Or you could do the right thing like i did ya whiners....grind up more doff slots to the 400 max, grind up all the bank and inventory space too....i did, it isn't that hard really...only took about two weeks for each of 14 toons,, two weeks,, was done...and ALOT more storage to boot, i never run out now.
I mean really, you took advantage of a broken system that was NEVER intended to be your personal bank. i know i know it was Cryptics error and they did let it go on a long time...but you really should have never thought that they would never fix it. You should have been grinding up extra storage in the mean time, knowing this was going to happen eventually. I do feel sorry for your losses, but you can't blame Cryptic for stealth patching this in (but i sorta do feel like we should have had a warning).
Actually i'm much more worried about the "delete bug" atm....i'm not posting on the exchange now until i know that bug is fixed...not going to risk losing very expensive items from them not being returned to me through the mail system (and this has already happened twice).
New flash for ya, there are people, like me, who've purchased all the bank, inventory and DOFF slots available. Cryptic won't let us buy any more slots. So kindly remove your head from your podex and stop pointing accusatory fingers and calling people 'whiners' because it makes ya feel all big and bad.
The mail system was never broken (beyond the occasional hiccup here and there) and has worked just fine for three years now. Hell, the system even clearly encouraged one to send messages to oneself, with its autofill address feature.
The system, as it has existed for three years, has done no one any harm whatsoever. So, kindly quit it with this 'exploit' nonsense. You couldn't even attach bound items to mail messages, hence necessitating the need for purchasing extra bank and inventory slots (which myself and a great many others have already done).
Now, those of us who have innocuously stored away supplies for our Fleets, BOFFs, exchange sale or for our personal use (supplies which were earned through time, effort and real world money in the case of those who sell keys on the Exchange) are getting kicked in the proverbial teeth by this needless change.
The player rage about this might be just simmering now. Yet, just you wait until the lockbox key sellers start coming out of the woodwork. Honestly, I suspect the only reason there isn't a bigger fuss about all this already, is because most of the veteran players are playing all the new LOR content and are likely unaware of this idiotic and needless change to the mail system.
"Don't try to be a great man. Just be a man and let history make its own judgments." -Zefram Cochrane
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
New flash for ya, there are people, like me, who've purchased all the bank, inventory and DOFF slots available. Cryptic won't let us buy any more slots. So kindly remove your head from your podex and stop pointing accusatory fingers and calling people 'whiners' because it makes ya feel all big and bad.
The mail system was never broken (beyond the occasional hiccup here and there) and has worked just fine for three years now. Hell, the system even clearly encouraged one to send messages to oneself, with its autofill address feature.
The system, as it has existed for three years, has done no one any harm whatsoever. So, kindly quit it with this 'exploit' nonsense. You couldn't even attach bound items to mail messages, hence necessitating the need for purchasing extra bank and inventory slots (which myself and a great many others have already done).
Now, those of us who have innocuously stored away supplies for our Fleets, BOFFs, exchange sale or for our personal use (supplies which were earned through time, effort and real world money in the case of those who sell keys on the Exchange) are getting kicked in the proverbial teeth by this needless change.
The player rage about this might be just simmering now. Yet, just you wait until the lockbox key sellers start coming out of the woodwork. Honestly, I suspect the only reason there isn't a bigger fuss about all this already, is because most of the veteran players are playing all the new LOR content and are likely unaware of this idiotic and needless change to the mail system.
News flash you there, you need to remove Your head from your podex, you took advantage of a broken system, that doesn't give you the right to expect to get a freebie for life.
And a working mail system, that can send mail and get mail just makes it functional, doesn't mean it was meant for you to abuse it for your own needs....try to use your ISP mail system to backup your harddrive and see how far that gets you? Oh wait, you can't do that, why? you have a storage limit?? Its the same principle for STO's mail.
"If everyone used Macs, we'd be working on how to get to Alpha Centauri rather than how to get to Mars."
News flash you there, you need to remove Your head from your podex, you took advantage of a broken system, that doesn't give you the right to expect to get a freebie for life.
And a working mail system, that can send mail and get mail just makes it functional, doesn't mean it was meant for you to abuse it for your own needs....try to use your ISP mail system to backup your harddrive and see how far that gets you? Oh wait, you can't do that, why? you have a storage limit?? Its the same principle for STO's mail.
So how pissed would you be if you wake up tomorrow and during the night gmail set a new limit of 4% of what it was yesterday ? Thats EXACTLY what cryptic did here, same percentage.
bad decision (imo) poorly and unfairly implemented (fact)
the lack of outrage is because people are still finding out, they're occupied for the next few days with new content, and/or they don't think their voice matters.
Why does Cryptic keep trying to convince me I shouldn't be playing their games?
I'm not an exploiter for using the mail as designed. You just changed your mind about it several years in and will let certain posters label people if it serves your purpose.
Show some integrity. Apologize for lack of warning, and tell the world we were NOT exploiting anything. You set the parameters.
So how pissed would you be if you wake up tomorrow and during the night gmail set a new limit of 4% of what it was yesterday ? Thats EXACTLY what cryptic did here, same percentage.
We will agree to disagree with each other i guess, seriously i'm not trolling too damn old for kidstuff lol
I know what Cyrptic did, the only thing that wasn't "right" about what they did was "not" to give fair notice. But as for them fixing a system that was being used in ways they did not intend, they have that right.
And hmm, i hope you are not keeping all your gmail from the last two years on their servers anyway, store it locally, there are ways to do that, then the worry of losing your old email is not there, i do that, so i will never worry about losing my mail.
"If everyone used Macs, we'd be working on how to get to Alpha Centauri rather than how to get to Mars."
bad decision (imo) poorly and unfairly implemented (fact)
the lack of outrage is because people are still finding out, they're occupied for the next few days with new content, and/or they don't think their voice matters.
