It's ok to be cynical but you ought to have something relevant to back up your cynicism otherwise your assertations are far more baseless than the ones you are being cynical about.
Maybe PWE and Cryptic should stop releasing things like ships with 5 fore weapons (and 5 tact slot escorts for that matter) to only one faction, that is a definite pay2win for one faction of the game and is totally unacceptable. When dealing with factional items there should be a equivalent equal for ALL the factions not just one.
Sadly though it is painfully obvious which faction the devs care for and which they do not in STO. Time and time again KDF ships have been nerfed and been denied access to on paper superior vessels to appease the Feds.
If you only want to give ships to one side because the KDF doesn't make you enough money (try releasing some ships worth buying, see the forum posts about this ) thats fine but don't offer the Fed ones with such obvious and huge advantages.
The mods too seem to suffer this favourtism, time and time again KDF related discussion threads get moved out of STO discussion while Fed ones get to remain yeah because that's fair.
They are not likely to release every tiny bit of information in a 45 min talk. I am sure if you contact them they would fill in the blanks for you, the guy's email address is at the end of the program.
I am sure they would not. If EA has done an actual scientific study, they would not give their data away as the information would be valuable to their competitors.
One does not need to be a genius to understand that the video is not presented from a neutral point of view; therefore it is biased. That does not mean I am disregarding everything Ben Cousins has said, but I'm not taking his word as gospel (like you seem to), either.
I love the 'You can grind dilithium for a month and get your own.' argument. What a totally illogical saying in todays game of STO.
That's a month if you grind your measly 8000 a day, and you don't spend any dilithium on anything else.
Yea. Never gonna happen in today's grind infected version of the game. Maybe pre-season 6, but not now.
Better change that saying to 90 days. Maybe.
If someone was determined they could grind it out in two weeks. Everyone has two Free characters for 16k dil a day, and if you bought character slots and were really determined you could do it in a week, or less. I'm not one for grinding, but acting like it's a monumental task is disingenuous. If for whatever reason you do not want to spend $25 on a ship grinding for a month is a fair and reasonable alternative set by crytic. Debunking the whole p2w argument. Also, your fleet is not going to kick you out just because you stop donating dil for a month, if they do, your better off anyway.
Also, pre-season 6 the dil/c now z ratio was a zen sellers paradise. I forgot the amount but it was 300+/1, now it's around 90/1. Times have never been better for freeloaders, further reinforcing that the game is not p2w.
I'm not sure payto win is the major issue in STO. Sure, we have some, to some extent, but we can also farm to win, as long as you have some time and excellent gaming skills. At least farm to win will be possible as long as the devs keep adding massive dilithium sinks, which i hope they do. Season 7 allowed me to stop spending money here. :P
What bugs me in this game is power creep. This is far more critical since it affects every single aspect of the game. PvE becomes unchallenging and not funny, and if you pvp you're forced to buy the new equipement. Which sucks.
A good example of power creep is the new andorian escort. It has nothing to do with the old c-store ships. It makes STFs and fleet actions look stupid, and it forces people to buy it for pvp or leave the queues. This is a nonsense, but the devs here keep doing it because people start complaining if they don't get an edge over previous ships. :rolleyes:
If anybody thinks that the kumari is an equal to the RA level Raptors for the KDF.....
sorry OP, Cryptic's stand on power creep and P2W has been communicated as loud and clear as humanly possible. I m afraid you are a little late to the party.
Keep in mind, the fact that you haven't seen a post from a certain dev does NOT mean he doesn't use these forums for feedback on his work. There are devs who read and never post, and the Community Managers take feedback from these forums into meetings with the devs, so even those who NEVER read the forums still get feedback from here.
And the above illustrates the seemingly different corporate mentality between Cryptic/PW and EA .
I say seemingly because I don't know how EA gather info from their forums .
On another topic : I also took away two other things from Ben Cousins .
- The reliance on Metrics to gage custumer satisfaction .
While in STO we've had our share of protests against the Almighty Metrics (hell , that issue even caused be to burst into song) -- well , for a change I was reminded of a different view on the Metrics issue -- one of DStahl's recent sayings (something akin to "I wish I could show you the figures") . And yes , DStahl was talking about the positive growth of STO .
- The other thing that stood out to me was the advice EA got from that Korean company about "never tell the player he lost because the other player had better stuff" .
To me it seemed that EA threw that advice out the window (once their jobs were at stake) , and that left me to wonder if a similar ... 'ideological transformation' has occurred at Cryptic just before the first Lockbox (?) , when suddenly it became "ok" to offer a marginally (up to 10%) more superior items ?
