should just scrap the game and start with fresh code for the next expansion... not like they are building from scratch without any idea of where to go... just clone the current game using new code and build enough leg room for future expansions... and up the min specs.
Yeah, but saying that the pricing model of an imaginary possible future Star Trek MMO will have an even more player unfriendly pricing model is just wild speculation hillariously attempting to prove some point that can't be proven at the time being.
You're totally right -- the post I quoted made it sound like a Trek MMO in another studio's hands would be sunshine and rainbows and unicorn farts. I was providing a counterpoint, it could be way worse.
Yeah, but saying that the pricing model of an imaginary possible future Star Trek MMO will have an even more player unfriendly pricing model is just wild speculation hillariously attempting to prove some point that can't be proven at the time being.
And "player unfriendly" is also highly variable between people - some would prefer to pay 15$ monthly sub that gives them access to everything while others prefer to play for free and only buy what they think is needed or relevant. Then you have whales that like to show off their illustrious collection of items, while others are satisfied with proverbial leeching and letting others pay for the game's maintenence.
Until and if the day comes to have another Star Trek MMO, we have no idea wheather it would be more expensive, cheaper or exactly the same. I for one would prefer Cryptic to buckle up and correct the mistakes they've done with DR, possibly even rearange the people on high management level so STO can continue long into the future.
True, but the only thing that we know about a future STO MMO is that it will take years to develop and I seriously doubt CBS or Paramount will make the mistake of thinking that a MMO company can develop a fully functional MMO in less than 2 years of development. So if STO 2 is announced tomorrow, then it will be at least 2017 before it launches and that might mean that it has already been in preliminary development for a while.
You're totally right -- the post I quoted made it sound like a Trek MMO in another studio's hands would be sunshine and rainbows and unicorn farts. I was providing a counterpoint, it could be way worse.
Not exactly a glowing account of STO.
I can see the marketing now;
Not exactly a glowing account of STO.
I can see the marketing now;
STO: Hey, it could be worse...?
:P
Haha, yeah. But in seriousness, I really do like how this game is monetized, it's probably the best free to play model I've encountered (outside of, you know, being totally free).
True, but the only thing that we know about a future STO MMO is that it will take years to develop and I seriously doubt CBS or Paramount will make the mistake of thinking that a MMO company can develop a fully functional MMO in less than 2 years of development. So if STO 2 is announced tomorrow, then it will be at least 2017 before it launches and that might mean that it has already been in preliminary development for a while.
Hypothetically speaking:
As it should. Frankly, I'm a bit sick and tired of Cryptic trying to excuse all the shortcommings of STO almost 5 years into the game with the point that they had to rush the release.
They only seem to make a concentrated effort to fix bugs that they believe will cost them money. Dilithium exploits and such. Many bugs go unacknowledged or are ignored...most likely because they would rather spend their money putting out more overpriced ships for us to purchase with new shiny traits and I win consoles - cause that's where the money's at.
Haha, yeah. But in seriousness, I really do like how this game is monetized, it's probably the best free to play model I've encountered (outside of, you know, being totally free).
And "player unfriendly" is also highly variable between people - some would prefer to pay 15$ monthly sub that gives them access to everything while others prefer to play for free and only buy what they think is needed or relevant.
Yeah, well, we all know what happened when STO was a sub game.
I still care, but the energy is waning. There's only so much you can do.
This week I participated in a survey about the costs associated with the game in general. This isn't an authorized survey - at least I don't think so - but the preliminary stuff is looking grim.
There's a new 'gate' so to speak that's happened. And fun has no part in it.
Hopefully the results will be posted later this week
This doesn't surprise me, yet it is dis-appointing that it is happening. I mean if JJ Abrams could talk about how he respects cannon in star trek and then in his first movie says romulans don't understand singularities when their ship use them? Look he got away with it once....Cryptic did also with the new R&D system or LOR expansion if you want...but when the movie 2 came out people complained....just like when DR came out. People just seem to be following a stupid pattern it seems.
This doesn't surprise me, yet it is dis-appointing that it is happening. I mean if JJ Abrams could talk about how he respects cannon in star trek and then in his first movie says romulans don't understand singularities when their ship use them? Look he got away with it once....Cryptic did also with the new R&D system or LOR expansion if you want...but when the movie 2 came out people complained....just like when DR came out. People just seem to be following a stupid pattern it seems.
to be fair, romulans aren't exactly experts at singularities. if they were they would have been able to pick up on the fact that what they had was actually an egg carrying the young of the trans dimensional creatures in timescape.
