A good hustle or scam comes down to the victims knowing about it or not.
If you think about it, it just might actually be the opposite... That the whales feel they finally have a way in which they get to feel special for using all that money.
That in fact, nothing as of yet has given them even remotely the satisfaction of upgrading - think about it, you know it makes sense.
Anyone can grind a 6 week reputation out but a 1700$ dil ship is not for everyone.
I am actually quite sure there is a definitive and yet un-tagged sense of "accomplishment" and "pride" amongst the whales, a sense of redemption finally.
You don't have to look further than right here on this board to find threads with people parading their dps around like they created it by personal talent and will-power and didn't just go out and buy it.
yes ... i see what you mean lol, the people who wrote this game messed it up to many times, and i don't hear wolf anymore, if there is one, it's to late
It's like the little boy who cried update, the boy cried Update!! and all the users got on, and they where like awwww darn, and then went off to do whatever
Then, the next day the boy cried update again, and the users where like YES!!! and logged on and where like oh great ...
And then, the 3rd day when the boy cried update, no one came. and it was all over ... lol
Ok... after this exp change drop rate at 60lv suddenly goes extremely down. After fight with 12 cruisers and 5 battleships at advance all I get is 8 to 10 items: mostly white, 2-3 green and with big luck 1 blue.
A good hustle or scam comes down to the victims knowing about it or not.
If you think about it, it just might actually be the opposite... That the whales feel they finally have a way in which they get to feel special for using all that money.
That in fact, nothing as of yet has given them even remotely the satisfaction of upgrading - think about it, you know it makes sense.
Anyone can grind a 6 week reputation out but a 1700$ dil ship is not for everyone.
I am actually quite sure there is a definitive and yet un-tagged sense of "accomplishment" and "pride" amongst the whales, a sense of redemption finally.
You don't have to look further than right here on this board to find threads with people parading their dps around like they created it by personal talent and will-power and didn't just go out and buy it.
So much hate for the whales... you do know someone needs to pay money to keep the game going, right?
Being a whale myself, I can say I definitely did not have a sense of pride for having a ~$1000 ship. Even we understand that's ridiculous. However, what else do we have to spend money on? If I wanted to, I could afford around ~$2000 a month to put into "entertainment". If I spend most of that month playing STO, I don't have a problem putting that money toward STO, regardless of what I'm purchasing. And - you have no right to complain where I spend my money. If anything, you should thanks whales for keeping the servers running. Sure, it would be better if Cryptic utilized different methods for getting players to pay money, but with what we got, whales are what's keeping the game going. Blame Cryptic, not the whales :cool:
All of that said, with the recent patches, they do seems designed to keep people playing and grinding, but it's having the opposite affect. There are other things out there that are more entertaining at this point, and my money is going there. Grinding is not entertaining.
It's very true that the whales help keep things going and so I am thankful. Heck the whales of BGO could keep a server running by themselves. All 3 of them - ha. But I don't believe we are getting to those price levels yet.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Yes and this where it comes down to if you feel hustled or not.
And as I touched on in my last post I believe the ludicrous upgrading costs, in themselves, makes it not just special and attractive to a whale, but ultimately the best system in the game to date.
Namely because it's not just about what you have - it's equally if not more important what others don't have, there is no way you can feel special without it being based on what others aren't.
So, since you spent the money in the past anyway, upgrading is by far a better system in where the money don't matter - you spend those anyway.
But the oppertunity to think you are special - or rather to gloat over what others don't have could potentially be the most important update for whales.
Don't get me wrong, for me personally the game is all but dead - at the very least stuck on the on-going content drought.
But from the perspective of the whales and the perspective of cryptic - the amount of dil going into DR, goes a long way in explaining it all.
I think with the crafting milk-now button they learned of people's stupidity and from here on out they going to capitalize on whales' vanity... retro-actively knowing they could have been doing this all along.
That, in conjunction with the community's reaction to al rivera, from their perspective it's pay-back time, litterly, metaphorically and buttom-line.
I could disagree with this. I'd wager that (based on the forums) the happiest players probably:
- Spend nothing or very little.
- Have lower expectations.
I think this goes to the core of the problem which is that the game encourages people who do spend to outspend their level of satisfaction.
