The problem is also the slippery slope. I imagine the Winter Event went well, so their conclusion is 'if we can keep players logging in every day ad nauseam, we'll make much money.'
However, that's strictly looking at metrics and extrapolating without utilizing extraneous data like oh, it was a holiday month, or that the players might normally have lives/ families/ significant others who might want some time as well.
Before, Cryptic, you were competing with other games for my attention. Now you're competing with friends and family, and frankly, you're going to lose. What happened to just creating a fun game and I give you money because it's fun and I enjoy it? Now you'd like me to pay you to skip the pain. What's wrong with this picture?
This is precisely why people are up in arms about this.
It's one thing to make a game more enjoyable or accessible, but that's not what's going on here. Cryptic is going to offer an item for real currency that lets players bypass a system that Cryptic developed. This is akin to the city closing half the lanes of a highway and then charging people for a pass that lets them drive in said closed lanes because they don't want to wait around in traffic that the city itself caused.
This is akin to the city closing half the lanes of a highway and then charging people for a pass that lets them drive in said closed lanes because they don't want to wait around in traffic that the city itself caused.
I don't mind the tokens if it speeds up my grind. Like many others have stated I'm don't want to see timers extended just to then get people buy the token. I think people will by the token without extending the timers, I myself included.
What we do know is the calendar events are going away in favor of dailies and mark weekend events. What I have said on other posts is I'm not interested in waiting three or four weeks for a bonus mark event. I also stated I was concerned about missions being made dailies that may allow for less time to grind like say mirror universe is a daily you can run one time... basically making it worthless.
The other thing that could happen is things are made a rotating daily like the fleet actions... one day its tour the galaxy the next day its mirror invasion, etc. Not in favor of this either.
The other possibility is that the hourly events are converted into dailies that are intact as they are now but made so you can do them at any point like other dailies. So for the bonus mark event daily you would start the mission wrapper that opens a three hour window and you grind your marks during the window for bonus marks. Same for the one hour mirror invasion, etc. This is not the case though for Tour the Galaxy on tribble so I don't expect this to happen.
I would expect in any of the options that the mentioned token is going to allow you to alleviate the cooldown cycle for one of those mark daily missions so you can do again without waiting. I'm fine with this as long as the daily timing is the equivalent of what we are losing on the calendar event cycle and the daily token shortens this wait between cooldowns.
Bottom line... Lots of possibilities but no real answers until next weeks blogs. We will just have to wait and see.
Gold Sub since March 2010
Lifetime Sub since June 2010
Wow this is nothing short of extortion in a online video game. If any of you are okay with this, then I don't know what to say.
This is greed to the extreme, and shows the mentality of the people running this game. How can ANYONE be okay with this idea at ALL.
Hint: You don't even know what you're talking about. The entirety of the information you have to go on is one screenshot and 11 pages of increasingly wild speculation on a forum already rife with wild speculation.
Here's something that makes so much sense that it's almost impossible for it to happen:
A free token/day (non-accumulating) for Gold.
Subscription has been really light on actual benefits, and this could actually make it worthwhile.
"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
I am going to hold judgment for now. Not because it doesn't worry me, but because I want to know what it will ACTUALLY be like. It really depends on how intrusive this ends up being.
I didn't come here to play an Iphone or Facebook game, and if that kind of treatment is what I will see, then I will go. Or if Arc becomes mandatory, then I will go.
I remain empathetic to the concerns of my community, but do me a favor and lay off the god damn name calling and petty remarks. It will get you nowhere.
I must admit, respect points to Trendy for laying down the law like that.
Wow this is nothing short of extortion in a online video game. If any of you are okay with this, then I don't know what to say.
This is greed to the extreme, and shows the mentality of the people running this game. How can ANYONE be okay with this idea at ALL.
Do you think they will really increase cooldowns? They are not stupid, they do have meeting where they talk about this, they know players would be mad. Players are already ready to buy this with current cooldowns.
And of course they need to increase the current profit of this game.. do you think pwe didn't gave them goals for new year? They ordered them to make new features that will increase total profit in order to get bigger budget for this game. And they must do this to keep their jobs. This is business, f2p is business. So this is what we will/could get
What I really want, for the love of the baby kuvah'magh, is for daily mission timers to reset at a set server time, rather than at intervals based on last-played.