I still care, but the energy is waning. There's only so much you can do.
This week I participated in a survey about the costs associated with the game in general. This isn't an authorized survey - at least I don't think so - but the preliminary stuff is looking grim.
There's a new 'gate' so to speak that's happened. And fun has no part in it.
Hopefully the results will be posted later this week
Yeah, well, we all know what happened when STO was a sub game.
You have to actually offer a game if you want people to pay for subs. Not a year's worth content drought. And quality, not a bug infestation. Regardless how much all of us that are sticking around here love the game, the reality is that STO is a sub-par game and it especially was before PWE purchased the game and went F2P.
Only an idiot would expect to have enough subscribers to sustain the game and make a profit under those circumistances. People won't pay hard earned money for smoke and mirrors. The reason STO failed as a sub game had nothing to do with a big portion of the industry switching to F2P but it had everything to do with the quality of the product Cryptic offered at the time.
You have to actually offer a game if you want people to pay for subs. Not a year's worth content drought. And quality, not a bug infestation. Regardless how much all of us that are sticking around here love the game, the reality is that STO is a sub-par game and it especially was before PWE purchased the game and went F2P.
Only an idiot would expect to have enough subscribers to sustain the game and make a profit under those circumistances. People won't pay hard earned money for smoke and mirrors. The reason STO failed as a sub game had nothing to do with a big portion of the industry switching to F2P but it had everything to do with the quality of the product Cryptic offered at the time.
Yeah , except STO didn't fail as a sub title within the first 13 months it had money pumped into it .
That's what SWTOR did , with a budget that was many times that of STO's .
If you lament STO's failure , at least put it in perspective .
"The Plan" at the time Atari closed the tap (around the end of the 13 month period) was for FE series to continue .
Which is kind of interesting if you look at it this way :
While many Klingon players were grateful for the Quonos revamp we got within the YOH , most players consider the end of the Atari "glory days" when the money stopped flowing and FE series stopped being produced .
Those same players were the ones who raised an eyebrow when the money started to flow again from (this time from PWE) , but no FE series were promised off the bat , with D'Angelo talking about 1 possibly 2 FE's per year .
(later on they did The 2800 anyway)
And today , after some visually polished , Trek actor VO-ed missions that in most ways surpass the old FE's get delivered -- many a player gets turned off STO because of surrounding issues .
My point being , that while Cryptic produced FE's under one company -- the fans were ecstatic , calling it "getting an episode of Trek every weekend" . But under another company , Cryptic produces seemingly superior (or more "shiny") episodic content and has ... what it has today with the fans .
... and yet ppl still take the time to lament how bad Atari was ... , while I quietly shake my head ...
Yeah , except STO didn't fail as a sub title within the first 13 months it had money pumped into it .
That's what SWTOR did , with a budget that was many times that of STO's .
If you lament STO's failure , at least put it in perspective .
"The Plan" at the time Atari closed the tap (around the end of the 13 month period) was for FE series to continue .
Which is kind of interesting if you look at it this way :
While many Klingon players were grateful for the Quonos revamp we got within the YOH , most players consider the end of the Atari "glory days" when the money stopped flowing and FE series stopped being produced .
Those same players were the ones who raised an eyebrow when the money started to flow again from (this time from PWE) , but no FE series were promised off the bat , with D'Angelo talking about 1 possibly 2 FE's per year .
(later on they did The 2800 anyway)
And today , after some visually polished , Trek actor VO-ed missions that in most ways surpass the old FE's get delivered -- many a player gets turned off STO because of surrounding issues .
My point being , that while Cryptic produced FE's under one company -- the fans were ecstatic , calling it "getting an episode of Trek every weekend" . But under another company , Cryptic produces seemingly superior (or more "shiny") episodic content and has ... what it has today with the fans .
... and yet ppl still take the time to lament how bad Atari was ... , while I quietly shake my head ...