Why does Cryptic keep trying to convince me I shouldn't be playing their games?
I'm not an exploiter for using the mail as designed. You just changed your mind about it several years in and will let certain posters label people if it serves your purpose.
Show some integrity. Apologize for lack of warning, and tell the world we were NOT exploiting anything. You set the parameters.
I agree with you. I am tired of the Ninja Nerfs.
I was just about to upgrade to Lifetime sub; but now I am may cancel my Gold sub and just upgrade the important perks I need.
News flash you there, you need to remove Your head from your podex, you took advantage of a broken system, that doesn't give you the right to expect to get a freebie for life.
And a working mail system, that can send mail and get mail just makes it functional, doesn't mean it was meant for you to abuse it for your own needs....try to use your ISP mail system to backup your harddrive and see how far that gets you? Oh wait, you can't do that, why? you have a storage limit?? Its the same principle for STO's mail.
Kirisee you're making the false assumption that that mail system was broken to begin with. Do you really expect anyone to believe that the mail system has been broken for three years now???!!! The system was DESIGNED to allow for a 500 message limit. It was also DESIGNED to allow five item attachments per individual message.
Hmmm...my Webster's II New Riverside Dictionary tells me that the word 'Design' means: "the order or arrangement of the components and details of something in accordance to a plan".
In other words, three years ago, when Cryptic DESIGNED and released STO's mail system, they established "the order or arrangement of the components and details" of said mail system "in accordance to a plan". Simply put, they planned to have a 500 message limit, with 5 attachment slots per message.
So, kindly spare us all this 'broken' and 'exploit' nonsense.
So how pissed would you be if you wake up tomorrow and during the night gmail set a new limit of 4% of what it was yesterday ? Thats EXACTLY what cryptic did here, same percentage.
Great analogy Lormalak! And if such a thing were to actually happen to a major email provider, I'm pretty sure the news of such a blunder would be broadcast loud and clear on every cable news network and various global media sources.
Right now, awareness and response to this whole mess seems confined to this and three or so other forum threads. Pretty sure that's because most veteran players are currently exploring the new Romulan content and are thus unaware of this horrendous and needless stealth nerf.
"Don't try to be a great man. Just be a man and let history make its own judgments." -Zefram Cochrane
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
News flash you there, you need to remove Your head from your podex, you took advantage of a broken system, that doesn't give you the right to expect to get a freebie for life.
And a working mail system, that can send mail and get mail just makes it functional, doesn't mean it was meant for you to abuse it for your own needs....try to use your ISP mail system to backup your harddrive and see how far that gets you? Oh wait, you can't do that, why? you have a storage limit?? Its the same principle for STO's mail.
And how was it a broken system? Because people used it for storage space?
When the DOFF system was created, there was no plans about Starbases and using DOFFs as payment. So what were people supposed to do when they had their 400 DOFF slots full of Rare and Very Rare DOFFs? Delete them so they make room for hundreds of common DOFFs for Starbases?
Cryptic forced players to resort to Mail Storage.
If they don't want people to use Mail as Storage, then they should've provided us another means to do so. End of Story.
\
I know what Cyrptic did, the only thing that wasn't "right" about what they did was "not" to give fair notice. But as for them fixing a system that was being used in ways they did not intend, they have that right.
I totally agree that the mailbox as it was before was not working as intended, however it was totally necessary for those us seriously working on starbase. What we have is 2 broken systems, one hurting the game experience and one helping, particularity with the former. Had both problems been fixed, there wouldn't be a big problem. But here's my problem:
Mailbox is unlimited time-intensive storage for years
Starbase are introduced; Doff requirements are highly unbalanced with the drop-rate. Players point this out for months with little response and no commitments.
Certain common doffs plummet in exchange price to ~5-6k while others reach 100k. Keep in mind you can buy 1fc with 1 provision costing 75ec when donating. This means that a common doff is valued at 22.5k ec and that would be in-line with the rest of the doff qualities.
Fleets are experiencing doff shortfalls to maintain starbase progress (keep in mind if you aren't completing projects everyday, it will take you well more than a year to finish a starbase). To make up for the shortfall, self sacrificing players have been buying large quanties of doffs to sift though and donate the needed ones. Hundreds to gain tens. Selling the doffs on the exchange is impossible and at a loss anyway, dismissing them is a waste, saving them for future use or having an alt donate them to another fleet is only viable alternative and made possible by the magic mailbox.
The mailbox was nerfed. Without warning. This nerfing will only hurt the doff sifters, as anyone using it for other storage will simply make a mule account or an alt in a fleet of one.
bad decision (imo) poorly and unfairly implemented (fact)
the lack of outrage is because people are still finding out, they're occupied for the next few days with new content, and/or they don't think their voice matters.
Why does Cryptic keep trying to convince me I shouldn't be playing their games?
I'm not an exploiter for using the mail as designed. You just changed your mind about it several years in and will let certain posters label people if it serves your purpose.
Show some integrity. Apologize for lack of warning, and tell the world we were NOT exploiting anything. You set the parameters.
Fourxgamer, methinks you're spot on about news of this mess not having hit the masses as yet, due to their exploration of all the new content. Given that, I would encourage anyone and everyone who's been intrepid enough to attempt logging into STO (Fed, Kling and Rom alike) to spread the word of this stealth nerf to their friends, fleetmates and group pals. Bring it up in local and zone chats everywhere. Get the word out, so we can have a proper response to this mess.
Also concur that all this back and forth, nerfing and nerfing and nerfing, leaves an incredibly bad taste in one's mouth towards Cryptic.
Ditto regarding all the troglodytes who would erroneously call the likes of you and I 'exploiters'. If anyone is feeling exploited here, it's someone like me, who's spent hundreds of real world dollars on this game, including purchase of the maximum number of slots for bank, inventory, DOFFs and nearly maxxed BOFF slots.