If I actually tried to keep up with my characters' daily timers, across STO and NW, my virtual life's to-do list would be about twenty times more complex than my real life's.
As for pay-to-reset, for the above reason I really can't see myself ever using it. I just do whatever any given character has available when I feel like playing it.
@Venture-1. @Venture from City of Heroes if you remember that. Yes, that Venture. Yes, I probably trashed your MA arc. You'll have to be specific; for me it was Tuesday.
I am going to hold judgment for now. Not because it doesn't worry me, but because I want to know what it will ACTUALLY be like. It really depends on how intrusive this ends up being.
Agreed. I never judge something until it goes live. Although, I don't think it will change much for most people. See a few new lines in the various windows is all I will ever see of it. I just don't see it affecting Reputation projects or Fleet projects. The only things I can see it changing are the Event Grinds and Hard missions like the Nukara and Deferi Invasion missions.
Isnt it funny how there was no mention of this whilst Dan Stahl was at the helm, but the second hes relieved of his position things change? coincidence? maybe not!
Agreed. I never judge something until it goes live. Although, I don't think it will change much for most people. See a few new lines in the various windows is all I will ever see of it. I just don't see it affecting Reputation projects or Fleet projects. The only things I can see it changing are the Event Grinds and Hard missions like the Nukara and Deferi Invasion missions.
Indeed. I could see this new system not being THAT bad. If they put a tag on being able to redo stuff like you said the hard missions from Deferi again, that's not a big deal.
If they start putting 20 hour timers on like...STFs, and then ask a Zen cost or something to do them again for the day, then I could see that be a VERY big problem.
But we don't know. Could be REALLY bad, could be not that bad at all. We don't truly know until it gets here.
PS. I find it a bit amusing they've already moved this thread down to the C-store/Zen/Promotions area of the forum.
I remain empathetic to the concerns of my community, but do me a favor and lay off the god damn name calling and petty remarks. It will get you nowhere.
I must admit, respect points to Trendy for laying down the law like that.
Indeed. I could see this new system not being THAT bad. If they put a tag on being able to redo stuff like you said the hard missions from Deferi again, that's not a big deal.
If they start putting 20 hour timers on like...STFs, and then ask a Zen cost or something to do them again for the day, then I could see that be a VERY big problem.
But we don't know. Could be REALLY bad, could be not that bad at all. We don't truly know until it gets here.
PS. I find it a bit amusing they've already moved this thread down to the C-store/Zen/Promotions area of the forum.
I hope they don't increase any timers. If they don't, this will be a really good way to get my alts back in business since I wouldn't have to wait a month and a half to finish my reputation grind on every toon I make.
Really the rep grind is game ruiningly painful for me since I can't play reliably, so if I can use that STF dilithium to speed up my reputation projects all my mothballed alts will be singing glory hallelujah.
if i were you i wouldnt be so quick to be that arrogant about the idea of support that PWE would keep the game going forever. when the money dries up from these apparent good "ideas" as just another fad, people will realize it at some point and give up, by that point STO will fold.
just don't keep your head in clouds.
At 52 years old, both of my feet are planted firmly on the ground, TYVM.
As to being arrogant, I'll admit to it publicly in front of witnesses. Unlike some other people around here.
I'm not interested in the game going forever because everything has to end eventually. As a lifelong Star Trek fan, I've been through something ending in Star Trek many times before. So, STO ending someday will not be the end of the world for me.
Besides, with all the complaining you do around here about everything, you're the perfect example of my point. Haven't seen you post anything positive in a very very long time. Yet somehow you're still playing STO and posting here.
Thank you for being the proof of my assertions. Well done! Bravo!
A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
I'm going to assume since this thread got buried into the c-store/zen forums that this is definitely coming or it would have just remained a discussion topic.
Gold Sub since March 2010
Lifetime Sub since June 2010
Do you think they will really increase cooldowns? They are not stupid, they do have meeting where they talk about this, they know players would be mad.