So as I've said before , while the details seem to be different here and there between EA & Cryptic , the overall picture looks damn similar in certain aspects .
And sometimes when a dev posts a question, he might not have originated that question; it might have come from the guy in the next desk, who doesn't post, having brought it up in conversation.
Well there aren't that many questions from the Devs to point at and start guessing what came from whom , but I know that there are Devs who see these forums as a pit of vipers and choose to stay away .
That is their right off course .
The more "structured communication" that came along under PW didn't exactly help foster direct Dev communication either .
If someone was determined they could grind it out in two weeks. Everyone has two Free characters for 16k dil a day, and if you bought character slots and were really determined you could do it in a week, or less. I'm not one for grinding, but acting like it's a monumental task is disingenuous. If for whatever reason you do not want to spend $25 on a ship grinding for a month is a fair and reasonable alternative set by crytic. Debunking the whole p2w argument. Also, your fleet is not going to kick you out just because you stop donating dil for a month, if they do, your better off anyway.
Also, pre-season 6 the dil/c now z ratio was a zen sellers paradise. I forgot the amount but it was 300+/1, now it's around 90/1. Times have never been better for freeloaders, further reinforcing that the game is not p2w.
Two weeks, grinding the TRIBBLE out of two characters just to get enough DIL for a ship while someone plunks down their CC for that ship the day it's available and is pew-pewing circles around you for those two weeks. If we were talking about PvP, they just paid to win while you were trying to play to win.
The entire problem is the way Cryptic presents their 'Free-to-play' system on the player base. We realize like any other business they need to make money to survive, this is common knowledge. The problem is that this 'need for greed' is on our face practically every time we log in no matter what we are doing. I can't even think about getting immersed in a story line or just geeking out on some mob killing for a while before I'm reminded I need to put some 'tokens' into the Reputation System vending machine, or that I'll need a TRIBBLE load of DIL to get.....well anything mostly. Also the amount of CONTROL that is exerted by Cryptic over this game is similar to that of a severely overbearing parent. Their 'metrics' show them that a certain area of the game is not getting attention, or that one area is getting too much....so they yank the rewards, or TRIBBLE with them so people can't get anything from them anymore under the guise 'It was never meant to give that type of reward!' Well which one of you geniuses decided 2 months ago that was a stellar idea and threw it in there? Say 'oops' much?
Sometimes I think they just spin a wheel or throw darts at a dartboard to get their decisions. Nobody except maybe Joan Rivers is that erratic by nature.
What bugs me in this game is power creep. This is far more critical since it affects every single aspect of the game. PvE becomes unchallenging and not funny, and if you pvp you're forced to buy the new equipement. Which sucks.
I may be wrong , but I think that many players refer to "power creep" as P2W .
A good example of power creep is the new andorian escort. It has nothing to do with the old c-store ships. It makes STFs and fleet actions look stupid, and it forces people to buy it for pvp or leave the queues. This is a nonsense, but the devs here keep doing it because people start complaining if they don't get an edge over previous ships. :rolleyes:
But isn't this the very nature of MMO's ?
Once upon a time Mark 11 ruled . Then Mark 12 got introduced . Now it rules . Once Mark 13 gets here , Mark 11 will be considered garbage .
It's the same with ships .
In a way (sadly) it has to be to keep a carrot in front of our nose ... , because the true death of this game can come from Johnny-Money-Bags deciding that he has all the stuff he wants .
The tempting carrot was much less prevalent in subscription MMO's because the gaming company made the majority of it's income via the sub -- thus they could introduce a new level of "power creep" once in a long while . Not so in F2P , which is why I think F2P games burn out more quickly .
You can only buy the ULTIMATE SWORD OF AWESOMENESS so many times .
Two weeks, grinding the TRIBBLE out of two characters just to get enough DIL for a ship while someone plunks down their CC for that ship the day it's available and is pew-pewing circles around you for those two weeks. If we were talking about PvP, they just paid to win while you were trying to play to win.
I have a massive stockpile of dilithium and I don't play to grind. I have significantly more dil than is needed to even buy the kumari ship, I could of bought it day 1 if I wished without spending any money. I know a lot of other people have a sizeable stash as well. How was it p2w again? Also, the kumari is not OP you didn't win anything.