An apology from the Devs would be welcome, but it would be a hollow platitude without a just reversion to the mail system as it has existed for the past three years.
I was just about to upgrade to Lifetime sub; but now I am may cancel my Gold sub and just upgrade the important perks I need.
I can't support this heavy handed nerfing.
Locutus359, you're not alone in your hesitance to spend any real world money on Cryptic any longer. Given all the nonsense this company has put its playerbase through, I may very well never spend so much as a penny on 'em ever again.
And I have a very dear friend, who actually got me into STO, who left the game altogether months ago, because of all this stealth nerfing. My pal was a big spender too, having spent hundreds on this game already and always eagerly bought up the latest C-Store ship offering.
Spent the past couple of weeks trying to cajole him back, with details about LOR and new Klingon and Fed content. And then this mail system stealth nerf happened.
"Don't try to be a great man. Just be a man and let history make its own judgments." -Zefram Cochrane
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
According to Bran it will not eat your attachments, as you take your attachments back and delete the mail, a new mail with attachment will be delivered, then claim that stuff and so on. (thats as long as the delete bug doesn't interfere with this and mail stay queued until the bug is fixedl).
According to Bran it will not eat your attachments, as you take your attachments back and delete the mail, a new mail with attachment will be delivered, then claim that stuff and so on. (thats as long as the delete bug doesn't interfere with this and mail stay queued until the bug is fixedl).
I totally agree that the mailbox as it was before was not working as intended, however it was totally necessary for those us seriously working on starbase. What we have is 2 broken systems, one hurting the game experience and one helping, particularity with the former. Had both problems been fixed, there wouldn't be a big problem. But here's my problem:
Mailbox is unlimited time-intensive storage for years
Starbase are introduced; Doff requirements are highly unbalanced with the drop-rate. Players point this out for months with little response and no commitments.
Certain common doffs plummet in exchange price to ~5-6k while others reach 100k. Keep in mind you can buy 1fc with 1 provision costing 75ec when donating. This means that a common doff is valued at 22.5k ec and that would be in-line with the rest of the doff qualities.
Fleets are experiencing doff shortfalls to maintain starbase progress (keep in mind if you aren't completing projects everyday, it will take you well more than a year to finish a starbase). To make up for the shortfall, self sacrificing players have been buying large quanties of doffs to sift though and donate the needed ones. Hundreds to gain tens. Selling the doffs on the exchange is impossible and at a loss anyway, dismissing them is a waste, saving them for future use or having an alt donate them to another fleet is only viable alternative and made possible by the magic mailbox.
The mailbox was nerfed. Without warning. This nerfing will only hurt the doff sifters, as anyone using it for other storage will simply make a mule account or an alt in a fleet of one.
Well, i will agree both systems are broken, mail and starbase. The cost in doffs is just insane at higher levels i hear, but in my mind it still doesn't justify using the mail system as a persons personal bank, that was not it's design. I think what we ALL should have been doing a long time ago was keep pushing hard for more storage, and then the "problem" for people using the mail this way would have never happened. I really hope people don't lose their items and doffs, me included since i always have a ton of sale going on the exchange.
Good Luck to you all..
"If everyone used Macs, we'd be working on how to get to Alpha Centauri rather than how to get to Mars."
Personally I don't think it would be a bad idea at all, and only thing I think that could possibly be address is if it was 100 per toon on the account. way to many people abuse the system for storage. same with the exchange . if people started losing items because they were looking for an exploit or a work around then they will stop doing it
the game charges for extra storage cap. and in the cases that people have maxed out the buyable storage space they can buy, guess what every thing has a cap. learn to deal with it . if you have a 5 lb bag you cant put 10lb of stuff in it. or 5 gallons of gas in a 2 gallon can. come on and grow up and stop the crying about everything.
so if this is a glitch then fine what ever, EXCEPT THIS SHOULD HAVE BEEN ADDRESSED IN SOME SORT OF TESTING. if it isn't then fine what ever it stops the exploiters.
Well, based on the previous posts and my extensive experience in coding games and playing mmo's, I'd like to make a prediction:
I think that banking items by mail will likely disappear, as was likely Cryptic's intention. Maybe this will decrease server-side lag issues too.
I think people will start using "bank fleets" and "bank alts" to store said items.
The bigger issue, doff storage, doff imbalance and ridiculously high daily doff donation requirements for starbase development will likely result in most hardcore doffers making a LOT of secondary accounts and creating the 3 free players on it, gaining 300 doff slots per account. This will result in a ton of new silver accounts that will never "buy" anything, never subscribe, and only result in longer queue waiting times for other silver, un-subscibed players.
Ideal solution: Cryptic reduces doff requirements for starbase projects from 90 to 50, and possibly opens the donation categories to be less specific (i.e. science or medical instead one type specifically). This would make it more realistic for an average sized fleet to meet the donation needs daily without the need for several of the members keeping 1,000s of doffs in "cold-storage" in their mailboxes.
More likely solution: Cryptic starts hunting down and closing the alternate accounts, trying to force people to buy the doff packs instead; not realizing that the majority of their player base isn't going to spend more than $10-20 a month on a game regardless; and Cryptic refuses to acknowledge that those players need realistic ways to accomplish the same goals substituting play-time for cash investment. (That's not even touching on the imbalance in type of doffs awarded from the packs leaving tons of useless doffs daily.)
The irony is that Cryptic has a beautiful market system in place. If they can make enough "elite" stuff for the "wallet warriors" to buy, they don't need to milk the rest of us as hard. I think this all comes down to the fact that they see mailbox doff storage as a loss of potential doff roster space sales... and the reality is that the few people who do use mail as storage are doing so to counter the ridiculous starbase doff donation requirements. Most of those people are smart enough to find an alternate means to accomplish the same storage requirements, until the underlying issue is addressed.