Yes... yes they are. They don't CARE about whether the players are mad or not. They don't UNDERSTAND why players are mad. They don't play this game. They are either being micro-managed by PWE to turn the game into an asian-grinder-MMO (as has been explicitly commented on in past blogs/comments) or have simply been told basic outlines of what they need to do and are coming up with the individual methods of torture themselves. They are doing this intentionally. They have a large audience and are destroying it for short-term profits to appease their new bosses. Only question is are they being directed with commands from above, or simply being given deadlines and ultimatums to "do this or the money stops"?
lol, they moved this to the c-store forum so everyone stops reading it :P
While I don't like to see threads of mine essentially buried, I also did not like the way the speculation and accusations were getting out of hand without any official word on what this change - if it happens- will do.
Until such time that they release hard details this is probably the best place for it.
While I don't like to see threads of mine essentially buried, I also did not like the way the speculation and accusations were getting out of hand without any official word on what this change - if it happens- will do.
Until such time that they release hard details this is probably the best place for it.
Here's my GUESS:
for players who don't use the feature, nothing will change, except an extra UI button.
players who do use the feature will be able to do dailies as often as they pay the zen.
the cost will probably be high enough to make it useless for farming anything but marks and obviously, event items..
for players who don't use the feature, nothing will change, except an extra UI button.
Everything in the history of Cryptic and the history of PWE tells us that things will change. The only reason this is there is because they are intending to increase the average player's grind, and this is the pre-emptive money-making scheme to justify it. They've even made comments about PWE and the asian grinder MMO and how Cryptic was incorporating those elements into STO. There's also the new hand on the wheel that comes out and says he's all for grinding. The signs are all very clear.
The players who don't use this feature will NOT remain unaffected. They will be affected. The entire POINT is to affect them to the point they take action. Cryptic hopes this action will be to spend real world money. The real action is people will leave the game completely.
As evidenced with Cryptic's utterly baffled response to the community outrage at the need to grind for anniversary rewards right on the heels of an annoying holiday grind and right before word about changes to other systems that makes the game more grindy. They truly don't understand why we don't want to toil mindlessly repeatedly and pay Cryptic for the right to wait for timegates and grind mechanics. They honestly thought we'd enjoy it.
I'm going to assume since this thread got buried into the c-store/zen forums that this is definitely coming or it would have just remained a discussion topic.
No it was a discussion about zen/c-store changes which means it should be in the c-store, zen and promotions area. (PS - No, I didn't move it :P)
I'm waiting to see how this actually gets implemented and if there are any other changes that would make these almost a necessity to get things done (which I haven't seen any so it could be paranoia on that part). I do like the idea though as it helps those of us that really don't have a lot of time get as much done in a day as possible, even if we have to fork out zen to do it.
Yes, I'm that Askray@Batbayer in game. Yes, I still play. No, I don't care. Former Community Moderator, Former SSR DJ, Now Full time father to two kids, Husband, Retail Worker. Tiktok: @Askray Facebook: Askray113
I have 2 options to get to work, I could take the regular highway that is moving at a crawl or I could take the less busy express toll highway and pay to get their faster. What is the difference for paying Zen to bypass the timers? Both are an option. As someone said earlier, this is more pay to hurry vs pay to win.
Well said...
I dont see this as a huge issue... people pay to change traits, specs, etc... this isnt much different... reset CD's... not a huge deal.
I see that the path this game is taking is the path of the Asian supergrind style of play, to be able to do the grind daily you must buy tokens to remove cool down. Sadly this is the path of the Asian games. :mad: Kind of disappointed do.
Mind as well just create a T5 Starbase Ticket too. I'd buy it.
That would probably be hundreds if not thousands of dollars to be equivalent.
Some browser games have count down timers and sell various time reducing items. From 15 minutes to up to a day in time savings. So if you spent $30 to buy a one day time reduction for your fleet base. Would you use it on a 20hr timer or wait for one of the multi-day timers?
You want an actual pay to win (or at least anti-grind.) Make actual fleet marks purchasable.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
I see that the path this game is taking is the path of the Asian supergrind style of play, to be able to do the grind daily you must buy tokens to remove cool down. Sadly this is the path of the Asian games. :mad: Kind of disappointed do.
you want Supergrind? Acquire a Zod Rune in Diablo 2. Now THAT is grinding!
Nothing Cryptic has ever added to this game compares.... well except the madness of building a T5 starbase solo....
