Second, all existing content, all new story content, patrols and most queues will not require a Tier 6 or Upgraded Tier 5 starship.
Only the most challenging new level 60 content will strongly benefit from using an upgraded Tier 5 starship or a Tier 6 starship, however it will not strictly require it.
So why are we bothering with this? If we can just use our existing ships, why bother upgrading, especially if all you'll get is extra ship HP?
You're just a machine. And machines can be broken.
it's mentioned in the article that they haven't decided whether it will be a straight up zen cost, or will require a tradeable token that will be purchasable for zen- like fleet modules.
I'm deciding for you: it's the latter, and if you can't see that maybe you need your eyes checked.
I spent more that 100 on this game and I wont pay a dime for upgrade to T5-U ship because it is still UP compared to T6. I would pay 10 for T6 fleet version of my T5 c store ship if it have all T6 stuff. If not then you wont see my money anmore. (its not rage its realistic, and seems like 90% ppl have similar thoughts)
if it mean that the JHAS is geting tier 5-U then i really suggest that you give it tier 6 fully as it is the most expensive and hardest ship to get your hands on this would be best for it otherwise it will be hard as a selling point for this ship anymore
That counts for all other Lockbox ships too, no one will open the old Boxes anymore for a bit of Spacejunk with a "unique" hull,
Beta, LTA, CE, Multiple preorder Versions, all Addon Packs except AoY, nearly all KDF/Rom and ~50% of all Fedships, over 25 LockboxShips, Endurer of Atari's "Year of Hell", but...
I would suspect that tier 6 ships will cost more than any current tier 5 as they are superior, so the player who upgrades is just bringing his overall spending in line with someone who comes in and just buys a tier 6 straight out.
as 5-u is slightly inferior i would actually expect it to be ultimately cheaper to have gone down the upgrade route than buying straight out but we will see.
geko just said there are doing to be other ways to earn traits, so thats not a big deal and the special boff seats might only be for these current new ships so i need to see the boff seating for these and future ships before i can wrap my head around the set up and the implications. so im just going to have to reserve judgment until i see the layouts, and the pricing.
I think a per-ship unlock is far too extreme, especially considering the ship list has grown geometrically lately, and that not long ago a free ship slot or two was handed out by Cryptic, and that people like to have a collection of a few ships to suit them -- especially with the ship profiles and on-the-fly switching which was enabled.
Cryptic: You know we use multiple ships, you encourage us to use multiple ships, then you TAX us per ship! Come, come. That's unseemly.
Might I suggest a PER-CHARACTER unlock? A 1-time use, like a costume slot unlock or a ship slot unlock, which enables T5-U on any available ship which this character may choose in the future?
Honestly? Let's face it. You KNOW how many toons some people have. You know for a fact the kind of player base you have, the perfectionists, the collectors, the RPers, etc. You'll probably make more money for a $5/500z per-char unlock than you would charging $10/1000z per ship.
Your method will simply drive people away. We'll simply min/max our current ships as best we can, and be more resentful for your actions in the long run. Don't do this.
so basically the normal non C-store Odyssey I have been using doesnt matter?
even though its the "largest and most advanced ship the fed has ever made", special/limited time rewards like the anniversary Odyssey should be included.
i'd like to see the mirror ships added to, but they arent as high a priority as my main odyssey.
"Pressing this button will prompt you to pay a Zen cost (or possibly require an item with a Zen cost).
This cost will be significantly lower than if you were to purchase a Tier 6 ship from the Zen Store. "
this doesnt inspire much confidence, especially given the previous track record of the company. heck i tried to submit a help ticket the other day and the system didnt even register the ticket when i submitted......
i know new content will come and existing wont be the cats meow anymore, but the pay to win mentality isnt becoming.
lets pump out new content, charge where we can and ignore the broken things!
sector red alert bug ring a bell?
My suggestion:
i think the staff needs to take some time off new content and look over what is already there and fix/improve it. and i dont mean cosmetic things like new uniforms, i mean real nuts and bolts stuff.
like i was in a red alert a day or two ago and it was lagging so bad from all the weapons fire i had to cross my fingers and hope my ship was still kicking, and normally i hardly ever lag but i have been seeing an increasing trend.
so once u get all of this out of ur system, how about doing some bug fixing and performance work.....