You've missed the point - I'm not discussing Atari or PWE or SW:ToR. I was discussing the quality of the product and the reasons the game failed under the sub model. It has to do with the quality of experience offered, which majority of the players deemed unworthy for 15$ a month. That was true then and it's still true now. Only the things dragging back the quality have changed, the overall situation is more or less the same in terms of existing as a sub model.
You've missed the point - I'm not discussing Atari or PWE or SW:ToR. I was discussing the quality of the product and the reasons the game failed under the sub model. It has to do with the quality of experience offered, which majority of the players deemed unworthy for 15$ a month. That was true then and it's still true now. Only the things dragging back the quality have changed, the overall situation is more or less the same in terms of existing as a sub model.
Quality content costs money. 15 $ per sub means nothing if you don't have many subs. So, hen or egg?
In a F2P model, quality content is not neccessarily the driver of income. That's why we don't get weekly or monthly episodes. What gets you money is repeatable content that offers some kind of final reward after many iterations. Some people call that "grind".
You can't ignore quality, of course, or rather, if you ignore, you wil lalso see less people willing to put up with it. (But the succecss of facebook and mobile "grind" games shows even low quality can work - less investment, less profit, but still profit.)
The stor ymissions still come not just out of Cryptic's goodness of their heart, but they are another incentive for people to play the game and bother with all the rest. And the recent XP changes/level cap increase is basically an attempt to "monetize" this content. NOt by forcing you to sell it - but by forcing you to play the game to finally get access to the content. You don't need to pay anyhting, and paying anything will not really speed up things - but because you play more, you are more likely to eventually buy something.
It remains to be seen whether this works out for them...
But having played M:WO for a while (in fact, that was my game in my 2-year STO absence) - you don't know how great Startrek Online's quality actually is.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Quality content costs money. 15 $ per sub means nothing if you don't have many subs. So, hen or egg?
lol No. No hen, no egg. Doesn't work like that in the business environment, your "hen & egg" analogy is completely broken.
You decide to offer a product to the market. You ensure the quality of the product if you want your business to succeed. You take the risk of failiure together with the chance of success. If you've done your homework right, it should be fruitfull in most cases.
You don't go around the neighborhood asking people to shower you with money, so one nice sunny day in the future you may be able to provide them with a quality product. No han, no eggs. The one offering the product needs to make the first move and take risk, that a lesson Cryptic never learned.
Only exceptions are extraordinary cases of people or businesses with very high reputation amongst their target audience, like Chris Roberts for ex. - and even there people are slowly showing concerns about P2W even before the game is even released.
You've missed the point - I'm not discussing Atari or PWE or SW:ToR. I was discussing the quality of the product and the reasons the game failed under the sub model.
And my reply was in regards to WHEN STO "failed" as a sub model , and I included some of the events that seemingly led up to the supposed event .
See , it's not hat I did not understand you -- but for me the sequence of events , their impact on Cryptic , and their impact on the playerbase has tremendous importance .... , while for you it seems enough to say "STO failed as a sub model" -- and you say that , without considering when Atari closed (or started to close) the money tap , nor the reasons for Atari doing so (their own financial woes that had nothing to do with STO) , nor the other assets Cryptic had at the time (Champs & Neverwinter license) .
In the end , some here have claimed that STO was profitable when Atari decided to sell Cryptic .
Others say it was not .
So unless we get a definitive answer from our (3 posts and counting) EP , we won't know either way .
It would also be interesting to know for sure if the decision to go F2P was under Atari , or under the "we're up for sale" period , and one is left to wonder how a F2P model would have looked like under Atari .
.... STO got lucky ... to be picked up by two companies ... , to slip by the bankruptcy of it's grandparent company , and the near non-sellability of it's parent company ... -- if the current situation can be called "lucky" ...
The one offering the product needs to make the first move and take risk, that a lesson Cryptic never learned.
Yet that is what PWE did in a way .
They gambled on the viability of STO (and the deep pockets of it's fans & whales) , and on the lure of the D&D franchise fanbase via NWN .
They didn't buy Cryptic for what it was , they brought it for what it could be (monetization options and all) .
You're right about what you said and I'm well aware of the events that preceeded STO turning into a F2P game.
But my post was made from a purely consumer POV. To me, and dare I say most people, as the consumer of the product Cryptic offers - the important thing is what I get for my money out of the sub I'm paying and wheather it is sufficient enough by my standards to keep paying or not. I don't really care what goes on behind their corporate closed doors. I don't care if their grandparent company goes bankrupt or their publisher goes belly up as I have no influence over those things.