** The above is a statement of opinion, not presented as fact. This is not intended as instructions on how to circumvent or exploit anything in-game. The example above is just 1 idea of how players might respond to this situation. **
Now the reason I won't be playing for the next week (or until I see a patch note addressing it) is, what about returned exchange sales? I post 40 exchange offers daily on 10 or more characters. If half of the offers on each expire and are returned, i'll lose hundreds of items to the void!! Doffing is what I do with about 75% of my play time, and I play between 6 and 18 hours daily. If I can't sell doffs without fear of losing them when the sales expire... then there's not much for me to do until the issue is fixed.
Thx,
Q
Disclaimer: I am a subscribed customer for almost 1 year. I have played STO for about 18 months. I have unlocked all 400 doff roster spots on my primary character, and an additional 50-100 (for a total of 150-200 slots each) on more than 10 other characters; giving me a total of around 3,000 doff roster spots. Even with this, I have been using the mailbox to store 1,000's of white (common) doffs for fleet donations as well as blue and purple (rare/very rare) doffs for exchange sales. The loss of this means of doff storage will hinder my ability to sell doffs and donate enough to keep fleet projects running.
With around 5000+ zen spent on doff space and a combined roster of around 3,000 slots account-wide, I should not need to spend any more toward unlocking more doff roster space. You may feel that using the mailbox as doff storage was "exploiting the system for unintended uses", and you might even have a point... but the underlying issue is, doff storage limits need attention, and/or donation quantities need to be adjusted/rescaled. When smart people find a problem, they look for a solution that they can implement themselves (Instead of petitioning dev. teams in vain), and it seems that many of us found the same solution. Now they've "fixed" the problem with no notice, and yet failed to address the underlying issue.
Regardless, the issue needs to be addressed about returning exchange sales. There is no reason why items that expire on the exchange shouldn't be returned to me, and fear that they will not be is preventing me from playing.
Dammit. I had over a thousand doffs stored this way. With a limit of 40 Exchange sales at a time, I won't be able to get rid of them fast enough. Why do this? Isn't there better stuff to fix?
So, to clarify:
The 100 attachment limit is per account, not character?
Each character can post 40 items on the Exchange at a time?
Each Silver account gets 3 characters for free?
Each account could potentially receive up to 120 items returned from the Exchange?
Does this look like a good reason to buy more character slots, or create "bank accounts" with 3 characters each? I hate to say it, but the basic quality of life stuff is why I went right back to playing STO instead of Neverwinter... and why I will likely let the Lifetime Subscription Sale pass right on by again.
With each passing day I wonder if I stepped into an alternate reality. The Cubs win the world series. Donald Trump is President. Britain leaves the EU. STO gets a dedicated PvP season. Engineers are "out of control" in STO.
Where am I supposed to store the thousand surplus doffs I have on all my toons? I've already bought 10 of the +100 storage things, but all those blue-quality warp theorists have to go somewhere. Can't donate them to starbases, can only sell so many at a time, and I'll be damned if I'm spending money on the highway-robbery rates on the doff upgrinder. Even near-useless doffs are still too valuable to simply throw away, and thats how i pay for everything I do in this game anyways, so I'm not gonna cripple myself here.
Its like they realized 'oh TRIBBLE we were being too generous with our F2P model!' so they reduced how much dil is available while trying every trick they could think of to make it more important to have. Stop it! I'm not spending MORE money.
/Rant, if not over, then at least on hold. Grrrrrr.
Wow, so this is what is holding my mail to ransom.
Geez, fix the doff problem which would stop us needing to mail doff in the first place.
Allow us to buy the exact doffs we need from our fleet bases, that would eliminate the problem entirely. Hell, they could make them more expensive to get specific doffs.
Work with us Cryptic. Why do you have to create these problems, and then make them 10 times worse.....
So, to clarify:
The 100 attachment limit is per account, not character?
Each character can post 40 items on the Exchange at a time?
Each Silver account gets 3 characters for free?
Each account could potentially receive up to 120 items returned from the Exchange?
Does this look like a good reason to buy more character slots, or create "bank accounts" with 3 characters each? I hate to say it, but the basic quality of life stuff is why I went right back to playing STO instead of Neverwinter... and why I will likely let the Lifetime Subscription Sale pass right on by again.
In my testing its per account, so yes this will only harm people that have a lot of worthless stuff (aka common doffs) and heavy exchange users will likely just create mule accounts
Why can't we stack multiples of the same item for all items? I can stack 20 hypos that are exactly the same. Why not 20 DOFFs or 20 Beam Arrays if they are exactly the same? This would give the players much-needed relief under this unrealistic, unannounced 100 attachment mail limit.
So, to clarify:
The 100 attachment limit is per account, not character?
Each character can post 40 items on the Exchange at a time?
Each Silver account gets 3 characters for free?
Each account could potentially receive up to 120 items returned from the Exchange?
Does this look like a good reason to buy more character slots, or create "bank accounts" with 3 characters each? I hate to say it, but the basic quality of life stuff is why I went right back to playing STO instead of Neverwinter... and why I will likely let the Lifetime Subscription Sale pass right on by again.
Well you wouldn't have that much stuff in the exchange expiring and being mailed to you if your prices were reasonable, and/or you were selling stuff people actually wanted to buy.
As for me I'm fine with the 100 message mail limit. I usually keep my mail empty and very very rarely ever have anything expire in the exchange. If it doesn't sell in 2-3 days I will repost it at a lower price and keep doing that until it sells. Also, I don't use mail to communicate with other players though occasionally someone in my KDF fleet sends a message to all fleet members.