The entire problem is the way Cryptic presents their 'Free-to-play' system on the player base. We realize like any other business they need to make money to survive, this is common knowledge. The problem is that this 'need for greed' is on our face practically every time we log in no matter what we are doing. I can't even think about getting immersed in a story line or just geeking out on some mob killing for a while before I'm reminded I need to put some 'tokens' into the Reputation System vending machine, or that I'll need a TRIBBLE load of DIL to get.....well anything mostly. Also the amount of CONTROL that is exerted by Cryptic over this game is similar to that of a severely overbearing parent. Their 'metrics' show them that a certain area of the game is not getting attention, or that one area is getting too much....so they yank the rewards, or TRIBBLE with them so people can't get anything from them anymore under the guise 'It was never meant to give that type of reward!' Well which one of you geniuses decided 2 months ago that was a stellar idea and threw it in there? Say 'oops' much?
Sometimes I think they just spin a wheel or throw darts at a dartboard to get their decisions. Nobody except maybe Joan Rivers is that erratic by nature.
You don't have to do any of the above mentioned, feel free to geek out on the story line. STO certainly is not p2w, paying for convenience is another matter.
I would very much expect the same or very similar results to be the case today within the margins of standard deviations. The issue is about human psychology at the end of the day and I have not seen a paradigm shift in human psychological behavior in the last two years.
Yet 3 years ago F2P for MMO's was not the "norm" .
Would you say that is the same situation today ?
Altho admittedly it is interesting to think about it : did the "market" force ppl to re-evaluate their stance toward F2P (by more and more games going F2P) , or did ppl's spending habits force more games to go F2P and thus forced others who objected to F2P to think again ? Hmmm .... .
How can it not be relevant? Yes the figures may vary but unless there is something very unusual going on I think it safe to assume that the posters on here are a tiny minority of those playing the game.
Well if you take a look at the graph about that games community , it showed 2% posted on the forums , yet 10% read the forums .
If some of those 10% talk to some of their friends (ingame) about the issues in game (presented on the forums) then that 10% could be suddenly a lot more .
But through the presentation , we've learned that in 2009 EA gave a flying rats behind about all of that .
It could be that they still do . Or not . I don't know .
Look at the amount of opposition there was to lockboxes on these forums when they were first introduced, did it stop them selling? Not a bit of it.
The lock boxes themselves were one of two linchpins in Cryptic's mid-to-long term strategy .
So yeah , they did not yank something that important , and something that proved so profitable . Profits were up by an order of a magnitude .
BUT we were heard ... in a way .
On one had Cryptic did try to "sweeten the deal" several times , OTOTH they later on introduced the LOBI store (the irony of the name still amuses me to no end) -- thus the "it's gambling" ideology/outcry got muddled by an onslaught of secondary prizes of debatable value .
and likewise you cannot say to me we are not the biggest spenders unless you have data to support your assertions.
I have no such data except for the data I provided in an earlier post about my spending habits .
I do however have several ppl in my fleet for example who almost never post here but are high spenders -- thus from my experience , I spend much less now but I post often , yet I know of others of whom the exact opposite is true .
You have no idea if there are DEVs that do not use us as a canary, where is your proof of that?
I've noted this before , that issue is shown in the regular "what goes on Tribble ends up on Holodeck" -- regardless of player feedback bit.
I have a massive stockpile of dilithium and I don't play to grind. I have significantly more dil than is needed to even buy the kumari ship, I could of bought it day 1 if I wished without spending any money. I know a lot of other people have a sizeable stash as well. How was it p2w again? Also, the kumari is not OP you didn't win anything.
You don't have to do any of the above mentioned, feel free to geek out on the story line. STO certainly is not p2w, paying for convenience is another matter.
Congratulations on missing the entire point, and way to assume most players have stockpiles of DIL like you - most do not. I'm not going to get into it with you and derail this guy's thread. This is a cleverly disguised P2W game IMO, you don't think so and that's fine.
Congratulations on missing the entire point, and way to assume most players have stockpiles of DIL like you - most do not. I'm not going to get into it with you and derail this guy's thread. This is a cleverly disguised P2W game IMO, you don't think so and that's fine.
I got the point, the point is you don't have one. I don't think you know what p2w is, or how discussing p2w is derailing the p2w topic... You seem to be in your own little world. You complain and say buying the kumari is p2w, when all it is is a new shiny ship, buying it wont leave a trail of destruction in your wake. You didn't win anything, it's not overpowered, it's a nice vanity ship you don't need, nothing more. If you think that's p2w that's fine, just show me an actual p2w ship. I want to hit the win button and "pwn some noobz" in pvp.
for example our Fleet Module Ships have 10% more Hull, 10% more shields and a 10th console slot, wich translates to 10% more console power.