To the consumer, the quality of the service provided comes first and foremost in their decisions to pay for something or not, regardless of the background mumbo-jumbo the company is going through.
One thing that most people don't get is that the customer is almost NEVER right. I mean the guy who owns the pawn shop on "Pawn Stars" said it best.
"If the customer was always right, I'd never make any money."
STO was doomed to fail as a sub game, just plain doomed. F2P model gave it a new lease on life. Going back to sub, would outright kill it.
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!
After looking at the tactical builds on 1 of my accounts.. Tactical builds are now useless, advanced stf?... with tactical build (space combat) and XIV gear..? no way!
This is with traits attempting to plug the weaknesses of the build and species. Adjusting them on the strengths leads you to pop in advanced stf in all of about, awww.. 20 seconds after encountering more than 1 enemy to deal with on your own.
If your finding advanced too easy for your build its obvious Elite is your que. As from my perspective i cannot see how tactical can manage advanced stf at all let alone an elite.
I still care, but the energy is waning. There's only so much you can do.
This week I participated in a survey about the costs associated with the game in general. This isn't an authorized survey - at least I don't think so - but the preliminary stuff is looking grim.
There's a new 'gate' so to speak that's happened. And fun has no part in it.
Hopefully the results will be posted later this week
Yeah, where is this survey at? Or, if said results are posted, please post a link to them here.
STO was doomed to fail as a sub game, just plain doomed. F2P model gave it a new lease on life. Going back to sub, would outright kill it.
We were not discussing the non-existant possibilty for STO to revert to a sub based game again. What the game offers currently is nowhere near sufficient enough to justify 15$ per month for most people, apart for someone selflessly wanting to support the game going on. Ofcourse reverting to sub would kill it.
We were just discussing the reasons STO didn't make it as a sub game in the first place back then.
In the end , some here have claimed that STO was profitable when Atari decided to sell Cryptic .
Others say it was not .
So unless we get a definitive answer from our (3 posts and counting) EP , we won't know either way .
Even if STO was, Neverwinter was not. The 1-2 games Cryptic has in development that are unlaunched were not. (For example, their Lovecraft game. There was a post-NW game that seemingly got canned. Stahl is off working on another game.)
I think Champions was seriously threatened at that point regardless of whether it was profitable because of DCUO and what we now know, that Blizzard was planning Titan as a super-hero MMO. CoH was going F2P. (Blizzard converted Titan into a co-op super-hero shooter they just announced called Overwatch, which looks to be a Pixar-ish super-hero Team Fortress game. But at the time, it's possible that Cryptic knew about Titan from industry sources.)
I always thought maybe Atari was offloading risk onto Cryptic and I'm now more confident of that, as I've nearly completed an MBA since then. Atari was a French company and French accounting (which is very similar to Japanese accounting) has some irregular practices. French and Japanese accounting principles don't require you to consolidate returns on subsidiaries, if profit is immaterial. I believe R&D is generally capitalized rather than expensed but if the subsidiary is American, you might have some very funny flexibility there to expense subsidiary R&D (which is appropriate since this is the American standard) while capitalizing parent company R&D (which is appropriate since this is the French standard).
You just say how much you put into a subsidiary unit and how much you got out and everything else is subject to whatever spin you want to put on it for shareholders. Thing is, if you're developing more games, profit probably IS immaterial for the unit taken as a whole.
The big trick is not so much about profit but that you can use a subsidiary to mask operating leverage and risk. Depreciation can also be a big factor. The French do it on an accelerated timetable more, I think, which makes new ventures look more profitable but can result in problems in later years.
And, wow! I just looked at Atari's books from when they bought Cryptic. They paid $45 million for Cryptic. Then immediately added a $38 million goodwill credit to their books as a result of the acquisition. That's a red flag that they were in a hurry to basically offload the cost of the purchase.
Want to know something interesting? Between December 2008 and March 2009, Cryptic suffered losses of around $3 million and zero revenue. (No surprise. They had no live products.)
But that was after they acquired the Trek license. They were developing STO and CO BOTH on around a combined budget of $12 million a year.