Cryptic should not want too many people like me who are willing to play the patience game against them and win--but that is exactly what they are creating more and more of.
And sorry...I am not going to feel "grateful" to people who spend beyond reason and jump through every financial hoop without standing up and saying enough is enough, or doing so what may be way too late. The game will cease to be fun even for them when there is no one else left to lord it over...
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-) Proudly F2P.Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
So much hate for the whales... you do know someone needs to pay money to keep the game going, right?
Being a whale myself, I can say I definitely did not have a sense of pride for having a ~$1000 ship. Even we understand that's ridiculous. However, what else do we have to spend money on? If I wanted to, I could afford around ~$2000 a month to put into "entertainment". If I spend most of that month playing STO, I don't have a problem putting that money toward STO, regardless of what I'm purchasing. And - you have no right to complain where I spend my money. If anything, you should thanks whales for keeping the servers running. Sure, it would be better if Cryptic utilized different methods for getting players to pay money, but with what we got, whales are what's keeping the game going. Blame Cryptic, not the whales :cool:
All of that said, with the recent patches, they do seems designed to keep people playing and grinding, but it's having the opposite affect. There are other things out there that are more entertaining at this point, and my money is going there. Grinding is not entertaining.
No hate for whales at all...
I was strictly commenting on the motivation for whales of the upgrading system.
In where I said, what has been perceived as a weakness - the ludicrous cost of copy-pasted blank stats, is in fact the biggest strength and the best system for whales to date.
That being, you spend the money anyway but now you have what you never had before; something to set you apart from other players.
Then I said I believe that is what has made DR the "best expansion ever" and that it's not a failure for the game or even a problem.
The only negative in all of this for cryptic is not realizing how much money they can get for zero conten - the copy-pasted stats with no work involved.
Am I completely objective about it, yes and no - I do call it a scam and say it's copy-paste where as much as those have value meaning attached those are also objective facts.
For example, "upgrading IS copy-pasted with no new animations". That has a negative meaning to it yes but it is also a fact...
If you feel hated on reading that I will apologize I am not out to point the finger at individuals, rather I want to debate systems, groups and mechanisms.
I've spent a great deal of money in this game, but I'm certainly not a whale - not the way you describe them. All this talk of lording over others and having what others don't makes spenders sound like a bunch of aristocratic douchebags. I just like having the latest shiny thing to play around with and being as effective as possible in the game. Hell, if I could I would upgrade everyone else's gear for them. We don't all spend money to be space kings.
I don't expect anyone to come out and be proud of it.
It ain't a politically correct opinion to have, so...
But yeah it's probably one of the reasons it has gone relatively if not entirely un-noticed.
I believe dil put into upgrading by whales has made DR the "best expansion ever" and I also believe the amount of dil that has been consumed dwarfs everything else to the point cryptic has red ears over not just doing this before.
In oppose to what others would like to be reality that the queues are empty and the game is hurting.
And yes I attribute whales putting dil into upgrading largely to the fact it is expensive.
Call it ninja brilliance - it almost made it home on stealth.
But that's the same reason you buy an expensive car right?
So others could see you can afford something they couldn't.
It's not because the fabric of that car is worth million of dil, you are simply paying for the brand of owning something expensive (that others don't have).
It can only be special or luxery based on others NOT having it.
I don't say it to flame the whales though, I say it in explaining why DR IS in fact a SUCCESS.
Hell I can only be jealous, I wish I had the vision to sell people's own property back to them copy-pasted and charge millions.
It's pretty slick when you think about it
/edit
ps. of course it can't stand alone in analyzing DR, you have to include the fake star trek ships being the whole reasoning for better stats, longevity and content drought and so on
i said it somewhere else but the point is still the same, if they pick a plant to fast, it dies (ultra fast cash grab for a small bump) vs. slower income= longer game life (MUCH more profit over the long term), one entity or another is not living within it's means, this tree cannot produce 10,000,000,000 apples, the balance is broken lol
The queues might be down and there might be less free loaders on.
But you have to remember we only need the playing population as far as to make the whales keep spending.
If whales are pleased with their gameplay being primarily upgrading in where they get to feel special and leveling specialization in-definitely in time for the next set of specialization passives - you don't need the queues and you don't need the f2p'ers who might have previously filled them up.