So, we have nothing to worry about because we are already 10 steps beyond these 10% "pay to win" items for direct sale.... we even got chance boxes in STO and the game is still running, and hell did we all scream NOOOOO with our pitchforks held high when that stuff came out.
one thing this video tells me is that all the "loud minority" talk that we got from the Dev's... has to be true, because Pie Charts never lie and this dude just said 2% are in the Forum writing...
i don't like it but it is what it is... people are just consumer zombies, the numbers don't lie.
oh well the only thing STO i bought this year was the Steamrunner, for the lack of a Dilithium to Zen option.
i find it silly that even the Battlefield guy talked about PETS...
i don't understand why Pets are in STO, they do not fit to the setting in any form or shape...
so this is the answers for it, some dude with numbers and pie charts told them "pets sell well" so they made them and some minority of the Playerbase really buys that stuff.
I may be wrong , but I think that many players refer to "power creep" as P2W .
This bugs me too. Power Creep and P2W are completely different animals. Granted, you can find them in the same zoo, but they're still really different. One's lazy mechanic design and the other is lazy monetization.
Why would they need to be biased? The talk gives figures and explains how bad things were, they were afraid of losing their jobs, you can't make it much worse than a company being shut down, they told us this, what would the be the point of being biased, what purpose would it serve?
In a way it is definitely biaised because in this video, what is called pay to win is showed as the only possible solution to a profitability issue.
Now let's analyse the figures differently:
- The profitability has increased.
- Thus, the game is making money
But:
- The playerbase is extremely stable
- The game is vastly advertised as a pay to win game
Which means they have little growth margins too. As soon as their very stable playerbase will start getting fed up with power creep/pay to win issues, the game is dead.
Of course the guy in the video says that a stable game population is a great victory. I'd say they just put their game in a dangerous situation. As soon as it stops growing it means something's wrong, because such games have theorically a larger playerbase. FPS are the most popular kind of game; don't tell me they couldn't have found other solutions.
The fact that you can exchange dilithium for Zen doesn't make things any less pay-to-win.
While it's certainly possible to get things from the Z-Store without spending a cent, the fact is that *someone* bought Zen. The fact that you then traded for it doesn't affect the end-result which is that cash went in to PWE in exchange for something from the Z-Store. Always.
Everything bought from the Z-Store cost somebody real money. It may not have been you. If it wasn't you, then you chose to make yourself a sub-minimum wage employee of someone who did.
"Participation in PVP-related activities is so low on an hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly basis that we could in fact just completely take it out of STO and it would not impact the overall number of people [who] log in to the game and play in any significant way." -Gozer, Cryptic PvP Dev
But isn't this the very nature of MMO's ?
Once upon a time Mark 11 ruled . Then Mark 12 got introduced . Now it rules . Once Mark 13 gets here , Mark 11 will be considered garbage .
Of all the problems I've had with STO over the years, power creep isn't one of them.
This thread demonstrates how little power creep affects gear in the game.
A good example of power creep is the new andorian escort. It has nothing to do with the old c-store ships. It makes STFs and fleet actions look stupid, and it forces people to buy it for pvp or leave the queues. This is a nonsense, but the devs here keep doing it because people start complaining if they don't get an edge over previous ships. :rolleyes:
No they do it to make money. Think about what you said again.
Everything bought from the Z-Store cost somebody real money. It may not have been you. If it wasn't you, then you chose to make yourself a sub-minimum wage employee of someone who did.
It most certainly does. Once you agree that everything from the store is paid for with real money by someone, it is clear that the best items in the game are only acquired with cash. That is the very definition of pay-to-win.
Well, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
Actually, there is. The Turbine (LOTRO/DDO) model can theoretically allow every single player to get whatever they want out of the store without spending a cent. Obviously, only a few do so, because Turbine is still in business. But that is, in fact, a free lunch.
"Participation in PVP-related activities is so low on an hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly basis that we could in fact just completely take it out of STO and it would not impact the overall number of people [who] log in to the game and play in any significant way." -Gozer, Cryptic PvP Dev
Of all the problems I've had with STO over the years, power creep isn't one of them.
This thread demonstrates how little power creep affects gear in the game.
I understand what you are saying but I'm not sure you understand what I'm saying .
Let me give you another example :
Before S.5 , it took a bit to take down a normal Borg cube (if you didn't use Sci abilities) .
