test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Lockboxes aren't killing the game....
centersolace
Member Posts: 11,178 Arc User
..."Bound to Character" is.
I've liked a lot of the things from the lobi store and lockboxes, and even bought quite a few of them, but every time I do it feels incredibly anti-climatic. The entire point of character bound costumes and ships is so you have to buy them for multiple characters.
Hilariously though, all it's done is made people less likely to make new characters, or not buy the items at all. I'd bet a very large sum of money that players would buy a lot more Lobi Store, and Lockbox items if they were account wide.
I've liked a lot of the things from the lobi store and lockboxes, and even bought quite a few of them, but every time I do it feels incredibly anti-climatic. The entire point of character bound costumes and ships is so you have to buy them for multiple characters.
Hilariously though, all it's done is made people less likely to make new characters, or not buy the items at all. I'd bet a very large sum of money that players would buy a lot more Lobi Store, and Lockbox items if they were account wide.
Post edited by centersolace on
0
Comments
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them."
-Thomas Marrone
Will never happen.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
The o3 - Killed you good
That would be even stupider. A lot of players buy those with real money simply to make ECs. I have done it myself. Making them account wide, and allowing them to be tradeable would make everyone happy. The only things that shouldn't be tradeable or account wide are the weapons.
(Though, if Cryptic wanted to be truly fiendish, the Lobi purchase could allow access to the weapons and whatnot in the account wide Dilithium Store.
I agree. I suspect Cryptic won't change this anytime soon (if ever) though.
Were that the case, Cryptic/PWE would have likely changed it long ago. They're out to make money. Obviously what they're doing appears to be working for them...there are enough people that want certain things on multiple characters and they're buying the BtC items.
they make all these small moves to further restrict trade and hopefully increase profits, but they just don't understand that making just about everything that is character bound, account bound, would bring in far more money than restricting everything. it would encourage people to play more characters and buy more items. plus the gesture alone would go a long way to restoring at least some of the respect that they lost since the whole lockbox thing started. and people would return the gesture by spending more money.
unhappy people with no hope for the future and a heavily restricted market don't make for a good economy, a free market with an optimistic future does...
Pizza: Pepperoni
Kalek shel'tek!
"Do not make me look foolish by allowing yourself to be murdered" -Lord Yu
I am sure its working well as it is and thats why they drag there feet about it. In fact I would say it works to well.I hear of it often enough people spending more than I could ever hope to spending for there "Mains". I can only see that spending going up with BtA not everything has to either just certain things here and there.Hell I am no penny pincher when it comes to this game but would certainly want to spend on items I knew I could use on more than one toon. Some of them have a certain image to keep ya know.
But then again its not something i worry about a lot.
There's a lot more things that kill this game than bound to character.
sure, there's other things that would make a bigger difference, like fixing interiors, creating story content, improving pvp, and the foundry, but those things are large efforts that are hard to make money off of (yeah right... they just dont understand that it would bring in many more players). but this is simple. probably just changing a word in a database column. so a couple minutes for each item... maybe a days work for a single person to do every item in game. and they would practically be celebrated as hero's for finally giving us something significant that we want.
Pizza: Pepperoni
Kalek shel'tek!
"Do not make me look foolish by allowing yourself to be murdered" -Lord Yu
Don't give them any ideas!!! :eek::eek::eek:
Pizza: Pepperoni
Kalek shel'tek!
"Do not make me look foolish by allowing yourself to be murdered" -Lord Yu
Sure it's working, but is it working as well as it could be? People are complaining about it more than they support it. I've opened boxes, and I've bought stuff out of the Lobi Store, but I haven't bought nearly as much as I could have.
Absolutely. But this is also what keeps the game alive. Cryptic needs a constant flow of money into the game, and I don't believe that Cryptic is making as much money as they could be.
Reward packs being bound to character is okay for me. They're vanity items and there's no need to make them sellable.
Lobi on the other hand... If the prices weren't so crazy high, I'd be okay with the current state of affairs.
Based on what though?
Forum posts? Forum posters tend to make up a small amount of any MMO.
Zone chat in ESD, Qo'noS, etc? Again, that's not really representative.
We're not going to know the actual numbers - but they've already said they did well during S6, which laid the groundwork for them to be able to do S7 and look beyond. They'll see how things go during S7...and take it from there.
I'm one of those people that despised the concept. Unfortunately, I'm also one of those people that eventually said WTH...and went ahead anyway. Perhaps if more folks stuck to their guns on the matter, so to speak, then their (Cryptic/PWE) numbers would reflect something different.
Heck, we see people complaining about all sorts of things like the older ships, retrain tokens, etc, etc, etc...hasn't changed anything. Obviously enough people are still buying all the various things to keep all the various prices where they are...
In regard to the Mirror ship for the KDF toon, you don't have to open the boxes on that toon. You can trade the Mirror ship (or even just buy it off the Exchange).
The mining buggers - I...yeah...I hate that, personally. I can see why they wouldn't want folks selling them on the Exchange, but it gets a little harder to see why they're not BtA rather than BtC. You're still looking at the refinement caps.
Thing is, it's not a direct cost. It's not 125 Zen for 5-6 Lobi on average. So you're not looking at over 16k Zen for a Recluse, Jem Dread, etc, etc. There's everything else that you get along the way. Say you were looking to get some vanity item from the Lobi store and figured you were looking at 20 boxes - depending on how the planet's are aligned - you could walk away with a fortune (or you could end up with mining buggers - meh).
