Honestly Virus has the truth of it. The problem was the alt-unlock chaining method resulting in no characters having to run the event at all. Their initial change fixed that by devaluing their pearl stockpiles. The salami "acommodation" will still devalue the currency and void this tactic (exploit?). But now everyone will need to run the event on 1 character each year, just like they really want.
Here is my problem: I was 1 day short (40 pearls) short of getting the liner last year and never slottes the project. So my reading is that I am SOL on getting it since I only ever do these eventa on my main. (I never slot projects unless I can fill them since the system wont let you cancel. Popr foresight on my part I guess?).
At least I can buy a half dozen spec points.
But my real complaint is the ship emotes. Reminds me of the disco ball all over again. I will pay 1000 zen for a system unlock allowing me to turn those off. Double if I can also get rid of the sparklies every time I use an ability.
Wait,starship emotes? Seriously Cryptic? This is really a stupid idea...on high level of stupid. And also, we do have Summer event in the middle of Iconian War. Something sounds seriously wrong here...
At least give us a middle finger emote. I can use that...
Over the last couple of seasonal events we noticed a trend that was different than we had seen in the past. General participation on the event was dropping, but the number of ships being collected was staying the same. Somehow people were playing less and still earning the ships from these events; we started digging into the numbers to figure this out. We initially assumed people were using the Lobi bypass option to speed their way through the events, but after digging deeper into the numbers that wasnt the case either. It turned out the change we made to make earning the ships more alt friendly had completely trivialized play of the events. Players could earn currency on all of their alts in one year, and then spend the currency from a single character every year to get the ship immediately. While some few players would then re-run the event on the character that spent their currency, the vast majority wouldnt. Again, this meant participation was down while rewards were still earned at the same rate.
If you want to see general participation in the events increase, then add additional rewards that can be purchased with Pearls, Autographs, and Qmendations. If one player wants to stock up on an event currency so they don't have to next year, then let them. If there are more rewards to buy with pearls, then players will play the event for longer. There is absolutely no need to create a new currency for each event.
1. Its an event, granted you get nice shiny stuff but it means NOTHING in grand scheme of gameplay and story.
2. Which leads to this point, we want more story content do we not? Events are supposed to be temporary "filler" before the main event which is what EVERYONE plays this game for. STAR TREK not Bay Watch
3. I want these guys to put the time and resources into making good stories and keep the game alive with episodic like flair we expect from Star Trek, so far so good. The whole reason why people play the game is for that purpose, to fill the Trek void we miss on TV.
4. Granted it sucks for pre-planners but hey life sucks, deal with it power on through. We have Iconians to kill.
5. Trek fans are some of the hardest fans to please with any franchise, cut these guys some slack, they have to deal with PWE overlords and even worse, CBS. Cryptic is trying its damnest to keep its flagship (pardon the pun) alive and well under the strict guidelines of these two massive conglomerates.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] "This planet smells, it must be the Klingons"
There has been a lot of discussion, speculation, and general debate with the decision to adjust the way Summer Event ship currency is earned. This wasnt a decision we came to lightly, but it was one that we needed to make to maintain the integrity of this event and these ships. Im going to take a moment to give some history on these sorts of events, why we made this decision, and what we plan to do moving forward.
Our seasonal events came to pass as a way to give you something fun to play that doesnt fall strictly in line with our standard gameplay, while also giving out a rare and powerful reward for doing so. We decided, as most of you would, that the most desirable reward we could give out is a ship and a system was designed to give you access to that ship. Over a specific period of time youre asked to log in and play a short mission for about 55% of that time in order to earn a near lock box quality ship. This ship was earned per character and each character on your account had to turn in the same amount of currency to earn the ship. The ship wasnt only powerful, but was a status symbol for someone that was there when the event ran. After a couple of years of participating in this system the general feedback from the community was that this was too tedious and far too much of a commitment for people with multiple alts that wanted the ship. This led us to have some internal discussions and make a change.
About a year ago we changed the system so that all you had to do was earn the ship on a single character on your account, and then every alt you had that could slot the ship project only had to turn in a single days worth of currency in order to get the ship. We were happy to make this change, and were even happier at how well it was received by the community. It meant everyone got their ships and didnt have to get completely burned out on the daily mission to earn the currency. For a time, this was a great setup and both dev and player got what they wanted.
Over the last couple of seasonal events we noticed a trend that was different than we had seen in the past. General participation on the event was dropping, but the number of ships being collected was staying the same. Somehow people were playing less and still earning the ships from these events; we started digging into the numbers to figure this out. We initially assumed people were using the Lobi bypass option to speed their way through the events, but after digging deeper into the numbers that wasnt the case either. It turned out the change we made to make earning the ships more alt friendly had completely trivialized play of the events. Players could earn currency on all of their alts in one year, and then spend the currency from a single character every year to get the ship immediately. While some few players would then re-run the event on the character that spent their currency, the vast majority wouldnt. Again, this meant participation was down while rewards were still earned at the same rate.
