test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Vanity Ships.
similon
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
How do you feel about the concept?
Just in case you're unaware - These would be ships that (traditionally) lack functionality, and are there for their nice, shiny appearance and/or showing off.
This came to me (again) last night when I was watching the episode of DS9 where Sisko's go sailing. I thought about how nice it would be to drift through sector space in a Bajoran Sail Ship. You may of course have difficulty explaining why it's transwarp capable. You also obviously wouldn't be able to take it into combat. Perhaps say having Shuttle, Starship & optional None-combat/sector space or something.
Anyway, What do you think of the concept?
(Please refrain from posting comments about wasting money, that is not the topic at hand)
Just in case you're unaware - These would be ships that (traditionally) lack functionality, and are there for their nice, shiny appearance and/or showing off.
This came to me (again) last night when I was watching the episode of DS9 where Sisko's go sailing. I thought about how nice it would be to drift through sector space in a Bajoran Sail Ship. You may of course have difficulty explaining why it's transwarp capable. You also obviously wouldn't be able to take it into combat. Perhaps say having Shuttle, Starship & optional None-combat/sector space or something.
Anyway, What do you think of the concept?
(Please refrain from posting comments about wasting money, that is not the topic at hand)
___________________________
The day will not save them. And we own the night.
The day will not save them. And we own the night.
Post edited by similon on
0
Comments
As for the money.... well I think it's an issue not to be ignored. Not to complain about it but depending on their usability pricing should adapt to it. Also from a business perspective. Making those vanity ships costs time and money so people should buy them to make it pay off. So the ships either have to provide some, albeit small, use beyond vanity or be really cheap.
system Lord Baal is dead
I think adding ships like the Risian corvette or the Tuffli freighter, but giving them reasonable functionality, is the best bet.
I'd love to get a Bajoran Solar sail ship. Kinda hoping there's eventually a Spring Event set on Bajor that allows us to earn one.
Don't even give it an engine slot. Just let is coast through sector space at warp 1(Yes it should be slower but no one is going to schlep through sector at low Impulse) speeding up as it passes stars.
I hope STO get's better ...
---- FIRE EVERYTHING ! ----
The solar ships being an excellent example.
I could see interesting races being built around them.
Release any race tools to the foundry for them and you'd have hundreds of 'tracks'
Same with the jet packs.
Let foundry authors play with the tools you used to create flying high and you'd have a whole new dimension to the game practically overnight.
Are you referring to the Klingon BoPs that were added to fill out their ship tiers? If so, you just said they're useful for the first 40 levels of the game...
And they come with consoles useful for admirals.
This is a market that STO currently lacks. Other than collecting all the lockbox/lobi ships there's really nothing you can do. Especially since you can't have a unique ship per say, since there is a potentially infinite amount of any existing ship, the ships just merely have to be won from lockboxes.
STO needs to expand what it sells and how it sells it, at the moment they might be meeting their mark, but there's so much untapped potential.
See the following thread for more things that Cryptic could expand upon:
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=816321
Yeah, that was my first thought about it too. A non-combat/shuttle sized thing that was really only good for the Tour the Universe event.
Maybe a solar sail ship would have on-board doff missions and bank access. Perhaps historical reanactment-themed missions. And they could certainly say that a simple warp engine and defensive weapons were added for convenience and safety. We don't all need our replicas to be as authentic as Sisko's.
I would be content with a Bajoran solar sailer vanity pet, but a full interior would be really nice, especially since the canon information is there to work off of.
Conjoined, Re-emergence, and . . .
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Now you're just talking crazy... this is STO not EVE Online!
First, I am writing not talking. Second, sanity is an over rated attribute best left for the weak of will.
If they are ever going to make PVP anything other than a pay to win time waster then new ideas need to be considered. Woe onto me for suggesting a meaningful competition with a unique reward. Just because a lame TRIBBLE game like EVE attempted to do it first doesn't imply they ever did it right and that leaves STO an window of opportunity.
Wow.... Just wow. Well... I guess you're entitled to your opinion but with EVE Online STILL steamrolling after 10 years on the market AND pay to play I don't think there's really any room for STO players to call EVE "lame"
It's like a Run-Escape player calling WoW "Lame."
Now on to an actual discussion...
