Thanks for the feedback everyone. We do indeed have the prices wrong (perhaps even by an order of magnitude) on the gear and such that sells for Dilithium. We had a lot of focus in the team on getting the sources of Dilithium hooked up and working, and did not pay as much attention to the back end pricing yet as we probably should have. We will be reviewing the pricing to make it a lot more sane, because I agree with you that it's painful right now to do quite a few things.
Stephen D'Angelo
Executive Producer
Star Trek Online
i knew that ether the prices were highly outdated compared to the later work done on how much we could earn and refine at a time, or it was basically intentional and wouldn't change much. i was sincerely hoping is wasn't the later, and that those insane numbers couldn't be close to right. order of magnitude is right, 1 or 2 zeros need to be loped off the price of everything. for example, a white boff can be bought for 240, that really needs to be like 24. and the weapon prices, drop 2 zeros off their price and you will have a good reasonable place to start fine tuning prices.
Thanks for the feedback everyone. We do indeed have the prices wrong (perhaps even by an order of magnitude) on the gear and such that sells for Dilithium. We had a lot of focus in the team on getting the sources of Dilithium hooked up and working, and did not pay as much attention to the back end pricing yet as we probably should have. We will be reviewing the pricing to make it a lot more sane, because I agree with you that it's painful right now to do quite a few things.
Stephen D'Angelo
Executive Producer
Star Trek Online
Subscribers should be able to earn enough Dilithium for ONE weapon by doing ONE Star Cluster just like 75 Badges does on live - AT ANY RANK. Silver customers should have to grind or pay for their gear.
Subscribers should not feel any more pain than they do currently at any rank. If you correct the numbers to do that then we will shout Halleluiah!!! - Our subscriptions saved us from having to "Grind or Pay".
Revo, as fast as you level up in the game it becomes a constant gear chase, get geared of Lt. CMdr then poof you spend half of Commander with LtCmdr gear while you run around to gear at the Cmdr level..
I've levelled two characters on tribble since the beta started and I never had trouble gearing my guys for their level.
Sure it wasn't mostly Uncommon, but I wasn't under-geared.
In regards to the dilithium store, I haven't seen pricing that insane since the PvP store in CO. Over a year to get a full set of gear? What is this I don't even-
I hope it's true that this was merely a case of "accidentally set the numbers WAY higher than they should be".
Thanks for the feedback everyone. We do indeed have the prices wrong (perhaps even by an order of magnitude) on the gear and such that sells for Dilithium. We had a lot of focus in the team on getting the sources of Dilithium hooked up and working, and did not pay as much attention to the back end pricing yet as we probably should have. We will be reviewing the pricing to make it a lot more sane, because I agree with you that it's painful right now to do quite a few things.
Stephen D'Angelo
Executive Producer
Star Trek Online
I find that a tad hard to believe, if your reworking an econemy wtfh would you not adjust what the currancy is spent on?! If thats the case the incompetance runs deep in that area of developement. How hard is it to go adjust the prices for stuff to be reasonable?
Not being able to buy generic doffs with energy credits is also a real pain. Seems like everything we NEED to test is either so overpriced no one can afford it, or flat out unavaible. It starts to wear thin real fast. You need to make missions award dilithium it doesnt have to be a staggering amount but 250-500 dilithium for average story mission would help.
Who wants to go grind 3 exploration missions just to be able to retrain a Boff?
Personally i understand why your stipend at leveling up doesnt give you enough to get the next ship. This encourages you to do the missions that pump out dilithium. What good is doing a bunch of mission that give xp but no dilithium?? Answer is they want you dong the dalies that award dilithium or ore. And since the rewards on the story missions and other level up as you progress. You can use the replay system to outfit your character much more quickly than grinding dailies.
Also if you noticed there are a troop of special ops outside the admirals office. They carry premo gear specifically for handling the borg. But you will have to grind stfs to get points for the gear.
My main problem is WHERE ARE THE DILITHIUM MISSIONS?? I have gotten captain in 5 days (awesome) but i have yet to unlock the defari dailies and only one of Drakes dailies rewards ore. And i have only 2 exploration dailies that reward dilithium. We need more dailies that reward ore or dilithium not less. If dilithium is the new economy then give us more access to it before endgame not after.
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.