Ive written all of this to explain how weve gotten to where we are today, a new currency for every ship every year. This ensured that each year the players that participate in the event will earn the reward for that year, while still allowing alts to earn the ships after a single play of the event. We knew that shipping the alt friendly system as it was is our mistake, and we wanted to ensure that impacted players werent left with nothing. We created a variety of desirable rewards that would let players turn in their pearls and feel like they got something valuable or unique for them. While this satisfied me in the short term, after reading all of your feedback I want to take this a step further.
We will be making every event ship youve ever earned and every event ship moving forward total account unlocks. As soon as one character on your account owns a ship, every single other character on your account that exists now or you will ever create will have immediate access to any event ship youve earned. There will be no need for your alts to play the event mission, no hoops to fly through other than picking up the ship from a store. Hopefully taking this extra step will address any lingering concerns you have with the overall change. Thanks for reading this far, and I look forward to seeing you on Risa soon!
In other words this boils down to one thing.
METRICS
Wrong move cryptic and I don't think you will like the result. Forcing us to play an MMO a certain way just to pad your metrics is what drives people away. Make the game fun again, stop punishing players and instead reward them, and the metrics will take care of themselves.
We will be making every event ship youve ever earned and every event ship moving forward total account unlocks. As soon as one character on your account owns a ship, every single other character on your account that exists now or you will ever create will have immediate access to any event ship youve earned. There will be no need for your alts to play the event mission, no hoops to fly through other than picking up the ship from a store. Hopefully taking this extra step will address any lingering concerns you have with the overall change. Thanks for reading this far, and I look forward to seeing you on Risa soon!
Okay you have redeemed yourself. Thankyou for taking the time to listen to our concerns and make a change in our favor. This last paragraph makes the game worth playing again.
We don't want what the Feds have. We want the equivalent. We want fairer treatment. Concern, desire, greed to some extent, and passionate belief that the enough people would buy KDF items to make it worth Cryptic's while.
We will be making every event ship youve ever earned and every event ship moving forward total account unlocks. As soon as one character on your account owns a ship, every single other character on your account that exists now or you will ever create will have immediate access to any event ship youve earned. There will be no need for your alts to play the event mission, no hoops to fly through other than picking up the ship from a store. Hopefully taking this extra step will address any lingering concerns you have with the overall change. Thanks for reading this far, and I look forward to seeing you on Risa soon!
Just for clarification sake, does this mean once we earn the ship, we can dismiss it and reclaim it later like Veteran ships?
There has been a lot of discussion, speculation, and general debate with the decision to adjust the way Summer Event ship currency is earned. This wasnt a decision we came to lightly, but it was one that we needed to make to maintain the integrity of this event and these ships. Im going to take a moment to give some history on these sorts of events, why we made this decision, and what we plan to do moving forward.
Our seasonal events came to pass as a way to give you something fun to play that doesnt fall strictly in line with our standard gameplay, while also giving out a rare and powerful reward for doing so. We decided, as most of you would, that the most desirable reward we could give out is a ship and a system was designed to give you access to that ship. Over a specific period of time youre asked to log in and play a short mission for about 55% of that time in order to earn a near lock box quality ship. This ship was earned per character and each character on your account had to turn in the same amount of currency to earn the ship. The ship wasnt only powerful, but was a status symbol for someone that was there when the event ran. After a couple of years of participating in this system the general feedback from the community was that this was too tedious and far too much of a commitment for people with multiple alts that wanted the ship. This led us to have some internal discussions and make a change.
About a year ago we changed the system so that all you had to do was earn the ship on a single character on your account, and then every alt you had that could slot the ship project only had to turn in a single days worth of currency in order to get the ship. We were happy to make this change, and were even happier at how well it was received by the community. It meant everyone got their ships and didnt have to get completely burned out on the daily mission to earn the currency. For a time, this was a great setup and both dev and player got what they wanted.
Over the last couple of seasonal events we noticed a trend that was different than we had seen in the past. General participation on the event was dropping, but the number of ships being collected was staying the same. Somehow people were playing less and still earning the ships from these events; we started digging into the numbers to figure this out. We initially assumed people were using the Lobi bypass option to speed their way through the events, but after digging deeper into the numbers that wasnt the case either. It turned out the change we made to make earning the ships more alt friendly had completely trivialized play of the events. Players could earn currency on all of their alts in one year, and then spend the currency from a single character every year to get the ship immediately. While some few players would then re-run the event on the character that spent their currency, the vast majority wouldnt. Again, this meant participation was down while rewards were still earned at the same rate.
Ive written all of this to explain how weve gotten to where we are today, a new currency for every ship every year. This ensured that each year the players that participate in the event will earn the reward for that year, while still allowing alts to earn the ships after a single play of the event. We knew that shipping the alt friendly system as it was is our mistake, and we wanted to ensure that impacted players werent left with nothing. We created a variety of desirable rewards that would let players turn in their pearls and feel like they got something valuable or unique for them. While this satisfied me in the short term, after reading all of your feedback I want to take this a step further.
We will be making every event ship youve ever earned and every event ship moving forward total account unlocks. As soon as one character on your account owns a ship, every single other character on your account that exists now or you will ever create will have immediate access to any event ship youve earned. There will be no need for your alts to play the event mission, no hoops to fly through other than picking up the ship from a store. Hopefully taking this extra step will address any lingering concerns you have with the overall change. Thanks for reading this far, and I look forward to seeing you on Risa soon!