Nowdays we have ships that can be boosted to shred normal Borg cubes (again , without Sci debuff abilities) .
Thus logic suggest that if we keep this up , sooner or later we will have ships that will shred Tac Cubes (without Sci abilities) .
If you don't call that a 'power creep' , what do you call it then ?
And mind you , the example you've given above is for PVE . In PvP , superior gear & ship absolutely matter .
Which is why I continue to champion the separation of build trees between PvP and PvE , because every new playable item that is "superior" in one way in PvE screws up PvP more . Same with the new boosts and passive bonuses .
I understand what you are saying but I'm not sure you understand what I'm saying .
Let me give you another example :
Before S.5 , it took a bit to take down a normal Borg cube (if you didn't use Sci abilities) .
Nowdays we have ships that can be boosted to shred normal Borg cubes (again , without Sci debuff abilities) .
Thus logic suggest that if we keep this up , sooner or later we will have ships that will shred Tac Cubes (without Sci abilities) .
If you don't call that a 'power creep' , what do you call it then ?
And mind you , the example you've given above is for PVE . In PvP , superior gear & ship absolutely matter .
Which is why I continue to champion the separation of build trees between PvP and PvE , because every new playable item that is "superior" in one way in PvE screws up PvP more . Same with the new boosts and passive bonuses .
I think there is a point to be had here with PVP, I don't know how feasible seperating the build trees is and I am sure number of people would cry their nuts of if they couldn't use the new shinnie console they bought.
I do agree though that PVP balancing is a fail at the moment i just don't have a clue as to the solution.
If you don't call that a 'power creep' , what do you call it then ?
I call that Cryptic changing content. Cryptic tweaking NPCs. Cryptic tweaking BOFF powers. Cryptic tweaking encounters.
Since we use almost the exact same lineup of powers since launch day, I don't call that power creep. This isn't the power creep of using Vex Thal weapons to make North Temple of Veeshan Encounters easy to burn through. This isn't the power creep of using Blackwing Lair gear to gimp Molten Core. This is Cryptic completely restructuring STFs multiple times, and changing the Borg four different times since launch day.
The Borg are harder than they were the first time I fought one at end-game years ago. But the STFs are much much easier. Tactical Team didn't do anything all that useful against the Borg the first time I fought one at end-game years ago. But Viral Matrix did. These days those roles are reversed.
I do agree though that PVP balancing is a fail at the moment i just don't have a clue as to the solution.
Cryptic has never been able to balance PVP in this game. The only semblance of balanced PVP that has ever existed was low level PVP. Because there was no access to all of the unbalancing array of powers and added ship equipment.
The arguments going around in PVP right now are just a merry go round. They echo the exact same debates and frustrations that have been problematic in PVP since the very beginning.
Escorts vs. Cruisers vs. Science abilities.
No one likes Science abilities to crowd control them out of the ability to play the game actively. So everything from stun lock to power drain is complained about.
No one likes Cruisers being to defensive that they can't be killed by damage dealers or effectively crowd controlled.
No one likes Escorts being able to quickly pop an opponent and having enough options to get away with it either through defense, speed or both.
Everyone hates battle cloaking.
Everyone hates having to target through a swarm of NPCs dropped by either carriers or mine boats.
This is the same argument, extended out over three years.
Cryptic's not done much of anything to balance it. Just perpetuate it with continuous tweaks.
Comments
P2W alive and well in STO.
Sadly though it is painfully obvious which faction the devs care for and which they do not in STO. Time and time again KDF ships have been nerfed and been denied access to on paper superior vessels to appease the Feds.
If you only want to give ships to one side because the KDF doesn't make you enough money (try releasing some ships worth buying, see the forum posts about this ) thats fine but don't offer the Fed ones with such obvious and huge advantages.
The mods too seem to suffer this favourtism, time and time again KDF related discussion threads get moved out of STO discussion while Fed ones get to remain yeah because that's fair.
Also the JHAS. Doesn't really need explaining.
That's a month if you grind your measly 8000 a day, and you don't spend any dilithium on anything else.
Yea. Never gonna happen in today's grind infected version of the game. Maybe pre-season 6, but not now.
Better change that saying to 90 days. Maybe.