A F2P MMO does not need "loyal" customers. It needs impulsive, impatient ones. Cryptic (we should really say PW here, as all the decisions are coming from them) doesn't really care about its existing customer base, because going F2P is going to bring in orders of magnitude more new players. F2P MMOs live on a constantly turning over population of casual players who join the game, make one or two impulse microtransaction purchases, then move on to the next thing when they realize the game is no good. Anyone who stays and buys a subscription is just an added bonus.
There are only two explanations for the outlandish state of the proposed economy. One is that someone ROYALLY screwed up with their idea of economy pricing. However, it's so egregiously bad that it baffles the mind that a mistake of this magnitude can be even made in honesty. It's like McDonalds trying to charge $150 for a hamburger, and being completely and genuinely serious about it.
The other explanation is that this was always the plan, and they ROYALLY misjudged how we would react/perceive these economic changes. But again, a situation this out of whack stretches the imagination on how they could be so far off with their judgement of what we would consider tolerable. Did they really think these values were even somewhere close to reasonable? It's one thing to be off by a factor of two or so, but to be off by a factor of
I guess the philosophical question at the end of the day is, of the above two situations, which is worse... a company so flabbergastingly incompetent to propose such an unbelievably one-sided economy, or a company so two-faced and underhanded that they knowingly proposed said economy and are trying to get away with it. Neither really put forth the image of hope and confidence for a healthy STO future.
First off, I am glad to hear that the pricing of componets will be looked at. While I am a strong supporter of the change that ships are not handed out "for free" anymore, the component prices are out of line.
For end game components the formular should be straight forward, as you can simply do the math on current embles gained per daily (3) and the cost per component. For current XI ones this is fine. You can probably also add the Marks of Honor / Exploration for the lvl X compoents in your calculation to get the starting point right.
With this as a starting point it should be easier top scale down the lower level component cost.
I agree with many of you, it seems like Cryptic is forgetting about us loyal, lifetime members that have been here for almost 2 years! It is so disappointing to see the game go down this road, and I don't mean the F2P road I mean they way they just make sweeping changes to thing that are not broken while ignoring the things we ask for. i thing a new currency was needed to take the place of the emblem, marks madness we had but this is a bad replacement! and why was it necessary to foul up the ship token system? what did that have to do with the way it was? I'm just so frustrated with the lack of content, and the general lack of interest by the Devs.
Don't get me wrong i LOVE this game but every update they ruin it a little more for me
Thanks for the feedback everyone. We do indeed have the prices wrong (perhaps even by an order of magnitude) on the gear and such that sells for Dilithium. We had a lot of focus in the team on getting the sources of Dilithium hooked up and working, and did not pay as much attention to the back end pricing yet as we probably should have. We will be reviewing the pricing to make it a lot more sane, because I agree with you that it's painful right now to do quite a few things.
Stephen D'Angelo
Executive Producer
Star Trek Online
I don't believe you. I wish I could but I just don't anymore.
/signed +1
Stephen, you have a chance to prove us wrong. Easy solutions:
1) Free basic ship at rank up. Either return to a ship token deal, or give refined dilithium equal to the cost of a single rank-appropriate ship.
2) Get rid of the refining gate mechanism. Or at least make it a heckuva lot more than 8k/day. Maybe make it 100k/week or something (so people who play a lot in a single day/weekend can still reap rewards without daily logins).
3) Item costs should be similar to the pace on Holodeck. I can do a single Explore Daily for 75 BoE5 and get a Mk X Uncommon item. You definitely don't want to be more than the current Emblem grind where a casual player can only get a handful a day, meaning 1 Very Rare item a week.
I understand you want Mk XI gear to be more than Mk II gear. So allow each rank to earn more Dilithium with each mission/daily. Put in some sort of Rank Multiplier.
4) Make sure when you calculate out conversions for existing players you give fair value for their work. If I've got 350 Emblems on Holodeck right now, I better get 10x Very Rare items worth of Dilithium.
The OP makes a lot of good points about the directions you can take this game. Especially consider these points for paying/Gold players. You want to restrict free ships or have a refining gate -- Put that on the Silvers.
Anyway, as I started, I hope you prove us wrong. I hope you show some faith in us players. Because we've supported you all long enough. Go ahead and check my account. You'll see I've spend much more than $15/mo in game/c-store purchases on top of my LTS. And I'll continue to do so if I feel I'm treated well/fairly and I have fun.
