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Retire Captain feature for Zen
ron91516
Member Posts: 5 Arc User
We need a feature that will allow long time games the ability to "retire" a captain. It could be worth a new Title and Accolade. The retire feature would be only for level 50 captains. As an in-game benefit, the newly retired caption would get all of the Lobi ships (these ships would be account bound as to not make this an exploit), maybe 50K credits, 8k dilith, and any useful items that the captain may have that are account or player bound... these could be delivered via mail. The cost could be 500 zen.
I have been playing for a very long time. This is an attempt to give old players like me a way to retire the many characters that I have and consolidate to a core. I think this would be a great new feature that many long time players would take advantage of. it gives you enough to make it worth wild but still not be too crazy to be an exploit.
I have been playing for a very long time. This is an attempt to give old players like me a way to retire the many characters that I have and consolidate to a core. I think this would be a great new feature that many long time players would take advantage of. it gives you enough to make it worth wild but still not be too crazy to be an exploit.
Post edited by ron91516 on
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R.I.P. Leonard Nimoy
on characters i never play now, would be great to retire them and have
thier lobi ships passed on to another existing or newly levelled toon on the
same account. yep would be happy to pay for that service.
'when I was your age, <insert random fact about how things used to be better>'
'you young ones and your fancy ships, back in MY day .. <etc>'
'listen here you little s :eek: '
Well you get the drift.
The only objection I can see pwe/cryptic making to your idea, OP, is this one: One less Lobi Ship purchase from one customer. Times how many customers the game has. Means their profit margins will take a hit. Always something businesses are keen to avoid.
Oh yeah. Almost forgot. Something else which might go wrong with the idea, lol.
http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r6/thunderfoot006/Strictly%20for%20the%20lols/tehlols.jpg
perhaps one of the new boff specializations, mentor.
I actually like the idea of a BOff that outranks you.
Also what if instead of just Retire it was Resign Commission, and then it could be tied to joining a Civilian faction of somekind?
Maybe thats a silly idea with limited appeal but I'd like to be able to have a Civilian Character
They're not talking about ALL the Lobi ships. They're talking about, effectively, merging your alts into a single character and transferring their existing purchases over.
All said, though, I think the safer bet will be something like the event ship discount for alts albeit more expensive. There are technical hurdles for packaging up. For instance, getting the game to limit it by faction.
For just 300 Lobi (an example amount, the real value should probably be calculated: maybe 2000 ZEN or a dilithium value), you can claim any "per character" ship on an alt.
This ties into the economics of bulk pricing.
There are a percentage of players who will open lockboxes for every character to get the same ship multiple times. This is likely a small group.
There is probably a larger group who have one of these ships and whose demand for it on an alt is a non-zero value that is less than the initial purchase price.
By estimating the demand elasticity for a duplicate of a lockbox ship, this allows Cryptic to come up with a value for a discount price to offer it at and to set the price at a level which generates total higher revenue, which needs to be balanced against the lost revenue from the person who would have paid more for the duplicate lockbox ship.
Examples:
If you set the duplicate lockbox ship value at $10 and 27 people take the duplicate, you have $270 in revenue. But maybe you lost one person who would have bought $300 in lockbox keys so this pricepoint is a net loss of $130. Don't do it.
If you set the duplicate lockbox ship value at $15 and 25 people take the duplicate, you have $375 in revenue. That one person who would have spent $300 for a copy of that ship on an alt is lost. But you have a net gain of $75 in revenue. In this case, it would be foolish not to offer the duplicate.
However, the curve may work out so that if you offer the duplicate at $5 and 76 people take the duplicate, you have $380 in revenue. This would be better than either of the previous two options if you're confident about demand estimates.
Demand for a second copy of a good is rarely static. In fact, I think the discounts for copies of event ships was done by Cryptic as a means of measuring/testing player demand for duplicates of ships. It had to be a non-zero value because "free" distorts perceptions but they made it so cheap that they could see how many people would claim copies "for the heck of it" and from there can begin estimating the demand curve for duplicates of per character goods to arrive at a price.
:cool:
Though that just reminds me, would you believe, in one of the Rihannsu novels (The Empty Chair) the Enterprise actually does attack a Romulan ship with a big rock... Laughed all the way through that book, in fact. In a good way.
Yep as STOLeviathan says, when the OP says "all the Lobi ships", he/she actually meant "all the Lobi ships the retiring captain has" - took me a minute to work it out, too. So the idea is that for a Zen fee, you can delete a character but transfer all their items to your other characters, even the bound items.
I think that's a great idea. I mean, I haven't got the figures myself so I can't be sure, but I can't really imagine that having paid real money once to unlock an item on one character, most people would then pay again to unlock it on another character if they couldn't transfer it, even if they'd really prefer to play with it on that character rather than the first one. So if I'm right about that, it's not as if Cryptic would lose much money by allowing this, and they'd gain the "retiring" fee.
Back on topic. How about after the Captain retires, she becomes a special consultant? Available at a cost for certain missions. As an addon to the regular Away Team. The mecchanics are already in place for such what with the various security team and entourage beamdowns.