Mr. Inferno
I play one character. I ran the events, earned the currencies, and went back and earned more of each currency.
I would like to apply my extra pearl currency toward the new currency this one last time. I think the company should look forward and consider adding a similar aforementioned rollover for other event currencies (Winter, CCE, and Mirror Event) as I, and others, have more of those also if your metrics are leading you to similar conclusions for other events.
If you continue to let players acquire extra new future currency past a minimum please consider allowing player to turn those currencies in for additional dilithium.
There has been a lot of discussion, speculation, and general debate with the decision to adjust the way Summer Event ship currency is earned. This wasn’t a decision we came to lightly, but it was one that we needed to make to maintain the integrity of this event and these ships. I’m going to take a moment to give some history on these sorts of events, why we made this decision, and what we plan to do moving forward.
Life would have been much simpler and sweeter for everyone if this had been part of the original announcement...
~snip~
We created a variety of desirable rewards that would let players turn in their pearls and feel like they got something valuable or unique for them. While this satisfied me in the short term, after reading all of your feedback I want to take this a step further.
We will be making every event ship you’ve ever earned and every event ship moving forward total account unlocks. As soon as one character on your account owns a ship, every single other character on your account that exists now or you will ever create will have immediate access to any event ship you’ve earned. There will be no need for your alts to play the event mission, no hoops to fly through other than picking up the ship from a store.
Well, that's a move that will certainly go a long way to reducing the anger amongst many of the veteran players. But does leave some out of luck on ships they havn't managed to unlock so far, who expected to do so this year.
It also doesn't do much for the 'New Players' that you were trying to draw in with the 'Delta Recruit' program, welcome to the game, see all those old folks, they are all getting account wide unlocks on stuff you will never be allowed to have. Does seem to contradict the whole plan really.
Hopefully taking this extra step will address any lingering concerns you have with the overall change. Thanks for reading this far, and I look forward to seeing you on Risa soon!
Hmmm...
<center><font size="+5"><b>Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day... Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life...</b></size></center>
We will be making every event ship youve ever earned and every event ship moving forward total account unlocks. As soon as one character on your account owns a ship, every single other character on your account that exists now or you will ever create will have immediate access to any event ship youve earned. There will be no need for your alts to play the event mission, no hoops to fly through other than picking up the ship from a store. Hopefully taking this extra step will address any lingering concerns you have with the overall change. Thanks for reading this far, and I look forward to seeing you on Risa soon!
I'll start off the post by saying that I'm glad to see you guys have listened to some of the feedback and are planning to do this! It's a massive step in the right direction. I do wonder if this means ships we've earned but accidentally dismissed can now be reclaimed? Or are those characters still going to be out of luck since the previous projects are being removed?
Players could earn currency on all of their alts in one year, and then spend the currency from a single character every year to get the ship immediately. While some few players would then re-run the event on the character that spent their currency, the vast majority wouldnt. Again, this meant participation was down while rewards were still earned at the same rate.
Ive written all of this to explain how weve gotten to where we are today, a new currency for every ship every year. This ensured that each year the players that participate in the event will earn the reward for that year...
This section of your post caught my attention. You imply that people who do the run with all their toons on one year, haven't earned the ship for the next year. But really, they have, they just put in the work the year before.
Think of it like this; if you have two people and one of them works 40 hours a week for 21 weeks of the year, but the other works 20 hours a week for 52 weeks of the year. Did the first person not earn half of the money he now has simply because he got 21 weeks of the year off?
But alas, the metrics didn't add up!
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!!
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
I don't often post on the forums, unless I feel a reason to.... That being said....
I have to say that some of us can't run the daily event things for the 40 ship tokens enough times to be able to get the ship for the event. Will there be a way to help those of us who can't do that, by making the new currencies not be character-bound? I say this as I've been there before, and know that frustration first-hand. It's also happened where I've just missed it by a day or two and was absolutely flabbergasted, as the tokens were "character-bound" and I couldn't trade from another character to get the ship.
I'll still play the events as faithfully as I can, if for no other reason than to enjoy the content, and I won't outright buy the ship on day 1 even if I have enough said tokens to get it right from the get-go.
I can see your side about wanting everyone on equal footing for the event ships, especially for the newer players. And you also got folks who have some decent stockpiles of the event tokens.... Here's a crazy idea... Make the event tokens no longer be character-bound, or account-bound, for that matter. BUT, set a max EC cap on the price of them, so nobody can charge exorbitantly high prices for them on the exchange. (By "exorbitantly high prices", I'm referring to amounts of 10,000 EC and up. You shouldn't need to have to charge millions of ECs for a token, like some of the lock box ships are going for.... I mean, for real....) This gives the more veteran players an opportunity to help the newer players. And, if we want to, we can outright give them to said players, at no charge.