EC should be for common/white items. Dilithium should be for everything else.
EC should be earnable in every mission and from recycling gathered items. Dilithium should be a bonus reward for the completion of story arcs, FAs, STFs, Dailys, FEs, special events and (much as I hate to say it) PvP. Both should be earnable in the DOff system. Earnings/Prices would obviously have to be carefully balanced.
Basic ships with basic equipment should be free at rank up.
Im only glad i wont have to put up with the dilithium problem on holodeck cause both my characters there are at the highest ranks, unlike my F2P one, who only has his commander level ship now when he is half way done with that rank.
Im only glad i wont have to put up with the dilithium problem on holodeck cause both my characters there are at the highest ranks, unlike my F2P one, who only has his commander level ship now when he is half way done with that rank.
Hardly, your gonna get slammed with a horrible exchange rate that wipes all your resources into Dilithium Ore and everything in game is getting bumped up in price that will require refinement. Your looking at having to come into the game daily to refine your resources and farm dailies to get more.
Wouldnt be surprised if Refined Dilithium becomes the currency for the Exchange as well to further inflate the requirement to have...
Bridge Officer with the extremely rare skills that sell for Millions of EC on the Exchange = Translate that into tons of Refined Dilithium
Personally I will close my account and wait for Star Wars in December if you keep destroying this game. I am a 600 day vet. And one of the major reasons I play this game it to fly the ships. I love the space combat and you are going to greatly unbalance the whole game with this. This is not like a mount in WoW.. having access to the ships at for those level is weaved into the system and keeps things balanced. unless your completely going to rewrite every mission and every NPC encounter your at a huge disadvantage while grinding for the new shio. YOU have dramatically less shield and hull strength, you have less tac/eng/sci stations. I cant think of a worse ideal. Just when things really starting to get good you destroy all progress you've made with this one. You should fire anyone who thought this was a good idea. I know who long it takes for me to find to to grind in other games as I typically don''t have a lot of time. You are shutting people like me out of this game. thanks for ruining something I really liked then lying to us about not making changes like this...
FIX this or risk loosing causal players like myself.
Personally I will close my account and wait for Star Wars in December if you keep destroying this game. I am a 600 day vet. And one of the major reasons I play this game it to fly the ships. I love the space combat and you are going to greatly unbalance the whole game with this. This is not like a mount in WoW.. having access to the ships at for those level is weaved into the system and keeps things balanced. unless your completely going to rewrite every mission and every NPC encounter your at a huge disadvantage while grinding for the new shio. YOU have dramatically less shield and hull strength, you have less tac/eng/sci stations. I cant think of a worse ideal. Just when things really starting to get good you destroy all progress you've made with this one. You should fire anyone who thought this was a good idea. I know who long it takes for me to find to to grind in other games as I typically don''t have a lot of time. You are shutting people like me out of this game. thanks for ruining something I really liked then lying to us about not making changes like this...
FIX this or risk loosing causal players like myself.
I second this statement!! I have been a Loyal Customer since this game started i know that there are many, like myself ,that could not and can not afford an LTS and have paid our fee since launch!
I too am a 600 hundred day Vet and cannot but help feeling like I am being screwed for a game
that i loved to play being mangled the in the way it is now in the current tribble build!
We Gold members were told by Dstahl before his departure that we would not see any changes in the
way we currently play, not it seems that as a gold subscribers we we most likely be on par as the "freemium" guys in terms of we play at the current state on Tribble.
I hope and pray to God that this is nowhere near the final game! It is my sincere hope that the devs
are reading the boards and listing to us. I really don't want to leave but if this pile of something that they put on Tribble doesn't get any better for us Golds I for one will be following this very path!!
These threats of quitting are sadly falling on deaf ears. If Cryptic cared whether we stayed or not, they would not have gone in a direction they knew they would be so divisive. It is your decision on whether to stay or not obviously but threats won't make any difference to a company that doesn't care.
Me, I have an LTS and fully intend to be a thorn in Cryptic's side until they shut down the game which shouldn't be too long judging from their displayed behavior.
These threats of quitting are sadly falling on deaf ears. If Cryptic cared whether we stayed or not, they would not have gone in a direction they knew they would be so divisive. It is your decision on whether to stay or not obviously but threats won't make any difference to a company that doesn't care.