Taking the argument to that extreme doesn't do anything other than dismiss the problem and defend Cryptic... For example, if we were talking about some mass murderer that shot up a public place and you came in and said "Yeah, but he's no ADOLF HITLER! Now THAT was a bad guy!" you're just dismissing any complaints and ignoring the facts at hand.
Regardless of your thoughts on the grind level of Diablo 2, THIS game, right here and now, is going to pot and doing so very quickly.
Comments
This is precisely why people are up in arms about this.
It's one thing to make a game more enjoyable or accessible, but that's not what's going on here. Cryptic is going to offer an item for real currency that lets players bypass a system that Cryptic developed. This is akin to the city closing half the lanes of a highway and then charging people for a pass that lets them drive in said closed lanes because they don't want to wait around in traffic that the city itself caused.
Developer creates time-gate.
Developer realizes time-gate causes friction.
Developer offers pass to skip time-gate.
How can that not be anything but sleazy and greedy? Cryptic should be ashamed, but they won't be. They'd have to have some shame left.
...but this actually happens.
I know it does and most people would consider it extortion.
What we do know is the calendar events are going away in favor of dailies and mark weekend events. What I have said on other posts is I'm not interested in waiting three or four weeks for a bonus mark event. I also stated I was concerned about missions being made dailies that may allow for less time to grind like say mirror universe is a daily you can run one time... basically making it worthless.
The other thing that could happen is things are made a rotating daily like the fleet actions... one day its tour the galaxy the next day its mirror invasion, etc. Not in favor of this either.
The other possibility is that the hourly events are converted into dailies that are intact as they are now but made so you can do them at any point like other dailies. So for the bonus mark event daily you would start the mission wrapper that opens a three hour window and you grind your marks during the window for bonus marks. Same for the one hour mirror invasion, etc. This is not the case though for Tour the Galaxy on tribble so I don't expect this to happen.
I would expect in any of the options that the mentioned token is going to allow you to alleviate the cooldown cycle for one of those mark daily missions so you can do again without waiting. I'm fine with this as long as the daily timing is the equivalent of what we are losing on the calendar event cycle and the daily token shortens this wait between cooldowns.
Bottom line... Lots of possibilities but no real answers until next weeks blogs. We will just have to wait and see.
Lifetime Sub since June 2010
This is greed to the extreme, and shows the mentality of the people running this game. How can ANYONE be okay with this idea at ALL.
Hint: You don't even know what you're talking about. The entirety of the information you have to go on is one screenshot and 11 pages of increasingly wild speculation on a forum already rife with wild speculation.
A free token/day (non-accumulating) for Gold.
Subscription has been really light on actual benefits, and this could actually make it worthwhile.
I didn't come here to play an Iphone or Facebook game, and if that kind of treatment is what I will see, then I will go. Or if Arc becomes mandatory, then I will go.
Do you think they will really increase cooldowns? They are not stupid, they do have meeting where they talk about this, they know players would be mad. Players are already ready to buy this with current cooldowns.
And of course they need to increase the current profit of this game.. do you think pwe didn't gave them goals for new year? They ordered them to make new features that will increase total profit in order to get bigger budget for this game. And they must do this to keep their jobs. This is business, f2p is business. So this is what we will/could get
If I actually tried to keep up with my characters' daily timers, across STO and NW, my virtual life's to-do list would be about twenty times more complex than my real life's.
As for pay-to-reset, for the above reason I really can't see myself ever using it. I just do whatever any given character has available when I feel like playing it.
Agreed. I never judge something until it goes live. Although, I don't think it will change much for most people. See a few new lines in the various windows is all I will ever see of it. I just don't see it affecting Reputation projects or Fleet projects. The only things I can see it changing are the Event Grinds and Hard missions like the Nukara and Deferi Invasion missions.
Indeed. I could see this new system not being THAT bad. If they put a tag on being able to redo stuff like you said the hard missions from Deferi again, that's not a big deal.
If they start putting 20 hour timers on like...STFs, and then ask a Zen cost or something to do them again for the day, then I could see that be a VERY big problem.
But we don't know. Could be REALLY bad, could be not that bad at all. We don't truly know until it gets here.
PS. I find it a bit amusing they've already moved this thread down to the C-store/Zen/Promotions area of the forum.
Guarantee somewhere down the line there will be tokens to increase the dilithium cap for a day.