I can imagine that there are some people who will only play during the summer/winter events, and leave the game alone the rest of the time. If that played a big part of what prompted this decision, then I can understand that viewpoint. However, I'm also reasonably sure that among those who have "stockpiled" event tokens also play all the time. Thus, this is what prompted my idea mentioned above.
I think the biggest issues here has and will continue being the "leg up" mission. the past two/three(longer?) seasonal events we've have a special one-off Feature Episode run that gave us 400 Event tokens. If you had removed that, THAT would have fixed most of this "metrics" anomaly you're talking about. I'll admit here and now that was MY plan for the winter event past Christmas.... run the mission on all alts... bam 400 tokens.... sit and wait.... next year Bam 400 more.
Instead what you're introducing seems like a HUGE expenditure of resources(in design and storage debt) to change seasonal currencies Thrice-yearly. What happens to the people that keep those currencies not because they can't buy stuff with it... but because it now has a novelty "i can't get this anymore" quality? They're going to keep those currencies as long as they possibly can... that means that the exchanges you already have(Andorian Phasers, Prototype Consoles, Nukara Reputation Gear, old R&D particles) will balloon as each year whatever buyback you may introduce will be compounded with more and more seasonal currency.
We don't want what the Feds have. We want the equivalent. We want fairer treatment. Concern, desire, greed to some extent, and passionate belief that the enough people would buy KDF items to make it worth Cryptic's while.
I think the biggest issues here has and will continue being the "leg up" mission. the past two/three(longer?) seasonal events we've have a special one-off Feature Episode run that gave us 400 Event tokens. If you had removed that, THAT would have fixed most of this "metrics" anomaly you're talking about. I'll admit here and now that was MY plan for the winter event past Christmas.... run the mission on all alts... bam 400 tokens.... sit and wait.... next year Bam 400 more.
Instead what you're introducing seems like a HUGE expenditure of resources(in design and storage debt) to change seasonal currencies Thrice-yearly. What happens to the people that keep those currencies not because they can't buy stuff with it... but because it now has a novelty "i can't get this anymore" quality? They're going to keep those currencies as long as they possibly can... that means that the exchanges you already have(Andorian Phasers, Prototype Consoles, Nukara Reputation Gear, old R&D particles) will balloon as each year whatever buyback you may introduce will be compounded with more and more seasonal currency.
there is no 'leg-up' mission for the summer or winter event; that's only the anniversary
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
I think the biggest issues here has and will continue being the "leg up" mission. the past two/three(longer?) seasonal events we've have a special one-off Feature Episode run that gave us 400 Event tokens.
There never was a "leg up" Mission for both the Winter or Summer Event ... that's an Anniversary Thing ...
EDIT : Too Late ...
Patch Notes : Resolved an Issue, where people would accidently experience Fun.
Wow. I finally read through this whole thing. Took all day, but I managed it.
I had a few things to say regarding the change to the Summer Event (and most likely future events), but some of that seems to be moot after Salami Inferno's announcement of account wide unlocks. Even so, I still don't agree with retiring the older Risian ships. Actually, I don't agree with retiring any rewards. Exclusivity is a poor excuse for rewards that been available annually since the inception of these events, and erasing players' unfinished progress is just bad form.
Since Cryptic's now going to make an exclusive currency for each event's reward, why not just make the older rewards and currency still available for these annual events? Queued events have a Choice of Mark reward, the same could be done here for earning event rewards. Stockpiling, then, becomes irrelevant since each reward would need a special currency. Making older rewards available, along with the new, would encourage more participation, especially for those that may have missed a previous reward. So, if this is really about getting players to participate, then retiring rewards makes no sense.
Also, it's odd that Cryptic only seems to be looking at/counting event participation/success based on the one activity within the Event: the daily ship token reward activity, in the case of Summer/Risa: "Flying High". While, yes, players may come to get the ships, that's not why they stay, and not why they spend hours grinding in the Summer Events. Players grind more Lohlunat Favors than anything, and I'd think THAT would be a better metric to be tracking to gauge the event's success by.
Star Trek Online Volunteer Community Moderator and Resident She-Wolf
Community Moderators are Unpaid Volunteers and NOT Employees of Gearbox/Cryptic
Views and Opinions May Not Reflect the Views and Opinions of Gearbox/Cryptic
Thank you. As a long time player, this pretty much solves the main issue I had with this... since I'd have just done the race to save up for next year anyway.
Now, I do have to ask: will players that didn't get the old ships be able to obtain them?
Maybe I'm not in the majority, but just because I earned the ships already doesn't mean I begrudge my fellow players having that same opportunity when the next round of a given Event rolls around. While I don't have access to your metrics, you could theoretically increase participation overall in these Events by allowing players to slot Event Rep projects from any iteration of that specific Event. For example, the Summer Event here could have new players spending three times what a long-term player does flying the course just to unlock access to all three ships. This applies to all the Events, really... if a given year's reward doesn't pique a given player's interest, but they missed a prior year, they could participate in the Event for the thing they missed and might actually want.
While I'm personally happy with your solution, for me, I hope that you consider allowing newer folks to... well... grind harder in order to get the things they missed.
With each passing day I wonder if I stepped into an alternate reality. The Cubs win the world series. Donald Trump is President. Britain leaves the EU. STO gets a dedicated PvP season. Engineers are "out of control" in STO.