Is it that hard to imagine you are looking at the new premise of the game, whales only grinding singleplayer?
Notice how everything has been lined up to fit this exact pattern.
Deleting everything, even the slightest little detail that might make players consider anything but exactly what they want.
Remember in the old days you'd log on and think about what you felt like doing?
Now it's down to hell, we can't even have vendor trash giving players EC because it might make them not grind story missions.
The queues might be down and there might be less free loaders on.
But you have to remember we only need the playing population as far as to make the whales keep spending.
I'm sorry but I think you're incredibly off the mark here.
If they somehow exempted lockbox ships from the last XP nerf or made double XP or even double spec points a feature of gold membership or a vet reward or a lifetime perk, you might have a point.
I think you're off base though because the state of the game is every bit as painful and frustrating for big spenders, if not moreso. Spending doesn't alleviate any of the major inconveniences.
And I think people who spend don't see this as a F2P game. It's only free if you're not paying so expectation of some kind of eventual value payoff or a pain-free experience is higher among people who spend money.
I see plenty of free players who look at these kinds of changes and say, "Well, it takes me lots of grinding to get one spec point and I'm locked into only playing content that awards it if I want it but I don't have to spend anything." I also see lots of free players who say, "Well, I just play how I want but it doesn't cost me anything so I'm happy."
Whereas I think if someone spends upwards of $25 in a month, it's fair for them to want no aspect of this game to feel free to play. It should only FEEL free to play if you aren't spending. If you are spending, it should become more and more indistinguishable from AAA paid game because that's what it is FOR YOU if you're spending AAA dollars.
I don't expect anyone to come out and be proud of it.
It ain't a politically correct opinion to have, so...
But yeah it's probably one of the reasons it has gone relatively if not entirely un-noticed.
I believe dil put into upgrading by whales has made DR the "best expansion ever" and I also believe the amount of dil that has been consumed dwarfs everything else to the point cryptic has red ears over not just doing this before.
In oppose to what others would like to be reality that the queues are empty and the game is hurting.
Game actually IS hurting. Sure, there's been a huge amount of Dilithium spent since DR. But equally sure is that a great many ppl are totally fed-up, had to give up their alts, feel locked into single builds because of the costly upgrades and such, and are on the verge of leaving, or have already done so.
A company cannot live on whales alone. Whales need water to swim in (ask Scotty). And when they're no Ahabs left to show off to, the whales will go too. And that is why a certain unnamed lead Dev is running such a destructive game (figuratively): fun whilst you're milking everyone dry, but ultimately self-defeating.
If whales are pleased with their gameplay being primarily upgrading in where they get to feel special and leveling specialization in-definitely in time for the next set of specialization passives...
I thought the whole point of being a whale was instant gratification. The crafting and upgrading systems plays into this pretty hard - you can just pay to get your gear immediately - but the specialization system doesn't seem like it would appeal to whales at all. They'd have to provide a way for whales to buy levels/quicker XP gains (and no, the current XP boosters are NOT it).
Also, F2Pers are the ones grinding away for dilithium to sell for Zen. They're the ones feeding the whales. Without them, the dil exchange would dry up and upgrades would largely cease. So, Cryptic should be more concerned with keeping the F2Pers happy and feeling accomplished more so than the whales. They may as well break out the harpoons otherwise.
Also, F2Pers are the ones grinding away for dilithium to sell for Zen. They're the ones feeding the whales. Without them, the dil exchange would dry up and upgrades would largely cease. So, Cryptic should be more concerned with keeping the F2Pers happy and feeling accomplished more so than the whales. They may as well break out the harpoons otherwise.
And this is why I got out of the Zen market post DR. Not only do I refuse to spend cash on the game, I also will not convert my dilithium into Zen. My dilithium is not going to feed anybody else's habit and why I can say I am *completely* F2P.
Sorry, says the bartender--but you've had a few too many. I'm going to have to cut you off.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-) Proudly F2P.Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
Seems to me like you are defending a position based on your personal preference.
That you do spend the money but would like to have to spend less - not that you are going to stop playing or spending, no matter what.
And that really is the key there, "no matter what".
A whale is someone who "has to have it" and that's not just money but grinding 19 hour days for the sword of whatever
Aslong as there are story missions to replay they won't stop playing. Whereas if there wasn't something to grind manually they would stop playing albeit they still had money to spend.