STO was made in 18 months. This probably makes the game's development budget close to $10 million, before accounting for licensing fees and marketing, which is probably more than the budget for a game in a case like this.
Looking back at some numbers I found, apparently City of Heroes was $7 million.
Most AAA online games are upwards of $100 million. Secret World and DCUO were around $50 million spent on development.
I think a serious problem is that Cryptic positioned themselves as the guys who could get the job done for less and, consequently, they get locked into offering a lower grade experience.
Catch is, if you try to please everybody, you end up getting TRIBBLE. Games have tried that approach before, it didn't go well.
Many times when players suggest something, they do not really know what they are asking for. Not saying all ideas are bad, however many times players are highly short sighted and many times WRONG.
Sorry customer is hardly ever right.
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!
errrm.. lol the game is for the customers so if one doesnt take note then word will get around that your product is s***. Before long nobody is buying your product, it fails and your company then needs a new product quick time before it goes under.
Most definitely the customer is right 90% of the time.
Its very much like asking the builders building your new fancy house to include features some of which are necessary... in the end they don't include the requested features and totally stiff you on the quality. (leaning walls and such) Obviously at that point one would withdraw from the contract and cease any payment.
(And its no good them building a bench at the bottom of your swimming pool to try and comfort the shear lack of acceptability.)
Comments
That...isn't how game development works.
You're totally right -- the post I quoted made it sound like a Trek MMO in another studio's hands would be sunshine and rainbows and unicorn farts. I was providing a counterpoint, it could be way worse.
True, but the only thing that we know about a future STO MMO is that it will take years to develop and I seriously doubt CBS or Paramount will make the mistake of thinking that a MMO company can develop a fully functional MMO in less than 2 years of development. So if STO 2 is announced tomorrow, then it will be at least 2017 before it launches and that might mean that it has already been in preliminary development for a while.
Not exactly a glowing account of STO.
I can see the marketing now;
STO: Hey, it could be worse...?
:P
Haha, yeah. But in seriousness, I really do like how this game is monetized, it's probably the best free to play model I've encountered (outside of, you know, being totally free).
Hypothetically speaking:
As it should. Frankly, I'm a bit sick and tired of Cryptic trying to excuse all the shortcommings of STO almost 5 years into the game with the point that they had to rush the release.
Really sad cause this game has so much potential.
Go play Marvel Heroes then.
My character Tsin'xing
They thought people would continue paying when hardly any content was added?
This week I participated in a survey about the costs associated with the game in general. This isn't an authorized survey - at least I don't think so - but the preliminary stuff is looking grim.
There's a new 'gate' so to speak that's happened. And fun has no part in it.
Hopefully the results will be posted later this week
to be fair, romulans aren't exactly experts at singularities. if they were they would have been able to pick up on the fact that what they had was actually an egg carrying the young of the trans dimensional creatures in timescape.
Where is this survey at ?
You have to actually offer a game if you want people to pay for subs. Not a year's worth content drought. And quality, not a bug infestation. Regardless how much all of us that are sticking around here love the game, the reality is that STO is a sub-par game and it especially was before PWE purchased the game and went F2P.
Only an idiot would expect to have enough subscribers to sustain the game and make a profit under those circumistances. People won't pay hard earned money for smoke and mirrors. The reason STO failed as a sub game had nothing to do with a big portion of the industry switching to F2P but it had everything to do with the quality of the product Cryptic offered at the time.
Yeah , except STO didn't fail as a sub title within the first 13 months it had money pumped into it .
That's what SWTOR did , with a budget that was many times that of STO's .
If you lament STO's failure , at least put it in perspective .
"The Plan" at the time Atari closed the tap (around the end of the 13 month period) was for FE series to continue .
Which is kind of interesting if you look at it this way :
While many Klingon players were grateful for the Quonos revamp we got within the YOH , most players consider the end of the Atari "glory days" when the money stopped flowing and FE series stopped being produced .
Those same players were the ones who raised an eyebrow when the money started to flow again from (this time from PWE) , but no FE series were promised off the bat , with D'Angelo talking about 1 possibly 2 FE's per year .
(later on they did The 2800 anyway)
And today , after some visually polished , Trek actor VO-ed missions that in most ways surpass the old FE's get delivered -- many a player gets turned off STO because of surrounding issues .