Me, I have an LTS and fully intend to be a thorn in Cryptic's side until they shut down the game which shouldn't be too long judging from their displayed behavior.
Frankly, that kind of line is just as preposterous as threatening to rage-quit. It's more than a little presumptuous to assume that Cryptic is going to shut down any time soon. And to fancy yourself a "thorn in Cryptic's side" is making a bit too much of yourself, too.
Honestly, this is a Test Server. And the F2P build isn't going live anytime soon. We have more than enough time to give feedback to Cryptic and let them make their adjustments. It hasn't even been that long since Tribble's been back. We need to be patient as the devs update their builds and send them our way. That kind of stuff does take time.
If we're vociferous enough about what we do and don't like, the devs will respond accordingly, to the best of their ability. But please take into account that their may be some decisions that are out of their hands; that doesn't mean that they won't try and make the best of it for the sake of us players, but that does mean that they might have their hands tied on certain aspects of where the game is going. Especially so, considering they have to answer to both Perfect World and CBS on a variety of topics.
Did the OP mention that Dilithium will be for sale in the C-store?
I would sort of be ok with that, as I despise grinding. And as a Lifer, I know I am not adding anything financially to the game's financial bottom line anymore other than the occasional c-store uniform purchase.
This way I can get the gear I want without spending hours grinding for it, thats time I sadly do not have anymore.
Even better would be how EVE does it with their PLEX cards, as it is now, you can buy a PLEX card for say $20, and then sell it in game for currency to allow you to play however you want, without having to grind for credits.
So in STO , someone who had the time to grind for Dilithium , would then be able to get a free month gold subscription in exchange for their Dilithium .
we all should consider that many of us already have played trough the holl game. So it can be somehow boring to lvl up in the test server again without the benefits we had on holodeck. I mean if i would create a new char on holodek i would have max out all my items at every tier and would easily lvl up to max level. I think that the way it is in the tribble now makes more scence. lvling up should be harder and maxing out items also.
Cryptic should add missions to every tier where player could have a choiche between collecting dilitium, enery credits or dilitium. so you could have a choice to spend more time on improving your ship or to level up. there should be path such as staying at a lvl and improving the ship or going for lvl upward.
another point is that at every lvl there should also be some noob ships for people who dont want to spend much dilithium. other ships should be more expensive which would be more realistic but the items should be cheaper compared to starships.
Crytic should also take into consideration that if a VA would help someone to lvl from 1 to 51 without that the newbe buying anything, the newbe would have easily much dilitium at lvl 51. so giving out much dilitium at each ranking up should be reconsidered and insted of giving that much dilitium people should get less dilitihum at each rank but have discount on a single ship.
Did the OP mention that Dilithium will be for sale in the C-store?
I would sort of be ok with that, as I despise grinding. And as a Lifer, I know I am not adding anything financially to the game's financial bottom line anymore other than the occasional c-store uniform purchase.
This way I can get the gear I want without spending hours grinding for it, thats time I sadly do not have anymore.
Even better would be how EVE does it with their PLEX cards, as it is now, you can buy a PLEX card for say $20, and then sell it in game for currency to allow you to play however you want, without having to grind for credits.
So in STO , someone who had the time to grind for Dilithium , would then be able to get a free month gold subscription in exchange for their Dilithium .
Umm, no. If I want to buy in game currency for RL money, I'll go play EvE. Stop enabling Cryptic.
we all should consider that many of us already have played trough the holl game. So it can be somehow boring to lvl up in the test server again without the benefits we had on holodeck. I mean if i would create a new char on holodek i would have max out all my items at every tier and would easily lvl up to max level. I think that the way it is in the tribble now makes more scence. lvling up should be harder and maxing out items also.
Cryptic should add missions to every tier where player could have a choiche between collecting dilitium, enery credits or dilitium. so you could have a choice to spend more time on improving your ship or to level up. there should be path such as staying at a lvl and improving the ship or going for lvl upward.
another point is that at every lvl there should also be some noob ships for people who dont want to spend much dilithium. other ships should be more expensive which would be more realistic but the items should be cheaper compared to starships.
Crytic should also take into consideration that if a VA would help someone to lvl from 1 to 51 without that the newbe buying anything, the newbe would have easily much dilitium at lvl 51. so giving out much dilitium at each ranking up should be reconsidered and insted of giving that much dilitium people should get less dilitihum at each rank but have discount on a single ship.