I delete messages immediately when something sells in the exchange but right now the exchange messages are piling up. I know they are working on it and hope they fix it soon. The longer it takes to fix, the longer it will take me to delete all those dang exchange messages.
newsflash, atm items are eaten by the mailsystem. at least for me! b4 LoR i had only 6 mails with only 21 slots used.
But 30% of returns from exchange are empty, and since the mail does not state which item was returned, i dont even know what i lost.
Gotta hand it to cyptic, when they go big they really do go big on TRIBBLE people.
Who at cryptic or or PWE for that matter makes decisions like this?
Are the devs clueless why so many people use the mail system in this manner.
I am really growing tired of incompetent decision making like this to what get a few extra bucks and at the same time cripple people all around?
But again me and many others really do not have anything else we can buy more slots, why on that note should even if I have space put all my white doffs from my alts on the alts, makes it very hard to find out what I have or do not have for my mains needs project wise.
I ma again will say this again I am not going to waste my time dealing with it, if cryptic/pwe can not come to their senses or a reasonable compromise I will just move on.
I love star trek to death but the continuous blunders,mistakes and poor management and also stealth nerfs time and time again to punish the player base is wearing my patience and many others like me very thin.
As one old say goes "GREED IS ETERNAL!"
I honestly wonder with the way the game is run by cyptic if that is their only concern to make money at all costs even if they can't get anymore money out of some of us due to limits already reach...
Then to top it off we got the white knights constantly defending these stealth nerfs and low key bearly mention patch note changes.. I promise as teh weeks go one if even that long this like many past mistakes is going to blow back up in cryptic face....
Well you wouldn't have that much stuff in the exchange expiring and being mailed to you if your prices were reasonable, and/or you were selling stuff people actually wanted to buy.
As for me I'm fine with the 100 message mail limit. I usually keep my mail empty and very very rarely ever have anything expire in the exchange. If it doesn't sell in 2-3 days I will repost it at a lower price and keep doing that until it sells. Also, I don't use mail to communicate with other players though occasionally someone in my KDF fleet sends a message to all fleet members.
I delete messages immediately when something sells in the exchange but right now the exchange messages are piling up. I know they are working on it and hope they fix it soon. The longer it takes to fix, the longer it will take me to delete all those dang exchange messages.
I post things on the market because it is worth my time to do so. Changing the risk/reward will lead me to post less items to reduce my risk. Less items on the market means higher prices for what is posted.
The Ferengi will adapt. Resistance is futile
Ex-CoH players, Please add the chat channel "CoX STO"
I've come to dread the release of new seasons now as I am invariably robbed of something important and slandered for having used it.
I could be writing about how I enjoyed the new missions, but Cryptic has managed to get me to focus on their bad practices again.
You could have used that countdown on the launcher to warn us about how long we had to clean out our mail. That would have been useful.
I would normally be playing right now, but not being able to delete the mail and being kicked out of fleet mark event queues with a 5 second warning is making me step away.
You will never hear me complain about Neverwinter. I hope you realize why.
newsflash, atm items are eaten by the mailsystem. at least for me! b4 LoR i had only 6 mails with only 21 slots used.
But 30% of returns from exchange are empty, and since the mail does not state which item was returned, i dont even know what i lost.
This right here, is an issue. I got several today bounced back from the exchange, stating items are being returned bla bla bla.. 'cept theres a problem.
I dont know what the funkin wagnals the item was cuz the mail system trashed it.
Not cool - I have a constantly rotating 40-items up for sale and don't know what the returned items even are how.
In my testing its per account, so yes this will only harm people that have a lot of worthless stuff (aka common doffs) and heavy exchange users will likely just create mule accounts
That is part of what I was getting at; the other part is that by doing this they are penalizing you for buying extra character slots. Think of it this way:
One Silver account has 3 character slots, 100 max attachments, so approx 33 attachments available per character.
One Gold account has 4 character slots, 100 max attachments, so approx 25 attachments available per character.
One Silver account, purchasing the Two Character Slots at 625 Zen, has 5 character slots, 100 max attachments, so approx 20 attachments available per character.
One Gold account, purchasing the Four Character Slots at 1065 Zen, has 8 character slots, 100 max attachments, so approx 12 attachments available per character.
You do see that they are (unintentionally, I hope) penalizing you for spending Zen on character slots, right? At the very least a limit of 50 attachments per character slot would allow for the potential return of one full Exchange cycle and 2 full mailings to be sent. It might also get folks to spend more money on character slots, rather than motivating them not to...
With each passing day I wonder if I stepped into an alternate reality. The Cubs win the world series. Donald Trump is President. Britain leaves the EU. STO gets a dedicated PvP season. Engineers are "out of control" in STO.
That is part of what I was getting at; the other part is that by doing this they are penalizing you for buying extra character slots. Think of it this way:
One Silver account has 3 character slots, 100 max attachments, so approx 33 attachments available per character.
One Gold account has 4 character slots, 100 max attachments, so approx 25 attachments available per character.
One Silver account, purchasing the Two Character Slots at 625 Zen, has 5 character slots, 100 max attachments, so approx 20 attachments available per character.
One Gold account, purchasing the Four Character Slots at 1065 Zen, has 8 character slots, 100 max attachments, so approx 12 attachments available per character.
You do see that they are (unintentionally, I hope) penalizing you for spending Zen on character slots, right? At the very least a limit of 50 attachments per character slot would allow for the potential return of one full Exchange cycle and 2 full mailings to be sent. It might also get folks to spend more money on character slots, rather than motivating them not to...
You've brought up a phenomenal point with your post, that I hadn't considered thus far, Breadandcircuses!
I've long been content to simply have one character and one character alone, my Fed Tac. Yet, with all this new Klingon and Romulan content, I was resolved, and I should stress WAS, to create two additional characters, in order to explore said new content. Hell, I might even have eventually spent as much money on those additional two characters as I already have upon my single Fed Tac.
