Well, thank you for deciding for me today that its no longer worth it for me to play STO. You see, I missed the Risa event last year because I was in the hospital. Found out about the ship and was like "Neat, I'll just have to wait til next year to grab it". Well, that's not a thing anymore, because we need to have "exclusivity". So now, that I know its an impossibility to get the thing I want in the game no matter what, what exactly is the point of playing the game? If I don't check each day, week, month to see what or when an event is, and I miss it, I can never catch up later.
The thing is, this is supposed to be a game, entertainment if you will. So why do you devs build MMOs to be more like a job. Why do I need to log in 30 days in a row to do a monotonous task that was fun the first 2 or so times over and over again? I mean, if I miss a day with this new system I completely wasted all the time of the other 29 days because it will be impossible to later fulfill the requirements to gain the item/reward/whatever. Your response would be probably something like "its a game you don't have to do it if you don't want to." But that's the thing, I DO want to, I want to play the game, I want to get the thing that you're teasing me with, but now I can't because of time constraints, real life, sickness, my REAL job, etc.
This is just as bad as when you decided to "remove content" from Champions. New players would never be able to get stuff that is in the game that other players have, because you removed they ability to ever get it again.
So, this seems to be an indicator that you're interested in an elitist player base that goes around showing off things they "worked" for that others can not ever work for in a similar way. You know, the player base that is either, rich, living off of the government, disabled, retired etc. Not the average person that can't play a game on a schedule.
Granted, life isn't fair, but that's why we have entertainment, you know games, so we can forget about how much life sometimes sucks for all of us.
So yes, thank you for telling us in this post that STO is in fact NOT a game, its a job, were you pay money instead of earning it. You do your time and the work when you say and maybe you get something, otherwise you miss out.
In the earlier post by mr. Inferno we heard something to the effect of "the players get what they want and the devs get what they want." What exactly do the devs want? Other than a paycheck, and the continued promise of one by working, I don't see what they get out of this change? You just laid a bunch of people off recently, was it because of the event metrics? You know, the metrics that said that some people did the even twice on two characters because they had the time THAT year, so that if next year they didn't, they'd be covered?
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;
After the alt friendliness, earning a ship was 1000 + 40X (X = # of alts)
People still had to grind out the 1000. Could have been 3 toons on one year (like I did) so my 'participation' was 3x what it 'should' have been that year. So, if anything, your metrics for year 1 was inflated. If you had factored in the metrics over a few years you would have seen a stabilization of metrics. Instead you got all knee-jerk and nuked everything. Flying through rings and running the ice race till I could do it w/ my eyes closed from the horrific repetition I did on year 1 to get 3000 items. This year I'd either have to grind out another 1000 for next year or grind out 1000 next year. No Matter What I'd have to average out grinding 1000 items per year on some toon!
Ive written all of this to explain how weve gotten to where we are today, a new currency for every ship every year.
I'd not mind the change but for one thing... the ambush. If you had said we're changing the items every year starting next year then people would know not to stockpile/save this year and plan accordingly. Hell, you'd not even have to offer to buy-back excess for some trinkets hoping to soothe the angry mob you created by this announcement. But I guess Cryptic can't plan that far ahead? Can't see over the next lockbox you have to crank out.
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.
So, does this mean they will be reclaimable like C-store / Vet ships? Can I discharge one to free up some garage space and not have them sitting there forever for the few times I may feel like driving one around for a few days?
My alts all had 40 pearls,the only thing that I spent pearls on was R&D materials boxes.So I traded in for two boxes and am now left with 10 pearls.My alts aren't yet at level 60.So,I can't spend those last pearls.Basically any character under level 60 and has 14 or less pearls left can't trade them for anything.Since I didn't read anything on the news page about any expiration date on trading in pearls,I hope these pearls will be able to be traded in when my alts reach level 60.
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.!
Extending the events a bit wouldn't hurt, the 14 day ones with 21 total days should be a month long. Both events fall right when people go off on vacations, specially the Winter one. The only reason I got the Winter ship was because I had saved autographs because I was out on vacation for two weeks and missed some weekends. Now I'll have to drop a bunch of EC for lobi every time there is an event which coincides with vacations.
On the other hand, the ship unlock solution is very welcome. I've ran out of space to store so many reward and lockbox ships.
Thanks for the clarification, Salami. I now understand why there's a new currency for each new ship. But I still don't understand why the old ships are being completely discontinued. I would love to maybe someday pick up a Samsar for my Delta Recruit, for example. Will that not be possible anymore?
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them." -Thomas Marrone
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!
I'm fine with the currency change.
What you didn't address was why you're retiring the old Risian ships and you didn't say whether or not we'll be able to get them in some way. I didn't participate in the event last year so I never got the Luxury Cruiseliner. I was planning on getting it this year but you guys said it won't be possible anymore in the blog.
Edit: This does give a clue as to why the Kobali Samsar cruiser was never added to the lobi store. Since I got it during the anniversary event I'm assuming I'll have it as an account unlock soon and be able to claim it on my delta recruits, if I'm reading your post right.
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!
But why not monetize the old Risian ships? Can we get a confirmation sooner rather than later if and how they will continue to be available? Because exclusive ships don't make any $ sense, and surely many new people might want them in their collections as well as the new event ship.
"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."
So what? If we played every single alt through the grind, shouldn't WE get to decide how we spend the pearls?
