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Why free to play is very good!
baudl
Member Posts: 4,060 Arc User
in response to "why free to play is very bad" i thought it would only be fair to lay some facts straight, because in that other thread it seems that opinions have turned into facts.
1) would STO or even cryptic be still around if they hadn't been bought by PWE and hadn't changed their games to a f2p model?
maybe, maybe not...judging from other game developers that did not change their business model and are no more, i'd say there would be no STO today.
2)Does a subscription based model mean more and better content?
No, there is no evidence to support that...the feature episode releases in sto during the first year can't be seen as a measurement, since they most certainly were already partially finished before the game even launched.
3)Do you need any amount of real money to play and get any item/ship in this game?
with a hand full of exceptions, no. And those exceptions are optional, not mandatory. Some are even only visuals that have no impact in terms of gameplay.
4) is a microtransaction model bad for impatient people?
Most certainly, those are the people that pump the largest amount of money into the game and are also those that get most frustrated about it at the end of the month...
also notorious for searching the fault for their mistakes somewhere else, but themselves.
1) would STO or even cryptic be still around if they hadn't been bought by PWE and hadn't changed their games to a f2p model?
maybe, maybe not...judging from other game developers that did not change their business model and are no more, i'd say there would be no STO today.
2)Does a subscription based model mean more and better content?
No, there is no evidence to support that...the feature episode releases in sto during the first year can't be seen as a measurement, since they most certainly were already partially finished before the game even launched.
3)Do you need any amount of real money to play and get any item/ship in this game?
with a hand full of exceptions, no. And those exceptions are optional, not mandatory. Some are even only visuals that have no impact in terms of gameplay.
4) is a microtransaction model bad for impatient people?
Most certainly, those are the people that pump the largest amount of money into the game and are also those that get most frustrated about it at the end of the month...
also notorious for searching the fault for their mistakes somewhere else, but themselves.
Go pro or go home
Post edited by baudl on
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6) It's easy to say "Dude! Check out this awesome game!"
I bought all three Scimitar, MVAE + fleet, Excelsior Retrofit + fleet, Fleet Avenger, Fleet T'Varo, Valdore Warbird, Delta Flyer, Fleet Defiant, Account Shared Bank, EC Cap Removal, NX registry (because it's cool mkay?) even Mobius with a lucky sale and various service unlocks.
All of this with ZEN and EC, mostly first one using Dilithium Exchange. Still have to spend a dime
I don't think this one is right. There is technically nothing in STO that is not free to get.
Stuff in the Cstore can all be gotten by grinding D... and trading it to people that are spending some $ to get it for free.
Cryptic makes money on everything ever sold on the Cstore... and on every lockbox item purchased with in game EC.
Some people spend real $ to pick up Zen to sell for in game D... which they spend directly on fleet projects or items. Or they spend the Zen and items to sell on the exchange for EC to pick up other things they want.
This way there is NOTHING you can't get for free to you... that isn't to say Cryptic isn't still making money. Cryptic pays Free players in dilithium and ec, we then get what we want with that and sell the access. We sell it to players looking to skip the grind, they do that buying the grind rewards we have.... with the other fake currency Cryptic sells them for actual $. lol Its a big wheel and it only turns if free players keep grinding more then they need to sell to people who would rather drop 50 bucks a month then play 10+ hours a week.
No way, sorry ... if you have ANY idea of STO Prehistory, Beta & Launch, you know that's beyond possible ... (not like they had lots of time during these days :P , they basically had to scrap KDF because of it)
... you might be partly right about the First STFs & New Sector, Undine Story Arc & New Sector, First Level Cap Increase, First Klingon PVE (those were probably in "Glimpse in a DEV's eye" - Status) ... but not FE Series ... you also forgot lots of stuff during the first year, or simply weren't around ...
I don't think this one is right. you cant get monthly or lifetime subscription for zen through the c-store only by paying cash, therefore any of the items that are unique to the subscription rewards like the mugatu pet for example are impossible to get without spending money.
there is not anything other then these unique rewards though.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
Exactly .
This game was built from scratch in 14 months (Gecko time) .
However , if you think that this game is so much better off after going F2P , here are some stuff that we were told we'd have in F2P that never came about .
vetship isn't P2W at all, it's a fine ship, but there are better options.
Fair... you guys are right a couple pets... a couple uniforms... and a couple vet ships.
Really if you are not paying your sub for the 500 zen... or been playing with your life time sub long enough to make the stipend net out... your likely paying for nothing. I think at the current conversion rates it would take 2+ years to even out the money spent on a life time sub. The folks that got a lifetime early though... ya they have netted out by now. I am not sure getting a lifetime makes any sense now though. By my math to net out today would take until around November 2016 assuming the cost of zen doesn't jump or something.
Part of me would like to see cryptic reward there subs better... honestly though there is the other part of me that enjoys not having to give them money anymore unless I want that says na.
F2P is a short-term business model.
