While they are being replaced, the new "currency" (again, I personally wouldn't call Marks a currency) will also be available from a wide variety of gameplay. Currently, Reman Datalogs are only available from the Vault Shuttle Event, and only during the special hourly event. Players should be able to earn their Reman set a lot easier with this change, or use those same Marks for a variety of other rewards. This change allows the player to choose what rewards they want to work on, using the same Marks.
What about the Delta Data Daily flight logs? Some of my chars still have a few of those sitting around....
As I mentioned on page 6, I'll be passing this thread along to the dev team, so feel free to leave constructive feedback. Flaming, trolling, harassing material or anything else breaking the forum's rules will not be tolerated, so please watch your posts or you will receive warnings or infractions from the Mod team and myself. This is your friendly reminder
I have gotten some more information for you that I wanted to share:
Season 7 points from the OP
While they are being replaced, the new "currency" (I personally wouldn't call Marks a currency) will also be available from gameplay outside of STFs. This allows you to play different content and still earn rewards, including if you don't have a team available for a STF or don't wish to use the public queues. This also means that rewards cost significantly less in time.
Incorrect. There will be a way to earn dilithium from Elite STFs.
While they are being replaced, the new "currency" (again, I personally wouldn't call Marks a currency) will also be available from a wide variety of gameplay. Currently, Reman Datalogs are only available from the Vault Shuttle Event, and only during the special hourly event. Players should be able to earn their Reman set a lot easier with this change, or use those same Marks for a variety of other rewards. This change allows the player to choose what rewards they want to work on, using the same Marks.
As an avid STFer myself, from what I've seen, I think everyone will be taken care of. Watch for a dev blog on the conversion next week (or the week after at the latest).
Please see Bort's post yesterday here. The extra piece is being used in the new Borg alt set.
Yes, this is part of the reputation system, but the items cost significantly less in time than how they are currently obtained. I have only one complete XII ground set, among all my characters who run STFs, and looking at this new system, I couldn't be more excited. Watch for Tribble patch notes for when this goes to testing, and make sure to leave your feedback in the official feedback thread that gets created. As a player, I'm very happy with what I've seen.
Again, this is false. You can earn Dilithium from STFs if you play on Elite (among other rewards).
As noted, the Dilithium prices have been increased, yes. Please leave your feedback on this in this thread or the Tribble forums.
Again, constructive feedback is welcome and the devs are watching this thread
Cheers,
Brandon =/\=
I think what we're suffering from in part, Brandon, is lack of information and surprise information that never was mentioned in Tribble notes.
When major changes happen, we need to have as much information as possible in order to judge whether we're better off or not. EDIT: So I am appreciative you and Borticus (the most prominent in these discussions) are providing more details on major changes instead of waiting.
From what we have, though, it seems we're not. It seems STO will turn into a job rather than a game.
That's a sure way to keep people away, and thus hurts Cryptic/PWE's wallet in the long-run.
Remember your goal: to keep Star Trek lovers as your long-term players. Increased grinding won't do it, and taking away avenues of taking care of multiple grinds in the same mission (Omega Marks + Dilithium not possible on Normal STFs, for example) will only make matters worse.
As noted, the Dilithium prices have been increased, yes. Please leave your feedback on this in this thread or the Tribble forums.
What's the deal here? Increased prices to convert doffs to a higher tier? Junior Officer Cadres costing dilithium? Does Cryptic want to make working on Fleet Starbases worse with those ridiculous doff requirements? Or are there plans to cut down the amount of doffs needed to complete starbase assignments?
Again, Cryptic is making changes to the game that a.) nobody asked for and b.) EVERYONE HATES IT.
Stop it. *rolls up newspaper* Bad Cryptic! *smack*
As I mentioned on page 6, I'll be passing this thread along to the dev team, so feel free to leave constructive feedback. Flaming, trolling, harassing material or anything else breaking the forum's rules will not be tolerated, so please watch your posts or you will receive warnings or infractions from the Mod team and myself. This is your friendly reminder
I have gotten some more information for you that I wanted to share:
Season 7 points from the OP
THe complaints and the vitriol among them especially with GW2 in its early stages and Rift due to launch an expansion (and lets not forget Planetside 2 and defiance in the future) Is warrented based on what's happening. People are angry.
While they are being replaced, the new "currency" (I personally wouldn't call Marks a currency) will also be available from gameplay outside of STFs. This allows you to play different content and still earn rewards, including if you don't have a team available for a STF or don't wish to use the public queues. This also means that rewards cost significantly less in time.
If this turns out to be the case without requiring an ungodly amount of dilithium this could be a very good thing.
Incorrect. There will be a way to earn dilithium from Elite STFs.
Incorrect yourself. As of this moment on Tribble there is no way and no response on the subject has suggested there WILL be a way. Until now. If this is true and the dilithium is significant enough to balance out what's being lost? Then its a matter of adjustments and i feel a LOT better about the game's future rather than what the current image being given off by season 7 on tribble is. Anyone can adjust to a new way of doing things. But taking something away that cant be replaced is a lot harder.
While they are being replaced, the new "currency" (again, I personally wouldn't call Marks a currency) will also be available from a wide variety of gameplay. Currently, Reman Datalogs are only available from the Vault Shuttle Event, and only during the special hourly event. Players should be able to earn their Reman set a lot easier with this change, or use those same Marks for a variety of other rewards. This change allows the player to choose what rewards they want to work on, using the same Marks.
If the entire structure of Set items is being looked at. THAT would be a very good thing and while Maco and Omega and KDF are. No one has said anything about Breen, Jem, and Aegis sets. The items involved and their values are as much a core issue in this problem as the set benefits.
As an avid STFer myself, from what I've seen, I think everyone will be taken care of. Watch for a dev blog on the conversion next week (or the week after at the latest).
As a player, This Dev Blog needs to come out sooner rather than later. I'm looking at several very good places to spend money and as of this moment myself and a lot of people playing this game are under the impression we're about to get hosed again. The fact that none of these changes were in the patch notes is a HUGE issue for a lot of people and Devs have not commented on it at all. This kind of silence only breeds the worst kind of fear. And i'm a victim of it. When paired with the Doff changes this seems like a very dark road we're going down.
Please see Bort's post yesterday here. The extra piece is being used in the new Borg alt set.
Pretty sure the OP knew that but the change to the 3+maco is going to alter builds significantly and at the time this happened suggested a LOT more grinding was involved to repair the damage from these changes. That is a problem for him and others.
Yes, this is part of the reputation system, but the items cost significantly less in time than how they are currently obtained. I have only one complete XII ground set, among all my characters who run STFs, and looking at this new system, I couldn't be more excited. Watch for Tribble patch notes for when this goes to testing, and make sure to leave your feedback in the official feedback thread that gets created. As a player, I'm very happy with what I've seen.