So very glad you've enlightened me otherwise Breadandcircuses. Honestly, I had no idea that the devs have been conspiring to discourage us from exploring all this new content and potentially shelling out more money to their mess of a company.
Your insight has done us all a service.:)
"Don't try to be a great man. Just be a man and let history make its own judgments." -Zefram Cochrane
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
Comments
New flash for ya, there are people, like me, who've purchased all the bank, inventory and DOFF slots available. Cryptic won't let us buy any more slots. So kindly remove your head from your podex and stop pointing accusatory fingers and calling people 'whiners' because it makes ya feel all big and bad.
The mail system was never broken (beyond the occasional hiccup here and there) and has worked just fine for three years now. Hell, the system even clearly encouraged one to send messages to oneself, with its autofill address feature.
The system, as it has existed for three years, has done no one any harm whatsoever. So, kindly quit it with this 'exploit' nonsense. You couldn't even attach bound items to mail messages, hence necessitating the need for purchasing extra bank and inventory slots (which myself and a great many others have already done).
Now, those of us who have innocuously stored away supplies for our Fleets, BOFFs, exchange sale or for our personal use (supplies which were earned through time, effort and real world money in the case of those who sell keys on the Exchange) are getting kicked in the proverbial teeth by this needless change.
The player rage about this might be just simmering now. Yet, just you wait until the lockbox key sellers start coming out of the woodwork. Honestly, I suspect the only reason there isn't a bigger fuss about all this already, is because most of the veteran players are playing all the new LOR content and are likely unaware of this idiotic and needless change to the mail system.
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
News flash you there, you need to remove Your head from your podex, you took advantage of a broken system, that doesn't give you the right to expect to get a freebie for life.
And a working mail system, that can send mail and get mail just makes it functional, doesn't mean it was meant for you to abuse it for your own needs....try to use your ISP mail system to backup your harddrive and see how far that gets you? Oh wait, you can't do that, why? you have a storage limit?? Its the same principle for STO's mail.
So how pissed would you be if you wake up tomorrow and during the night gmail set a new limit of 4% of what it was yesterday ? Thats EXACTLY what cryptic did here, same percentage.
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
the lack of outrage is because people are still finding out, they're occupied for the next few days with new content, and/or they don't think their voice matters.
Why does Cryptic keep trying to convince me I shouldn't be playing their games?
I'm not an exploiter for using the mail as designed. You just changed your mind about it several years in and will let certain posters label people if it serves your purpose.
Show some integrity. Apologize for lack of warning, and tell the world we were NOT exploiting anything. You set the parameters.
We will agree to disagree with each other i guess, seriously i'm not trolling too damn old for kidstuff lol
I know what Cyrptic did, the only thing that wasn't "right" about what they did was "not" to give fair notice. But as for them fixing a system that was being used in ways they did not intend, they have that right.
And hmm, i hope you are not keeping all your gmail from the last two years on their servers anyway, store it locally, there are ways to do that, then the worry of losing your old email is not there, i do that, so i will never worry about losing my mail.
I agree with you. I am tired of the Ninja Nerfs.
I was just about to upgrade to Lifetime sub; but now I am may cancel my Gold sub and just upgrade the important perks I need.
I can't support this heavy handed nerfing.
Delirium Tremens
Tier 4 Starbase, Tier 3 Embassy
http://dtfleet.com/
Kirisee you're making the false assumption that that mail system was broken to begin with. Do you really expect anyone to believe that the mail system has been broken for three years now???!!! The system was DESIGNED to allow for a 500 message limit. It was also DESIGNED to allow five item attachments per individual message.
Hmmm...my Webster's II New Riverside Dictionary tells me that the word 'Design' means: "the order or arrangement of the components and details of something in accordance to a plan".
In other words, three years ago, when Cryptic DESIGNED and released STO's mail system, they established "the order or arrangement of the components and details" of said mail system "in accordance to a plan". Simply put, they planned to have a 500 message limit, with 5 attachment slots per message.
So, kindly spare us all this 'broken' and 'exploit' nonsense.
Great analogy Lormalak! And if such a thing were to actually happen to a major email provider, I'm pretty sure the news of such a blunder would be broadcast loud and clear on every cable news network and various global media sources.
Right now, awareness and response to this whole mess seems confined to this and three or so other forum threads. Pretty sure that's because most veteran players are currently exploring the new Romulan content and are thus unaware of this horrendous and needless stealth nerf.
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
And how was it a broken system? Because people used it for storage space?
When the DOFF system was created, there was no plans about Starbases and using DOFFs as payment. So what were people supposed to do when they had their 400 DOFF slots full of Rare and Very Rare DOFFs? Delete them so they make room for hundreds of common DOFFs for Starbases?
Cryptic forced players to resort to Mail Storage.
If they don't want people to use Mail as Storage, then they should've provided us another means to do so. End of Story.
Brace for impact.
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
I totally agree that the mailbox as it was before was not working as intended, however it was totally necessary for those us seriously working on starbase. What we have is 2 broken systems, one hurting the game experience and one helping, particularity with the former. Had both problems been fixed, there wouldn't be a big problem. But here's my problem:
Mailbox is unlimited time-intensive storage for years
Starbase are introduced; Doff requirements are highly unbalanced with the drop-rate. Players point this out for months with little response and no commitments.
Certain common doffs plummet in exchange price to ~5-6k while others reach 100k. Keep in mind you can buy 1fc with 1 provision costing 75ec when donating. This means that a common doff is valued at 22.5k ec and that would be in-line with the rest of the doff qualities.