"Tickle us, do we not laugh? Prick us, do we not bleed? Wrong us, shall we not revenge?" -General Chang
Note that although only T6 ships will come with a Ship Trait (not T5-U), ships are not the only way to acquire Ship Traits. Ship Traits are not restricted to the ship. Its something you unlock for you captain and you can use on any ship. There will be other ways to unlock Ship Traits. More details on this soon.
The blog says NO trait for T5-U
I guess that is specifically in reference to the ship XP tracker?
The only difference between these ships in Starship Mastery is that T6 ships have a Starship Trait that can be unlocked at Level 5 whereas T5-U ships Starship Mastery progression ends at Level 4 and they dont have a Starship Trait to be unlocked.
So you wont get a ship trait from playing the game but you can buy one in a lockbox?
I don't care if things are obsolete or not. I will be buying a Tier 6 ship, no question about that. But what is driving me away from the game is the fact that I've payed for ship, and now have to not only pay once for a fleet version upgrade, but once again for it to be competitive, even though other ships (lockbox, lobi, and special promotion ones) that are on-par with fleet ships are being upgraded for free, but things that have been payed for before in an upgrade, need to be payed for again, to be "competitive."
I'm still trying to wrap my head about the upgrade system.
Okay, we were told that Tier 5s ships get a purchasable option (bleh) to Tier 5U status, which gives our Tier 5 ships more HPs, a new console slot, and opens up to some of the Tier 6 traits.
But with Fleet ships, we just know they are getting a free upgrades.......but to what? Tier 5U? Tier 5.5U? Tier 5.9? Tier 6-? Tier 6?
i think the staff needs to take some time off new content and look over what is already there and fix/improve it. and i dont mean cosmetic things like new uniforms, i mean real nuts and bolts stuff.
like i was in a red alert a day or two ago and it was lagging so bad from all the weapons fire i had to cross my fingers and hope my ship was still kicking, and normally i hardly ever lag but i have been seeing an increasing trend.
That doesn't earn Cryptic money. Just like having an artist spend 2 minutes to fix the Galaxy-X's glaring model flaws doesn't earn them money.
How about extending that free upgrade to people who already spent money on the ship period, like for example, fleet ships, and Z-Store ships.
If you want to prevent backlash, move to "if you spent money on it, you don't spend money to upgrade it now" model... I understand the need to charge for the upgrade in some fashion, but do that for the people who are riding ships bought with dilithium or mirror universe ships.
Charging for Fleet ships when we already paid in both time to grind out the unlock and Real Money (for the fleet ship module) to unlock the capability to get the ship, and then the time get the necessary fleet credit FOR the ship, well that is just rubbing salt in a wound.
Lobi Store, Lock Box, Event, *FLEET* and Event ships should be exempt from cost for the upgrade process.
As a newer player to this game trying to grind for Dil to exchange for Zen I feel a lot of this stuff is just putting things farther out of my reach as the price of Zen (buying with Dil) is going up and will continue to go up and up. But I guess thats what Cryptic/PWE wants, this way they force you to spend rl cash eventually to be able to experience all the content.
This is the same stuff that happened with PWE's other game Perfect World International. In order to even have a chance at playing new content that comes out you pretty much need to spend $100's to $1000's of dollars to get the gear to even give you a chance. The time it would take you to get the gear otherwise surpasses 1 year easily if not surpassing 2 years of playing time. This in turn causes a lot of problems in the community when players start to rage against each other because someone in your squad does not have good enough gear and causes the squad to fail or struggle through the instance they are in. This also in turn causes some players to reject others from accepting others in to squads to complete things.
Maybe I'm wrong I dont know. But I see this going down the same path as Perfect World International. I spent way more than I care to admit on PWI. I came to this game because the "Free to play" costs were not like PWI and I was actually able to get somewhere just by playing the content of the game. I see this slipping away on here soon also.
I would rather pay a monthly subscription fee and be on a equal playing field as others than have it "Free to play" which usually is more costly. But from a business perspective I can see how doing things this way makes the company more money.
I am loving this game so far and am having a lot of fun but if it heads down the same road as PWI then this will end up not being the game for me anymore.
Time will tell I suppose. But for now I'm enjoying it
So to summarize, we are ALL getting screwed over big time. :mad:
What incentive and reason is there even to use a T5-U ship, if they are going to be inferior in every way to T6 ships?
You really dropped the ball on this one Cryptic.