You've got access to information we dont but as a player i dont konw where you stand or how you operate.
Again, this is false. You can earn Dilithium from STFs if you play on Elite (among other rewards). As noted, the Dilithium prices have been increased, yes. Please leave your feedback on this in this thread or the Tribble forums.
Our feedback is being left with very little in the line of response, The Dilithium cost increases are Draconian and the effects it will have are far wide and reaching. If Elite STF's are going to provide solid sources of dilithium (and by that i mean replacing the 2600 or so you could make on a solid run+drop) Then yeah This will end up being much ado abot nothing., But feedback i've heard from people on the test server suggest its maybe...currently 400? That kind of loss of Dilithium will not be welcomed if it means you have to do significantly more work to get what is a small amount already given the prices of the Exchange AND the price of the consoles and other things requiring dilithium...which apparenlty is a lot of season 7 changes and ALL of the fleet missions.
Bottom line: Devs need to start making responses as to why these changes are being made and WHAT if any replacements are coming to deal with what will be happening.
My opinion... and believe me this is toned down considerably from what I had been planning to post:
What I see I do NOT like. It's getting harder and harder to log on every day.
Season Seven continues a decent into Grind Madness. We have ZERO coherent story progression. ZERO. A couple of lines of dialog in a grind-zone... that is not story progression.
-- WHY are the Tholians on the move? Do we get missions to explain this sudden aggression? Do we get an attempt to resolve this aspect of the conflict?
-- WHY are we suddenly so intent on helping the Romulans when we did our best to beat the stuffing out of them? We had an entire arc and featured episode dedicated to kicking them in the butt. Do we get this explained to us?
--HOW do we end up in a situation where we can strike at the Borg Queen? How do we get there, what happens after we smack her down...
I have no problem with the gear changes, I look forward to trying out new combinations of gear... what I have a problem with is having to grind to accumulate massive amounts of resources. Can't we make some of this gear a straightforward story drop like the Breen and Jem'Hadar sets?
At this point we might as well do away with crafting entirely. That's a whole separate currency/grind that costs dilthium... and you get very little out of it.
I keep saying "one more season" in the hopes that you release some kind of story-progression that resolves the open questions the core missions pose.
Instead I get more chances to grind to accumulate the new resource-of-the-day.
Getting resources for all these "projects" for the base and for the new "systems"... it's becoming a full-time job. And believe me I do not need another one of those.
While they are being replaced, the new "currency" (I personally wouldn't call Marks a currency) will also be available from gameplay outside of STFs. This allows you to play different content and still earn rewards, including if you don't have a team available for a STF or don't wish to use the public queues. This also means that rewards cost significantly less in time.
Incorrect. There will be a way to earn dilithium from Elite STFs.
Actually, what the OP says is true for normal and advanced difficulty levels. He was only wrong about the elite level. Also, removing the dilthium rewards from normal and elite is an awful idea. That will force all of the amateurs and novices into the elite difficulty level pugs, causing endless headaches and problems for everyone else. It's just a bad idea all around as playing those missions should yield a decent dilithium reward, regardless of the difficulty level
As an avid STFer myself, from what I've seen, I think everyone will be taken care of. Watch for a dev blog on the conversion next week (or the week after at the latest).
We will see how the conversion plays out. I doubt it we will know the extent of the problems until players actually calculate the conversion themselves.
Yes, this is part of the reputation system, but the items cost significantly less in time than how they are currently obtained. I have only one complete XII ground set, among all my characters who run STFs, and looking at this new system, I couldn't be more excited. Watch for Tribble patch notes for when this goes to testing, and make sure to leave your feedback in the official feedback thread that gets created. As a player, I'm very happy with what I've seen.
Being able to purchase the STF MACO and BORG sets with dilithium isn't a bad idea, but it creates more dilithium grind incentives, which isn't what we want. Most of us are already tired of grinding the Klingon Path of the Warrior, fleet events, tour the universe, and spending vast amounts of resources on our starbases. Please don't make it worse.
As noted, the Dilithium prices have been increased, yes. Please leave your feedback on this in this thread or the Tribble forums.
Again, constructive feedback is welcome and the devs are watching this thread
Cheers,
Brandon =/\=
There already is a dilithium cost for converting doffs. Don't make it worse. If you want to stop people from purchasing doff packs from the c-store, converting, and spam selling them on the exchange, then limit the amount of doffs people can sell on the exchange per day. However, don't penalize the non-Ferengi's who aren't spamming the exchange with rare doff's that got converted.
Again, this is a case of Cryptic proving that it doesn't understand it's own statistics or that Cryptic could just misread/misunderstand it's own statistics. You've created a giant resource sink in the game in terms of the amount of grind currency we have to spend to get things. For example, we are coaxed into paying dilithium for crafting, converting doffs, buying ships, investing in star bases, etc. So, when you go to look at the statistics and see that a lot of people are doing that, you will probably say to yourselves, "a lot of people are grinding for dilithium and spending it, so it must mean that they like doing it." If this is the mindset, you are using, I feel sorry for current and future STO players. You will not win over the hearts and minds of potential STO fans by turning this game into a vending machine. You will not demonstrate to us that you've created more content by simply making it more grindy. In short, grindfest does not equal innovation (or a solution to get the game back to how exciting it was at launch).
What's all this madness about marks? I see no issue with such a cosmetic change. And the stf suff will leave my inventory to go to my assets tab, that's perfect.
Now, back to serious buisness. Who had the ridiculous idea to reduce the STFs dilithium rewards? At least can we turn omega marks into dilithium (to make it equivalent to what we get currently in normal/elite)?
As the head of a smaller fleet in game, 9 members, what I've read about the upcoming changes to the Academy Doff recruitment has me troubled. Specifically, I am referring to the added dilithum cost of the general recruitment pack and the upgrading of Doffs. It is my belief that the new/increased dilithum costs will essentially bring an end to our fleet starbase project.
Our fleet starbase is currently sitting about one-third of the way between tier 2 and 3 on the Tac, Sci, and Eng progress bars. Unfortunately it's moving at a snail's pace as is because we have a shortage of the following Doffs:
Security
Medical
Operations
The C-store Doff packs, and the exchange are cost prohibitive for us. Our only realistically accessible Doff recruitment is though the missions at Starfleet Academy. Adding a dilithum cost to the general recruitment mission will significantly reduce the amount of Doffs we are able to recruit as we will be unable to buy them due to cost.