So, it won't work to just let you buy everything and then leave. We can't have cash only systems you can unlock and then be done.
You think it's a co-incidence the story missions are behind the biggest grind ever? Think again.
It's obviously been registered, noted and authenticated the whales give in to lore.
They didn't just happen to have placed the grind there.
No, we need you to keep playing so you keep buying. You pay your 7 millions of dil per ship now and then we keep you in-game with the 600 story missions you have to re-play per character.
When you talk about what you think ought to be, you are talking about how you wish it could be for you personally and I am talking about what's in fact going on.
To me leveling is tied into buying a fake ship in exactly the same way.
1 element is pay and the other is the hook to keep you here it being the skill-point grind.
If you could just buy a ship and then what?
It is quite obviously working. The whales are upgrading and the whales are replaying 600 story missions per character.
All you can point to is your own personal preference, that you'd wish you had to pay less and then right after you post you go start up a new upgrading window on 11 characters...
The queues are down yes.
But this is a new regime in where reputation, marks, fleets etc have outplayed their role.
They are all marginalized in terms of the dil coming in via upgrading and crafting and what's even more essential about that is, the new systems are almost entirely without any developer resources spent.
It would take 15-20 minutes to add a new specialzation window with passives, with zero animations, that's going to take your years to get through.
Same thing with the upgrading system.
You just fire up notepad and add a new passive bonus, boom, player now has to pay another 3 million to re-re-re-upgrade his weapons for 0 animations and 0 developer resources.
Queues? You can delete those just as indifferently as exploration went
I think it's sad to see that the XP nerf has turned us all into monsters. F2P attacking paying players, paying customers attacking F2P. The truth is, without one the other wouldn't have a game to play in. That works both ways. People who don't spend a dime provide Dilithium for those who do to trade Zen for it. People who buy Zen provide that Zen for those who don't want to buy it to trade for.
I don't think it's very nice to calling people who spend money on the game 'whales' though. I spend money on this game and for reference I don't fly a big bad TRIBBLE DPS monster. Most of the money I spend is simply to put towards Starbase projects. The rest is for personal use amongst my 15 toons to buy some gear with, but none of them have any ship equipment upgraded yet so it's not being spent on the upgrade system. I don't fly around with a superiority complex, and I don't think that because I spend money I deserve more than other players who don't spend money.
How about instead of deciding which part of the player base is 'better' than the other, we all focus our attention on the real enemy... The devs who have decided to nerf all the fun out of the game under the guise of 'improvement'.
Join date is wrong, I've actually been around since STO Beta.
True alters don't have a "main". Account wide unlocks for all unique event rewards!!
Seems to me like you are defending a position based on your personal preference.
That you do spend the money but would like to have to spend less - not that you are going to stop playing or spending, no matter what.
Is this in response to me? If so, no matter what doesn't apply. I deleted STO abruptly after Thursday's patch. The XP nerf was too demoralizing to tolerate.
A whale is someone who "has to have it" and that's not just money but grinding 19 hour days for the sword of whatever
Ah, okay. I thought whale was just a person who spent money on a F2P game and basically helped keep it funded. In that case, I'm not a whale at all. I did have a lot of cool things I really wanted, but there was plenty I did without. I thought you were just going off about people who spent money on the game at all.
"Going after larger fish" though supposedly whales are mammals and not fish that's how you should picture it.
Getting the biggest fish on the hook.
So your biggest spenders, those who go beyond insanity, those are the whales.
And I am not trying to go off on the whales I am just saying how it makes perfect sense that the expensive upgrading system becomes a whale brand exactly in its attribute of people not being able to afford it.
If you are a whale and you spend all that cash, why shouldn't you have something others don't?
If you buy LTS you get special things others don't and there is no flaming LTS'ers there.
So where people flamed the cost I say that's exactly what is right about it
I think it's sad to see that the XP nerf has turned us all into monsters. F2P attacking paying players, paying customers attacking F2P. The truth is, without one the other wouldn't have a game to play in. That works both ways. People who don't spend a dime provide Dilithium for those who do to trade Zen for it. People who buy Zen provide that Zen for those who don't want to buy it to trade for.