What's wrong with the ship tokens we have on Holodeck now?
Even better would be how EVE does it with their PLEX cards, as it is now, you can buy a PLEX card for say $20, and then sell it in game for currency to allow you to play however you want, without having to grind for credits.
So in STO , someone who had the time to grind for Dilithium , would then be able to get a free month gold subscription in exchange for their Dilithium .
Umm... this is how Cryptic ARE doing it.
They expect people to buy C-Points then trade it for Dilithium in game. EVE Online has people trade game time for 'free gametime'
Cryptic want people to trade Store Points for ingame currency. This is the equivelent of LOTR allowing folks to trade Turbine points for Gold. Needless to say, I find it exceptionally offensive and stupid. The current Dilithium shortage and daily refinement cap means most folks are going to be spending weeks just trying to meet the requirements to get themselves sorted let alone trade it on the market.
8000K Dilithium per day that has to be used on Ships, Equipment, Officers, Training, Renames, Respecs.
I would be unsurprised to find Dilithium being exchanged for wild inflated of C-Points considering the limited nature its getting now. You going to be happy to throw dow $20 of C-Points for 8K Refined Dilithium ?
What's wrong with the ship tokens we have on Holodeck now?
They are too confusing for us stupid players. Its so much less confusing to be given a tiny grant of dilithium that won't pay for a ship, a discount token to bring down the price of the ship to a point that the grant of dilithium STILL won't pay in full so we have to add to it from our own stores. See how much simpler that is?
They expect people to buy C-Points then trade it for Dilithium in game. EVE Online has people trade game time for 'free gametime'
Cryptic want people to trade Store Points for ingame currency. This is the equivelent of LOTR allowing folks to trade Turbine points for Gold. Needless to say, I find it exceptionally offensive and stupid. The current Dilithium shortage and daily refinement cap means most folks are going to be spending weeks just trying to meet the requirements to get themselves sorted let alone trade it on the market.
8000K Dilithium per day that has to be used on Ships, Equipment, Officers, Training, Renames, Respecs.
I would be unsurprised to find Dilithium being exchanged for wild inflated of C-Points considering the limited nature its getting now. You going to be happy to throw dow $20 of C-Points for 8K Refined Dilithium ?
Yeah I didn't realize that cryptic isn't going to sell dilithium on the c-store?
You're right though, with the hilariously short supply of dilithium, it will cost an outrageous amount of CP to buy dilithium. $20/8k dilithium doesn't sound far off the mark.
Yeah I didn't realize that cryptic isn't going to sell dilithium on the c-store?
You're right though, with the hilariously short supply of dilithium, it will cost an outrageous amount of CP to buy dilithium. $20/8k dilithium doesn't sound far off the mark.
Exactly. Their grand scheme hinges on the limit of dilithium you can get daily to trade. What needs to happen to drive this is to create a massive dilithium glut (make it *far* more available). More supply = less demand = lower prices. This way people won't feel ripped off.
Did the OP mention that Dilithium will be for sale in the C-store?
Yes, I did. It doesn't matter if it is for sale if:
1) It is unrefined Dilithium. The true culprit in this slew of bad decisions is the daily limit on refining dilithium.
2) If it is Refined Dilithium that is for sale in the C-Store, it will need to be ridiculously low priced and come in huge quantities (even after the "fix" to the current prices) to afford the blanket use of Refined Dilithium in STO. We're talking about more things using Refined Dilithium than Energy Credits, here.
With their current use of Refined Dilithium I don't see ANYONE selling it to other players (except RMTers) because you'll never be able to have enough of it no matter how much you grind and how often you log in to refine.
I agree with the OP completely. CO didn't detract from the experience for the Gold members when it went live. They made a lower tier experience for the Silvers, but didn't make it stupidly tedious either.
Some of the changes and the general feel of Tribble right now is making me not want to touch STO ever again once this all goes Live. I've been here since Beta, I've enjoyed playing and have brought several friends into the game, but I'm not feeling the 'love'.. not feeing any 'loyalty' in return for my patronage and support that I've given Cryptic and STO.
I'm a Lifer to both STO and CO. I've spent far too much money on both of the games in the past couple years. I don't want to be punished for it.