For some reason the Doffs in the categories I've listed above are next to impossible to get via the recruitment missions, also by purchasing Doffs from the Doff-In-a-Box vendor on the fleet starbase. As a result we have a glut of Tactical, Engineering, and Science Doffs with nowhere to use them. Our best course of action was to upgrade these extra Doffs to green quality and then downgrade them back to white and hope they fall into the categories we need. The success rate with this hasn't been great, but it's better than nothing. Increasing the upgrade costs will mean that we will be forced to utilize this already limited success process even less.
As a small fleet already struggling with the starbase, we were really holding out hope for some relief with the base projects and Doff recruitment ratios for the three categories we desperately need. The reported recruitment changes on Tribble, instead of relief, appear to make the starbase project even more difficult and no longer worth the effort. I humbly ask that these changes be reconsidered.
Kind regards,
Brian
Thank you for the T6 Galaxy Class. - I support Tovan Khev. - Please bring back the exploration missions.
I can understand doing away with "investigate officer reports" daily and the rewards associated with it. However, in reguards to STF dilithium rewards I do hope whatever conversion you impliment will equal the same amount of dilithium we are able to aquire currentley in STFs. Any Deduction in this will not only hurt starbases, It will hurt people who wish to earn dilithium to convert to c-store points.
Currentley i sell all my dilithium to get points. There are many things in the c-store i have bought and still want. Removing "officer reports" (which i understand why) is going to lessen the amount of dilithium i can earn in a day. If STF's dont pay out the same they do now, i dont see how i could continue to earn any decent amount of dilithium to sell, which in turn hurts starbases.
Please consider things carefully when deciding how to make certain changes. The last thing i wanna see is people ditching the game after launch of season 7, to go play SWTOR when it goes free 2 play in November.
I decided to come back for a little while (got bored with all my other games), and while I'm interested to a small degree about Season 7, I do think the cost of laying is way too high.
Heh...
The cost of "laying" has been way to high since time in memoriam...
Both monetarily and many times, in the cost to ones EGO.
STO Member since February 2009. I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born! Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
Even me ( being a relative noob ) can see that increasing dilithium-prices is - at the very least- stretching it when I look at the amounts it costs to build/expand a base .If they're planning to do that they'd need to add a lot of ways to earn that dilithium and significantly increase , not decrease, dilithium rewards . You cannot expect to do one without the other unless you don't mind a mass exodus of players .
Has anyone at Cryptic at any time wondered just how confusing all these currencies are by now ( just a thought ) ? New players like myself are completely clueless which currency is earned where and what it is used for . I have to consult the WIKI very often just to find out what all of them are used for . And for a new player it doesn't matter what you call them ( be it a currency or a reputation mark ) because in the end it amounts to the same thing : you have to grind for it ....
I see no benefits to the player in this new scheme. I see a lot of bad design aimed at bleeding players, destroying one of the better subsystems of this game -- DOFFs, and making the already onerous starbase grind ridiculous. Altogether, for me, means I will be spending less and less time in STO and more in Guild Wars 2 and spending my money on their game which is not set up as a Chinese death trap.
Our feedback is being left with very little in the line of response, The Dilithium cost increases are Draconian and the effects it will have are far wide and reaching. If Elite STF's are going to provide solid sources of dilithium (and by that i mean replacing the 2600 or so you could make on a solid run+drop) Then yeah This will end up being much ado abot nothing.
I respectfully disagree. We're essentially being handed a one-two punch here:
1. Salvage --> dilithium is being removed. If this action is mitigated by increased dilithium drops or other methods of conversion (what I assume to be Marks --> dilithium), then yes, maybe that's an issue to a lesser degree.
2. Doff grinding --> I don't even grind doffs that often and I find this change to be obnoxious. Unless the plan is to increase the volume of dilithium received + remove the 8k/day cap, this is a pretty nasty imposition. Furthermore, it's basically been stated that, while comments/questions pertaining to the subject are being review, at this time the updated cost model is working as intended.
Bran (or other devs) - as a suggestion, since both in-and-out-of-game this seems to be a rather large point of contention, perhaps an unscheduled dev blog for clarification might be in order outside of comments the dev team has made in various threads? Good PR goes a long way
First of all comparing the Daily report to welfare or minimum wage is BAD analogy. As far as "NO WORK," you're confusing things in a general sense of things. You yourself even stated that it has a small effect that it probably doesn't even matter.
I chose it precisely because it is the correct analogy. It's not 0 time, but it is about 15x more efficient than anything else in the game, if not moreso. Again, that's not a huge problem. I suggest farming it off to the DOFF system because that would normalize the 'dilithium per minute of work' a bit. And you need nothing invested in the character to get it. Get *any* character to 25, unlock as many klingons as you can = some amount of dilithium for no risk, and no time investment. As i say, that's like welfare, it's not really enough to move very far
Also, you're confusing two things a bit. I'm not saying you shouldn't get a reward for doing foundry missions, only that the reward for click a single panel to autocomplete 3 foundry missions isn't all that good for the game.
I belong to an elite group of people that do STFs, we can do all three SPACE STFs at around 5 to 8minutes apiece with a cool down of 1/2hr for each STF. It is quicker to bang out all three STFs in a matter of 21min per character.
I would hardly call that elite. That's called being in a group with people who have bothered to at least be minimally competent and coordinated. One or two good players can carry a pug to meet the optional objectives in STF's these days.
Though the Daily is faster across the board with all my farming toons, the rewards from my STFs daily runs net the biggest revenue in regards to Dilithium - and on top of that, any loot that can be exchange for a Dilithium box nets an even greater amount of Dilithium.
Without a doubt STF's are more than 1100 dilithium per run on average. Because you have to be reasonably close to your definition of elite to run STF's that should be the most efficient way to earn dilithium - and it is, for the 6560 dilithium per day you want to cap per character.
Someone with 4 toons or less is barely making a dent in the Dilithium economy, and someone with 20+ toons earned their keepsake merely because they invested money in acquiring toon slots. There is nothing wrong with the Daily Officer Report mission rewards, if anything they should just examine the missions themselves. However; I feel this is small and unimportant issue that just serves as a distraction to more important gameplay issues.
In regards to alt leveling, seriously now, I've played through the entire game with 4 or 5 toons already - How is leveling my alts via story missions going to improve the Fun factor, it is the same as grinding. The foundry files is a good way to LEVEL alts, the quicker an alt levels the faster one can do STFs and get end game items. I and many others earned their keep after beating the game. Its the same when there was no skipping the tutorial, it was a hassle and tiresome at best. leave it be, we're graspng at straws with this one.
Well there's a lot wrong with the dilithium rewards then, because it's a 'pay to win' system. Infinite cycles are bad.
For 1065 zen I can get 4 character slots, doing only the officer reports daily I can earn 9.1 zen per day per character at current exchange rates. Which means every character can pay for itself in 30 days of about 1 minute of work. Nothing about that seems likely to cause a problem to you? It's probably a good thing you're not a game designer.