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Think the point was that it is the only true p2w ship in the game. Only way to earn it is to pay actual $... everything other ship can be ground out... or you can trade the things you grind (EC... or items if you do an actual trade instead of exchange purchase) to people that purchased keys to open lockboxes to pull those ships.
The point is every ship on the cstore or out of a box can be had with out spending $... but the vet ship is behind a pay wall.
Pretty much this ... best-case-scenario ... Cryptic getting enough revenue, to give us enough "goodies" on the way ...
PS : F2P is something I can live with, for the game to proceed & succeed ... but it's not like "Hooray best business model ever" ... better to have 1 or 2 FE + 1 "Expansion" a year with F2P, than none because STO was shut down ... but I'd still prefer 15 FE in 6 months ... for that matter ...
That is badly black and white and completely false.
Sub is a BAD in fact terrible business model. Its simple business 101... in order for ANY business to grow it needs to well in fact grow. You do that by selling more widgets or selling your widgets for more. Some companies decide to go high end with there product and charge more... some choose to expand into new markets and bring in fresh money.
Sub games really hit a massive wall... there is no getting around it. its a terrible model to grow. Look at the history of every MMO ever... they almost always start off with massive numbers of paying customers and over time that shrinks. Then you see them scramble to both bring in new money (players) and or start charging more for there product. You see at some point they realize there not GROWING and if its not growing well... its doing something else. For a game company bringing in customers years after a lunch is next to impossible... I mean if people loved the idea of a trek mmo they where here day one right... its not going to attract 1000s of new trek and or game lovers now. For sure not for the same price they did not spend then. (I have no idea of the numbers... but I doubt the number of 100% NEW players starting brand new subs this month is NOT very high... and it wouldn't be if the game wasn't f2p either.)
The real questions to ask are these.
1) Does F2P grow faster then sub ?
I am not really asking... I'm sort of stating the obvious. Yes F2P does in fact grow the customer base faster then Sub. There for yes business wise F2P is superior there.
2) Does F2P charge more for a product ?
Again I am going to just throw the answer down again. YES it does, per player believe it or not F2P games make more money. At least well done ones do... the truth is as much as we hate it. Cryptics lotto system has tapped into something very primal and easy to exploit. Its not a video game thing... next time you pull a game ticket of a fast food fry carton... or punch that # off some stupid product into an internet box to try and win some silly reward. You can fully understand that video game companies just like everyone else use plenty of psychology to sell you stuffs. With a bit of know how they can get you to spend 10x more in small bits then if they just upfront ask you for X.
In any event... that was a long winded answer to your Statement. No F2P is not a short term model... its in fact very long game. Look up studies on video poker games ect... gambling / game theory journals are great for those. In every case you will see that players become conditioned, they become numb to losses that grow larger and larger.
I guess that does lead me to one final question....
Has Cryptic conditioned enough of its players ?
Can they now turn out junk single missions with a gamble box and collect more and more money ?
Sadly... the science is on there side. They likely can. lmao
Well it might be long-term "money-wise" but not "development-wise" ... i.E. instead of getting a continuous flow of the story, we got one evil Iconian patsy after another ... to promote Lockboxes
this is an opinion...not a fact. and a flawed one too. new ships are the main revenue for cryptic, though i have no numbers to support that it seems pretty obvious each time a new ship is released. be it via c-store or lockbox.
the guys developing missions etc are not the same guys that create new ships...
so there is no manpower drained by revenue creating goods that are taken away from gamecontent department.
fact is however that since the game is f2p they earned much much more than through micro transactions than they ever did with subscriptions...that was stated numerous times in interviews concerning the f2p transition.
and they invested in a larger staff for various departments within the company...
so that statement is kind of illogic, since less profit and less manpower can't generate more/better content.
Don't disagree... I was responding to someone who called it a bad business model. Which it clearly isn't.
It is a terrible "artistic" model I will agree there. There are some companies that manage to walk a fine line and still retain some artistic integrity. Cryptic isn't one of them... anyone that has a problem with that should have jumped ship 2 or 3 years ago when that became obvious to most folks.
how do you know that, did anybody every came out with such a revelation to the media or to you in particular? I mean, a lot of guesswork and assumption are made on how developers at cryptic are doing their job...
a bold statement, that artists at cryptic are compromised by some corporate conspiracy to empty the players pocket.
Well the people to blame are the people that make the decisions where to use there resources. They are using some BS Vegas style psychology on us. (they could have chose to try and walk a line and be one of the rare companies that makes money and art at the same time)
The people that make the decisions... know that the more they get us gambling in general the less they have to do to keep us gambling. At this point we are like the abused spouse that won't give up on the relationship. (ok bad taste on my part there).
Really though... think about casual gamblers. To get them hooked you needs flashy lights big games some razzel dazzel. Fast forward a few years... they are in a dim light drinking room filled with 10 year old coin machines, half of them with flickering back and burned out cherry lights on top. The room might be half as full... those players though are just pumping in the silver, and hitting the atm every 30 min. A couple of them have fallen even further and there in the back room playing some terrible rigged game of poker with people that will break parts of them if they don't show up on pay day with some paper.