I agree completely.
You guys want to focus your anger? Focus it on our lying excuse for 'Lead Content Designer' pwgroverclvlnd.
Re-read the original post and the double speak, intentional deception and outright lies should be more then enough to give you someone to be mad at.
And of course, he couldn't care less, guy can't even be bothered to give us a simple 'we'll take another look at the numbers.'
With people like this at the helm, it's no wonder the game is in the sorry state it's in.
You guys want to focus your anger? Focus it on our lying excuse for 'Lead Content Designer' pwgroverclvlnd.
Re-read the original post and the double speak, intentional deception and outright lies should be more then enough to give you someone to be mad at.
And of course, he couldn't care less, guy can't even be bothered to give us a simple 'we'll take another look at the numbers.'
With people like this at the helm, it's no wonder the game is in the sorry state it's in.
The players do a way better job of testing this stuff than they ever do, maybe they should start listening to us instead of themselves.
Frankly that's how most of the problems in this game originate, from them not listening to the testers. We give our time, for free, to test for them and do the job that the people they pay should be doing, and we do a better job. Yet when it comes down to it they ignore the vast majority of the feedback and then wonder why it doesn't work. Anyone remember when Geko said there was 'no actionable feedback' concerning the doff ui? I remember, and the uproar it caused considering how much there was.
It is the same all the time and it is a repetitive cycle that's going to continue unless they finally change their attitude. What is new this time is that the real issues in the game are supposedly 'working as intended' and therefore are even less likely to be fixed than the bugs.
Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head. - Euripides
I no longer do any Bug Hunting work for Cryptic. I may resume if a serious attempt to fix the game is made.
You guys want to focus your anger? Focus it on our lying excuse for 'Lead Content Designer' pwgroverclvlnd.
Re-read the original post and the double speak, intentional deception and outright lies should be more then enough to give you someone to be mad at.
And of course, he couldn't care less, guy can't even be bothered to give us a simple 'we'll take another look at the numbers.'
With people like this at the helm, it's no wonder the game is in the sorry state it's in.
I agree.
And I've already made it clear, I will not be giving Cryptic any more money until Rivera and D'Angelo are booted out; and I also expect there to be a serious rejig of the XP points system. There was no need to stuff around with the points, there was also no need to stuff around with the difficulty settings beyond adding the higher difficulty for people who wanted such a thing.
Rivera fancies that developers "Decide" what happens? Well news flash Rivera: I Decide whether you get any money from me. The players, as your customer base, "Decide" whether you get a single penny from us. You're only an employee of a business, you can drop the attitude.
Do you know something which has just occurred to me. I've been playing for a good six to eight hours today (it's the weekend and it's freezing outside, what else was I going to do?), in that time I've got a tier 6 ship all the way through the mastery to tier 5 and yet I'm not even quite at the half way mark to my next specialisation point... When I logged in today I hit the level I'm on now from turning in some doff missions. So yeah, six hours of play and I've mastered a whole starship to tier 5 yet not gained one spec point...
That pretty much says it all about how messed up the progression is just now.
Join date is wrong, I've actually been around since STO Beta.
True alters don't have a "main". Account wide unlocks for all unique event rewards!!
Comments
those whales got screwed over, and down THAT ladder they made it that high anything down the chain got hung by outlandish timers and upgrade costs.
A good hustle or scam comes down to the victims knowing about it or not.
If you think about it, it just might actually be the opposite... That the whales feel they finally have a way in which they get to feel special for using all that money.
That in fact, nothing as of yet has given them even remotely the satisfaction of upgrading - think about it, you know it makes sense.
Anyone can grind a 6 week reputation out but a 1700$ dil ship is not for everyone.
I am actually quite sure there is a definitive and yet un-tagged sense of "accomplishment" and "pride" amongst the whales, a sense of redemption finally.
You don't have to look further than right here on this board to find threads with people parading their dps around like they created it by personal talent and will-power and didn't just go out and buy it.
It's like the little boy who cried update, the boy cried Update!! and all the users got on, and they where like awwww darn, and then went off to do whatever
Then, the next day the boy cried update again, and the users where like YES!!! and logged on and where like oh great ...