Comments
i knew that ether the prices were highly outdated compared to the later work done on how much we could earn and refine at a time, or it was basically intentional and wouldn't change much. i was sincerely hoping is wasn't the later, and that those insane numbers couldn't be close to right. order of magnitude is right, 1 or 2 zeros need to be loped off the price of everything. for example, a white boff can be bought for 240, that really needs to be like 24. and the weapon prices, drop 2 zeros off their price and you will have a good reasonable place to start fine tuning prices.
Subscribers should be able to earn enough Dilithium for ONE weapon by doing ONE Star Cluster just like 75 Badges does on live - AT ANY RANK. Silver customers should have to grind or pay for their gear.
Subscribers should not feel any more pain than they do currently at any rank. If you correct the numbers to do that then we will shout Halleluiah!!! - Our subscriptions saved us from having to "Grind or Pay".
I've levelled two characters on tribble since the beta started and I never had trouble gearing my guys for their level.
Sure it wasn't mostly Uncommon, but I wasn't under-geared.
In regards to the dilithium store, I haven't seen pricing that insane since the PvP store in CO. Over a year to get a full set of gear? What is this I don't even-
I hope it's true that this was merely a case of "accidentally set the numbers WAY higher than they should be".
I find that a tad hard to believe, if your reworking an econemy wtfh would you not adjust what the currancy is spent on?! If thats the case the incompetance runs deep in that area of developement. How hard is it to go adjust the prices for stuff to be reasonable?
Not being able to buy generic doffs with energy credits is also a real pain. Seems like everything we NEED to test is either so overpriced no one can afford it, or flat out unavaible. It starts to wear thin real fast. You need to make missions award dilithium it doesnt have to be a staggering amount but 250-500 dilithium for average story mission would help.
Who wants to go grind 3 exploration missions just to be able to retrain a Boff?
Also if you noticed there are a troop of special ops outside the admirals office. They carry premo gear specifically for handling the borg. But you will have to grind stfs to get points for the gear.
My main problem is WHERE ARE THE DILITHIUM MISSIONS?? I have gotten captain in 5 days (awesome) but i have yet to unlock the defari dailies and only one of Drakes dailies rewards ore. And i have only 2 exploration dailies that reward dilithium. We need more dailies that reward ore or dilithium not less. If dilithium is the new economy then give us more access to it before endgame not after.
A F2P MMO does not need "loyal" customers. It needs impulsive, impatient ones. Cryptic (we should really say PW here, as all the decisions are coming from them) doesn't really care about its existing customer base, because going F2P is going to bring in orders of magnitude more new players. F2P MMOs live on a constantly turning over population of casual players who join the game, make one or two impulse microtransaction purchases, then move on to the next thing when they realize the game is no good. Anyone who stays and buys a subscription is just an added bonus.
There are only two explanations for the outlandish state of the proposed economy. One is that someone ROYALLY screwed up with their idea of economy pricing. However, it's so egregiously bad that it baffles the mind that a mistake of this magnitude can be even made in honesty. It's like McDonalds trying to charge $150 for a hamburger, and being completely and genuinely serious about it.
The other explanation is that this was always the plan, and they ROYALLY misjudged how we would react/perceive these economic changes. But again, a situation this out of whack stretches the imagination on how they could be so far off with their judgement of what we would consider tolerable. Did they really think these values were even somewhere close to reasonable? It's one thing to be off by a factor of two or so, but to be off by a factor of
I guess the philosophical question at the end of the day is, of the above two situations, which is worse... a company so flabbergastingly incompetent to propose such an unbelievably one-sided economy, or a company so two-faced and underhanded that they knowingly proposed said economy and are trying to get away with it. Neither really put forth the image of hope and confidence for a healthy STO future.
For end game components the formular should be straight forward, as you can simply do the math on current embles gained per daily (3) and the cost per component. For current XI ones this is fine. You can probably also add the Marks of Honor / Exploration for the lvl X compoents in your calculation to get the starting point right.
With this as a starting point it should be easier top scale down the lower level component cost.
Don't get me wrong i LOVE this game but every update they ruin it a little more for me
Stephen, you have a chance to prove us wrong. Easy solutions:
2) Get rid of the refining gate mechanism. Or at least make it a heckuva lot more than 8k/day. Maybe make it 100k/week or something (so people who play a lot in a single day/weekend can still reap rewards without daily logins).