That this is a Free to Play game. Sure the forums are a very small population, but forumites tend to be the ones that stick around longer. Career Officer, Starfleet Veteran, Klingon Veteran, these titles are all over the forums. They also spent money to get them. Forum posters may only be 5% of the population, but I'm fairly sure that we're responsible for at least 40% of the profits. That's not exactly something to ignore.
The forumites and zone chatters may not be the biggest part of the population, but they are a very large chunk of it, but they're also the ones that spend the most money, and care about the game the most.
Don't invalidate that.
How can I invalidate something you cannot validate? Because again, everything you said here...based on what?
What percentage of LTS post? What percentage of Gold post? What percentage of the various collectors out there post? How many people that browse the forums for information post? How many of those that do post...complain?
Again, how can I invalidate something you cannot validate? It's all speculation.
Cryptic/PWE are going to take a look at what's going on with the books - the money coming in. They're going to look at the feedback they get on the forums. They'll see the good. They'll see the bad. Then they'll look at the books again. If something warrants attention, they will give it their attention.
Forum demands from a small percentage of those posting who represents a small percentage of those playing...well, it is what it is. Get more folks that do post to agree with something. Get more folks that do not post to post and to agree with something. Get people to vote with their wallets. Take that small percentage of a small percentage...and get Cryptic/PWE to notice. It worked for the Ambassador folks...may eventually work for the KDF...
If you can prove that's what the number say, then I will concede. Until then, I will continue to state that the numbers are not as high as they would be.
Many MMOs have per character unlocks, and Cryptic is one the few companies that has a lot of account wide unlocks, and players on this game now expect everything to be account wide, even though we still have account wide unlocks for Federation starships.
Cryptic is not going to change their game plan till people stop buying stuff, until then it will be as it always will be, till players stop buying. All five lockboxes there is a thread asking account wide unlocks for lockbox ships, and even though the forums are full of complaints on them ESD and other places have them floating around, so people are buying them regardless of what people think, or say on the forums.
You can say that they would make more money from account wide, because you and a few players on the forums say they would buy more, but apparently that has never been the case because someone is buying them enough that Cryptic feels no need to change them regardless what people on the forums say.The Data Cryptic receives is what they will use to determine the course of lockbox ships, not what players say but their actions.
Actions speak louder than words, and in this case the players actions is to buy, so the forums can scream yell throw fits, but till players stop buying nothing will change.
It's not about trying to get you to concede in the least - like I said, neither of us knows the actual numbers (what they are or what they could be). It's a case of suggesting that it's best not to assume and insult Cryptic in the interim. Go through, gather the support, and get folks to show Cryptic that...instead of saying that obviously the numbers are there but Cryptic is too stupid or too lazy to make changes that would make them more money. Cause that's how it comes off by saying the numbers are obviously there but Cryptic's done nothing...
If we provide helpful and constructive feedback, the devs may use it.
I feel that a better way to help with the acc bound issue.
Purples and higer = char bound
blues = acc bound
greens and commons = tradable
I would also spend more money on lobi's if they were acc bound and the clothing unlocks were acc bound.
I would love if the would revamp the currancy to the following...
EC
merge lobi into GPL
dil
the only difficulty i can see would be the dabo. perhaps exchanging EC for dil as a currency converter?
----Lt Cmdr @Thorley - Jupiter Force----
Sometimes that is true, however many, many times the voices on Forums have swayed decisions being made by Devs whether it be prior to or post a bad decision/mistake/nerf/patch/whatever. You can easily take S7 as a prime example, when the Devs decided to implement the drop rate changes and remove DIL from STF despite being told repeatedly it would cripple the game and TRIBBLE off the player base something fierce. They were forced to backtrack slightly and return DIL and drops to STF encounters, because people complained and righteously so.
Another MMO game i played for many years recently had its own version of this awhile afterit went F2P and beefed up their own Cash Shop. The Devs decided it would be a good idea to sell 'Keys' to 'boxes'(hmmm?) in the game, both of which already dropped at random rates in a certain zone for PvP only. Thus, they are really hard to get a hold of and you need to be dedicated to obtain either as it will take a bit of time. Mind you, these 'boxes' don't even contain GEAR, simply 'relics' that you can exchange for points to save and buy the gear eventually. The uproar that arose on that games forums was utterly astounding when the Devs announced they'd planned on adding the 'keys' to these 'boxes' to their Cash Shop, and they eventually backed down and cancelled that part of the patch completely. Players were concerned it would start a 'Pay-to-Win' approach to the game and ruin it.
Sound familiar? And that's a game that doesn't ask ANY sub fees from players, period.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
The o3 - Killed you good
But Cryptic has never put anything that's account bound into the Lobi Store. So how would they have those "numbers" to run up against anyway? Is Geko Psychic or something?
I like these ideas and would vote for you were there an election.
Hate to break it to you, but the change to the STF drop rate was not because the forums.
At first Cryptic announced they were cutting down on the Dil for STFs, and the forums raged and were angry "How dare they nerf our Dil"
Then Cryptic did the greatest switch since new coke....They said the were going to get rid of Dil all together form STFs and the Forums raged some more....then Cryptic came back and said ok we are going to put it back to what they originally had plan and the forums praised Cryptic for being great and understanding.:eek:
Cryptic pretty much did what a mother would do when their child wont stop crying about candy
Kid: I want the whole bag of candy
Mom: no I'll give you 3 pieces
Kid: no i want all of it.
Mom: how about you getting nothing
Kid: waaaaaaahhhhh not fair
Mom: fine I'll give you 3 pieces
Kid: you're the best mommy ever.
That pretty much sums up S7 and Dil in STFs.