We Will Be Making Every Event Ship You’ve Ever Earned And Every Event Ship Moving Forward Total Account Unlocks. As Soon As One Character On Your Account Owns A Ship, Every Single Other Character On Your Account That Exists Now Or You Will Ever Create Will Have Immediate Access To Any Event Ship You’ve Earned. There Will Be No Need For Your Alts To Play The Event Mission, No Hoops To Fly Through Other Than Picking Up The Ship From A Store. Hopefully Taking This Extra Step Will Address Any Lingering Concerns You Have With The Overall Change. Thanks For Reading This Far, And I Look Forward To Seeing You On Risa Soon!
I Love You Salamiinferno And Team
I believe God created the universe, because he knew we wanted to explore. So, he made us a playground...
Since Cryptic's now going to make an exclusive currency for each event's reward, why not just make the older rewards and currency still available for these annual events?
Good idea.
Making the Future currency retroactive to the past ships we all win.
For example summer 2015 player fills the Que halfway. 2016 player uses the 2016 currency to finish the 2015 Que.
This is a win for everyone.
Ex-CoH players, Please add the chat channel "CoX STO"
We will be making every event ship youve ever earned and every event ship moving forward total account unlocks. As soon as one character on your account owns a ship, every single other character on your account that exists now or you will ever create will have immediate access to any event ship youve earned. There will be no need for your alts to play the event mission, no hoops to fly through other than picking up the ship from a store. Hopefully taking this extra step will address any lingering concerns you have with the overall change. Thanks for reading this far, and I look forward to seeing you on Risa soon!
Good to hear, could have been 103 pages earlier though.
This is my Risian Corvette. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
If you were able to unlock the past event ships you can still get them on all your alts.
If you slotted the project and didn't finish you can still get the ship.
If you didn't then there will be a new T6 that will be just as assessable as the past ships were.
All of this at no monetary cost to you what. so. ever...
And STILL people are whining and moaning.
It's days like this that make me think that Cryptic could make a tribble that eats lag and poops Zen and people complain it was bind on equip or the cool down was too long. And some wonder why I have so little "empathy." -.-
I'm complaining because this was to be the year I GOT those ships.
I missed out on the corvette, the cruise ship and the carrier, and if this is true, I won't be able to get any of them.
The carrier especially.
I love carriers, I love the playstyle, I love the pet based gameplay they provide.
Making the Future currency retroactive to the past ships we all win.
For example summer 2015 player fills the Que halfway. 2016 player uses the 2016 currency to finish the 2015 Que.
This is a win for everyone.
Well, that's not exactly what I meant, but that could work, too.
Star Trek Online Volunteer Community Moderator and Resident She-Wolf
Community Moderators are Unpaid Volunteers and NOT Employees of Gearbox/Cryptic
Views and Opinions May Not Reflect the Views and Opinions of Gearbox/Cryptic
Ive written all of this to explain how weve gotten to where we are today, a new currency for every ship every year. This ensured that each year the players that participate in the event will earn the reward for that year, while still allowing alts to earn the ships after a single play of the event. We knew that shipping the alt friendly system as it was is our mistake, and we wanted to ensure that impacted players werent left with nothing. We created a variety of desirable rewards that would let players turn in their pearls and feel like they got something valuable or unique for them. While this satisfied me in the short term, after reading all of your feedback I want to take this a step further.
We will be making every event ship youve ever earned and every event ship moving forward total account unlocks. As soon as one character on your account owns a ship, every single other character on your account that exists now or you will ever create will have immediate access to any event ship youve earned. There will be no need for your alts to play the event mission, no hoops to fly through other than picking up the ship from a store. Hopefully taking this extra step will address any lingering concerns you have with the overall change. Thanks for reading this far, and I look forward to seeing you on Risa soon!
First let me say thank you for removing the per toon requirement for the event ships. Now I must ask about the trade-in system that has restrictions on some items which require a level 60 toon to do the trade for some items (e.g. the one pearl Spec Pack). I am one of those that do these events on alts just to change things up as I play, so that means my extra pearls are on a toon not at level 60 (and I am not going to do a mega grind to get to 60 over the weekend). So I have to ask why was this requirement placed on these trade-in rewards since the pearls are Bound to Character? (see my thread and in-game ticket addressing the same). If you are going to have use trade in now useless items then we need a method that does not have restrictions.
Alright.... I posted something WAAAAY before I could read through all one thousand plus posts here.... Admittedly, that's a challenge... Having caught up more and seen the detailed response from Salami Inferno (which, thank you for that explanation), I can see that there's more going on than I found in the first several pages of posts I read which contained alot of things that didn't answer what I was hoping to see answered, and a few rants.
I can better see the benefits here, rather than all the rage of the posts that I was seeing earlier. This will help to be able to get the event ships for all characters, which is cool. That being said, I have two questions I want to ask.
#1 - If we haven't been able to earn any of the past ships, will there be a way to do so?
