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Could our Lockboxes use some QOL changes?
webdeath
Member Posts: 1,570 Arc User
Late one night (Ok, ok you got me, tonight 
) I started to wonder why I don't seem to want to buy more lockboxes in STO then I do in games like Starwars: TOR..
So I figured I would look at the differences between the two..
First, there is the Star Trek Online Lockbox that we are familar with.
Opening a single Lockbox costs about $1.25 for a Key, and then from the 10 Pack it is about $11.25 for the 1,125 Zen for the Keys.
You can get keys either buying directly with Zen, Trading Dilithium for Zen, or buying the Keys from what some one sells on the Exchange.
After you have a key, you need to find a lockbox you want. Either by spending Dilithium for a 20 pack of the latest pack, Getting the latest one in a drop from enemies, or buying the ones you want from the Exchange.
Once you open your lockbox you always get the following:
Lobi
1 Random roll from the Listed rewards for that box.
Power Creep and "P2W" then comes in the form of what the random roll can be, weither its a new ship, Weapons, a console, or Newly Designed Doffs. Other wise it can be ANYTHING from the list of stuff avaliable.
That then got me thinking about how I seem to spend more money in SW:TOR on their Cartel Packs then I have been in STO's lockboxes.. And I think I understand why..
They give you more bang for your buck, so to speak.
Cartel Packs how ever are more expensive. Their Cheaper packs are 160 Cartel coins. And the More expensive packs are 360 cartel coins. You can also buy "Hypercrates" (Think Booster box) of 25 Packs for 6,912 Cartel coins (They always show 10% Discount and I have never seen them drop that discount) You can get at the least 450 cartel coins for $5. Making it so that 2 cheap packs or 1 Standard pack would cost you nearly all of your $5 purchase. And if you want a Hypercrate, you'd have to spend about $39.99 for 5500 coins + $5 450 + $10 1,050..
How ever, that being said, you do get MORE.. ALOT more..
A single Pack will almost always have something useful. And it doesn't come with only 2 things. A typical Standard pack comes with about 6-7 Different Items depending on your luck.
You'll get 2 Rare bonus items from the usual table of goodies (Mounts, Special unique Rest powers, And some other things like Adaptive armor which is glorified Costumes)
Then you get a "Boost" Item, Exp or Social points (And there are about 9 types of those)
Then you get a Crafting material (Usually useful or sellable, and not just 1 but about 5 or so)
Then you get a Companion Gift of the highest Rating either Rare or Very Rare quality
And last you have a chance to get an item that gives you reputation with the group dealing with the pack. Or an item that deals with that group to helps you buy from the Vendors of the Pack groups.
After thinking about it for a while I started to wonder why STO's lockboxes don't drop more. I'm not saying they have to drop as much as the SWTOR Packs drop. But they could maybe do something similar. Maybe Drop 4 items in the following manor:
Lobi: This is your typical Lobi drop as normal.
Rare/Ultra Rare Drop: This would be where Weapon crates, special doffs, consoles, etc would be placed.
Crafting Materials: This could be new, and could allow for crafting materials to be aquired another way. The Mineing Contracts could also have a chance to drop here as well. (Yes I am aware the CURRENT crafting system MAY be receiving another upgrade in a future season.)
Buffs: and other: this could be where things like the small Doff packs drop, The Fleet, Doff Credential, Exp booster, and the like would drop. They could also add a "Choose your Mark" reward here as well. It wouldn't have to be much, but maybe say 10-20 Of a high level mark. Or perhaps instead we could get Gold Pressed Latinium, or some other form of Gold Pressed Latinium, maybe slips that could be merged into strips, and eventually merged into Bars (Or just skip straight to Bars) and it would give us a way to purchase Gold pressed latinium goodies beyond Dabo, or Doff missions.
I'm sorry for the long post. TL;DR statement :rolleyes:: I feel like we don't get enough Bang for our Buck from lockboxes compared to other products and this could use a slight upgrade or modification of the current Lockbox pool to spread them out to get more bang for our buck.
Note: Yes, I know there are even more details that makes the Cartel Packs better overall as well if you look at more specifics, like the Costume/Adaptive armor sets and other Adaptive goodies, as well as practically everything that isn't consumable being also account unlockable for spending more Cartel Coins vs STO.. but figured it didn't have to be mentioned in the exact post, but could be pointed out here in a side note, since the main point of the thread is discussing the differences in the two types of objects that both uses to provide things you might not expect normally.
) I started to wonder why I don't seem to want to buy more lockboxes in STO then I do in games like Starwars: TOR..So I figured I would look at the differences between the two..
First, there is the Star Trek Online Lockbox that we are familar with.
Opening a single Lockbox costs about $1.25 for a Key, and then from the 10 Pack it is about $11.25 for the 1,125 Zen for the Keys.