Vanity Ships simply don't work in STO. This was tried before when Cryptic offered players unique ship costumes(like how the veterans get a unique ship skin) in the Zen store. These Items were purely cosmetic and served no purpose whatsoever. Cryptic removed them from the market permanently and for a long while they couldn't be obtained at all... Until they were finally cannibalized into the Fleet variant versions of the ships they represented.
Vanity Items don't work because
1. People don't buy them
2. They serve no purpose for their worth.
This has been Cryptic's argument all along about releasing ships. Sure it'd be fun to have all these neat little figurine-like collectible ships, but at the end of the day they are practically worthless and cost more time and money to produce and make available than is returned from in-game purchases.
Niche-market items are as valuable as an emerald in a pile of diamonds.... sure it's green-ish and different... but it's sill worth-less.
Shuttles are ugly and in no way "special" or interesting.
What I'm suggesting is some nice ships for you to cruise around in when you're not fighting for the safety of the galaxy.
Holo-emitters are a very different concept.
Bank access wouldn't make sense
That is one way to do it. Admittedly not quite what I had in mind - but giving them some purpose may help encourage people to actually bother.
Plus the inside is tiny! So it shouldn't take quite as long as a full, proper interior :P
And to all yee folk talking about money, time requirements or similar: Firstly, Naughty! and secondly - This post was more of a "wouldn't this be a nice feature, what are your thoughts?" than a "here's an economically viable option!". They may very well be your thoughts, but they're not good ones
The day will not save them. And we own the night.
Vanity items do work. To deny this is simply being ignorant. If vanity items didn't work they wouldn't be releasing costumes and uniforms for purchase any longer.
Ship skins =/= vanity ships. Please don't confuse the two.
Collector items are valued, hence why people collect them. Unfortunately outside of preorder content, everything in this game is quite easily obtainable provided you are willing to put in time/money which most collectors would be.
They already have a usable system set up for collector item ships. This would be the reputation system. Make a either utility heavy ship (meaning anything you could possibly want on it would be on it) or a combat heavy ship (meaning it could outfight any existing vessel in the game, or a interesting ship (stats would be on par or below par to existing t5 ships) an example would include a captured Borg sphere or something of the like.
Then determine a cost, something completely out of reach of the average player. Meaning Hundreds of thousands of dilithium, thousands of lobi, doffs, boffs, commodities, consumables, data samples, particle traces, basically a bunch of stuff. Also very important, make it NOT bound. This is essential for collector items how can you trade stuff to get stuff if everything is bound. Also must time gate the project meaning it would only be running for a max of two weeks or so, and if you couldn't complete it you're sol.
Right there is a perfect way to implement it. Some may whine that the ship isn't assessable and feasible for everyone, but hey guess what if it is a collector's item they're supposed to be rare. There's no point in collecting something if everyone and their brother already have one.
You just know They would make the interior..., the size of the Galaxy Bridge though... :rolleyes:
I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born!
Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
My apparently inferior thoughts are: I think there are more entertaining, regularly usable features that I would prefer Cryptic staff spend their time, and yes, money, on.
Actually yes they are.... that's like saying zen costumes don't equal a vanity you.
You have to purchase the clothing to be able to "look" the part you want. It's why there's practically no clothing for the KDF... people say it would sell, plead for it to be made. but it's only when other websites offer "free clothing" do people actually go out and try to actually get vanity clothing. Many of the vanity clothing purchases are so few far and between and is only really feasible when, like in LoR, when releasing mass amounts of specific faction content.
Sweety.... isn't what you're describing EXACTLY what they do for Winter/summer events now?
Sweety, that's why a ton of posts complaining about the Romulan tos uniform have been made. AFAIK the tos rom uniform wasn't available when the rest of the packs and such were released. Not sure what other websites are offering free clothing for this game.
Sweety, the winter and summer event ships are nothing special and certainly nothing worth dumping a ton of ec or real money into. A ton of people have them meaning they are no where near unique. Not to mention the fact that more often than not the ships are grinded instead of bought. How many corvettes did you see until the magic number of days that was required had passed? I didn't see many at all.
Thanks sweety.
Hun... if you're trying to castigate me by repeating a word that is part of my inherent speech, Please, just stop. That can be taken as a form of harassment and is a Violation of Forum ToS.
Now as for the rest of what you've said. I was referring to places like MMObomb and other sites that were handing out free clothing during the release of Season 7.
As for the Romulan TOS/TNG outfits that's really a red herring in this debate... Those items were released along side the release of LoR itself... not months down the line. Besides, it took longer for Veterans to get their ships, skins, and clothes than it took pack buyers to get a Romulan ZEN-iform.