#2 - For those of us who for whatever reason can't complete the event on a single character to get 1,000 tokens (or whatever the event ships will cost going forward), will there be a way to be able to still get it, either through running the event on alts and sharing the tokens, or another method, especially for those who can't afford to spend on lock box keys to get Lobi crystals?
From the remarks to my earlier post:
I've missed being able to get an event ship by like, at most, three or four runs, and was quite irked that I couldn't get help from one of my alts to get it, so I had to wait til the following year, and go through it again and hope I ran the event enough times to get both the past ship and the new one. That tends to get very tedious. That's why I made sure to stock up for the next year, in case that happened again. That way, I wouldn't be getting mad.
That price per token still needs like 1k tokens, so that's still upwards of 10 million ECs that may need to be spent to outright buy the tokens from the exchange. That fairness in the price was to prevent people from gouging and fueling a greed to max out one's ECs through selling tokens.
.
We will be making every event ship youve ever earned and every event ship moving forward total account unlocks. As soon as one character on your account owns a ship, every single other character on your account that exists now or you will ever create will have immediate access to any event ship youve earned. There will be no need for your alts to play the event mission, no hoops to fly through other than picking up the ship from a store. Hopefully taking this extra step will address any lingering concerns you have with the overall change. Thanks for reading this far, and I look forward to seeing you on Risa soon!
The problem I see with that is... yes, Bob is still putting in the time. But he's apparently dedicated enough that all of that work isn't going to pay off for him if he stops playing.
If he up and leaves, all that work he put in doesn't really pay off for him. He'll still need to come around each summer to claim his ships. He'll still need to log in, and still throw in 1k pearls to get that ship and get the discount on other alts.
There's no incentive to stick around for another year if you haven't invested in Lohlunat Pearl Futures. Yes, it trivializes the gameplay -- but from my point of view, Cryptic unintentionally hooks a bunch of Bobs into STO by putting that seed in their brain that says, "Hey, I can pull one over on Cryptic next year, but I'll still have to log in to get it and play around with it."
It's like an unintentional "Returning Player" reward. If you've not been around for a year, hey, guess what... you still get your awesome ship.
But that's basically what it is. It's a come play this, doesn't matter if you played the rest. Come play this.
And...then it's the same thing in the Winter. Come play this, doesn't matter if you played the rest. Come play this.
And...then there are all the other events here and there. Anniversary Event? Same thing. Any of the Crystalline/Mirror things? Same thing.
It's a series of events. There's almost always something going on...play this. Didn't play before? Won't play after? Play this. Maybe you'll see those other events and you'll play them as well.
It's along the line of how instanced the game is in general...STO's a series of instances...events...rewards for playing.
There is no you've been playing for X amount of time...no vet reward, unless you're subscribing.
But since there are always events, always playing, tada - player would be getting all the various rewards. Miss out on something, you've missed out on it.
So it's not that they're unintentionally doing anything - that's the plan. Offer rewards for events - have a constant stream of events - people that want to do that, will...then they can follow their metrics and tweak the rewards based on what players do.
This game isn't really a game for gamers, is it? I mean, think about it, they're talking about folks joining them on Risa for fun...like...you know...standing around and chatting, hanging out..uh, stuff normal folks go outside with real people to do...er...you know...shhhhhh...
Comments
Here is my problem: I was 1 day short (40 pearls) short of getting the liner last year and never slottes the project. So my reading is that I am SOL on getting it since I only ever do these eventa on my main. (I never slot projects unless I can fill them since the system wont let you cancel. Popr foresight on my part I guess?).
At least I can buy a half dozen spec points.
But my real complaint is the ship emotes. Reminds me of the disco ball all over again. I will pay 1000 zen for a system unlock allowing me to turn those off. Double if I can also get rid of the sparklies every time I use an ability.
At least give us a middle finger emote. I can use that...
If you want to see general participation in the events increase, then add additional rewards that can be purchased with Pearls, Autographs, and Qmendations. If one player wants to stock up on an event currency so they don't have to next year, then let them. If there are more rewards to buy with pearls, then players will play the event for longer. There is absolutely no need to create a new currency for each event.
1. Its an event, granted you get nice shiny stuff but it means NOTHING in grand scheme of gameplay and story.
2. Which leads to this point, we want more story content do we not? Events are supposed to be temporary "filler" before the main event which is what EVERYONE plays this game for. STAR TREK not Bay Watch
3. I want these guys to put the time and resources into making good stories and keep the game alive with episodic like flair we expect from Star Trek, so far so good. The whole reason why people play the game is for that purpose, to fill the Trek void we miss on TV.
4. Granted it sucks for pre-planners but hey life sucks, deal with it power on through. We have Iconians to kill.
5. Trek fans are some of the hardest fans to please with any franchise, cut these guys some slack, they have to deal with PWE overlords and even worse, CBS. Cryptic is trying its damnest to keep its flagship (pardon the pun) alive and well under the strict guidelines of these two massive conglomerates.
In other words this boils down to one thing.
METRICS
Wrong move cryptic and I don't think you will like the result. Forcing us to play an MMO a certain way just to pad your metrics is what drives people away. Make the game fun again, stop punishing players and instead reward them, and the metrics will take care of themselves.