Fleets are experiencing doff shortfalls to maintain starbase progress (keep in mind if you aren't completing projects everyday, it will take you well more than a year to finish a starbase). To make up for the shortfall, self sacrificing players have been buying large quanties of doffs to sift though and donate the needed ones. Hundreds to gain tens. Selling the doffs on the exchange is impossible and at a loss anyway, dismissing them is a waste, saving them for future use or having an alt donate them to another fleet is only viable alternative and made possible by the magic mailbox.
The mailbox was nerfed. Without warning. This nerfing will only hurt the doff sifters, as anyone using it for other storage will simply make a mule account or an alt in a fleet of one.
Fourxgamer, methinks you're spot on about news of this mess not having hit the masses as yet, due to their exploration of all the new content. Given that, I would encourage anyone and everyone who's been intrepid enough to attempt logging into STO (Fed, Kling and Rom alike) to spread the word of this stealth nerf to their friends, fleetmates and group pals. Bring it up in local and zone chats everywhere. Get the word out, so we can have a proper response to this mess.
Also concur that all this back and forth, nerfing and nerfing and nerfing, leaves an incredibly bad taste in one's mouth towards Cryptic.
Ditto regarding all the troglodytes who would erroneously call the likes of you and I 'exploiters'. If anyone is feeling exploited here, it's someone like me, who's spent hundreds of real world dollars on this game, including purchase of the maximum number of slots for bank, inventory, DOFFs and nearly maxxed BOFF slots.
An apology from the Devs would be welcome, but it would be a hollow platitude without a just reversion to the mail system as it has existed for the past three years.
Locutus359, you're not alone in your hesitance to spend any real world money on Cryptic any longer. Given all the nonsense this company has put its playerbase through, I may very well never spend so much as a penny on 'em ever again.
And I have a very dear friend, who actually got me into STO, who left the game altogether months ago, because of all this stealth nerfing. My pal was a big spender too, having spent hundreds on this game already and always eagerly bought up the latest C-Store ship offering.
Spent the past couple of weeks trying to cajole him back, with details about LOR and new Klingon and Fed content. And then this mail system stealth nerf happened.
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71
Hostage mail
:eek:
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
Hostage mail
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
Well, i will agree both systems are broken, mail and starbase. The cost in doffs is just insane at higher levels i hear, but in my mind it still doesn't justify using the mail system as a persons personal bank, that was not it's design. I think what we ALL should have been doing a long time ago was keep pushing hard for more storage, and then the "problem" for people using the mail this way would have never happened. I really hope people don't lose their items and doffs, me included since i always have a ton of sale going on the exchange.
Good Luck to you all..
French-kissing PWE's butt much?
I think that banking items by mail will likely disappear, as was likely Cryptic's intention. Maybe this will decrease server-side lag issues too.
I think people will start using "bank fleets" and "bank alts" to store said items.
The bigger issue, doff storage, doff imbalance and ridiculously high daily doff donation requirements for starbase development will likely result in most hardcore doffers making a LOT of secondary accounts and creating the 3 free players on it, gaining 300 doff slots per account. This will result in a ton of new silver accounts that will never "buy" anything, never subscribe, and only result in longer queue waiting times for other silver, un-subscibed players.
Ideal solution: Cryptic reduces doff requirements for starbase projects from 90 to 50, and possibly opens the donation categories to be less specific (i.e. science or medical instead one type specifically). This would make it more realistic for an average sized fleet to meet the donation needs daily without the need for several of the members keeping 1,000s of doffs in "cold-storage" in their mailboxes.
More likely solution: Cryptic starts hunting down and closing the alternate accounts, trying to force people to buy the doff packs instead; not realizing that the majority of their player base isn't going to spend more than $10-20 a month on a game regardless; and Cryptic refuses to acknowledge that those players need realistic ways to accomplish the same goals substituting play-time for cash investment. (That's not even touching on the imbalance in type of doffs awarded from the packs leaving tons of useless doffs daily.)
The irony is that Cryptic has a beautiful market system in place. If they can make enough "elite" stuff for the "wallet warriors" to buy, they don't need to milk the rest of us as hard. I think this all comes down to the fact that they see mailbox doff storage as a loss of potential doff roster space sales... and the reality is that the few people who do use mail as storage are doing so to counter the ridiculous starbase doff donation requirements. Most of those people are smart enough to find an alternate means to accomplish the same storage requirements, until the underlying issue is addressed.
** The above is a statement of opinion, not presented as fact. This is not intended as instructions on how to circumvent or exploit anything in-game. The example above is just 1 idea of how players might respond to this situation. **
Now the reason I won't be playing for the next week (or until I see a patch note addressing it) is, what about returned exchange sales? I post 40 exchange offers daily on 10 or more characters. If half of the offers on each expire and are returned, i'll lose hundreds of items to the void!! Doffing is what I do with about 75% of my play time, and I play between 6 and 18 hours daily. If I can't sell doffs without fear of losing them when the sales expire... then there's not much for me to do until the issue is fixed.
Thx,
Q
Disclaimer: I am a subscribed customer for almost 1 year. I have played STO for about 18 months. I have unlocked all 400 doff roster spots on my primary character, and an additional 50-100 (for a total of 150-200 slots each) on more than 10 other characters; giving me a total of around 3,000 doff roster spots. Even with this, I have been using the mailbox to store 1,000's of white (common) doffs for fleet donations as well as blue and purple (rare/very rare) doffs for exchange sales. The loss of this means of doff storage will hinder my ability to sell doffs and donate enough to keep fleet projects running.
With around 5000+ zen spent on doff space and a combined roster of around 3,000 slots account-wide, I should not need to spend any more toward unlocking more doff roster space. You may feel that using the mailbox as doff storage was "exploiting the system for unintended uses", and you might even have a point... but the underlying issue is, doff storage limits need attention, and/or donation quantities need to be adjusted/rescaled. When smart people find a problem, they look for a solution that they can implement themselves (Instead of petitioning dev. teams in vain), and it seems that many of us found the same solution. Now they've "fixed" the problem with no notice, and yet failed to address the underlying issue.