You can get keys either buying directly with Zen, Trading Dilithium for Zen, or buying the Keys from what some one sells on the Exchange.
After you have a key, you need to find a lockbox you want. Either by spending Dilithium for a 20 pack of the latest pack, Getting the latest one in a drop from enemies, or buying the ones you want from the Exchange.
Once you open your lockbox you always get the following:
Lobi
1 Random roll from the Listed rewards for that box.
Power Creep and "P2W" then comes in the form of what the random roll can be, weither its a new ship, Weapons, a console, or Newly Designed Doffs. Other wise it can be ANYTHING from the list of stuff avaliable.
That then got me thinking about how I seem to spend more money in SW:TOR on their Cartel Packs then I have been in STO's lockboxes.. And I think I understand why..
They give you more bang for your buck, so to speak.
Cartel Packs how ever are more expensive. Their Cheaper packs are 160 Cartel coins. And the More expensive packs are 360 cartel coins. You can also buy "Hypercrates" (Think Booster box) of 25 Packs for 6,912 Cartel coins (They always show 10% Discount and I have never seen them drop that discount) You can get at the least 450 cartel coins for $5. Making it so that 2 cheap packs or 1 Standard pack would cost you nearly all of your $5 purchase. And if you want a Hypercrate, you'd have to spend about $39.99 for 5500 coins + $5 450 + $10 1,050..
How ever, that being said, you do get MORE.. ALOT more..
A single Pack will almost always have something useful. And it doesn't come with only 2 things. A typical Standard pack comes with about 6-7 Different Items depending on your luck.
You'll get 2 Rare bonus items from the usual table of goodies (Mounts, Special unique Rest powers, And some other things like Adaptive armor which is glorified Costumes)
Then you get a "Boost" Item, Exp or Social points (And there are about 9 types of those)
Then you get a Crafting material (Usually useful or sellable, and not just 1 but about 5 or so)
Then you get a Companion Gift of the highest Rating either Rare or Very Rare quality
And last you have a chance to get an item that gives you reputation with the group dealing with the pack. Or an item that deals with that group to helps you buy from the Vendors of the Pack groups.
After thinking about it for a while I started to wonder why STO's lockboxes don't drop more. I'm not saying they have to drop as much as the SWTOR Packs drop. But they could maybe do something similar. Maybe Drop 4 items in the following manor:
Lobi: This is your typical Lobi drop as normal.
Rare/Ultra Rare Drop: This would be where Weapon crates, special doffs, consoles, etc would be placed.
Crafting Materials: This could be new, and could allow for crafting materials to be aquired another way. The Mineing Contracts could also have a chance to drop here as well. (Yes I am aware the CURRENT crafting system MAY be receiving another upgrade in a future season.)
Buffs: and other: this could be where things like the small Doff packs drop, The Fleet, Doff Credential, Exp booster, and the like would drop. They could also add a "Choose your Mark" reward here as well. It wouldn't have to be much, but maybe say 10-20 Of a high level mark. Or perhaps instead we could get Gold Pressed Latinium, or some other form of Gold Pressed Latinium, maybe slips that could be merged into strips, and eventually merged into Bars (Or just skip straight to Bars) and it would give us a way to purchase Gold pressed latinium goodies beyond Dabo, or Doff missions.
I'm sorry for the long post. TL;DR statement :rolleyes:: I feel like we don't get enough Bang for our Buck from lockboxes compared to other products and this could use a slight upgrade or modification of the current Lockbox pool to spread them out to get more bang for our buck.
Note: Yes, I know there are even more details that makes the Cartel Packs better overall as well if you look at more specifics, like the Costume/Adaptive armor sets and other Adaptive goodies, as well as practically everything that isn't consumable being also account unlockable for spending more Cartel Coins vs STO.. but figured it didn't have to be mentioned in the exact post, but could be pointed out here in a side note, since the main point of the thread is discussing the differences in the two types of objects that both uses to provide things you might not expect normally.
You think that your beta test was bad?
Think about this:
American Football has been in open beta for 144 years. ~Kotaku
Think about this:
American Football has been in open beta for 144 years. ~Kotaku
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Post edited by webdeath on
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Comments
I can still move.
I can still fight.
I will never give up!
TOR doesn't sell power through it's gambling boxes. STO has made selling advantages via lockbox their central business model.
For that reason alone you're never going to see the kind of changes you want.
I didn't miss that, I just didn't feel it was worth mentioning. Not when I was refering to perhaps an improvement to the way Lockbox provide rewards vs the example of the way the SW:TOR packs provide it.
There is 1 "Power Creep" Item in the SW:TOR Packs: Lightsaber crystals. But that really only effects low level gaming. (Level 10 Item that gives the same bonus as something normally you have to wait till level 50+ to use which hurts an entire crafting set.)