And then, the 3rd day when the boy cried update, no one came. and it was all over ... lol
I could disagree with this. I'd wager that (based on the forums) the happiest players probably:
- Spend nothing or very little.
- Have lower expectations.
I think this goes to the core of the problem which is that the game encourages people who do spend to outspend their level of satisfaction.
So much hate for the whales... you do know someone needs to pay money to keep the game going, right?
Being a whale myself, I can say I definitely did not have a sense of pride for having a ~$1000 ship. Even we understand that's ridiculous. However, what else do we have to spend money on? If I wanted to, I could afford around ~$2000 a month to put into "entertainment". If I spend most of that month playing STO, I don't have a problem putting that money toward STO, regardless of what I'm purchasing. And - you have no right to complain where I spend my money. If anything, you should thanks whales for keeping the servers running. Sure, it would be better if Cryptic utilized different methods for getting players to pay money, but with what we got, whales are what's keeping the game going. Blame Cryptic, not the whales :cool:
All of that said, with the recent patches, they do seems designed to keep people playing and grinding, but it's having the opposite affect. There are other things out there that are more entertaining at this point, and my money is going there. Grinding is not entertaining.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
And as I touched on in my last post I believe the ludicrous upgrading costs, in themselves, makes it not just special and attractive to a whale, but ultimately the best system in the game to date.
Namely because it's not just about what you have - it's equally if not more important what others don't have, there is no way you can feel special without it being based on what others aren't.
So, since you spent the money in the past anyway, upgrading is by far a better system in where the money don't matter - you spend those anyway.
But the oppertunity to think you are special - or rather to gloat over what others don't have could potentially be the most important update for whales.
Don't get me wrong, for me personally the game is all but dead - at the very least stuck on the on-going content drought.
But from the perspective of the whales and the perspective of cryptic - the amount of dil going into DR, goes a long way in explaining it all.
I think with the crafting milk-now button they learned of people's stupidity and from here on out they going to capitalize on whales' vanity... retro-actively knowing they could have been doing this all along.
That, in conjunction with the community's reaction to al rivera, from their perspective it's pay-back time, litterly, metaphorically and buttom-line.
Cryptic should not want too many people like me who are willing to play the patience game against them and win--but that is exactly what they are creating more and more of.
And sorry...I am not going to feel "grateful" to people who spend beyond reason and jump through every financial hoop without standing up and saying enough is enough, or doing so what may be way too late. The game will cease to be fun even for them when there is no one else left to lord it over...
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-)
Proudly F2P. Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
No hate for whales at all...
I was strictly commenting on the motivation for whales of the upgrading system.
In where I said, what has been perceived as a weakness - the ludicrous cost of copy-pasted blank stats, is in fact the biggest strength and the best system for whales to date.
That being, you spend the money anyway but now you have what you never had before; something to set you apart from other players.
Then I said I believe that is what has made DR the "best expansion ever" and that it's not a failure for the game or even a problem.
The only negative in all of this for cryptic is not realizing how much money they can get for zero conten - the copy-pasted stats with no work involved.
Am I completely objective about it, yes and no - I do call it a scam and say it's copy-paste where as much as those have value meaning attached those are also objective facts.
For example, "upgrading IS copy-pasted with no new animations". That has a negative meaning to it yes but it is also a fact...
If you feel hated on reading that I will apologize I am not out to point the finger at individuals, rather I want to debate systems, groups and mechanisms.
It ain't a politically correct opinion to have, so...
But yeah it's probably one of the reasons it has gone relatively if not entirely un-noticed.
I believe dil put into upgrading by whales has made DR the "best expansion ever" and I also believe the amount of dil that has been consumed dwarfs everything else to the point cryptic has red ears over not just doing this before.
In oppose to what others would like to be reality that the queues are empty and the game is hurting.
And yes I attribute whales putting dil into upgrading largely to the fact it is expensive.
Call it ninja brilliance - it almost made it home on stealth.
But that's the same reason you buy an expensive car right?
So others could see you can afford something they couldn't.
It's not because the fabric of that car is worth million of dil, you are simply paying for the brand of owning something expensive (that others don't have).
It can only be special or luxery based on others NOT having it.
I don't say it to flame the whales though, I say it in explaining why DR IS in fact a SUCCESS.
