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A true and unbiased look at STOs future and what it means for you
prierin
Member Posts: 7 Arc User
In response to "Second set of nerfs" thread...
I wonder if the devs have considered a long-term resolution for this. You simply cant scale back rewards whilst scaling up the challenge without POing a lot of players off. We want balance, both in gameplay and in-game economics. Yes, the new elite difficulty is one I agree with, within reason. Elite should be just that, elite. However, opening the STFs to abuse by an already known factor of players who purposefully fail or block the success of a mission to grieve others is a problem, and it seems Cryptic has sided with the wrong group of players on this one. This needs to be fixed. Immediately.
As far as dilithium goes., they should have raised the amount, not nerfed it, even by 0.5 or even 0.25%. You cant create an entire expansion basically built upon the need of a resource and then go and whittle that resource to laughable levels. New ships? Great. New skills? Awesome. Crafting? Woot!
But whats the point to any of this if you manage to essentially reserve the perks for C store customers only? Yes, I know all in-game content can be achieves through hard work and for free as easily I can climb Mt Everest from my couch in Australia with no training and being completely out of shape. After all, nothing is impossible.
Balance. That is all I want balance in in-game powers. Balance in in-game economics. Balance in cash-paid perks. Cryptic is about to run STO into the ground. I know that sounds like an exaggeration but consider this: the Korean model of F2P gameplay is to offer a free game whilst maximizing profits through in-game real $ purchases. However, this is a proven two-edged sword. Yes, you can increase profit for the short run but in turn you lose a percentage of your average playing base. To compensate for these losses you must encourage more real $ purchases its a cycle of destruction that has seen the end of many beloved games.
Please consider the following:
Perfect World INC (stock symbol PWRD), Cryptics parent company, has been watching a stagnation in its stocks for years. From 2012 mid 2013 they hovered at about $10.50 a share on average. In mid 2013 there was a sudden leap from that average to $22.48 a $12 rise in share costs, slumping to $17.41 at the opening of 2014 and currently resting at $19.77 as of 10/16/14.
What caused this sudden spike?
Mostly this: Perfect World Reports Steady Overseas Revenue with Initial Success of PWIN
Take that in for a moment and consider what is happening to STO. Cryptic, a US company contracted by Perfect World, does what their parent company tells them: make profit over all else. This is the curse of F2P games. Content gets shafted and the price of these free games skyrockets. This is why, on average, I prefer subbed games they offer the one thing I want in addition to playability and story: balance.
In the end, what is this post about? Is it a rant? No. It is merely a neutral and unbiased explanation to what we are seeing in the new, and dare I say it future, expansions of this and other F2P games. Do not expect things to change too much and dont expect them to change any time soon. We humble players are caught in a minefield; if we refuse to pay real $ and the company takes a hit, we will see more of an increase for real $ items over in-game content. If we suck up and pay, the same will occur. We are, sadly, left with only two choices:
Play or quit.
No amount of complaining will resolve any of this. Free to play or not, this is a business and businesses only exist for ONE purpose: not to provide enjoyment, not to provide comfort, but to make money. HOW they do it is irrelevant and WHO they PO is inconsequential. IN the end, as long as their shares keep rising and their overall profits keep coming in they will continue to do what they do. Remember, 143.3 million USD. That was their net profit last year. Seeing as they pay, most probably, around $150,000 - $200,000 annually for space, equipment and programmers salaries, and most programmers work on multiple games (how many games does Cryptic manage alone?) it is easy to see that our complaints are meaningless to them.
So continue to hope they listen. Its about all we can do, really.
I wonder if the devs have considered a long-term resolution for this. You simply cant scale back rewards whilst scaling up the challenge without POing a lot of players off. We want balance, both in gameplay and in-game economics. Yes, the new elite difficulty is one I agree with, within reason. Elite should be just that, elite. However, opening the STFs to abuse by an already known factor of players who purposefully fail or block the success of a mission to grieve others is a problem, and it seems Cryptic has sided with the wrong group of players on this one. This needs to be fixed. Immediately.
As far as dilithium goes., they should have raised the amount, not nerfed it, even by 0.5 or even 0.25%. You cant create an entire expansion basically built upon the need of a resource and then go and whittle that resource to laughable levels. New ships? Great. New skills? Awesome. Crafting? Woot!
But whats the point to any of this if you manage to essentially reserve the perks for C store customers only? Yes, I know all in-game content can be achieves through hard work and for free as easily I can climb Mt Everest from my couch in Australia with no training and being completely out of shape. After all, nothing is impossible.