I think after this I'm pretty much done with starship purchases, and I find myself honestly doubting if I even want to continue playing this game anymore.
??? How exactly did they miss the mark "by a long shot?"
By making the ships inferior to T6 for the new content, they essentially make even the upgraded versions of the ships less useful for the game as it moves forward. That includes ships people spent real money on. A lot of canon ships.
I don't trust them anymore. There's no impetus to spend money on this game when they do that. This isn't like in Everquest where my upgrades were obtained by defeating bosses in the game.
What SHOULD they have done?
Not monetized the upgrading system from the get-go. Or maintained the top tier as it stood and just made the new ships expanded side-grades. With those new bells and whistles available to, say, a fleet Defiant. Like the new BOFF seat.
And, why still post on this forum if you don't play anymore?
Free game, free country. I've still got helpful insight to provide. It's not like one can "quit" a free game. I have uninstalled, but if they maybe did something useful or interesting to me in the next few years, I might consider returning. As is, I believe management just wants to squeeze profits, and the developers are at a loss creatively as to how to juggle that with continuing to give Star Trek fans rock solid Star Trek content that they want to "play."
Right now the game is just a glorified Pay to Fly a Star Trek looking Ship around event. I did that for 4 years. Now I'm being pushed out by a series of bad decisions.
Like the specialization tree.
Enjoy that. I already did THAT treadmill with Everquest. (And the logic behind it is directly 180 degrees opposite of the logic behind the captain trait revamp).
Like I said, I still have insight to provide. I just think this game is no longer being designed for a Star Trek fan like me. Maybe other Star Trek fans. But not this one.
It's sad. But hey, since we're also talking about things they've point blank said ... consider this ... they've point bland straight up said they care about NEW players. And a lot of decisions are being made to get new players. They have also danced around how they don't care about vet players. The longer YOU play this game, the less they need you or your money. They're not into retention. Just churn and burn.
I already know how that goes. You will eventually too.
Sometimes I feel like most of sto's playerbase have never played any other mmo's. How can this possibly be a surprise Of course the expansion is going to make everything obsolete, it's what expansions do.
While you are totally correct, a lot of this problem is Cryptic's own fault. Stalling a level raise and only progressing sideways for nearly 4 years was foolish, totally and utterly foolish. It should never have been allowed to get to the point where we were forced to pool so many resources in one "tier" of ships for so long. There should have been no more than 2 years between cap raises. On a somewhat related note.. leveling to 50 should NEVER have been allowed to get so fast either. There is no reason someone should be able to get to max level in under a week.
If we can get ship traits from elsewhere, I'm fine with not being able to get a T5U ship to maximum mastery.
Once again, I'll reiterate: The extra bridge officer seat is the deal-breaker.
I would be more than willing to put up a whole pile of Zen to put my T5 ship on par with a T6. It'd be fair to me to make the price precisely equivalent, with the upgrade costing the difference between a T5 and a T6 ship. Maybe even a bit more. But if I'm going to do that, I would like to see my upgraded T5 ship get that extra boff seat so I can actually be a ship that functions like a T6 ship, even if I miss out on perks like a ship trait.
Losing bridge officer seat, to me, isn't just passing up "bells and whistles." Boff seats are the core of how your ship functions, and not having one hampers T5U ships instantly.
The artist formerly known as PlanetofHats.
Actual join date: Open beta, 2009ish.
Content from level 50-60 can be done with our current ships.
However if you want there are another tier of ships to buy
or you can upgrade your current ship to near T6 levels.
Your pain runs deep.
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
So to summarize, we are ALL getting screwed over big time. :mad:
What incentive and reason is there even to use a T5-U ship, if they are going to be inferior in every way to T6 ships?
You really dropped the ball on this one Cryptic.
I think after this I'm pretty much done with starship purchases, and I find myself honestly doubting if I even want to continue playing this game anymore.
But they won't be inferior in every way! They get...um...four Space Mastery slots and Hull HP upgrades! So...um...wait...I guess they kind of are. :P
Comments
So why are we bothering with this? If we can just use our existing ships, why bother upgrading, especially if all you'll get is extra ship HP?
??? How exactly did they miss the mark "by a long shot?" What SHOULD they have done?
And, why still post on this forum if you don't play anymore?
I'm deciding for you: it's the latter, and if you can't see that maybe you need your eyes checked.