One does not need to be a genius to understand that the video is not presented from a neutral point of view; therefore it is biased. That does not mean I am disregarding everything Ben Cousins has said, but I'm not taking his word as gospel (like you seem to), either.
make an alt if you want to refine more Dil a day
I have 6 VA's (only really play 2 of them) but when Really needed i can pump out 48k in Dil a day
Also, Dil a TONS easier to farm then it was in S6, you can pull 2~3k a STF
If someone was determined they could grind it out in two weeks. Everyone has two Free characters for 16k dil a day, and if you bought character slots and were really determined you could do it in a week, or less. I'm not one for grinding, but acting like it's a monumental task is disingenuous. If for whatever reason you do not want to spend $25 on a ship grinding for a month is a fair and reasonable alternative set by crytic. Debunking the whole p2w argument. Also, your fleet is not going to kick you out just because you stop donating dil for a month, if they do, your better off anyway.
Also, pre-season 6 the dil/c now z ratio was a zen sellers paradise. I forgot the amount but it was 300+/1, now it's around 90/1. Times have never been better for freeloaders, further reinforcing that the game is not p2w.
What bugs me in this game is power creep. This is far more critical since it affects every single aspect of the game. PvE becomes unchallenging and not funny, and if you pvp you're forced to buy the new equipement. Which sucks.
A good example of power creep is the new andorian escort. It has nothing to do with the old c-store ships. It makes STFs and fleet actions look stupid, and it forces people to buy it for pvp or leave the queues. This is a nonsense, but the devs here keep doing it because people start complaining if they don't get an edge over previous ships. :rolleyes:
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
LOL
You coughed me to it.
sorry OP, Cryptic's stand on power creep and P2W has been communicated as loud and clear as humanly possible. I m afraid you are a little late to the party.
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
And the above illustrates the seemingly different corporate mentality between Cryptic/PW and EA .
I say seemingly because I don't know how EA gather info from their forums .
On another topic : I also took away two other things from Ben Cousins .
- The reliance on Metrics to gage custumer satisfaction .
While in STO we've had our share of protests against the Almighty Metrics (hell , that issue even caused be to burst into song) -- well , for a change I was reminded of a different view on the Metrics issue -- one of DStahl's recent sayings (something akin to "I wish I could show you the figures") . And yes , DStahl was talking about the positive growth of STO .
- The other thing that stood out to me was the advice EA got from that Korean company about "never tell the player he lost because the other player had better stuff" .
To me it seemed that EA threw that advice out the window (once their jobs were at stake) , and that left me to wonder if a similar ... 'ideological transformation' has occurred at Cryptic just before the first Lockbox (?) , when suddenly it became "ok" to offer a marginally (up to 10%) more superior items ?
So as I've said before , while the details seem to be different here and there between EA & Cryptic , the overall picture looks damn similar in certain aspects .
Well there aren't that many questions from the Devs to point at and start guessing what came from whom , but I know that there are Devs who see these forums as a pit of vipers and choose to stay away .
That is their right off course .
The more "structured communication" that came along under PW didn't exactly help foster direct Dev communication either .
Two weeks, grinding the TRIBBLE out of two characters just to get enough DIL for a ship while someone plunks down their CC for that ship the day it's available and is pew-pewing circles around you for those two weeks. If we were talking about PvP, they just paid to win while you were trying to play to win.
The entire problem is the way Cryptic presents their 'Free-to-play' system on the player base. We realize like any other business they need to make money to survive, this is common knowledge. The problem is that this 'need for greed' is on our face practically every time we log in no matter what we are doing. I can't even think about getting immersed in a story line or just geeking out on some mob killing for a while before I'm reminded I need to put some 'tokens' into the Reputation System vending machine, or that I'll need a TRIBBLE load of DIL to get.....well anything mostly. Also the amount of CONTROL that is exerted by Cryptic over this game is similar to that of a severely overbearing parent. Their 'metrics' show them that a certain area of the game is not getting attention, or that one area is getting too much....so they yank the rewards, or TRIBBLE with them so people can't get anything from them anymore under the guise 'It was never meant to give that type of reward!' Well which one of you geniuses decided 2 months ago that was a stellar idea and threw it in there? Say 'oops' much?
Sometimes I think they just spin a wheel or throw darts at a dartboard to get their decisions. Nobody except maybe Joan Rivers is that erratic by nature.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
The o3 - Killed you good
I may be wrong , but I think that many players refer to "power creep" as P2W .
But isn't this the very nature of MMO's ?
Once upon a time Mark 11 ruled . Then Mark 12 got introduced . Now it rules . Once Mark 13 gets here , Mark 11 will be considered garbage .
It's the same with ships .
In a way (sadly) it has to be to keep a carrot in front of our nose ... , because the true death of this game can come from Johnny-Money-Bags deciding that he has all the stuff he wants .