Balance. That is all I want balance in in-game powers. Balance in in-game economics. Balance in cash-paid perks. Cryptic is about to run STO into the ground. I know that sounds like an exaggeration but consider this: the Korean model of F2P gameplay is to offer a free game whilst maximizing profits through in-game real $ purchases. However, this is a proven two-edged sword. Yes, you can increase profit for the short run but in turn you lose a percentage of your average playing base. To compensate for these losses you must encourage more real $ purchases its a cycle of destruction that has seen the end of many beloved games.
Please consider the following:
Perfect World INC (stock symbol PWRD), Cryptics parent company, has been watching a stagnation in its stocks for years. From 2012 mid 2013 they hovered at about $10.50 a share on average. In mid 2013 there was a sudden leap from that average to $22.48 a $12 rise in share costs, slumping to $17.41 at the opening of 2014 and currently resting at $19.77 as of 10/16/14.
What caused this sudden spike?
Mostly this: Perfect World Reports Steady Overseas Revenue with Initial Success of PWIN
BEIJING, June 4, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Perfect World Co., Ltd. (Nasdaq: PWRD) on May 20 announced its unaudited financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2014. Its first-quarter revenues reached 891.1 million yuan (143.3 mln USD), marking a yearly rise of 44.2 percent. Overseas markets contributed to about one quarter of the company's total revenues.
CNG statistics show that Perfect World has been the largest Chinese game exporter for seven straight years, with its game exports accounting for 40 percent of China's total. The favorable first-quarter results have largely met previous expectations. According to Perfect World CEO Robert Xiao, "The overseas development continued with good momentum, which suggests an initial success of the PWIN project launched last July."
Take that in for a moment and consider what is happening to STO. Cryptic, a US company contracted by Perfect World, does what their parent company tells them: make profit over all else. This is the curse of F2P games. Content gets shafted and the price of these free games skyrockets. This is why, on average, I prefer subbed games they offer the one thing I want in addition to playability and story: balance.
In the end, what is this post about? Is it a rant? No. It is merely a neutral and unbiased explanation to what we are seeing in the new, and dare I say it future, expansions of this and other F2P games. Do not expect things to change too much and dont expect them to change any time soon. We humble players are caught in a minefield; if we refuse to pay real $ and the company takes a hit, we will see more of an increase for real $ items over in-game content. If we suck up and pay, the same will occur. We are, sadly, left with only two choices:
Play or quit.
No amount of complaining will resolve any of this. Free to play or not, this is a business and businesses only exist for ONE purpose: not to provide enjoyment, not to provide comfort, but to make money. HOW they do it is irrelevant and WHO they PO is inconsequential. IN the end, as long as their shares keep rising and their overall profits keep coming in they will continue to do what they do. Remember, 143.3 million USD. That was their net profit last year. Seeing as they pay, most probably, around $150,000 - $200,000 annually for space, equipment and programmers salaries, and most programmers work on multiple games (how many games does Cryptic manage alone?) it is easy to see that our complaints are meaningless to them.
So continue to hope they listen. Its about all we can do, really.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
You will forever be missed and never forgotten.
Post edited by prierin on
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Comments
Because he showed two sides of a coin in his thread ours and theirs, read carefully.
the only thing I want is, some nerfs and buffs + bug/glitch fixes.
that's alls any of us have wanted I think.
Those who go a bit further with what they are saying well.... there intentions are fairly obvious.
There aren't just two opinions out there. Not all players agree.
Layman's terms: OP wants STO to go back to subscription. Game will die out much quicker than any potential bug/nerf/difficulty increase/what have you.
Ill be perfectly honest I would love STO to go back to subs. I also never see it happening, so I wont waste time wishing for it.
Sub games have longevity and balance yes, that word again. Balance is relative; what one player sees as balanced and fair another may not, mostly due to play style, character builds, etc. Im not going to get into what my definition of balance is other than the ability and practicality of players to compete in an equal and balanced fashion. In far too many F2P games content is fashioned to favour those who pay vs those who dont, creating an unfair and, in my opinion, unbalanced game style.
In the end the purpose of this post is to simple show what some (most judging by the topics on the forums) players want in response to the new expansion vs what the reality of the situation is and why it is so. Take it or leave it.
Why do games with cash shops, regardless of genre, include daily mechanics? Because zynga found that people whom log in every day spend more money than people who don't.