Its NOT free if you are grinding for it, I can say the same for the mining mini game, whip those suckers fast on all my toons. Again you are poking at something insignificant compared to larger issues at play. Not everyone has 10+ toons or more, very few folks do.
One minute to click a single panel for no risk is hardly grinding. You literally do not need to move the character except to dump things in the bank, and if you're industrious I suppose you could make your own foundry mission so 34 of your 35 characters never need to mvoe.
In the same way not everyone makes 20 million dollars a year, but those people significantly skew the overall economy because they can, in a day, move more money than everyone else. The '1%' or '.1%' are important economically because they have so much more than everyone else they can shift markets.
How is this any different? Its worse, since you get additional rewards while doffing - also keep in mind, NOT every player doff or like to doff. AS far as the upcoming season 7 changes to doff acquisition it will make things even more painful for the playerbase. You in turn want them to force the doff system on everyone, the doff system is another silly grind minigame.
I don't want to. I'm merely looking for something that has a better reward per time per character structure than 1440 dilithium per minute, and that won't require Cryptic programming time to develop something else new.
Keep in mind the 1440 dilithium for foundry missions that are instaclick also hurts legitimate foundry missions, because people are a lot less motivated to do those when they can do nothing and get all the good rewards.
In the end the issue is the state of the game than a measly foundry file, why use a tactical nuke to kill a fly? There is no need for it. All this talk about welfare, minimum wage etc... is foolish talk and has no place here - BAD analogy need to be left out, this is NOT real life work.
Believe it or not many of the same problems that arise in real life arise in video game economies, I am, in fact an expert in this, designing game economies and currencies is hard - very hard - because as you say below, you don't want to grind, so as a designer it's my job to come up with something you can do that will reward you for doing it that you will actually want to do. I don't work on STO, but there's a long list of things they could do well outside the one little problem of dilithium. But it really is a knife edge balance, where cryptic has had some problems finding a sweet spot between trying to give people something worth doing when they log in to socialize and having something they feel they absolutely must to to get anywhere in the game.
The ability to get per character 1440 dilithium for one minute of not moving clicking a few buttons and being done is too far down the spectrum of free stuff, and as you point out, a handful of people can exploit it, and that can seriously mess up your game. With say 30 characters you can earn about 275 zen per day, and that can be essentially free. What could possibly go wrong? Oh, right.
I come to play STO and socialize, not Grind if it were a second job. If I wanted to work, I'll take up residence at my real life job place.
nuff said
MIM
Sure, so the question is how do you convert what they have into something that is worth doing and not a grind? Handing out free dilithium because you managed to type your password correctly is probably not the best way to make you feel like you're actually enjoying what you get out of the game.
Redesigning the daily missions and their reward structure is a bigger topic than I was talking about in that post, which is specifically the investigate officer reports daily on trivial missions. My short answer is randomness that matters. Shake up the encounters you actually face a little bit, so even if the basic theme of the missions is the same (kill these two gateways, kill donatra for example) you can have a lot of variations on the type of enemies that spawn, even the type of ship donatra shows up in. You can have better layers of rewards if your 'elite' group can get a mission done in 8 minutes well maybe you should get more rewards than a pug that does it in 15. Better still, maybe you should get even more rewards if you can get that down to 6 minutes. E.g. (and just an illustration) maybe if you did a space STF in 6 minutes it should always reward at least one prototype salvage to each person. In 5 minutes it should always drop one mk XII purple item etc. The tradeoff here of course is that too much tension causes people to rage quit groups and that's no fun, it's sad enough when someone rages over missing the optional in a pug, and those aren't even hard for most groups these days.
I respectfully disagree. We're essentially being handed a one-two punch here:
1. Salvage --> dilithium is being removed. If this action is mitigated by increased dilithium drops or other methods of conversion (what I assume to be Marks --> dilithium), then yes, maybe that's an issue to a lesser degree.
2. Doff grinding --> I don't even grind doffs that often and I find this change to be obnoxious. Unless the plan is to increase the volume of dilithium received + remove the 8k/day cap, this is a pretty nasty imposition. Furthermore, it's basically been stated that, while comments/questions pertaining to the subject are being review, at this time the updated cost model is working as intended.
This goes for me to.
I love Star Trek and that is the only reason why I'm still here since launch.
But all these changes...
Will normal mode STF still get dilithium? I only play those...
The worst part is people are telling you youare making bad moves but you just don't care...
What's all this madness about marks? I see no issue with such a cosmetic change. And the stf suff will leave my inventory to go to my assets tab, that's perfect.
Now, back to serious buisness. Who had the ridiculous idea to reduce the STFs dilithium rewards? At least can we turn omega marks into dilithium (to make it equivalent to what we get currently in normal/elite)?
Yes, no more currencies which clutter up your inventory. But you will want to get and keep all that junk loot from STFs because you will need it for the Reputation projects that gain you the new(old) gear.
I don't really care about removing dil from stfs but will we still be able to buy the Omega/MACO sets somehow?? I have been working for almost a year now for full mark 12 special reserve set!!! That is my goal in the game! to get the Omega/MACO gear on my Fed, then get OMEGA/HG on my KDF, so are they removing the special reserve? on tribble they are still there
It's good to hear that the dilithium changes to the doff projects are not final. The prices are way too steep for any of us to feasibly use this mechanic. I find the current holodeck prices quite reasonable. As it stands now, every ounce of dilithium on all of my characters is going toward the fleet starbase system.
Isn't it interesting that this particular Thread has had more than 13000 hits/views (and climbing) in Less then 24 hours...
The next highest recent one took almost two months to achieve this goal.
Methinks perhaps this is why BranFlakes has popped-in a few times to try to calm the masses.
Can anybody say... Runaway Bus...
<chuckle>
STO Member since February 2009. I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born! Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
It seems like much of the problem is that they've pushed a build to tribble in one state without telling us what the intended final state is. And those two are not necessarily the same.
There's lots wrong with the game that is legitimately worth griping about. But if they haven't yet gotten around to implementing a feature they intended to have for S7 live it creates a false impression of what's happening.
Presumably STF's will reward dilithium, or things that can be converted to dilithium, but someone made the mistake of having 21 different STF currencies that will all need to be converted, and that isn't done yet, and they might want to change the technology for how they reward STF dilithium or whatever, and it's not on tribble and people panic. That's a communication and documentation problem.
Buried within this is the broader design problem of charging 50 dollars for 3 ships of which I can only fly one at a time and they're all stuck to one faction, or having lockbox keys which cost 1.4 million credits on the exchange to open a lock box with an expectation value of 960k and those sorts of things.