3) Item costs should be similar to the pace on Holodeck. I can do a single Explore Daily for 75 BoE5 and get a Mk X Uncommon item. You definitely don't want to be more than the current Emblem grind where a casual player can only get a handful a day, meaning 1 Very Rare item a week.
I understand you want Mk XI gear to be more than Mk II gear. So allow each rank to earn more Dilithium with each mission/daily. Put in some sort of Rank Multiplier.
4) Make sure when you calculate out conversions for existing players you give fair value for their work. If I've got 350 Emblems on Holodeck right now, I better get 10x Very Rare items worth of Dilithium.
The OP makes a lot of good points about the directions you can take this game. Especially consider these points for paying/Gold players. You want to restrict free ships or have a refining gate -- Put that on the Silvers.
Anyway, as I started, I hope you prove us wrong. I hope you show some faith in us players. Because we've supported you all long enough. Go ahead and check my account. You'll see I've spend much more than $15/mo in game/c-store purchases on top of my LTS. And I'll continue to do so if I feel I'm treated well/fairly and I have fun.
EC should be for common/white items. Dilithium should be for everything else.
EC should be earnable in every mission and from recycling gathered items. Dilithium should be a bonus reward for the completion of story arcs, FAs, STFs, Dailys, FEs, special events and (much as I hate to say it) PvP. Both should be earnable in the DOff system. Earnings/Prices would obviously have to be carefully balanced.
Basic ships with basic equipment should be free at rank up.
Hardly, your gonna get slammed with a horrible exchange rate that wipes all your resources into Dilithium Ore and everything in game is getting bumped up in price that will require refinement. Your looking at having to come into the game daily to refine your resources and farm dailies to get more.
Wouldnt be surprised if Refined Dilithium becomes the currency for the Exchange as well to further inflate the requirement to have...
Bridge Officer with the extremely rare skills that sell for Millions of EC on the Exchange = Translate that into tons of Refined Dilithium
Personally I will close my account and wait for Star Wars in December if you keep destroying this game. I am a 600 day vet. And one of the major reasons I play this game it to fly the ships. I love the space combat and you are going to greatly unbalance the whole game with this. This is not like a mount in WoW.. having access to the ships at for those level is weaved into the system and keeps things balanced. unless your completely going to rewrite every mission and every NPC encounter your at a huge disadvantage while grinding for the new shio. YOU have dramatically less shield and hull strength, you have less tac/eng/sci stations. I cant think of a worse ideal. Just when things really starting to get good you destroy all progress you've made with this one. You should fire anyone who thought this was a good idea. I know who long it takes for me to find to to grind in other games as I typically don''t have a lot of time. You are shutting people like me out of this game. thanks for ruining something I really liked then lying to us about not making changes like this...
FIX this or risk loosing causal players like myself.
I second this statement!! I have been a Loyal Customer since this game started i know that there are many, like myself ,that could not and can not afford an LTS and have paid our fee since launch!
I too am a 600 hundred day Vet and cannot but help feeling like I am being screwed for a game
that i loved to play being mangled the in the way it is now in the current tribble build!
We Gold members were told by Dstahl before his departure that we would not see any changes in the
way we currently play, not it seems that as a gold subscribers we we most likely be on par as the "freemium" guys in terms of we play at the current state on Tribble.
I hope and pray to God that this is nowhere near the final game! It is my sincere hope that the devs
are reading the boards and listing to us. I really don't want to leave but if this pile of something that they put on Tribble doesn't get any better for us Golds I for one will be following this very path!!
Me, I have an LTS and fully intend to be a thorn in Cryptic's side until they shut down the game which shouldn't be too long judging from their displayed behavior.
Frankly, that kind of line is just as preposterous as threatening to rage-quit. It's more than a little presumptuous to assume that Cryptic is going to shut down any time soon. And to fancy yourself a "thorn in Cryptic's side" is making a bit too much of yourself, too.
Honestly, this is a Test Server. And the F2P build isn't going live anytime soon. We have more than enough time to give feedback to Cryptic and let them make their adjustments. It hasn't even been that long since Tribble's been back. We need to be patient as the devs update their builds and send them our way. That kind of stuff does take time.
