white) Boffs cost EC, higher quality (Green/Blue/Purple) Boffs would be sold at venders using Dilithium. This way someone who is Dilithium poor is able to buy a simple Boff if they choose to, but if you want the best boffs you can buy you need Dilithium or C-store points, (Or accomplish an ingame task that grants a Boff, such as Diplomacy 4's cross faction Boff, or the STF Liberated Borg, or the Featured Episode Boffs when a Featured Episode is being first run or during a FE replay.)
Also shouldn't we use EC for customizing and renaming our ships instead of Dilihtium?
Again this serves as an EC sink and such customization of appearance and bridges and names are things that don't make sense as consuming Refined Dilithium. it isn't like these are items that would ever have a place in the C-Store so why use Dilithium for these?
Since Captain/Character skill respects are sold in the C-Store, I can see these being offered using Dilithium, this keeps a Dilithium spec and equates to how a C-store purchase can be made using ingame means.
As I see it trivial (acquiring common Boffs or Gear from vendors for example) and mandatory tasks (training Boffs) should be handled with EC, while more meaningful transactions (Acquiring a new ship, or high quality 'vender' equipment (gear/Boffs if such a Boff store is added) should be Dilithium based.
Also Another possible idea for the 'Request Duty Officier tab' in the Duty officier window.
How about we can 'request' a single white/common Doff at a time using EC (Beginer that is Dilithium poor who just needs a body that fills a specific specialization due to the randomness of the lottery/trading packs) or an individual can request a green Doff using either just Dilithium, or a combination of Dilithium and EC.
There would be cool downs on how frequently Doffs can be purchased via this manner as this would be a method to plug a gap in a duty roster, not to fill the duty roster so the cool down could easily be several days to a week, but that way people can fill holes in their duty roster without praying to the random number generator deity... or for Q to be merciful.
For example I have on Tribble around 70 Doffs... I have never received a single Security Doff that has the Security Specialization, thus all the assignments that require one are locked to me. If you want to trust in random chance, the current assignments work fine, but if your looking to fill a specific hole in your roster, 'a request/purchase/whatever you want to call it' might be appropriate.
This would add yet another EC and Dilithium sink to the economy.
Blue and Purple Doffs (and rarer specialization/race combos and perhapse some rarer specializations) would no doubt NOT be obtainable via this in-game method as they should be rare/very rare, while greens are just uncommon, but are at least assured to not die on you, unless your a KDF who decides to execute an incompetent crew-member.
Please listen to this bit right here. I absolutely detest having to log in every day to earn something. That makes it into a chore. When I want to play, I want to be making progress and enjoying myself. With dailies, when I feel like playing, there's not enough to do to fill me time. But I still don't make very much progress because I can't play like that every day.
Ditto, know we just have to wait for the revised prices to see what happens.
i should say the levelling process on tribble has been sped up for testing reasons. it will be much slower on holdodeck, maybe even what we have now.
and to clarify im mainly concerned about high end gear and the speed it takes to acquire. lower end gear should not be that much harder to obtain than it is now, getting slowly tougher as you level up. max end gear should be a reasonable challenge as you theoretically spend an endless amount of time there.
yes i agree endgame needs massive work and should be their big focus. the new task force updates are awesome and this is coming from someone who would not go near them with a 10 metre stick. more of the same is needed, aleong with the other things you suggest.
Indeed, this is true. If you are going to forcefully impose limits like this, at least change your concept of dailies over to a weekly one (i.e. you can run the same mission seven times anytime during a week). This would at least make things more flexible for the players.
Thank you I am glad to hear you say that. As an aside. You need to add dual cannons and dual heavy cannons to the vendors in ESD. Most escort captains will equip at one lease one if not more of these and being forced to hope for a drop, have to craft, or resort to the exchange really isn't cool. Please add these to the stores.
I don't believe you. I wish I could but I just don't anymore.
Now I hate leveling and I don't enjoy the game near as much as I did before. I get that this is an unfinished product but the direction we are going in has me concerned. I'm have a LT subscription but I would drop down to silver if I was paying month to month. I just don't feel the joy right now..why would any want to subscribe for the items in the matrix and have to go through a mega grind fest. It just feels like Ever Quest all over again...
All I wanted from 4.1 was content that's it..
I'm pessimistic about them making it reasonable, but I'll keep an eye on it.
To me the biggest thing you could do with the dilithium is to bring the costs and time down to what we have now with emblems.
I do like the idea of not having to track a bunch of different tokens etc.,however the costs and time taken to get the same items with the new dilithium currency should have never gone up.They should be exactly the same.
With that said I personally do not mind having to take one or two more days to get all the items I need to upgrade my ship.I do mind when it goes into weeks and months to get the same items.
These are my suggestions.
Gold members should never have in game currency or any kind of content gated to them.
Gold members should have a higher daily refinement of dilithium limit if one needs to be in place as well as the ability to repeat the exploration missions as they are now on Holodeck.
Silver players should be limited to the 8000 a day refinement as well as the exploration missions are one a day.Maybe add a C-Store item that silvers could buy to increase the daily refinement limit.Not game breaking and they have to penny up if they want to match what golds have.Which is the point of free to play.If silvers want something gold have then penny up for it at the C-Store or get the subscription.
Gold players should have an easier time getting what they need in game without artificial gates thrown at them.Gold should always have an advantage over the free players.Nor should golds ever be forced to the C-Store for anything.
Silvers should have to work alot harder if they want the same as the gold members have or pop for the subscription to get it.
We (the subscribers) have waited faithfully for content updates for months, and what do we get instead?
A "fix" for things that were not broken in the first place.
We are promised that nothing will be taken away from us when STO goes F2P,
and then we get the news that we will no longer get a free ship at rank up.
I don't see the reason behind this. Yes, Cryptic needs money.
But the best way to get money is NOT to p*ss on your loyal customers.
Here is what I think should be done:
1. Leave the free ship token as it is now on Holodeck.
2. Lower the prices on items purchasable by Dilithium to a level that matches the one we currently have for emblems and other tokens.
3. Do not make restrictions for subscribing players.
4. Spend more time and energy developing changes that we actually want (like more missions, STF's, events and fleet actions).
5. Add lots of fun and convenient items to the C-store that we can purchase (cosmetics, pets, short-duration boosts and the like).
I think you should take a look at Turbine's free to play model for Lord of the Rings Online.
I played the game before it went F2P, and I can honestly say that my gaming experience has only gotten better after it went F2P.
Why? Because nothing was taken away from the subscribers, and lots of convenient and cosmetic items that I wanted became easily
available in the store (while still being available in-game).
It is a model that, in my opinion, is well balanced and awards the subscribers, while still adding incentives to spend money in the store.
LOTRO has even tripled it's revenue after converting to this F2P model!
Unless you guys at Cryptic are actually trying to get rid of as many players as possible,
I hope you will stop for a minute and reconsider what you are proposing to do to this game.
I love Star Trek, I love this game, and I hope that you do too.
Please listen to the players and do what is best for the future of this game.
- Storm