Its typical PWE/ Cryptic changes. Push the fan base hard and see what they'll take and if they will push back.
The Doff system on my Alts is pretty much All I do. Killing the grinder with the new prices pretty much gives me zero reason to log in with all my toons.
It seems to me that a lot of the people on this forum come from the time of the subscription model and havent understood how free2play works.
I've spend most of my gaming time over the last year playing a successfull f2p tank game (don't know if i'm allowed to name names here), so let me tell you about what i learned there.
A subscription based game model is very easy to understand:
The user pays a fee to the developer, therefore the developer provides content as good and satifying as possible to the user, therefore the user pays a fee to the developer again and so on till all eternity.
A free2play game works completly different.
First the developer provides content to the player, then the player has to enjoy the content so he keeps playing. At some point then the player has to start paying the developer. Usually this is encouraged by the developer by frustrating the player in some way. Wouldn't it be nice to have this? Wouldn't it be easier not to have to do this? From now on the developer has to balance frustrating the player enough so he pays and satisfying him enough so he keeps playing.
I came to STO, because the developers of the other game fustrated me too much and i decided to look for a less frustrating way to spend my time.
I actually liked a lot of what i saw here.
What i do realize now is, that most of the stuff i like here still comes from the subscription times. Now it seems to me that the developers try to more and more push the f2p model, and that seems to come as quite a shock to the old time players.
For players f2p means that they have to be aware of the motives of the developers, and not trust them to have the players best interest in mind.
The starbase system is a great example for how f2p works, as its just a lot less frustrating if you are willing to pay money.
And it doesn't come as a big suprise to me, that this system will be extended to the doff system and to the advancement/loot system ( called Reputation and apparently a awesome new feature).
On a sidenote, i once read an interview with the lead developer of that other game, where he explicitly stated that the transformation from subscription to f2p doesn't work, because you have to train your players from the beginning (carrot and stick), and i think what happens in this thread is exactly what he ment.
This is actually a very insightful post.
However, the problem is not necessarily that they are monetizing, per se. It is more along the lines of pushing it to extremes. The staggering number of DOffs required, combined with the skyrocketing cost of DOffs, combined with the grind-to-grind-to-pay-to-grind ad nauseum...
Well, it adds up. It's true that converting from subs to F2P is difficult as people accustomed to this sort of thing. However, there are limits as to how far you can push people.
If they REALLY need this kind of income, there is one solution that they should consider - having a lot of these features be free for subscribers. Give more, solid value to a subscription. Those who will tend towards F2P practices will likely lean towards F2P behavior. Those who want a bargain but will still put cash in will go for subs. Those who want to play but are disgusted with F2P stuff will also sub. Combined, you may have better income and better retention all in one.
That said, that's just me. All I know is that this just has me shaking my head and wondering how we're supposed to do anything with this. I do not want to join in the "we're entitled to XYZ crowd," and I realize Cryptic needs to make the dough, as does PWE. But something like this is just too much for a lot of people, and while it may be premature for me to say so, I can't imagine starting a new starbase, or even a new toon, under these circumstances.
I really hate to jump on this bandwagon, but that's the way it sure seems to me.
It seems like much of the problem is that they've pushed a build to tribble in one state without telling us what the intended final state is. And those two are not necessarily the same.
There's lots wrong with the game that is legitimately worth griping about. But if they haven't yet gotten around to implementing a feature they intended to have for S7 live it creates a false impression of what's happening.
Presumably STF's will reward dilithium, or things that can be converted to dilithium, but someone made the mistake of having 21 different STF currencies that will all need to be converted, and that isn't done yet, and they might want to change the technology for how they reward STF dilithium or whatever, and it's not on tribble and people panic. That's a communication and documentation problem.
Buried within this is the broader design problem of charging 50 dollars for 3 ships of which I can only fly one at a time and they're all stuck to one faction, or having lockbox keys which cost 1.4 million credits on the exchange to open a lock box with an expectation value of 960k and those sorts of things.
Unfortunately, those of us that have been here for any length of time, have seen just how reliable what gets put on Tribble is...
More often than not, it passes to the Holodeck "AS IS"... and eventually becomes "Working As Intended".
:eek:
STO Member since February 2009. I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born! Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
As I mentioned on page 6, I'll be passing this thread along to the dev team, so feel free to leave constructive feedback. Flaming, trolling, harassing material or anything else breaking the forum's rules will not be tolerated, so please watch your posts or you will receive warnings or infractions from the Mod team and myself. This is your friendly reminder
I have gotten some more information for you that I wanted to share:
Season 7 points from the OP
While they are being replaced, the new "currency" (I personally wouldn't call Marks a currency) will also be available from gameplay outside of STFs. This allows you to play different content and still earn rewards, including if you don't have a team available for a STF or don't wish to use the public queues. This also means that rewards cost significantly less in time.
It is a currency, as is fleet marks. What you call Dilithium Ore then?
Just because to get one you have to spend another, does not negate the fact that it is indeed still a currency.
While they are being replaced, the new "currency" (again, I personally wouldn't call Marks a currency) will also be available from a wide variety of gameplay. Currently, Reman Datalogs are only available from the Vault Shuttle Event, and only during the special hourly event. Players should be able to earn their Reman set a lot easier with this change, or use those same Marks for a variety of other rewards. This change allows the player to choose what rewards they want to work on, using the same Marks.
Please, lets not continue splitting hairs. Omega, Romulan and Fleet Marks are a currency as Dilithium Ore is to Dlithium.
The bit you said about being able to earn these marks from other missions sounds wonderful. This to me is the best part about the new currencies, but we were also told that Dlithium too would be earn-able throughout all missions, but we have yet to see that happen...
As an avid STFer myself, from what I've seen, I think everyone will be taken care of. Watch for a dev blog on the conversion next week (or the week after at the latest).
What you term as taken care of is far from what the players I know felt in the Dlithium debacle, many of which no longer play...
Please see Bort's post yesterday here. The extra piece is being used in the new Borg alt set.
I have, and will continue to give feedback until the Jman realizes you never nerf when you can improve other sets to make the old ones look worse.
To be honest, he went down in my estimations when he tried to explain the reason behind it....
Yes, this is part of the reputation system, but the items cost significantly less in time than how they are currently obtained. I have only one complete XII ground set, among all my characters who run STFs, and looking at this new system, I couldn't be more excited. Watch for Tribble patch notes for when this goes to testing, and make sure to leave your feedback in the official feedback thread that gets created. As a player, I'm very happy with what I've seen.
Dilithium should not come within a country mile of the rep system, getting stuff quicker by adding dilithium and you might as well sell them outright in the cstore.
Telling us to grind, then pay while you grind, to only then be met with more pay. It is absurd!