Why do games add enticements to get you to spend the first time? Because zynga found that after breaking the first purchase barrier people are likely to keep spending.
Time gates with pay to bypass? Thank zynga for that idea too.
And the list goes on and on.
But while zynga has the most data, and they share some conclusions from it--cryptic decides how to implement, not pwe. If the orders were coming from pwe, I really doubt that co, nw, and sto would have such different monetization methods.
Well if you try and actually read that you will see it doubled from the start date and now, and not what you copied that "it has lingered".
As fas as f2p vs sub, 2d vs 3d games, shooters vs rpg, whatever whenever - making poor design choices is a universal concept that is connected to what forum rules won't allow me say and cannot be - or at least has not yet been, contributed to anything but usually 1 or 2 people in charge not knowing how to create a game as much as they might be awesome in 3d studio max etc.
Take the good old star wars gal john smedley for example...
Was that because it was an rpg, an mmo or because it had subs and wasn't f2p? No of course not.
All it was, all it is, **** people making **** decisions
*gives cookie* nailed it.
My character Tsin'xing
The problem is, Cryptic has long ago given up the plot on this too. They are so consumed by metrics and curves and maximizing revenue that they have long ago abandoned the gameplay elements entirely. Every patch introduces another treadmill, and every other patch removes some piece of gameplay that isnt profitable enough to fix. Its too late for STO, has been for a year.
I started out in this game under the Sub model. I wasnt happy with the F2P model initially but that was mostly due to the 6 months of Content Drought they put us through. Promising content was coming while holding back on releasing things theyd said was ready. I unsubbed the moment I heard of the F2P model. I was not going to continue supporting their efforts to change the game when they chose to keep us in the dark on the matter...Months of subs lost expecting content.
But since then I have put quite a bit of money into the game over the last few years. Including large purchases in the way of Ships.
But its starting to get to the point where I dont feel Im getting my return. I feel as if Cryptic has its hand out at every turn. And the ability to play the game and enjoy it dwindles because it becomes more and more monotonous. Crafting is a prime example of this. It will take forever to get anywhere with Crafting without a well spring of Dilithium. Which I dont have. Currently I have maybe 10 dollars worth of Dilithium in my Cargo Bay. Which is probably more then the average player. But I surely dont have enough to get Crafting to a point where its actually useful for someone at my level with my needs.
Yes, that's why virtually every new Western MMO released from 2010 on has either gone 100% F2P or a F2P/Subscription Hybrid payment model (like STO.) The ONLY Subscription MMOs that still seem to do okay are WoW (the 800 lbs gorilla outlier of MMOs) and EVE Online (although EVE can be played by buying PLEX instead of a subscription.
For someone commenting on MMOs you sure don't seem to know a lot about the current MMO market trends. MMO developers AREN'T going F2P for the hell of it - they're doing so because overall it nets them more money/profit <--- And that's what leads to ANY MMOs longevity as the owners and investors are only concerned with that aspect.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
Right now if we enjoy the game and want to support it, the only way to do so (apart from subing) is to buy things in the C-Store.
If we buy overpowerd and unbalenced things cryptic will be more inclined to produce more.
If we buy inconsequential and cosmetic things cryptic will be more inclined to produce more.
If we throw our money at the lockbox lottery cryptic will be more inclined to produce more.
What can I throw my money at that will incline cryptic to polish balence and fix things? Nothing.
The sad thing is, I know people who make far too much money and would hapily spend far to much on balence and bug fixes. Heck I make far too little money and still spend too much on this game.
If cryptic gave us some sort of global project to throw dilithium and zen into, like a fund raising themonitor, I know they could afford to hire on some more code monkeys and ballence testers to smooth this games rough edges.
In fact I wouldnt be suprised if they did very well indeed out of it.
https://youtube.com/channel/UCJZ5FBJ9bFaZ6yAFiNpZiRQ/featured?view_as=subscriber
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/CaptainCidStorm
That's where you, and others, are incorrect. Yes, Cryptic (and PWE) provide games which entertain us. That is the TOOL they use to accomplish their end goal: PROFIT. Their business is not, however, purely to entertain us. if it was, none of this would be an issue.
To assume the later is true it to merely convince yourself of an illusion. It is a rather convoluted concept, I know. Actors, singers, sports players... they are here to entertain us and make a mint doing it. Most of the time you get your money's worth without fail, even if the movie isn't as good as you had hoped the concert was lacking or your team lost.