My point being , that while Cryptic produced FE's under one company -- the fans were ecstatic , calling it "getting an episode of Trek every weekend" . But under another company , Cryptic produces seemingly superior (or more "shiny") episodic content and has ... what it has today with the fans .
... and yet ppl still take the time to lament how bad Atari was ... , while I quietly shake my head ...
Uhm.....you're not making any sense at all.
You've missed the point - I'm not discussing Atari or PWE or SW:ToR. I was discussing the quality of the product and the reasons the game failed under the sub model. It has to do with the quality of experience offered, which majority of the players deemed unworthy for 15$ a month. That was true then and it's still true now. Only the things dragging back the quality have changed, the overall situation is more or less the same in terms of existing as a sub model.
Quality content costs money. 15 $ per sub means nothing if you don't have many subs. So, hen or egg?
In a F2P model, quality content is not neccessarily the driver of income. That's why we don't get weekly or monthly episodes. What gets you money is repeatable content that offers some kind of final reward after many iterations. Some people call that "grind".
You can't ignore quality, of course, or rather, if you ignore, you wil lalso see less people willing to put up with it. (But the succecss of facebook and mobile "grind" games shows even low quality can work - less investment, less profit, but still profit.)
The stor ymissions still come not just out of Cryptic's goodness of their heart, but they are another incentive for people to play the game and bother with all the rest. And the recent XP changes/level cap increase is basically an attempt to "monetize" this content. NOt by forcing you to sell it - but by forcing you to play the game to finally get access to the content. You don't need to pay anyhting, and paying anything will not really speed up things - but because you play more, you are more likely to eventually buy something.
It remains to be seen whether this works out for them...
But having played M:WO for a while (in fact, that was my game in my 2-year STO absence) - you don't know how great Startrek Online's quality actually is.
lol
You decide to offer a product to the market. You ensure the quality of the product if you want your business to succeed. You take the risk of failiure together with the chance of success. If you've done your homework right, it should be fruitfull in most cases.
You don't go around the neighborhood asking people to shower you with money, so one nice sunny day in the future you may be able to provide them with a quality product. No han, no eggs. The one offering the product needs to make the first move and take risk, that a lesson Cryptic never learned.
Only exceptions are extraordinary cases of people or businesses with very high reputation amongst their target audience, like Chris Roberts for ex. - and even there people are slowly showing concerns about P2W even before the game is even released.
And my reply was in regards to WHEN STO "failed" as a sub model , and I included some of the events that seemingly led up to the supposed event .
See , it's not hat I did not understand you -- but for me the sequence of events , their impact on Cryptic , and their impact on the playerbase has tremendous importance .... , while for you it seems enough to say "STO failed as a sub model" -- and you say that , without considering when Atari closed (or started to close) the money tap , nor the reasons for Atari doing so (their own financial woes that had nothing to do with STO) , nor the other assets Cryptic had at the time (Champs & Neverwinter license) .
In the end , some here have claimed that STO was profitable when Atari decided to sell Cryptic .
Others say it was not .
So unless we get a definitive answer from our (3 posts and counting) EP , we won't know either way .
It would also be interesting to know for sure if the decision to go F2P was under Atari , or under the "we're up for sale" period , and one is left to wonder how a F2P model would have looked like under Atari .
.... STO got lucky ... to be picked up by two companies ... , to slip by the bankruptcy of it's grandparent company , and the near non-sellability of it's parent company ... -- if the current situation can be called "lucky" ...
Yet that is what PWE did in a way .
They gambled on the viability of STO (and the deep pockets of it's fans & whales) , and on the lure of the D&D franchise fanbase via NWN .
They didn't buy Cryptic for what it was , they brought it for what it could be (monetization options and all) .
You're right about what you said and I'm well aware of the events that preceeded STO turning into a F2P game.
But my post was made from a purely consumer POV. To me, and dare I say most people, as the consumer of the product Cryptic offers - the important thing is what I get for my money out of the sub I'm paying and wheather it is sufficient enough by my standards to keep paying or not. I don't really care what goes on behind their corporate closed doors. I don't care if their grandparent company goes bankrupt or their publisher goes belly up as I have no influence over those things.
To the consumer, the quality of the service provided comes first and foremost in their decisions to pay for something or not, regardless of the background mumbo-jumbo the company is going through.