Okay you have redeemed yourself. Thankyou for taking the time to listen to our concerns and make a change in our favor. This last paragraph makes the game worth playing again.
Off topic... but your Sig is HILARIOUS..... "Neravarine." :P
Just for clarification sake, does this mean once we earn the ship, we can dismiss it and reclaim it later like Veteran ships?
Mr. Inferno
I play one character. I ran the events, earned the currencies, and went back and earned more of each currency.
I would like to apply my extra pearl currency toward the new currency this one last time. I think the company should look forward and consider adding a similar aforementioned rollover for other event currencies (Winter, CCE, and Mirror Event) as I, and others, have more of those also if your metrics are leading you to similar conclusions for other events.
If you continue to let players acquire extra new future currency past a minimum please consider allowing player to turn those currencies in for additional dilithium.
Lastly, thank you for responding.
Life would have been much simpler and sweeter for everyone if this had been part of the original announcement...
Well, that's a move that will certainly go a long way to reducing the anger amongst many of the veteran players. But does leave some out of luck on ships they havn't managed to unlock so far, who expected to do so this year.
It also doesn't do much for the 'New Players' that you were trying to draw in with the 'Delta Recruit' program, welcome to the game, see all those old folks, they are all getting account wide unlocks on stuff you will never be allowed to have. Does seem to contradict the whole plan really.
Hmmm...
Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life...</b></size></center>
I'll start off the post by saying that I'm glad to see you guys have listened to some of the feedback and are planning to do this! It's a massive step in the right direction. I do wonder if this means ships we've earned but accidentally dismissed can now be reclaimed? Or are those characters still going to be out of luck since the previous projects are being removed?
This section of your post caught my attention. You imply that people who do the run with all their toons on one year, haven't earned the ship for the next year. But really, they have, they just put in the work the year before.
Think of it like this; if you have two people and one of them works 40 hours a week for 21 weeks of the year, but the other works 20 hours a week for 52 weeks of the year. Did the first person not earn half of the money he now has simply because he got 21 weeks of the year off?
But alas, the metrics didn't add up!
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
I have to say that some of us can't run the daily event things for the 40 ship tokens enough times to be able to get the ship for the event. Will there be a way to help those of us who can't do that, by making the new currencies not be character-bound? I say this as I've been there before, and know that frustration first-hand. It's also happened where I've just missed it by a day or two and was absolutely flabbergasted, as the tokens were "character-bound" and I couldn't trade from another character to get the ship.
I'll still play the events as faithfully as I can, if for no other reason than to enjoy the content, and I won't outright buy the ship on day 1 even if I have enough said tokens to get it right from the get-go.
I can see your side about wanting everyone on equal footing for the event ships, especially for the newer players. And you also got folks who have some decent stockpiles of the event tokens.... Here's a crazy idea... Make the event tokens no longer be character-bound, or account-bound, for that matter. BUT, set a max EC cap on the price of them, so nobody can charge exorbitantly high prices for them on the exchange. (By "exorbitantly high prices", I'm referring to amounts of 10,000 EC and up. You shouldn't need to have to charge millions of ECs for a token, like some of the lock box ships are going for.... I mean, for real....) This gives the more veteran players an opportunity to help the newer players. And, if we want to, we can outright give them to said players, at no charge.
I can imagine that there are some people who will only play during the summer/winter events, and leave the game alone the rest of the time. If that played a big part of what prompted this decision, then I can understand that viewpoint. However, I'm also reasonably sure that among those who have "stockpiled" event tokens also play all the time. Thus, this is what prompted my idea mentioned above.
I think the biggest issues here has and will continue being the "leg up" mission. the past two/three(longer?) seasonal events we've have a special one-off Feature Episode run that gave us 400 Event tokens. If you had removed that, THAT would have fixed most of this "metrics" anomaly you're talking about. I'll admit here and now that was MY plan for the winter event past Christmas.... run the mission on all alts... bam 400 tokens.... sit and wait.... next year Bam 400 more.
Instead what you're introducing seems like a HUGE expenditure of resources(in design and storage debt) to change seasonal currencies Thrice-yearly. What happens to the people that keep those currencies not because they can't buy stuff with it... but because it now has a novelty "i can't get this anymore" quality? They're going to keep those currencies as long as they possibly can... that means that the exchanges you already have(Andorian Phasers, Prototype Consoles, Nukara Reputation Gear, old R&D particles) will balloon as each year whatever buyback you may introduce will be compounded with more and more seasonal currency.
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
There never was a "leg up" Mission for both the Winter or Summer Event ... that's an Anniversary Thing ...
EDIT : Too Late ...
I had a few things to say regarding the change to the Summer Event (and most likely future events), but some of that seems to be moot after Salami Inferno's announcement of account wide unlocks. Even so, I still don't agree with retiring the older Risian ships. Actually, I don't agree with retiring any rewards. Exclusivity is a poor excuse for rewards that been available annually since the inception of these events, and erasing players' unfinished progress is just bad form.
