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On the Issue of the C-Store and Tribble
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Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
I'd like to point out, that in their analysis of C-store purchases, something needs to be made patently clear. The only reason that I chose to spend the Tribble CPOINTS I had was in order to achieve faster in my testing of the DOFF system as it is the biggest part of what I'm actually wanting to test (and I didn't buy any more, I already have plenty sitting there waiting for something that I actually want to buy). The point here, is that if they use this as their marker, they might think that I feel the DOFF item on the Cstore is worthwhile, when I do not. For starters, I hate these sort of Gambling schemes in F2P games. Secondly, I like to earn most of what I have. For some things this doesn't mean as much (Tr116, Borg Boff, Etc). However, in the case of DOFFS, it just seems like a random quick fix to something that patience can resolve. I think they are overpriced, and really not worth the effort. I spent all my stipend and frankly I believe I only got one good doff out of the mix. Hardly worth my money or time.
The other reason that this entire thing seems invalid to me, is that we are attempting to level in a very narrow (and unclear) time window to achieve levels and Commendations in Tribble so we can get certain items on Test Server. Its taking advantage of what you might call the 'Hardcore' player of STO. I'm putting up with it, but it does grate a bit with my personality. Not only am I paying to play the game, but I'm paying to give Cryptic information about what is wrong with the game. I'm paying to essentially work many hours, for items with questionable dollar value, in large part because i want the accolade. That's all well and good, but then throwing the C-Store promotion on top of it, and touting it as a marketing analysis of what people would actually spend makes no sense to me.
I just think its a bad idea, to try to take advantage of the playerbase who are also trying to Test the game and help find the bugs so that the game looks clean when it goes live. Even more annoying, apart from the DOFF system, the thing I wanted to test most were the STF's and all that content. I understand they wanted us to grind our way through the gated content, but it would have been nice if I could have ported something else over, if only to try out the changes to the Task force. All well and good, I have my Admiral and General now, but its a matter of appropriately gearing up and so forth, which is somewhat annoying to do particularly on the KDF side.
Please from now on, don't Monetize the Test server. Its not clever. Many gaming companies pay testers as you likely do as well in house. The point I'm making is, we're paying you to test your server... and being given t his big carrot to pay more to test, just seems an abuse of our love of the game. Don't do it.
I'm not writing this with any particular animosity, nor do I have a sense there were any big conspiracies. I do want to clarify why this sets a bad precedent and that it should clearly never happen again. I can understand why you might not wanted to have given us free access to purchase the Cadre packs, as that would have allowed us to fill our DOFF roster to 100.
The other reason that this entire thing seems invalid to me, is that we are attempting to level in a very narrow (and unclear) time window to achieve levels and Commendations in Tribble so we can get certain items on Test Server. Its taking advantage of what you might call the 'Hardcore' player of STO. I'm putting up with it, but it does grate a bit with my personality. Not only am I paying to play the game, but I'm paying to give Cryptic information about what is wrong with the game. I'm paying to essentially work many hours, for items with questionable dollar value, in large part because i want the accolade. That's all well and good, but then throwing the C-Store promotion on top of it, and touting it as a marketing analysis of what people would actually spend makes no sense to me.
I just think its a bad idea, to try to take advantage of the playerbase who are also trying to Test the game and help find the bugs so that the game looks clean when it goes live. Even more annoying, apart from the DOFF system, the thing I wanted to test most were the STF's and all that content. I understand they wanted us to grind our way through the gated content, but it would have been nice if I could have ported something else over, if only to try out the changes to the Task force. All well and good, I have my Admiral and General now, but its a matter of appropriately gearing up and so forth, which is somewhat annoying to do particularly on the KDF side.
Please from now on, don't Monetize the Test server. Its not clever. Many gaming companies pay testers as you likely do as well in house. The point I'm making is, we're paying you to test your server... and being given t his big carrot to pay more to test, just seems an abuse of our love of the game. Don't do it.
I'm not writing this with any particular animosity, nor do I have a sense there were any big conspiracies. I do want to clarify why this sets a bad precedent and that it should clearly never happen again. I can understand why you might not wanted to have given us free access to purchase the Cadre packs, as that would have allowed us to fill our DOFF roster to 100.
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This will make it seem less of a big deal for Gold members to plop these down every once in a while, especially on the less expensive stuff, and I am sure also where Cryptic is expecting the majority of CPoints sold on the Exchange will come from as well, I am sure there are a lot of players who have already purchased everything.
I think the folks at Cryptic know that nearly everyone purchased a ton of DOFFs via the C-Store only because they gave us free points and only because the DOFF system is the brand new thing everyone wants to try. If they don't know this, well, they should figure it out soon enough.
Whether or not you like it, whenever you load up any MMO like STO, you're "testing" it. These games are never perfect and never finished. If you find an issue with the game, you're likely to point it out to other people and mention it on the forums or in the chat where a developer has a chance of noticing it (more so if you filed a bug report) and then it can be addressed. We're all effectively paying to bug test. I don't have a problem with this as I enjoy helping to give other people a smoother, less flawed experience.
On the rewards for testing, well... they did it for the original beta and they're doing it again now. They've strategically placed testing rewards to encourage us to do particular things: Get a Fed to level 31, Get a Fed to 51, get a single commendation up to DOFF tier 3, get a Klingon to level 31, get a Klingon to level 51. These are the things they want tested and we're paying attention (more or less).
The monetization of the Test Server I think you're referring to is where you buy C-Store points on Holodeck and you get an equal number of points on Tribble, right? I don't see anything wrong with this as you're not actually spending your real points, you're just spending their shadow. This test server is transitory compared to the live server.
On a last note, what happens when you reach 100 DOFFs and get more? Is there a message complaining that you have too many? I only have around 40+ right now and I'm curious.
To Elorfin: I'm not sure about the 100 doffs. I think you just can't get any more, which is why they have a system to purge them from your ship. Right now I'm at 60something doffs on one of my characters, but now that I have a big handful I've been doing some of the high risk high reward missions for that reason.
Doing the higher risk ones makes a lot of sense when you have a big pool. Unfortunately, I'm of the mind that I don't want to lose anyone.