Video game companies which create and sell platform games fall under this category as well: they make money by providing entertainment.
The F2P model, on the other hand, wants you to believe this is true when in fact it is not. Their model is entirely different. The will provide you entertainment, sure, but their goal isnt to have you pay for entertainment but use entertainment as a tool to make you pay. Big difference.
Can you tell me why this would possibly be? There are a multitude of reasons.
Most sub games cant compete with the F2P. Who doesnt like free? Why pay $12.00 a month to play game A when you can play game B for free? Who doesnt ignore the fact that, in the long run, you are paying well over the monthly sub price you scoffed at for this free game?
There are few Western MMORPG game makers left to compete. Eastern makers (with the F2P model) are HUGE. Why work on a single or maybe 2-3 games when you can be contracted out to work on 8, 10 or even more?
Youre comparing apples to oranges here. Truth be told, so am I you cant compare a F2P game with a sub game. Not laterally at any rate.
But we are digressing somewhat. My original point is that give the current trend players of STO should not look for some miracle cure as to the current sense of imbalance in the game today. If anything, small patches will get ironed out then a new set of issue swill arrive. Rinse and repeat.
By stocks in PWE. Seriously. That's the only way i can see how both parties may come out ahead.
They want to get me to spend money? They have to do what Grinding Gear Games does with Path Of Exile. I spend money on that game here and there because I believe in that f2p system, not the STO asian f2p system.
(Don't be fooled into thinking this is still a western MMO. It's being run like the typical asian "f2p" MMO now)
Lol...I've seriously considered doing that
btw...I think F2P works just fine and I think they struck a reasonable balance for the most part prior to this expansion. With smart purchases and some patience a F2P guy could be every bit as effective...just not have quite as many options. What you mostly bought is time though.
Now they've gone way beyond the time gate of the dil cap and rep system. DR instituted a vast system to artificially jack up the time requirement and try and frustrate people into spending more cash. So, if you were in real good shape for endgame prior to the expansion, you now have to spend a mint or wait an eternity just to get back where you were.
I shudder to think about the barrier to entry for the new player now. The path to well performing endgame is a MUCH longer journey these days.
Cryptic must not think they can get new players so it seems they are milking the ones they have for what they can get.
Tell us how you really feel!. +2 for being honest.
Lol I'll probably TRIBBLE people off with that, but I'm telling it like it is. What the hell do I care about their stock price? I see it as compromising the integrity and fun of a game that until recently I quite enjoyed in order to make a larger profit. I resent that. I'm not here for the sake of their stock price. Couldn't care less. I'm here to play Star Trek with others and that's it, and because they're attempting to encourage me to spend money I won't spend money. I know I'm not the only one who feels that way but I may be the only one who will say it here on the forums. They want me to spend money to get back to the level I was at before DR. Are they nuts?
Things like the DR pack are incentive for me to spend money. Things like a ridiculous dilithium sink in the form of upgrading paired with nerfed rewards for my favorite content - which I can't do now until I've taken part in the ridiculous dilithium sink even though I've been doing it fine for years - are incentive for me to leave STO and play another game, and take my money with me. They almost got it right...I was SO close to buying DR. It was fate really that made me read those tribble notes an hour before I made the purchase.
I was talking about the majority, yeah ok fine some dont agree but I think most do at least thats what the general consensus seems like at this time.
there is never 3 sides or more to coin. when it comes to being unbiased in games the best you can do is take the view points of the "majority" of players and the company of said game and put them together.
its still not biased but not perfectly either and we all know what trying to achieve perfection is like lol
1. Friend #1 : Loves the overhaul of the R&D projects, burns all his dilithium crafting. Gets mad he has not dilithium left. Loves the upgrade options, burns all his dilithium upgrading. Gets pissed he is out of dilithium, gets mad the devs b/c he can't farm or refine fast enough.
2. Friend #2: Loves the overhaul of the R&D projects, spends hours in tribble testing it out. Makes a list of items to craft and what to skip. Waits until level 15 (without pressing finish now) before crafting. Stockpiles R&D stuff. Loves the upgrade options. Makes a list of weapons to upgrade, priority upgrade lists. Tests it out on tribble, decides to wait until Delta Rising drops and bugs are found and fixed before upgrading. He has 22 million dilithium over 5 toons.
Which one do you think I unfriended?
You seriously think PWE's business expenses are $150k - $200k annually?