If we're vociferous enough about what we do and don't like, the devs will respond accordingly, to the best of their ability. But please take into account that their may be some decisions that are out of their hands; that doesn't mean that they won't try and make the best of it for the sake of us players, but that does mean that they might have their hands tied on certain aspects of where the game is going. Especially so, considering they have to answer to both Perfect World and CBS on a variety of topics.
I would sort of be ok with that, as I despise grinding. And as a Lifer, I know I am not adding anything financially to the game's financial bottom line anymore other than the occasional c-store uniform purchase.
This way I can get the gear I want without spending hours grinding for it, thats time I sadly do not have anymore.
Even better would be how EVE does it with their PLEX cards, as it is now, you can buy a PLEX card for say $20, and then sell it in game for currency to allow you to play however you want, without having to grind for credits.
So in STO , someone who had the time to grind for Dilithium , would then be able to get a free month gold subscription in exchange for their Dilithium .
Cryptic should add missions to every tier where player could have a choiche between collecting dilitium, enery credits or dilitium. so you could have a choice to spend more time on improving your ship or to level up. there should be path such as staying at a lvl and improving the ship or going for lvl upward.
another point is that at every lvl there should also be some noob ships for people who dont want to spend much dilithium. other ships should be more expensive which would be more realistic but the items should be cheaper compared to starships.
Crytic should also take into consideration that if a VA would help someone to lvl from 1 to 51 without that the newbe buying anything, the newbe would have easily much dilitium at lvl 51. so giving out much dilitium at each ranking up should be reconsidered and insted of giving that much dilitium people should get less dilitihum at each rank but have discount on a single ship.
Umm, no. If I want to buy in game currency for RL money, I'll go play EvE. Stop enabling Cryptic.
What's wrong with the ship tokens we have on Holodeck now?
Umm... this is how Cryptic ARE doing it.
They expect people to buy C-Points then trade it for Dilithium in game. EVE Online has people trade game time for 'free gametime'
Cryptic want people to trade Store Points for ingame currency. This is the equivelent of LOTR allowing folks to trade Turbine points for Gold. Needless to say, I find it exceptionally offensive and stupid. The current Dilithium shortage and daily refinement cap means most folks are going to be spending weeks just trying to meet the requirements to get themselves sorted let alone trade it on the market.
8000K Dilithium per day that has to be used on Ships, Equipment, Officers, Training, Renames, Respecs.
I would be unsurprised to find Dilithium being exchanged for wild inflated of C-Points considering the limited nature its getting now. You going to be happy to throw dow $20 of C-Points for 8K Refined Dilithium ?
They are too confusing for us stupid players. Its so much less confusing to be given a tiny grant of dilithium that won't pay for a ship, a discount token to bring down the price of the ship to a point that the grant of dilithium STILL won't pay in full so we have to add to it from our own stores. See how much simpler that is?
Yeah I didn't realize that cryptic isn't going to sell dilithium on the c-store?
You're right though, with the hilariously short supply of dilithium, it will cost an outrageous amount of CP to buy dilithium. $20/8k dilithium doesn't sound far off the mark.
Exactly. Their grand scheme hinges on the limit of dilithium you can get daily to trade. What needs to happen to drive this is to create a massive dilithium glut (make it *far* more available). More supply = less demand = lower prices. This way people won't feel ripped off.
Yes, I did. It doesn't matter if it is for sale if:
1) It is unrefined Dilithium. The true culprit in this slew of bad decisions is the daily limit on refining dilithium.
2) If it is Refined Dilithium that is for sale in the C-Store, it will need to be ridiculously low priced and come in huge quantities (even after the "fix" to the current prices) to afford the blanket use of Refined Dilithium in STO. We're talking about more things using Refined Dilithium than Energy Credits, here.
With their current use of Refined Dilithium I don't see ANYONE selling it to other players (except RMTers) because you'll never be able to have enough of it no matter how much you grind and how often you log in to refine.
I agree with the OP completely. CO didn't detract from the experience for the Gold members when it went live. They made a lower tier experience for the Silvers, but didn't make it stupidly tedious either.
Some of the changes and the general feel of Tribble right now is making me not want to touch STO ever again once this all goes Live. I've been here since Beta, I've enjoyed playing and have brought several friends into the game, but I'm not feeling the 'love'.. not feeing any 'loyalty' in return for my patronage and support that I've given Cryptic and STO.
I'm a Lifer to both STO and CO. I've spent far too much money on both of the games in the past couple years. I don't want to be punished for it.