As noted, the Dilithium prices have been increased, yes. Please leave your feedback on this in this thread or the Tribble forums.
So you do not want us to have stabases? Why did you even bother with season 6 if you are going to handicap just about everyone. Starbases will grind to a very abrupt halt if this goes live...
Again, constructive feedback is welcome and the devs are watching this thread
Cheers,
Brandon =/\=
I really do hope you guys listen, I really do. The amount of negative feedback I am getting not only on the forums, but from zone chat throughout the game and the many fleets I know people in, is that this will not go well for you guys should you continue down this path.....
Comments
My character Tsin'xing
I think what we're suffering from in part, Brandon, is lack of information and surprise information that never was mentioned in Tribble notes.
When major changes happen, we need to have as much information as possible in order to judge whether we're better off or not. EDIT: So I am appreciative you and Borticus (the most prominent in these discussions) are providing more details on major changes instead of waiting.
From what we have, though, it seems we're not. It seems STO will turn into a job rather than a game.
That's a sure way to keep people away, and thus hurts Cryptic/PWE's wallet in the long-run.
Remember your goal: to keep Star Trek lovers as your long-term players. Increased grinding won't do it, and taking away avenues of taking care of multiple grinds in the same mission (Omega Marks + Dilithium not possible on Normal STFs, for example) will only make matters worse.
What's the deal here? Increased prices to convert doffs to a higher tier? Junior Officer Cadres costing dilithium? Does Cryptic want to make working on Fleet Starbases worse with those ridiculous doff requirements? Or are there plans to cut down the amount of doffs needed to complete starbase assignments?
Again, Cryptic is making changes to the game that a.) nobody asked for and b.) EVERYONE HATES IT.
Stop it. *rolls up newspaper* Bad Cryptic! *smack*
THe complaints and the vitriol among them especially with GW2 in its early stages and Rift due to launch an expansion (and lets not forget Planetside 2 and defiance in the future) Is warrented based on what's happening. People are angry.
If this turns out to be the case without requiring an ungodly amount of dilithium this could be a very good thing.
Incorrect yourself. As of this moment on Tribble there is no way and no response on the subject has suggested there WILL be a way. Until now. If this is true and the dilithium is significant enough to balance out what's being lost? Then its a matter of adjustments and i feel a LOT better about the game's future rather than what the current image being given off by season 7 on tribble is. Anyone can adjust to a new way of doing things. But taking something away that cant be replaced is a lot harder.
If the entire structure of Set items is being looked at. THAT would be a very good thing and while Maco and Omega and KDF are. No one has said anything about Breen, Jem, and Aegis sets. The items involved and their values are as much a core issue in this problem as the set benefits.
As a player, This Dev Blog needs to come out sooner rather than later. I'm looking at several very good places to spend money and as of this moment myself and a lot of people playing this game are under the impression we're about to get hosed again. The fact that none of these changes were in the patch notes is a HUGE issue for a lot of people and Devs have not commented on it at all. This kind of silence only breeds the worst kind of fear. And i'm a victim of it. When paired with the Doff changes this seems like a very dark road we're going down.
Pretty sure the OP knew that but the change to the 3+maco is going to alter builds significantly and at the time this happened suggested a LOT more grinding was involved to repair the damage from these changes. That is a problem for him and others.
You've got access to information we dont but as a player i dont konw where you stand or how you operate.
Our feedback is being left with very little in the line of response, The Dilithium cost increases are Draconian and the effects it will have are far wide and reaching. If Elite STF's are going to provide solid sources of dilithium (and by that i mean replacing the 2600 or so you could make on a solid run+drop) Then yeah This will end up being much ado abot nothing., But feedback i've heard from people on the test server suggest its maybe...currently 400? That kind of loss of Dilithium will not be welcomed if it means you have to do significantly more work to get what is a small amount already given the prices of the Exchange AND the price of the consoles and other things requiring dilithium...which apparenlty is a lot of season 7 changes and ALL of the fleet missions.
Bottom line: Devs need to start making responses as to why these changes are being made and WHAT if any replacements are coming to deal with what will be happening.
What I see I do NOT like. It's getting harder and harder to log on every day.
Season Seven continues a decent into Grind Madness. We have ZERO coherent story progression. ZERO. A couple of lines of dialog in a grind-zone... that is not story progression.
-- WHY are the Tholians on the move? Do we get missions to explain this sudden aggression? Do we get an attempt to resolve this aspect of the conflict?
-- WHY are we suddenly so intent on helping the Romulans when we did our best to beat the stuffing out of them? We had an entire arc and featured episode dedicated to kicking them in the butt. Do we get this explained to us?
--HOW do we end up in a situation where we can strike at the Borg Queen? How do we get there, what happens after we smack her down...
I have no problem with the gear changes, I look forward to trying out new combinations of gear... what I have a problem with is having to grind to accumulate massive amounts of resources. Can't we make some of this gear a straightforward story drop like the Breen and Jem'Hadar sets?
At this point we might as well do away with crafting entirely. That's a whole separate currency/grind that costs dilthium... and you get very little out of it.
I keep saying "one more season" in the hopes that you release some kind of story-progression that resolves the open questions the core missions pose.
Instead I get more chances to grind to accumulate the new resource-of-the-day.
Getting resources for all these "projects" for the base and for the new "systems"... it's becoming a full-time job. And believe me I do not need another one of those.
Might be the only good change I see from Cryptic.
Actually, what the OP says is true for normal and advanced difficulty levels. He was only wrong about the elite level. Also, removing the dilthium rewards from normal and elite is an awful idea. That will force all of the amateurs and novices into the elite difficulty level pugs, causing endless headaches and problems for everyone else. It's just a bad idea all around as playing those missions should yield a decent dilithium reward, regardless of the difficulty level
We will see how the conversion plays out. I doubt it we will know the extent of the problems until players actually calculate the conversion themselves.
Being able to purchase the STF MACO and BORG sets with dilithium isn't a bad idea, but it creates more dilithium grind incentives, which isn't what we want. Most of us are already tired of grinding the Klingon Path of the Warrior, fleet events, tour the universe, and spending vast amounts of resources on our starbases. Please don't make it worse.
There already is a dilithium cost for converting doffs. Don't make it worse. If you want to stop people from purchasing doff packs from the c-store, converting, and spam selling them on the exchange, then limit the amount of doffs people can sell on the exchange per day. However, don't penalize the non-Ferengi's who aren't spamming the exchange with rare doff's that got converted.