Since Cryptic's now going to make an exclusive currency for each event's reward, why not just make the older rewards and currency still available for these annual events? Queued events have a Choice of Mark reward, the same could be done here for earning event rewards. Stockpiling, then, becomes irrelevant since each reward would need a special currency. Making older rewards available, along with the new, would encourage more participation, especially for those that may have missed a previous reward. So, if this is really about getting players to participate, then retiring rewards makes no sense.
Also, it's odd that Cryptic only seems to be looking at/counting event participation/success based on the one activity within the Event: the daily ship token reward activity, in the case of Summer/Risa: "Flying High". While, yes, players may come to get the ships, that's not why they stay, and not why they spend hours grinding in the Summer Events. Players grind more Lohlunat Favors than anything, and I'd think THAT would be a better metric to be tracking to gauge the event's success by.
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Thank you. As a long time player, this pretty much solves the main issue I had with this... since I'd have just done the race to save up for next year anyway.
Now, I do have to ask: will players that didn't get the old ships be able to obtain them?
Maybe I'm not in the majority, but just because I earned the ships already doesn't mean I begrudge my fellow players having that same opportunity when the next round of a given Event rolls around. While I don't have access to your metrics, you could theoretically increase participation overall in these Events by allowing players to slot Event Rep projects from any iteration of that specific Event. For example, the Summer Event here could have new players spending three times what a long-term player does flying the course just to unlock access to all three ships. This applies to all the Events, really... if a given year's reward doesn't pique a given player's interest, but they missed a prior year, they could participate in the Event for the thing they missed and might actually want.
While I'm personally happy with your solution, for me, I hope that you consider allowing newer folks to... well... grind harder in order to get the things they missed.
I Love You Salamiinferno And Team
Good idea.
Making the Future currency retroactive to the past ships we all win.
For example summer 2015 player fills the Que halfway. 2016 player uses the 2016 currency to finish the 2015 Que.
This is a win for everyone.
Ex-CoH players, Please add the chat channel "CoX STO"
Good to hear, could have been 103 pages earlier though.
I'm complaining because this was to be the year I GOT those ships.
I missed out on the corvette, the cruise ship and the carrier, and if this is true, I won't be able to get any of them.
The carrier especially.
I love carriers, I love the playstyle, I love the pet based gameplay they provide.
And I'm being told no, I can't have them.
Well, that's not exactly what I meant, but that could work, too.
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First let me say thank you for removing the per toon requirement for the event ships. Now I must ask about the trade-in system that has restrictions on some items which require a level 60 toon to do the trade for some items (e.g. the one pearl Spec Pack). I am one of those that do these events on alts just to change things up as I play, so that means my extra pearls are on a toon not at level 60 (and I am not going to do a mega grind to get to 60 over the weekend). So I have to ask why was this requirement placed on these trade-in rewards since the pearls are Bound to Character? (see my thread and in-game ticket addressing the same). If you are going to have use trade in now useless items then we need a method that does not have restrictions.
I can better see the benefits here, rather than all the rage of the posts that I was seeing earlier. This will help to be able to get the event ships for all characters, which is cool. That being said, I have two questions I want to ask.
#1 - If we haven't been able to earn any of the past ships, will there be a way to do so?
#2 - For those of us who for whatever reason can't complete the event on a single character to get 1,000 tokens (or whatever the event ships will cost going forward), will there be a way to be able to still get it, either through running the event on alts and sharing the tokens, or another method, especially for those who can't afford to spend on lock box keys to get Lobi crystals?
From the remarks to my earlier post:
I've missed being able to get an event ship by like, at most, three or four runs, and was quite irked that I couldn't get help from one of my alts to get it, so I had to wait til the following year, and go through it again and hope I ran the event enough times to get both the past ship and the new one. That tends to get very tedious. That's why I made sure to stock up for the next year, in case that happened again. That way, I wouldn't be getting mad.
That price per token still needs like 1k tokens, so that's still upwards of 10 million ECs that may need to be spent to outright buy the tokens from the exchange. That fairness in the price was to prevent people from gouging and fueling a greed to max out one's ECs through selling tokens.
Thank you!
But that's basically what it is. It's a come play this, doesn't matter if you played the rest. Come play this.
And...then it's the same thing in the Winter. Come play this, doesn't matter if you played the rest. Come play this.
And...then there are all the other events here and there. Anniversary Event? Same thing. Any of the Crystalline/Mirror things? Same thing.
It's a series of events. There's almost always something going on...play this. Didn't play before? Won't play after? Play this. Maybe you'll see those other events and you'll play them as well.
It's along the line of how instanced the game is in general...STO's a series of instances...events...rewards for playing.
There is no you've been playing for X amount of time...no vet reward, unless you're subscribing.
But since there are always events, always playing, tada - player would be getting all the various rewards. Miss out on something, you've missed out on it.
So it's not that they're unintentionally doing anything - that's the plan. Offer rewards for events - have a constant stream of events - people that want to do that, will...then they can follow their metrics and tweak the rewards based on what players do.
This game isn't really a game for gamers, is it? I mean, think about it, they're talking about folks joining them on Risa for fun...like...you know...standing around and chatting, hanging out..uh, stuff normal folks go outside with real people to do...er...you know...shhhhhh...