"If the customer was always right, I'd never make any money."
STO was doomed to fail as a sub game, just plain doomed. F2P model gave it a new lease on life. Going back to sub, would outright kill it.
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
This is with traits attempting to plug the weaknesses of the build and species. Adjusting them on the strengths leads you to pop in advanced stf in all of about, awww.. 20 seconds after encountering more than 1 enemy to deal with on your own.
If your finding advanced too easy for your build its obvious Elite is your que. As from my perspective i cannot see how tactical can manage advanced stf at all let alone an elite.
Yeah, where is this survey at? Or, if said results are posted, please post a link to them here.
We were not discussing the non-existant possibilty for STO to revert to a sub based game again. What the game offers currently is nowhere near sufficient enough to justify 15$ per month for most people, apart for someone selflessly wanting to support the game going on. Ofcourse reverting to sub would kill it.
We were just discussing the reasons STO didn't make it as a sub game in the first place back then.
Even if STO was, Neverwinter was not. The 1-2 games Cryptic has in development that are unlaunched were not. (For example, their Lovecraft game. There was a post-NW game that seemingly got canned. Stahl is off working on another game.)
I think Champions was seriously threatened at that point regardless of whether it was profitable because of DCUO and what we now know, that Blizzard was planning Titan as a super-hero MMO. CoH was going F2P. (Blizzard converted Titan into a co-op super-hero shooter they just announced called Overwatch, which looks to be a Pixar-ish super-hero Team Fortress game. But at the time, it's possible that Cryptic knew about Titan from industry sources.)
I always thought maybe Atari was offloading risk onto Cryptic and I'm now more confident of that, as I've nearly completed an MBA since then. Atari was a French company and French accounting (which is very similar to Japanese accounting) has some irregular practices. French and Japanese accounting principles don't require you to consolidate returns on subsidiaries, if profit is immaterial. I believe R&D is generally capitalized rather than expensed but if the subsidiary is American, you might have some very funny flexibility there to expense subsidiary R&D (which is appropriate since this is the American standard) while capitalizing parent company R&D (which is appropriate since this is the French standard).
You just say how much you put into a subsidiary unit and how much you got out and everything else is subject to whatever spin you want to put on it for shareholders. Thing is, if you're developing more games, profit probably IS immaterial for the unit taken as a whole.
The big trick is not so much about profit but that you can use a subsidiary to mask operating leverage and risk. Depreciation can also be a big factor. The French do it on an accelerated timetable more, I think, which makes new ventures look more profitable but can result in problems in later years.
And, wow! I just looked at Atari's books from when they bought Cryptic. They paid $45 million for Cryptic. Then immediately added a $38 million goodwill credit to their books as a result of the acquisition. That's a red flag that they were in a hurry to basically offload the cost of the purchase.
Want to know something interesting? Between December 2008 and March 2009, Cryptic suffered losses of around $3 million and zero revenue. (No surprise. They had no live products.)
But that was after they acquired the Trek license. They were developing STO and CO BOTH on around a combined budget of $12 million a year.
STO was made in 18 months. This probably makes the game's development budget close to $10 million, before accounting for licensing fees and marketing, which is probably more than the budget for a game in a case like this.
Looking back at some numbers I found, apparently City of Heroes was $7 million.
Most AAA online games are upwards of $100 million. Secret World and DCUO were around $50 million spent on development.
I think a serious problem is that Cryptic positioned themselves as the guys who could get the job done for less and, consequently, they get locked into offering a lower grade experience.
With that said. Every Patch seams to make this game better in my opinion.
Catch is, if you try to please everybody, you end up getting TRIBBLE. Games have tried that approach before, it didn't go well.
Many times when players suggest something, they do not really know what they are asking for. Not saying all ideas are bad, however many times players are highly short sighted and many times WRONG.
Sorry customer is hardly ever right.
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
Most definitely the customer is right 90% of the time.
Its very much like asking the builders building your new fancy house to include features some of which are necessary... in the end they don't include the requested features and totally stiff you on the quality. (leaning walls and such) Obviously at that point one would withdraw from the contract and cease any payment.
(And its no good them building a bench at the bottom of your swimming pool to try and comfort the shear lack of acceptability.)
Know what i mean?