Hell I can only be jealous, I wish I had the vision to sell people's own property back to them copy-pasted and charge millions.
It's pretty slick when you think about it
/edit
ps. of course it can't stand alone in analyzing DR, you have to include the fake star trek ships being the whole reasoning for better stats, longevity and content drought and so on
But you have to remember we only need the playing population as far as to make the whales keep spending.
If whales are pleased with their gameplay being primarily upgrading in where they get to feel special and leveling specialization in-definitely in time for the next set of specialization passives - you don't need the queues and you don't need the f2p'ers who might have previously filled them up.
Is it that hard to imagine you are looking at the new premise of the game, whales only grinding singleplayer?
Notice how everything has been lined up to fit this exact pattern.
Deleting everything, even the slightest little detail that might make players consider anything but exactly what they want.
Remember in the old days you'd log on and think about what you felt like doing?
Now it's down to hell, we can't even have vendor trash giving players EC because it might make them not grind story missions.
I'm sorry but I think you're incredibly off the mark here.
If they somehow exempted lockbox ships from the last XP nerf or made double XP or even double spec points a feature of gold membership or a vet reward or a lifetime perk, you might have a point.
I think you're off base though because the state of the game is every bit as painful and frustrating for big spenders, if not moreso. Spending doesn't alleviate any of the major inconveniences.
And I think people who spend don't see this as a F2P game. It's only free if you're not paying so expectation of some kind of eventual value payoff or a pain-free experience is higher among people who spend money.
I see plenty of free players who look at these kinds of changes and say, "Well, it takes me lots of grinding to get one spec point and I'm locked into only playing content that awards it if I want it but I don't have to spend anything." I also see lots of free players who say, "Well, I just play how I want but it doesn't cost me anything so I'm happy."
Whereas I think if someone spends upwards of $25 in a month, it's fair for them to want no aspect of this game to feel free to play. It should only FEEL free to play if you aren't spending. If you are spending, it should become more and more indistinguishable from AAA paid game because that's what it is FOR YOU if you're spending AAA dollars.
Game actually IS hurting. Sure, there's been a huge amount of Dilithium spent since DR. But equally sure is that a great many ppl are totally fed-up, had to give up their alts, feel locked into single builds because of the costly upgrades and such, and are on the verge of leaving, or have already done so.
A company cannot live on whales alone. Whales need water to swim in (ask Scotty). And when they're no Ahabs left to show off to, the whales will go too. And that is why a certain unnamed lead Dev is running such a destructive game (figuratively): fun whilst you're milking everyone dry, but ultimately self-defeating.
I vote we get Dstahl back.
I thought the whole point of being a whale was instant gratification. The crafting and upgrading systems plays into this pretty hard - you can just pay to get your gear immediately - but the specialization system doesn't seem like it would appeal to whales at all. They'd have to provide a way for whales to buy levels/quicker XP gains (and no, the current XP boosters are NOT it).
And this is why I got out of the Zen market post DR. Not only do I refuse to spend cash on the game, I also will not convert my dilithium into Zen. My dilithium is not going to feed anybody else's habit and why I can say I am *completely* F2P.
Sorry, says the bartender--but you've had a few too many. I'm going to have to cut you off.
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That you do spend the money but would like to have to spend less - not that you are going to stop playing or spending, no matter what.
And that really is the key there, "no matter what".
A whale is someone who "has to have it" and that's not just money but grinding 19 hour days for the sword of whatever
Aslong as there are story missions to replay they won't stop playing. Whereas if there wasn't something to grind manually they would stop playing albeit they still had money to spend.
So, it won't work to just let you buy everything and then leave. We can't have cash only systems you can unlock and then be done.
You think it's a co-incidence the story missions are behind the biggest grind ever? Think again.
It's obviously been registered, noted and authenticated the whales give in to lore.
They didn't just happen to have placed the grind there.
No, we need you to keep playing so you keep buying. You pay your 7 millions of dil per ship now and then we keep you in-game with the 600 story missions you have to re-play per character.
When you talk about what you think ought to be, you are talking about how you wish it could be for you personally and I am talking about what's in fact going on.
To me leveling is tied into buying a fake ship in exactly the same way.
1 element is pay and the other is the hook to keep you here it being the skill-point grind.
If you could just buy a ship and then what?