And it isn't that I necessarely want to see the changes, or at least my Wallet doesn't, I just wanted to make the suggestion that it might be a good way to improve the resale quality of the Lockboxes beyond just Lobi and trying to get that lucky loot table roll on the ships they always drop. But of course it is my opinion on how it might effect Lockbox Sales. And I'm no way an expert on that kind of a subject.
Think about this:
American Football has been in open beta for 144 years. ~Kotaku
$50 is a more reasonable price, and would certainly get even me to open boxes for lobi.
Still wont get me to open for the chance, but opening them for that $50 lobi ship would increase the chance in getting the lockbox items.
Depends how they want to run it.....
You didn't feel that the core function of STO's lockboxes was worth mentioning in a thread pertaining to STO's lockboxes?
Interesting...
Given that CM color crystals are statistically identical to stock level 50 color crystals, and the stats on them have not increases one iota since launch (this includes during the Makeb level cap raise and multiple gear realignments), calling them power creepy is extremely disingenuous.
You're both operating under the assumption that everything else you get from the lockboxes are worthless and have zero value. If you open boxes just for a ship or just for the lobi, you're doing it wrong, but if you assign a value to these items, then it's not really THAT overpriced.
Not that I'm defending the boxes, I agree with the OP - there's about a 50% chance from opening a lockbox of just getting a duty officer minipack and that's the real problem with these boxes - the top end prizes are fine, the low level goodies are not. IMO the ship, console, trait, very rare doff, etc can stay the way they are, but the doff minipack needs to be rethought.
Cryptic would sell more if this was removed or buffed.
My PvE/PvP hybrid skill tree
The Topic wasn't about whether or not the items dropped from the STO Lockboxes were Power creep flooded, or P2W Spam. It was more about looking at the differences between two games that both have similar functions, and its to drop a RNG based item in the game that provides rewards for cash, and to suggest that maybe STO's version could use a change to make it more worth spending the money on.
I said they are only power creep for LOW LEVELS. They provide you with a crystal that gives you the same bonus at LEVEL 10 as a crystal you can buy only when your level 50. It also hurt the Crafting Profession of Artifice where they nolonger need to craft Lightsaber crystals for anyone lower level then 50+.
Edit: That is also a discussion for the SW:TOR forums and not here. So I won't be furthering that discussion/arguement here.
Think about this:
American Football has been in open beta for 144 years. ~Kotaku
Then that is where we differ. I value anything other than the ships, as garbage. I do not need anything else from them, and would only ever open them for a ship.
And there's the flaw in your analysis: the two games treat gambling packs fundamentally differently. CM packs are explicitly designed to be cosmetic fluff to generate revenue without touching gameplay mechanics one bit. STO Lockboxes on the other hand are centered around driving players to buy them via selling power, while at the same time keeping said power artificially scarce.
That fundamental difference means changes like you're looking for (notably having more stuff in lockboxes, which means more power disseminated via lockbox to the players, thusly reducing demand for lockboxes themselves) aren't going to happen. It runs absolutely contrary to Cryptic and PWEs interests to do so.
While yes it would be nice to have more, I only used that as an example previously. I appologize if you misunderstood that it was ment to be an example.
What I'm also saying is that maybe some of the lower quality items could be given their own pools as rewards. Taking a look at the latest Lockbox for example they could to this:
Pool 1: Lobi
Pool 2: Voth Science ship, Mirror Ships, Space Trait, Ground Trait, Anti-Proton Weapon Pack, Voth Doff, Console
Pool 3: Random Pool Boosts, Doff Mini Packs, Dilithium Mining Slips.
When you would open a Lockbox it would have 3 rolls, One for each catagory instead of 2 rolls like we have now. Now you actually feel like your getting now only the usual reward, but something else that would also be useful.
Of course Pool 2 would then have to be decided on which is the most commonly dropped item. I'd bet on the anti-Proton Weapons being more common. Since you can get not only Space weapons, but ground weapons and it won't always be the highest quality weapon depending on your level of opening the item.
Pool 2 could also just be set to an Optional pool, where Pools 3 and 1 are always guarenteed. And the Pool 2 reward would depend on the roll for the box..
For example when opening the Box, if it used a d100 (Again d100 is ONLY an example) And say it needed to be a 51 or above to even drop Pool 2, at least your still getting Pool 1 for the Lobi Store,and Pool 3 for something useful, even if to some considered "TRIBBLE".
Once again, as a suggestion, at a later date when, when the Crafting has been redesigned, they could add Crafting materials either to Pool 3 or more Rare Materials to Pool 2 in order to further the reward for opening a Box.
So, once again, the Suggestion is to give more of a reason to open a lockbox for the rewards being given.
Think about this:
American Football has been in open beta for 144 years. ~Kotaku