The tempting carrot was much less prevalent in subscription MMO's because the gaming company made the majority of it's income via the sub -- thus they could introduce a new level of "power creep" once in a long while . Not so in F2P , which is why I think F2P games burn out more quickly .
You can only buy the ULTIMATE SWORD OF AWESOMENESS so many times .
I have a massive stockpile of dilithium and I don't play to grind. I have significantly more dil than is needed to even buy the kumari ship, I could of bought it day 1 if I wished without spending any money. I know a lot of other people have a sizeable stash as well. How was it p2w again? Also, the kumari is not OP you didn't win anything.
You don't have to do any of the above mentioned, feel free to geek out on the story line. STO certainly is not p2w, paying for convenience is another matter.
Yet 3 years ago F2P for MMO's was not the "norm" .
Would you say that is the same situation today ?
Altho admittedly it is interesting to think about it : did the "market" force ppl to re-evaluate their stance toward F2P (by more and more games going F2P) , or did ppl's spending habits force more games to go F2P and thus forced others who objected to F2P to think again ? Hmmm .... .
Well if you take a look at the graph about that games community , it showed 2% posted on the forums , yet 10% read the forums .
If some of those 10% talk to some of their friends (ingame) about the issues in game (presented on the forums) then that 10% could be suddenly a lot more .
But through the presentation , we've learned that in 2009 EA gave a flying rats behind about all of that .
It could be that they still do . Or not . I don't know .
The lock boxes themselves were one of two linchpins in Cryptic's mid-to-long term strategy .
So yeah , they did not yank something that important , and something that proved so profitable . Profits were up by an order of a magnitude .
BUT we were heard ... in a way .
On one had Cryptic did try to "sweeten the deal" several times , OTOTH they later on introduced the LOBI store (the irony of the name still amuses me to no end) -- thus the "it's gambling" ideology/outcry got muddled by an onslaught of secondary prizes of debatable value .
I have no such data except for the data I provided in an earlier post about my spending habits .
I do however have several ppl in my fleet for example who almost never post here but are high spenders -- thus from my experience , I spend much less now but I post often , yet I know of others of whom the exact opposite is true .
I've noted this before , that issue is shown in the regular "what goes on Tribble ends up on Holodeck" -- regardless of player feedback bit.
Congratulations on missing the entire point, and way to assume most players have stockpiles of DIL like you - most do not. I'm not going to get into it with you and derail this guy's thread. This is a cleverly disguised P2W game IMO, you don't think so and that's fine.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
The o3 - Killed you good
I got the point, the point is you don't have one. I don't think you know what p2w is, or how discussing p2w is derailing the p2w topic... You seem to be in your own little world. You complain and say buying the kumari is p2w, when all it is is a new shiny ship, buying it wont leave a trail of destruction in your wake. You didn't win anything, it's not overpowered, it's a nice vanity ship you don't need, nothing more. If you think that's p2w that's fine, just show me an actual p2w ship. I want to hit the win button and "pwn some noobz" in pvp.
i like that expression
it is way more honest than "Free 2 Play"
and not nearly as misleading
what i find interesting in the video is that he said the items were roughly 10% better.
as of Heretic's Blog 10% is commonly accepted by the Playerbase of STO.
-> http://hereticalreflections.wordpress.com/2012/07/22/the-makings-of-the-mmo-microtransaction-model-in-the-west/
for example our Fleet Module Ships have 10% more Hull, 10% more shields and a 10th console slot, wich translates to 10% more console power.
So, we have nothing to worry about because we are already 10 steps beyond these 10% "pay to win" items for direct sale.... we even got chance boxes in STO and the game is still running, and hell did we all scream NOOOOO with our pitchforks held high when that stuff came out.
one thing this video tells me is that all the "loud minority" talk that we got from the Dev's... has to be true, because Pie Charts never lie and this dude just said 2% are in the Forum writing...
i don't like it but it is what it is... people are just consumer zombies, the numbers don't lie.
oh well the only thing STO i bought this year was the Steamrunner, for the lack of a Dilithium to Zen option.
i find it silly that even the Battlefield guy talked about PETS...
i don't understand why Pets are in STO, they do not fit to the setting in any form or shape...
so this is the answers for it, some dude with numbers and pie charts told them "pets sell well" so they made them and some minority of the Playerbase really buys that stuff.
This bugs me too. Power Creep and P2W are completely different animals. Granted, you can find them in the same zoo, but they're still really different. One's lazy mechanic design and the other is lazy monetization.