I hope they don't increase any timers. If they don't, this will be a really good way to get my alts back in business since I wouldn't have to wait a month and a half to finish my reputation grind on every toon I make.
Really the rep grind is game ruiningly painful for me since I can't play reliably, so if I can use that STF dilithium to speed up my reputation projects all my mothballed alts will be singing glory hallelujah.
At 52 years old, both of my feet are planted firmly on the ground, TYVM.
As to being arrogant, I'll admit to it publicly in front of witnesses. Unlike some other people around here.
I'm not interested in the game going forever because everything has to end eventually. As a lifelong Star Trek fan, I've been through something ending in Star Trek many times before. So, STO ending someday will not be the end of the world for me.
Besides, with all the complaining you do around here about everything, you're the perfect example of my point. Haven't seen you post anything positive in a very very long time. Yet somehow you're still playing STO and posting here.
Thank you for being the proof of my assertions. Well done! Bravo!
Lifetime Sub since June 2010
Yes... yes they are. They don't CARE about whether the players are mad or not. They don't UNDERSTAND why players are mad. They don't play this game. They are either being micro-managed by PWE to turn the game into an asian-grinder-MMO (as has been explicitly commented on in past blogs/comments) or have simply been told basic outlines of what they need to do and are coming up with the individual methods of torture themselves. They are doing this intentionally. They have a large audience and are destroying it for short-term profits to appease their new bosses. Only question is are they being directed with commands from above, or simply being given deadlines and ultimatums to "do this or the money stops"?
While I don't like to see threads of mine essentially buried, I also did not like the way the speculation and accusations were getting out of hand without any official word on what this change - if it happens- will do.
Until such time that they release hard details this is probably the best place for it.
for players who don't use the feature, nothing will change, except an extra UI button.
players who do use the feature will be able to do dailies as often as they pay the zen.
the cost will probably be high enough to make it useless for farming anything but marks and obviously, event items..
My character Tsin'xing
Everything in the history of Cryptic and the history of PWE tells us that things will change. The only reason this is there is because they are intending to increase the average player's grind, and this is the pre-emptive money-making scheme to justify it. They've even made comments about PWE and the asian grinder MMO and how Cryptic was incorporating those elements into STO. There's also the new hand on the wheel that comes out and says he's all for grinding. The signs are all very clear.
The players who don't use this feature will NOT remain unaffected. They will be affected. The entire POINT is to affect them to the point they take action. Cryptic hopes this action will be to spend real world money. The real action is people will leave the game completely.
As evidenced with Cryptic's utterly baffled response to the community outrage at the need to grind for anniversary rewards right on the heels of an annoying holiday grind and right before word about changes to other systems that makes the game more grindy. They truly don't understand why we don't want to toil mindlessly repeatedly and pay Cryptic for the right to wait for timegates and grind mechanics. They honestly thought we'd enjoy it.
No it was a discussion about zen/c-store changes which means it should be in the c-store, zen and promotions area. (PS - No, I didn't move it :P)
I'm waiting to see how this actually gets implemented and if there are any other changes that would make these almost a necessity to get things done (which I haven't seen any so it could be paranoia on that part). I do like the idea though as it helps those of us that really don't have a lot of time get as much done in a day as possible, even if we have to fork out zen to do it.
Former Community Moderator, Former SSR DJ, Now Full time father to two kids, Husband, Retail Worker.
Tiktok: @Askray Facebook: Askray113
Well said...
I dont see this as a huge issue... people pay to change traits, specs, etc... this isnt much different... reset CD's... not a huge deal.
Star Trek Online, Now with out the Trek....
I dunno. With how long some of those take to run. I might pay to speed some of them up.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
That would probably be hundreds if not thousands of dollars to be equivalent.
Some browser games have count down timers and sell various time reducing items. From 15 minutes to up to a day in time savings. So if you spent $30 to buy a one day time reduction for your fleet base. Would you use it on a 20hr timer or wait for one of the multi-day timers?
You want an actual pay to win (or at least anti-grind.) Make actual fleet marks purchasable.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
Nothing Cryptic has ever added to this game compares.... well except the madness of building a T5 starbase solo....
My character Tsin'xing
Regardless of your thoughts on the grind level of Diablo 2, THIS game, right here and now, is going to pot and doing so very quickly.