My guess is because they've upped the difficulty so that you'll get spanked if you don't? It's not /required/ but it's highly recommended.
That counts for all other Lockbox ships too, no one will open the old Boxes anymore for a bit of Spacejunk with a "unique" hull,
as 5-u is slightly inferior i would actually expect it to be ultimately cheaper to have gone down the upgrade route than buying straight out but we will see.
geko just said there are doing to be other ways to earn traits, so thats not a big deal and the special boff seats might only be for these current new ships so i need to see the boff seating for these and future ships before i can wrap my head around the set up and the implications. so im just going to have to reserve judgment until i see the layouts, and the pricing.
Cryptic: You know we use multiple ships, you encourage us to use multiple ships, then you TAX us per ship! Come, come. That's unseemly.
Might I suggest a PER-CHARACTER unlock? A 1-time use, like a costume slot unlock or a ship slot unlock, which enables T5-U on any available ship which this character may choose in the future?
Honestly? Let's face it. You KNOW how many toons some people have. You know for a fact the kind of player base you have, the perfectionists, the collectors, the RPers, etc. You'll probably make more money for a $5/500z per-char unlock than you would charging $10/1000z per ship.
Your method will simply drive people away. We'll simply min/max our current ships as best we can, and be more resentful for your actions in the long run. Don't do this.
even though its the "largest and most advanced ship the fed has ever made", special/limited time rewards like the anniversary Odyssey should be included.
i'd like to see the mirror ships added to, but they arent as high a priority as my main odyssey.
this doesnt inspire much confidence, especially given the previous track record of the company. heck i tried to submit a help ticket the other day and the system didnt even register the ticket when i submitted......
i know new content will come and existing wont be the cats meow anymore, but the pay to win mentality isnt becoming.
lets pump out new content, charge where we can and ignore the broken things!
sector red alert bug ring a bell?
My suggestion:
i think the staff needs to take some time off new content and look over what is already there and fix/improve it. and i dont mean cosmetic things like new uniforms, i mean real nuts and bolts stuff.
like i was in a red alert a day or two ago and it was lagging so bad from all the weapons fire i had to cross my fingers and hope my ship was still kicking, and normally i hardly ever lag but i have been seeing an increasing trend.
so once u get all of this out of ur system, how about doing some bug fixing and performance work.....
-General Chang
That is a pity. I like my Mirror ships, but it is what it is. Not gonna rage or anything.
The blog says NO trait for T5-U
I guess that is specifically in reference to the ship XP tracker?
http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/7002133
So you wont get a ship trait from playing the game but you can buy one in a lockbox?
http://sto.gamepedia.com/Fleet_Patrol_Escort
Okay, we were told that Tier 5s ships get a purchasable option (bleh) to Tier 5U status, which gives our Tier 5 ships more HPs, a new console slot, and opens up to some of the Tier 6 traits.
But with Fleet ships, we just know they are getting a free upgrades.......but to what? Tier 5U? Tier 5.5U? Tier 5.9? Tier 6-? Tier 6?
That doesn't earn Cryptic money. Just like having an artist spend 2 minutes to fix the Galaxy-X's glaring model flaws doesn't earn them money.
No, it says you cannot EARN a Starship trait with T5-U.
Starship traits are slottable in the traits menu like space and ground traits, they can be used on any ship.
If you want to prevent backlash, move to "if you spent money on it, you don't spend money to upgrade it now" model... I understand the need to charge for the upgrade in some fashion, but do that for the people who are riding ships bought with dilithium or mirror universe ships.
Charging for Fleet ships when we already paid in both time to grind out the unlock and Real Money (for the fleet ship module) to unlock the capability to get the ship, and then the time get the necessary fleet credit FOR the ship, well that is just rubbing salt in a wound.
Lobi Store, Lock Box, Event, *FLEET* and Event ships should be exempt from cost for the upgrade process.
This is the same stuff that happened with PWE's other game Perfect World International. In order to even have a chance at playing new content that comes out you pretty much need to spend $100's to $1000's of dollars to get the gear to even give you a chance. The time it would take you to get the gear otherwise surpasses 1 year easily if not surpassing 2 years of playing time. This in turn causes a lot of problems in the community when players start to rage against each other because someone in your squad does not have good enough gear and causes the squad to fail or struggle through the instance they are in. This also in turn causes some players to reject others from accepting others in to squads to complete things.