In a way it is definitely biaised because in this video, what is called pay to win is showed as the only possible solution to a profitability issue.
Now let's analyse the figures differently:
- The profitability has increased.
- Thus, the game is making money
But:
- The playerbase is extremely stable
- The game is vastly advertised as a pay to win game
Which means they have little growth margins too. As soon as their very stable playerbase will start getting fed up with power creep/pay to win issues, the game is dead.
Of course the guy in the video says that a stable game population is a great victory. I'd say they just put their game in a dangerous situation. As soon as it stops growing it means something's wrong, because such games have theorically a larger playerbase. FPS are the most popular kind of game; don't tell me they couldn't have found other solutions.
God, lvl 60 CW. 17k.
While it's certainly possible to get things from the Z-Store without spending a cent, the fact is that *someone* bought Zen. The fact that you then traded for it doesn't affect the end-result which is that cash went in to PWE in exchange for something from the Z-Store. Always.
Everything bought from the Z-Store cost somebody real money. It may not have been you. If it wasn't you, then you chose to make yourself a sub-minimum wage employee of someone who did.
Of all the problems I've had with STO over the years, power creep isn't one of them.
This thread demonstrates how little power creep affects gear in the game.
No they do it to make money. Think about what you said again.
#2311#2700#2316#2500
Doesn't make it any more Pay to Win either.
Well, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
But that doesn't mean it isn't/or can't happen. Power creep creeps you see.
It most certainly does. Once you agree that everything from the store is paid for with real money by someone, it is clear that the best items in the game are only acquired with cash. That is the very definition of pay-to-win.
Actually, there is. The Turbine (LOTRO/DDO) model can theoretically allow every single player to get whatever they want out of the store without spending a cent. Obviously, only a few do so, because Turbine is still in business. But that is, in fact, a free lunch.
I understand what you are saying but I'm not sure you understand what I'm saying .
Let me give you another example :
Before S.5 , it took a bit to take down a normal Borg cube (if you didn't use Sci abilities) .
Nowdays we have ships that can be boosted to shred normal Borg cubes (again , without Sci debuff abilities) .
Thus logic suggest that if we keep this up , sooner or later we will have ships that will shred Tac Cubes (without Sci abilities) .
If you don't call that a 'power creep' , what do you call it then ?
And mind you , the example you've given above is for PVE . In PvP , superior gear & ship absolutely matter .
Which is why I continue to champion the separation of build trees between PvP and PvE , because every new playable item that is "superior" in one way in PvE screws up PvP more . Same with the new boosts and passive bonuses .
I think there is a point to be had here with PVP, I don't know how feasible seperating the build trees is and I am sure number of people would cry their nuts of if they couldn't use the new shinnie console they bought.
I do agree though that PVP balancing is a fail at the moment i just don't have a clue as to the solution.
#2311#2700#2316#2500
I call that Cryptic changing content. Cryptic tweaking NPCs. Cryptic tweaking BOFF powers. Cryptic tweaking encounters.
Since we use almost the exact same lineup of powers since launch day, I don't call that power creep. This isn't the power creep of using Vex Thal weapons to make North Temple of Veeshan Encounters easy to burn through. This isn't the power creep of using Blackwing Lair gear to gimp Molten Core. This is Cryptic completely restructuring STFs multiple times, and changing the Borg four different times since launch day.
The Borg are harder than they were the first time I fought one at end-game years ago. But the STFs are much much easier. Tactical Team didn't do anything all that useful against the Borg the first time I fought one at end-game years ago. But Viral Matrix did. These days those roles are reversed.
I'm not willing to call that power creep at all.
Cryptic has never been able to balance PVP in this game. The only semblance of balanced PVP that has ever existed was low level PVP. Because there was no access to all of the unbalancing array of powers and added ship equipment.
The arguments going around in PVP right now are just a merry go round. They echo the exact same debates and frustrations that have been problematic in PVP since the very beginning.
Escorts vs. Cruisers vs. Science abilities.
No one likes Science abilities to crowd control them out of the ability to play the game actively. So everything from stun lock to power drain is complained about.
No one likes Cruisers being to defensive that they can't be killed by damage dealers or effectively crowd controlled.
No one likes Escorts being able to quickly pop an opponent and having enough options to get away with it either through defense, speed or both.
Everyone hates battle cloaking.
Everyone hates having to target through a swarm of NPCs dropped by either carriers or mine boats.
This is the same argument, extended out over three years.
Cryptic's not done much of anything to balance it. Just perpetuate it with continuous tweaks.