Now as for this argument that these ships are nothing special.... I counter with the fact that people run these events, period.... If these ships were "nothing special" and weren't "worth dumping a ton of ec or real money into" Then why does that happen almost EVERY event? And you're right these ships ARE grinded... these are special "one-off" ships let me see... a more appropriate term might be.... Hmmm... Oh COLLECTIBLE! Meaning that... these vanity "collectible" ships are something you have to work hard for and can't just outright buy unless you're loaded and stupid with money.....
You really REALLY need to understand what you're debating before debating it.
xd.
Haven't seen anything like that recently.
Not months down the line? http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=787941
LOR released in may, a costume released in july. 2 months from may to july. may + june. 2 is more than 1 meaning plural meaning months. You really REALLY need to understand what you're debating before debating it.
People run these events because either a) they enjoy it, b) they want something out of it. I'm sure many people enjoyed flying around in a jetpack. The ships are nothing special stat wise and definitely not worth paying for. Hardly "special" if everyone who could be bothered to fly around for 5 minutes a day can get one. Hardly "special" if a level 11 guy can get the same ship as a level 50.
Even if these ships were to be labeled as collectibles even though they're just another bad t4 ship that gets dwarfed by fleet and cstore ships, Cryptic is still implementing collectibles improperly. I fail to see how the summer event and winter event even pays for the time it takes to create them.
Running a special 2 week promotion where you are free to donate truckloads of ingame currencies (lobi, ec, dil) into a project that gets you something that not only is rare but is actually worthwhile. Now lets see how that could make Cryptic money. Lobi, have to open lockboxes, no real way around it. Obviously there is a limited amount you can get from featured episode series and the free one from the lockbox tutorial, but that wouldn't nearly be enough. Dilithium either you grind it or you buy it, simple as that. Ec, same thing you grind the ec, or buy it with zen via selling keys/fsms.
Super rich players might not have to grind/buy too much to get this ship, but for the common player to even have a shot he'd have to invest some serious cash. Which obviously would make Cryptic money.
I think you misunderstand the definition of collectible.... there is no "if." these ships ARE collectible because once their gone it's all likely they won't be back... there have been special circumstances for the Odessey/Bortas and the Jem'Hadar Attack Ship because of future offerings, but unless there is a Risa Faction or the next release includes playable Breen I don't see either the Chel Gret or corvette being re-released meaning these are collectibles and those that have them will have something no one else who starts STO in the future will have.
Now you knock these ships as worthless.... Isn't that what's been the discussion? Collectibles SHOULD be "sub-standard" compared to ZEN ships and even then what you call "worthless" someone else is kicking TRIBBLE in.
As for the investing serious money .... I think you're so blinded by your own pocketbook's emptiness, whether subscribed or a lifetime purchaser, that you've forgotten this game is FREE to PLAY.... The fact that "rich people" outright buy these ships in the first few days makes Cryptic MORE than enough money to cover their own production. Meanwhile the rest of us playing for free keep grinding EC just to get the chance to grab a single "ship in a box."
Now as for the the 2 months wait for clothes... that's still within the LoR launch window. most AAA titles have a launch window of well over 6 months for "new" DLC. If you think 2 months is something to complain about, grow up. Wanting something new and everything now is a childish by-product of a consumerist culture.
I'd fully expect to see the same ship prizes each year, you don't. Either way we'll wait and see. Winter event will be coming up in a few months.
I could kick TRIBBLE in a shuttle in a estf, that's how easy they are. Doesn't mean that shuttles aren't substandard.
Pocketbook's emptiness? Hah. That's just funny. If I wanted the corvette I could have bought it the first day, and that's just with ec. Not a sub or a lifer. The fact that you think a few people buying a ship on the first day (likely with ec, not even real cash) would pay for an entire team making an event which likely took hundreds of manhours to create is just laughable. Programmers and digital artists are generally well paid, I have no idea what Cryptic pays them, but it a) has to cover col and b) has to be enough to keep them there instead of going to work for a larger game company. I'm sure we'll never know any salary numbers due to nda.
Personally I don't care about the release date of the romulan clothes, I don't use my romulan for anything out side of doffing. I have all of the vanity clothes on my fed that I desire. The clothes' release was still months down the line as I proved. Then you magically come up with the term launch window.