Maybe I'm wrong I dont know. But I see this going down the same path as Perfect World International. I spent way more than I care to admit on PWI. I came to this game because the "Free to play" costs were not like PWI and I was actually able to get somewhere just by playing the content of the game. I see this slipping away on here soon also.
I would rather pay a monthly subscription fee and be on a equal playing field as others than have it "Free to play" which usually is more costly. But from a business perspective I can see how doing things this way makes the company more money.
I am loving this game so far and am having a lot of fun but if it heads down the same road as PWI then this will end up not being the game for me anymore.
Time will tell I suppose. But for now I'm enjoying it
What incentive and reason is there even to use a T5-U ship, if they are going to be inferior in every way to T6 ships?
You really dropped the ball on this one Cryptic.
I think after this I'm pretty much done with starship purchases, and I find myself honestly doubting if I even want to continue playing this game anymore.
By making the ships inferior to T6 for the new content, they essentially make even the upgraded versions of the ships less useful for the game as it moves forward. That includes ships people spent real money on. A lot of canon ships.
I don't trust them anymore. There's no impetus to spend money on this game when they do that. This isn't like in Everquest where my upgrades were obtained by defeating bosses in the game.
Not monetized the upgrading system from the get-go. Or maintained the top tier as it stood and just made the new ships expanded side-grades. With those new bells and whistles available to, say, a fleet Defiant. Like the new BOFF seat.
Free game, free country. I've still got helpful insight to provide. It's not like one can "quit" a free game. I have uninstalled, but if they maybe did something useful or interesting to me in the next few years, I might consider returning. As is, I believe management just wants to squeeze profits, and the developers are at a loss creatively as to how to juggle that with continuing to give Star Trek fans rock solid Star Trek content that they want to "play."
Right now the game is just a glorified Pay to Fly a Star Trek looking Ship around event. I did that for 4 years. Now I'm being pushed out by a series of bad decisions.
Like the specialization tree.
Enjoy that. I already did THAT treadmill with Everquest. (And the logic behind it is directly 180 degrees opposite of the logic behind the captain trait revamp).
Like I said, I still have insight to provide. I just think this game is no longer being designed for a Star Trek fan like me. Maybe other Star Trek fans. But not this one.
It's sad. But hey, since we're also talking about things they've point blank said ... consider this ... they've point bland straight up said they care about NEW players. And a lot of decisions are being made to get new players. They have also danced around how they don't care about vet players. The longer YOU play this game, the less they need you or your money. They're not into retention. Just churn and burn.
I already know how that goes. You will eventually too.
Good luck.
While you are totally correct, a lot of this problem is Cryptic's own fault. Stalling a level raise and only progressing sideways for nearly 4 years was foolish, totally and utterly foolish. It should never have been allowed to get to the point where we were forced to pool so many resources in one "tier" of ships for so long. There should have been no more than 2 years between cap raises. On a somewhat related note.. leveling to 50 should NEVER have been allowed to get so fast either. There is no reason someone should be able to get to max level in under a week.
Once again, I'll reiterate: The extra bridge officer seat is the deal-breaker.
I would be more than willing to put up a whole pile of Zen to put my T5 ship on par with a T6. It'd be fair to me to make the price precisely equivalent, with the upgrade costing the difference between a T5 and a T6 ship. Maybe even a bit more. But if I'm going to do that, I would like to see my upgraded T5 ship get that extra boff seat so I can actually be a ship that functions like a T6 ship, even if I miss out on perks like a ship trait.
Losing bridge officer seat, to me, isn't just passing up "bells and whistles." Boff seats are the core of how your ship functions, and not having one hampers T5U ships instantly.
Actual join date: Open beta, 2009ish.
They're not inferior to ALL T6, only some. Not all T6 ships will have every feature like the specialist BOFFs.
Content from level 50-60 can be done with our current ships.
However if you want there are another tier of ships to buy
or you can upgrade your current ship to near T6 levels.
Let us explore it... together. Each man hides a secret pain. It must be exposed and reckoned with. It must be dragged from the darkness and forced into the light. Share your pain. Share your pain with me... and gain strength from the sharing.
But they won't be inferior in every way! They get...um...four Space Mastery slots and Hull HP upgrades! So...um...wait...I guess they kind of are. :P