Regardless, the issue needs to be addressed about returning exchange sales. There is no reason why items that expire on the exchange shouldn't be returned to me, and fear that they will not be is preventing me from playing.
The 100 attachment limit is per account, not character?
Each character can post 40 items on the Exchange at a time?
Each Silver account gets 3 characters for free?
Each account could potentially receive up to 120 items returned from the Exchange?
Does this look like a good reason to buy more character slots, or create "bank accounts" with 3 characters each? I hate to say it, but the basic quality of life stuff is why I went right back to playing STO instead of Neverwinter... and why I will likely let the Lifetime Subscription Sale pass right on by again.
Its like they realized 'oh TRIBBLE we were being too generous with our F2P model!' so they reduced how much dil is available while trying every trick they could think of to make it more important to have. Stop it! I'm not spending MORE money.
/Rant, if not over, then at least on hold. Grrrrrr.
Geez, fix the doff problem which would stop us needing to mail doff in the first place.
Allow us to buy the exact doffs we need from our fleet bases, that would eliminate the problem entirely. Hell, they could make them more expensive to get specific doffs.
Work with us Cryptic. Why do you have to create these problems, and then make them 10 times worse.....
In my testing its per account, so yes this will only harm people that have a lot of worthless stuff (aka common doffs) and heavy exchange users will likely just create mule accounts
Well you wouldn't have that much stuff in the exchange expiring and being mailed to you if your prices were reasonable, and/or you were selling stuff people actually wanted to buy.
As for me I'm fine with the 100 message mail limit. I usually keep my mail empty and very very rarely ever have anything expire in the exchange. If it doesn't sell in 2-3 days I will repost it at a lower price and keep doing that until it sells. Also, I don't use mail to communicate with other players though occasionally someone in my KDF fleet sends a message to all fleet members.
I delete messages immediately when something sells in the exchange but right now the exchange messages are piling up. I know they are working on it and hope they fix it soon. The longer it takes to fix, the longer it will take me to delete all those dang exchange messages.
But 30% of returns from exchange are empty, and since the mail does not state which item was returned, i dont even know what i lost.
Who at cryptic or or PWE for that matter makes decisions like this?
Are the devs clueless why so many people use the mail system in this manner.
I am really growing tired of incompetent decision making like this to what get a few extra bucks and at the same time cripple people all around?
But again me and many others really do not have anything else we can buy more slots, why on that note should even if I have space put all my white doffs from my alts on the alts, makes it very hard to find out what I have or do not have for my mains needs project wise.
I ma again will say this again I am not going to waste my time dealing with it, if cryptic/pwe can not come to their senses or a reasonable compromise I will just move on.
I love star trek to death but the continuous blunders,mistakes and poor management and also stealth nerfs time and time again to punish the player base is wearing my patience and many others like me very thin.
As one old say goes "GREED IS ETERNAL!"
I honestly wonder with the way the game is run by cyptic if that is their only concern to make money at all costs even if they can't get anymore money out of some of us due to limits already reach...
Then to top it off we got the white knights constantly defending these stealth nerfs and low key bearly mention patch note changes.. I promise as teh weeks go one if even that long this like many past mistakes is going to blow back up in cryptic face....
I post things on the market because it is worth my time to do so. Changing the risk/reward will lead me to post less items to reduce my risk. Less items on the market means higher prices for what is posted.
The Ferengi will adapt. Resistance is futile
Ex-CoH players, Please add the chat channel "CoX STO"
I could be writing about how I enjoyed the new missions, but Cryptic has managed to get me to focus on their bad practices again.
You could have used that countdown on the launcher to warn us about how long we had to clean out our mail. That would have been useful.
I would normally be playing right now, but not being able to delete the mail and being kicked out of fleet mark event queues with a 5 second warning is making me step away.
You will never hear me complain about Neverwinter. I hope you realize why.
This right here, is an issue. I got several today bounced back from the exchange, stating items are being returned bla bla bla.. 'cept theres a problem.
I dont know what the funkin wagnals the item was cuz the mail system trashed it.
Not cool - I have a constantly rotating 40-items up for sale and don't know what the returned items even are how.
That is part of what I was getting at; the other part is that by doing this they are penalizing you for buying extra character slots. Think of it this way:
One Silver account has 3 character slots, 100 max attachments, so approx 33 attachments available per character.
One Gold account has 4 character slots, 100 max attachments, so approx 25 attachments available per character.
One Silver account, purchasing the Two Character Slots at 625 Zen, has 5 character slots, 100 max attachments, so approx 20 attachments available per character.
One Gold account, purchasing the Four Character Slots at 1065 Zen, has 8 character slots, 100 max attachments, so approx 12 attachments available per character.
You do see that they are (unintentionally, I hope) penalizing you for spending Zen on character slots, right? At the very least a limit of 50 attachments per character slot would allow for the potential return of one full Exchange cycle and 2 full mailings to be sent. It might also get folks to spend more money on character slots, rather than motivating them not to...
You've brought up a phenomenal point with your post, that I hadn't considered thus far, Breadandcircuses!
I've long been content to simply have one character and one character alone, my Fed Tac. Yet, with all this new Klingon and Romulan content, I was resolved, and I should stress WAS, to create two additional characters, in order to explore said new content. Hell, I might even have eventually spent as much money on those additional two characters as I already have upon my single Fed Tac.
So very glad you've enlightened me otherwise Breadandcircuses. Honestly, I had no idea that the devs have been conspiring to discourage us from exploring all this new content and potentially shelling out more money to their mess of a company.
Your insight has done us all a service.:)
Vice-Admiral Methos Corinthian
methos71