Again, this is a case of Cryptic proving that it doesn't understand it's own statistics or that Cryptic could just misread/misunderstand it's own statistics. You've created a giant resource sink in the game in terms of the amount of grind currency we have to spend to get things. For example, we are coaxed into paying dilithium for crafting, converting doffs, buying ships, investing in star bases, etc. So, when you go to look at the statistics and see that a lot of people are doing that, you will probably say to yourselves, "a lot of people are grinding for dilithium and spending it, so it must mean that they like doing it." If this is the mindset, you are using, I feel sorry for current and future STO players. You will not win over the hearts and minds of potential STO fans by turning this game into a vending machine. You will not demonstrate to us that you've created more content by simply making it more grindy. In short, grindfest does not equal innovation (or a solution to get the game back to how exciting it was at launch).
Now, back to serious buisness. Who had the ridiculous idea to reduce the STFs dilithium rewards? At least can we turn omega marks into dilithium (to make it equivalent to what we get currently in normal/elite)?
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
Only from Elite? No incentive for those that, for whatever reason, prefer normal difficulty then.
All generalizations are false, including this one.
- Mark Twain
As the head of a smaller fleet in game, 9 members, what I've read about the upcoming changes to the Academy Doff recruitment has me troubled. Specifically, I am referring to the added dilithum cost of the general recruitment pack and the upgrading of Doffs. It is my belief that the new/increased dilithum costs will essentially bring an end to our fleet starbase project.
Our fleet starbase is currently sitting about one-third of the way between tier 2 and 3 on the Tac, Sci, and Eng progress bars. Unfortunately it's moving at a snail's pace as is because we have a shortage of the following Doffs:
Medical
Operations
The C-store Doff packs, and the exchange are cost prohibitive for us. Our only realistically accessible Doff recruitment is though the missions at Starfleet Academy. Adding a dilithum cost to the general recruitment mission will significantly reduce the amount of Doffs we are able to recruit as we will be unable to buy them due to cost.
For some reason the Doffs in the categories I've listed above are next to impossible to get via the recruitment missions, also by purchasing Doffs from the Doff-In-a-Box vendor on the fleet starbase. As a result we have a glut of Tactical, Engineering, and Science Doffs with nowhere to use them. Our best course of action was to upgrade these extra Doffs to green quality and then downgrade them back to white and hope they fall into the categories we need. The success rate with this hasn't been great, but it's better than nothing. Increasing the upgrade costs will mean that we will be forced to utilize this already limited success process even less.
As a small fleet already struggling with the starbase, we were really holding out hope for some relief with the base projects and Doff recruitment ratios for the three categories we desperately need. The reported recruitment changes on Tribble, instead of relief, appear to make the starbase project even more difficult and no longer worth the effort. I humbly ask that these changes be reconsidered.
Kind regards,
Brian
Currentley i sell all my dilithium to get points. There are many things in the c-store i have bought and still want. Removing "officer reports" (which i understand why) is going to lessen the amount of dilithium i can earn in a day. If STF's dont pay out the same they do now, i dont see how i could continue to earn any decent amount of dilithium to sell, which in turn hurts starbases.
Please consider things carefully when deciding how to make certain changes. The last thing i wanna see is people ditching the game after launch of season 7, to go play SWTOR when it goes free 2 play in November.
Heh...
The cost of "laying" has been way to high since time in memoriam...
Both monetarily and many times, in the cost to ones EGO.
I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born!
Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
This is going to be intresting.
Has anyone at Cryptic at any time wondered just how confusing all these currencies are by now ( just a thought ) ? New players like myself are completely clueless which currency is earned where and what it is used for . I have to consult the WIKI very often just to find out what all of them are used for . And for a new player it doesn't matter what you call them ( be it a currency or a reputation mark ) because in the end it amounts to the same thing : you have to grind for it ....
I see no benefits to the player in this new scheme. I see a lot of bad design aimed at bleeding players, destroying one of the better subsystems of this game -- DOFFs, and making the already onerous starbase grind ridiculous. Altogether, for me, means I will be spending less and less time in STO and more in Guild Wars 2 and spending my money on their game which is not set up as a Chinese death trap.
I respectfully disagree. We're essentially being handed a one-two punch here:
1. Salvage --> dilithium is being removed. If this action is mitigated by increased dilithium drops or other methods of conversion (what I assume to be Marks --> dilithium), then yes, maybe that's an issue to a lesser degree.
2. Doff grinding --> I don't even grind doffs that often and I find this change to be obnoxious. Unless the plan is to increase the volume of dilithium received + remove the 8k/day cap, this is a pretty nasty imposition. Furthermore, it's basically been stated that, while comments/questions pertaining to the subject are being review, at this time the updated cost model is working as intended.
Just dont drop the Diltihium reward as this would kill the STFs.
Gear + Dilithium = FUN
Omega Marks and Zero Dilthium = People leaving STO (Thats real feedback from the 5000 member fleet I represent.)
Dont charge us for Doffs packs and DOFFs the will kill base building totally.
I think lots of people view the game as fun but these changes are negative, not postive.
Being a Fleet leader Im gettting lots of grumbles that scare me as people are real serious about not likeing these negatvies.
Im worried about my fleet and the game as this will impact both, your taking to much away and adding to much grind.
I chose it precisely because it is the correct analogy. It's not 0 time, but it is about 15x more efficient than anything else in the game, if not moreso. Again, that's not a huge problem. I suggest farming it off to the DOFF system because that would normalize the 'dilithium per minute of work' a bit. And you need nothing invested in the character to get it. Get *any* character to 25, unlock as many klingons as you can = some amount of dilithium for no risk, and no time investment. As i say, that's like welfare, it's not really enough to move very far
Also, you're confusing two things a bit. I'm not saying you shouldn't get a reward for doing foundry missions, only that the reward for click a single panel to autocomplete 3 foundry missions isn't all that good for the game.
I would hardly call that elite. That's called being in a group with people who have bothered to at least be minimally competent and coordinated. One or two good players can carry a pug to meet the optional objectives in STF's these days.
Without a doubt STF's are more than 1100 dilithium per run on average. Because you have to be reasonably close to your definition of elite to run STF's that should be the most efficient way to earn dilithium - and it is, for the 6560 dilithium per day you want to cap per character.
Well there's a lot wrong with the dilithium rewards then, because it's a 'pay to win' system. Infinite cycles are bad.
For 1065 zen I can get 4 character slots, doing only the officer reports daily I can earn 9.1 zen per day per character at current exchange rates. Which means every character can pay for itself in 30 days of about 1 minute of work. Nothing about that seems likely to cause a problem to you? It's probably a good thing you're not a game designer.
Thank you for making my point.
One minute to click a single panel for no risk is hardly grinding. You literally do not need to move the character except to dump things in the bank, and if you're industrious I suppose you could make your own foundry mission so 34 of your 35 characters never need to mvoe.