That is where we are... Cryptic is likely going to start bleeding players a bit at a time from here out. The ones that stay though, more and more they will sell stuff for there key fix.
you draw conections where there are none...no artist is forced by his boss to make certain subliminal messages/content so that "the poor, innocent player" gets a money consuming gambling addiction
and it most certainly got nothing to do with the quality of ingame missions, etc...
one must really be utterly paranoid if he believes that the single most important goal of crytic/PWE is to grab the last penny out of the players purse
I can just look at the obvious... go through the patch notes... go over every thing that has happened. Am I assuming... sure no more then when I decide to dump X or Y stock based on an analysis of performance.
Art is always subjective. Well imo the artistic quality of the work done for STO the last couple of years is 100% suspect. 90% of what is released seems to only exist to market a gamble box or store item.
I know for a fact the STO team has been reduced from where it was in terms of numbers. Yes they made a point of stating they added a few people awhile back. Then a month or so later one of those new people admitted to be mainly hired and working on another Cryptic game, and having a small responsibility on the STO team.
That is ok don't get me wrong. A game that has been around as long as STO doesn't need as many people... Cryptic is also a small developer. I am not saying they should have massive teams either. However management doesn't seem to support a true artistic vision for STO. If I have to defend that view point, then you must not be playing the game.
You miss the point 100%.
Its not about the artist being forced to do anything at all.
Its about management deciding... that they will get the writer to write content for ONE mission. They will get the GFX guy to update X or Y NPC and turn them into models they can skin on a player ship. (instead of asking them to write a story arc that gets them to Y and then deciding how to make that happen with in a budget)
Its not the artists that have failed... its management who has failed to get them to produce work at all. You can call it conspiracy if you like. I am telling you though as someone who has studied human behaviour and been paid for consultant work related to that field. Cryptic has someone making decisions that fully understands the psychology of gambling. I have explained in my previous posts something I have been paid good money to help companies use. Mostly companies that do stuff like that are smart about it... and they still try hard to deliver on all fronts. Its interesting to note though that if they do it right... they don't really have to to keep making money.
Does that vet ship make it so you insta win, and pwn everything with no effort? Nope. It's just a shiny given to players who put in lifetime subscriptions.
P2w my tail
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1
Of course what I stated was my opinion. I think it would have been clearer if I stated that it is a bad model from the artistic point of view, as you called it since I really don't care about how much money they make. Each and every decision is bound to the question wether people will pay for X instead of how can we improve Y in a sensible way. And new grinds and bioships in lockboxes are not what I call "improvements". Since the game went F2P I didn't spend a single cent and I won't change that, even if it menas they would shut down the servers.
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I know I feel you... I don't spend money anymore either. I stopped subbing around the 800 day mark.
Thing is with there model... as long as you and I keep playing they are making money. Our grind allows them to attract new players.
We keep the game alive... we keep prices on the exchange up.. we make new players want to "catch up".
How do they catch up ? How do they get shineys off the exchange (that we may have put there). Its simple they give money to Cryptic.
The only way to play STO and NOT make money for Cryptic... is to NOT sell any dilithium ever. Earn it and spend it but DO NOT convert it to Zen, nor spend it on Fleet projects ever. (that is someones money - or will lead to someone else spending some of it)
Further to that you must never ever buy or sell anything off the exchange ever. That entices people to buy Zen to convert to EC... or worse to buy lockbox keys and open boxes... so they can sell the nice stuffs to get other nice stuffs.
Exchange / D Exchange = Cash in Cryptics pocket... every time no matter what.
people must make peace with the fact that PVP, balancing, bug fixing are not prioritys at cryptic...period.
if those are things you absolutely need in a computer game, well STO is not your game.
if you have a gambling addiction and little restrain at spending your money on those "gambles"...STO is probably nothing for you either.
however if you are cool with those things...STO is pretty much perfect.
f2p model is THE best out there, only rivaled by lotro, imo.
Is subscription only feasable for a game like STO? No, never was, never will be (new ships were allways only exclusively available via micro transactions)
...i can't even imagine that they made a profit with the game after the initial hype was over. Probably broke even during the first year though...
STO is clearly a casual game for Star Trek fans and for people that normaly don't play on computers. It is save to asume that those people do not intend to pay a monthly subscription to play a game, but are more likely to engage in micro transaction once in a while.
the fact that we are discussing this on the forum, excludes us already from this group, but it is save to say that they not only exist but are a huge percentage of the overall playerbase. And those are the people this game is made for. And STO is actually quite a good game in that regard.
We dont doubt that a f2p game with a great model is good, but it is not the case of STO. It doesnt matter how good is their model if they abuse so much from their customers. Something that you obviously forgot. If there is no balance, it doesnt matter what model do you have, it is useless. Wake up, please.
Aww, what's the matter? Are the Negative-F2P responses you're getting in your F2P Love thread making you a sad panda?
Too Good. Running away from the LIES that are posted in this thread won't change anything.
Deal with it.
That would mean something if the game was ever balanced to begin with. So that argument literally holds no value.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1