It is quite obviously working. The whales are upgrading and the whales are replaying 600 story missions per character.
All you can point to is your own personal preference, that you'd wish you had to pay less and then right after you post you go start up a new upgrading window on 11 characters...
The queues are down yes.
But this is a new regime in where reputation, marks, fleets etc have outplayed their role.
They are all marginalized in terms of the dil coming in via upgrading and crafting and what's even more essential about that is, the new systems are almost entirely without any developer resources spent.
It would take 15-20 minutes to add a new specialzation window with passives, with zero animations, that's going to take your years to get through.
Same thing with the upgrading system.
You just fire up notepad and add a new passive bonus, boom, player now has to pay another 3 million to re-re-re-upgrade his weapons for 0 animations and 0 developer resources.
Queues? You can delete those just as indifferently as exploration went
I don't think it's very nice to calling people who spend money on the game 'whales' though. I spend money on this game and for reference I don't fly a big bad TRIBBLE DPS monster. Most of the money I spend is simply to put towards Starbase projects. The rest is for personal use amongst my 15 toons to buy some gear with, but none of them have any ship equipment upgraded yet so it's not being spent on the upgrade system. I don't fly around with a superiority complex, and I don't think that because I spend money I deserve more than other players who don't spend money.
How about instead of deciding which part of the player base is 'better' than the other, we all focus our attention on the real enemy... The devs who have decided to nerf all the fun out of the game under the guise of 'improvement'.
Is this in response to me? If so, no matter what doesn't apply. I deleted STO abruptly after Thursday's patch. The XP nerf was too demoralizing to tolerate.
Ah, okay. I thought whale was just a person who spent money on a F2P game and basically helped keep it funded. In that case, I'm not a whale at all. I did have a lot of cool things I really wanted, but there was plenty I did without. I thought you were just going off about people who spent money on the game at all.
"Going after larger fish" though supposedly whales are mammals and not fish that's how you should picture it.
Getting the biggest fish on the hook.
So your biggest spenders, those who go beyond insanity, those are the whales.
And I am not trying to go off on the whales I am just saying how it makes perfect sense that the expensive upgrading system becomes a whale brand exactly in its attribute of people not being able to afford it.
If you are a whale and you spend all that cash, why shouldn't you have something others don't?
If you buy LTS you get special things others don't and there is no flaming LTS'ers there.
So where people flamed the cost I say that's exactly what is right about it
I agree completely.
You guys want to focus your anger? Focus it on our lying excuse for 'Lead Content Designer' pwgroverclvlnd.
Re-read the original post and the double speak, intentional deception and outright lies should be more then enough to give you someone to be mad at.
And of course, he couldn't care less, guy can't even be bothered to give us a simple 'we'll take another look at the numbers.'
With people like this at the helm, it's no wonder the game is in the sorry state it's in.
The players do a way better job of testing this stuff than they ever do, maybe they should start listening to us instead of themselves.
Frankly that's how most of the problems in this game originate, from them not listening to the testers. We give our time, for free, to test for them and do the job that the people they pay should be doing, and we do a better job. Yet when it comes down to it they ignore the vast majority of the feedback and then wonder why it doesn't work. Anyone remember when Geko said there was 'no actionable feedback' concerning the doff ui? I remember, and the uproar it caused considering how much there was.
It is the same all the time and it is a repetitive cycle that's going to continue unless they finally change their attitude. What is new this time is that the real issues in the game are supposedly 'working as intended' and therefore are even less likely to be fixed than the bugs.
I agree.
And I've already made it clear, I will not be giving Cryptic any more money until Rivera and D'Angelo are booted out; and I also expect there to be a serious rejig of the XP points system. There was no need to stuff around with the points, there was also no need to stuff around with the difficulty settings beyond adding the higher difficulty for people who wanted such a thing.
Rivera fancies that developers "Decide" what happens? Well news flash Rivera: I Decide whether you get any money from me. The players, as your customer base, "Decide" whether you get a single penny from us. You're only an employee of a business, you can drop the attitude.
People selling adult fun for resources!!!! LOL!!!
*yes, they WHERE holding hands and running through a meddow i saw it!!*:eek:
sorry lol, pulling a funny
That pretty much says it all about how messed up the progression is just now.