In the same way not everyone makes 20 million dollars a year, but those people significantly skew the overall economy because they can, in a day, move more money than everyone else. The '1%' or '.1%' are important economically because they have so much more than everyone else they can shift markets.
I don't want to. I'm merely looking for something that has a better reward per time per character structure than 1440 dilithium per minute, and that won't require Cryptic programming time to develop something else new.
Keep in mind the 1440 dilithium for foundry missions that are instaclick also hurts legitimate foundry missions, because people are a lot less motivated to do those when they can do nothing and get all the good rewards.
Believe it or not many of the same problems that arise in real life arise in video game economies, I am, in fact an expert in this, designing game economies and currencies is hard - very hard - because as you say below, you don't want to grind, so as a designer it's my job to come up with something you can do that will reward you for doing it that you will actually want to do. I don't work on STO, but there's a long list of things they could do well outside the one little problem of dilithium. But it really is a knife edge balance, where cryptic has had some problems finding a sweet spot between trying to give people something worth doing when they log in to socialize and having something they feel they absolutely must to to get anywhere in the game.
The ability to get per character 1440 dilithium for one minute of not moving clicking a few buttons and being done is too far down the spectrum of free stuff, and as you point out, a handful of people can exploit it, and that can seriously mess up your game. With say 30 characters you can earn about 275 zen per day, and that can be essentially free. What could possibly go wrong? Oh, right.
Sure, so the question is how do you convert what they have into something that is worth doing and not a grind? Handing out free dilithium because you managed to type your password correctly is probably not the best way to make you feel like you're actually enjoying what you get out of the game.
Redesigning the daily missions and their reward structure is a bigger topic than I was talking about in that post, which is specifically the investigate officer reports daily on trivial missions. My short answer is randomness that matters. Shake up the encounters you actually face a little bit, so even if the basic theme of the missions is the same (kill these two gateways, kill donatra for example) you can have a lot of variations on the type of enemies that spawn, even the type of ship donatra shows up in. You can have better layers of rewards if your 'elite' group can get a mission done in 8 minutes well maybe you should get more rewards than a pug that does it in 15. Better still, maybe you should get even more rewards if you can get that down to 6 minutes. E.g. (and just an illustration) maybe if you did a space STF in 6 minutes it should always reward at least one prototype salvage to each person. In 5 minutes it should always drop one mk XII purple item etc. The tradeoff here of course is that too much tension causes people to rage quit groups and that's no fun, it's sad enough when someone rages over missing the optional in a pug, and those aren't even hard for most groups these days.
This goes for me to.
I love Star Trek and that is the only reason why I'm still here since launch.
But all these changes...
Will normal mode STF still get dilithium? I only play those...
The worst part is people are telling you youare making bad moves but you just don't care...
Yes, no more currencies which clutter up your inventory. But you will want to get and keep all that junk loot from STFs because you will need it for the Reputation projects that gain you the new(old) gear.
The next highest recent one took almost two months to achieve this goal.
Methinks perhaps this is why BranFlakes has popped-in a few times to try to calm the masses.
Can anybody say... Runaway Bus...
<chuckle>
I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born!
Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
There's lots wrong with the game that is legitimately worth griping about. But if they haven't yet gotten around to implementing a feature they intended to have for S7 live it creates a false impression of what's happening.
Presumably STF's will reward dilithium, or things that can be converted to dilithium, but someone made the mistake of having 21 different STF currencies that will all need to be converted, and that isn't done yet, and they might want to change the technology for how they reward STF dilithium or whatever, and it's not on tribble and people panic. That's a communication and documentation problem.
Buried within this is the broader design problem of charging 50 dollars for 3 ships of which I can only fly one at a time and they're all stuck to one faction, or having lockbox keys which cost 1.4 million credits on the exchange to open a lock box with an expectation value of 960k and those sorts of things.
The Doff system on my Alts is pretty much All I do. Killing the grinder with the new prices pretty much gives me zero reason to log in with all my toons.
This is actually a very insightful post.
However, the problem is not necessarily that they are monetizing, per se. It is more along the lines of pushing it to extremes. The staggering number of DOffs required, combined with the skyrocketing cost of DOffs, combined with the grind-to-grind-to-pay-to-grind ad nauseum...
Well, it adds up. It's true that converting from subs to F2P is difficult as people accustomed to this sort of thing. However, there are limits as to how far you can push people.
If they REALLY need this kind of income, there is one solution that they should consider - having a lot of these features be free for subscribers. Give more, solid value to a subscription. Those who will tend towards F2P practices will likely lean towards F2P behavior. Those who want a bargain but will still put cash in will go for subs. Those who want to play but are disgusted with F2P stuff will also sub. Combined, you may have better income and better retention all in one.
That said, that's just me. All I know is that this just has me shaking my head and wondering how we're supposed to do anything with this. I do not want to join in the "we're entitled to XYZ crowd," and I realize Cryptic needs to make the dough, as does PWE. But something like this is just too much for a lot of people, and while it may be premature for me to say so, I can't imagine starting a new starbase, or even a new toon, under these circumstances.
I really hate to jump on this bandwagon, but that's the way it sure seems to me.
Unfortunately, those of us that have been here for any length of time, have seen just how reliable what gets put on Tribble is...
More often than not, it passes to the Holodeck "AS IS"... and eventually becomes "Working As Intended".
:eek:
I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born!
Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
It is a currency, as is fleet marks. What you call Dilithium Ore then?
Just because to get one you have to spend another, does not negate the fact that it is indeed still a currency.
What about normal stf's? Are they being taken out of the game?
Please, lets not continue splitting hairs. Omega, Romulan and Fleet Marks are a currency as Dilithium Ore is to Dlithium.
The bit you said about being able to earn these marks from other missions sounds wonderful. This to me is the best part about the new currencies, but we were also told that Dlithium too would be earn-able throughout all missions, but we have yet to see that happen...
What you term as taken care of is far from what the players I know felt in the Dlithium debacle, many of which no longer play...
I have, and will continue to give feedback until the Jman realizes you never nerf when you can improve other sets to make the old ones look worse.
To be honest, he went down in my estimations when he tried to explain the reason behind it....
Dilithium should not come within a country mile of the rep system, getting stuff quicker by adding dilithium and you might as well sell them outright in the cstore.
Telling us to grind, then pay while you grind, to only then be met with more pay. It is absurd!
And again, what about normal stf's, are they being removed from the game?
If not, why no earn-able Dilithium?
So you do not want us to have stabases? Why did you even bother with season 6 if you are going to handicap just about everyone. Starbases will grind to a very abrupt halt if this goes live...
I really do hope you guys listen, I really do. The amount of negative feedback I am getting not only on the forums, but from zone chat throughout the game and the many fleets I know people in, is that this will not go well for you guys should you continue down this path.....