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 have to admit that I was excited to do the summer event for my first time and seeing what new ship you guys would come up with anyway, but this definitely makes it better! After all the horror of the last couple of days I think this is a very good job and I will certainly enjoy knowing that future characters can get ships that I've already unlocked.
I do, however, have one concern that isn't addressed by this - Will players who have only unlocked some of the ships from a previous event set ever be able to go back and unlock the rest to complete their sets?
I am a new player who started mid-way through the winter event this last year. I was, with careful timing, *barely* able to grind out the Breen carrier on the first character I had made. I also made good progress on the Chel Grett Warship with my second character having mistakenly believed that was the one that allowed you to purchase the extra-nifty carrier pets. I did realize my mistake and took comfort in the fact that I would be able to earn the Plesh Brek at the event this year. I'd really like to be able to complete my event item set and get the improved pets.
Thanks for your time and for addressing this issue. I know that you can never please everyone, but I do really appreciate this attempt to help improve things in the future.
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 wasn’t 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!
Wow... Good job. If you did this more often, explain things to the community, you could avoid a lot of rage. This is a great change. Glad to know you actually listen to the community.
Well, I understand the reason for the currency change and the account unlock is a great change. Unfortunately, this doesn't fix the problem for people who weren't playing or were otherwise unable to pick up the ships in the past events.
This probably wouldn't be such a big deal if we weren't currently in the middle of an event that's purpose was to bring new players in and old players back.
I want to be able to pick up the past event ships (which I understood I would be able to because of the history of being able to). Now what are you going to do about this issue or will this concern be swept under the rug?
Well that's something, at least. But not letting us use the pearls we earned for ships is still a d****b*g move. Seriously, doing this after the fact is bogus.
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!
Sir, I'd have to say that the thought process at play here behind these decisions is really baffling. You don't sound like a video game developer with the sole goal of providing a fun experience for their players. You sound like an accountant or administrator of a organization who's job it is is to dispense amusement and rewards in regulated quantities to a bunch of whiny exploiters. Understand what I'm saying?
Is this a video game or not? Why don't you guys consider why people do the things they do in your game? Bottom line is, the seasonal events suck. They are not fun. That is why people hoard your commodities. There is nothing fun about running the jet pack race every day (skip a day or two because you can) to get the ship, no matter how good the ship is. It's a total boring grind that requires no thought and I've had it with the mindless grind.
There is nothing fun about running the ice game. There is no challenge. Nothing stimulating or interesting. It sucks. I have ignored the seasonal events every year because the grind just sucks. I finally broke down last year's Winter event to get the Carrier and I hated every minute of it and it's not something I would ever do again regardless of the ship being offered. Mr Salami, I urge you and Geko to run your own toons through each and every seasonal event for the next couple of years and tell me what that experience was like. I guarantee you will be bored to tears and bitter from having your time wasted for something that is not enjoyable whatsoever.
I really urge you guys that run this game to go out and play some of the AAA MMOs out there so you can get a better idea of what fun and quality game play in an MMO looks like in today's market. It seems like you guys are resting on your laurels so hard and stuck in the past that STO will never be able to move out of its little niche market because you all are holding it back with your terrible choices.
Delta Rising was awful. The R&D system is a sad joke of a crafting system compared to other MMOs. The sector space revamp with the walls coming down was done half-assed and was completely overshadowed by the terrible low-res space backgrounds we now have. Your QA team is too small and too slow to respond to and to fix bugs. The game is a mess and has not gotten better with all the management changes over the last couple of years.
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 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.
This seems more than fair, since one of the biggest gripes since the beginning of the seasonal ship events have been centered around the fact that newly created characters weren't able to claim event ships. Anyone remember the "reboxing of ships" idea?
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!
Can you do something like this for lockbox and lobi ships? Or atleast make those ships reclaimable for the character they are on?
After reading the explanation from salamiinferno it seems my worst fears for this game have finally been realised.
Gone are the days when a game was made to be fun so people would just play it and spend money because they wanted to.
This 'product' is caught in a war between the players who want to have fun, and the developers who want to push the boundaries of how long they can keep the player base doing the same thing over and over.
So you've relented somewhat on this issue, like you did at the winter event, but only after a massive backlash.
Is this the way it's always going to be? A test of how far you can push your player base before they crack and you have to relent? As much as I am tired of seeing some players here kick off at the slightest change, I am also grateful to them for acting as a buffer between what you would do if you could get away with it, and the players like me that just want to quietly play this game, spend some money and have fun.
We will be making every event ship youve ever earned and every event ship moving forward total account unlocks.
Okay so maybe I'm not done.
But communication is key. You had to realize this announcement was going to make a lot of people upset. Why not include the above quoted information in the announcement? I wouldn't have had nearly the knee-jerk reaction I did if this little tidbit was included. Honestly I don't think I own any of the seasonal event ships, so it wasn't even access to them I was angry about, it was just the principle of locking them out with no apparent reason that angered me. But unlocking the ships per account like this is a fantastic thing.
But communication is key. You had to realize this announcement was going to make a lot of people upset. Why not include the above quoted information in the announcement? I wouldn't have had nearly the knee-jerk reaction I did if this little tidbit was included. Honestly I don't think I own any of the seasonal event ships, so it wasn't even access to them I was angry about, it was just the principle of locking them out with no apparent reason that angered me. But unlocking the ships per account like this is a fantastic thing.
They added that tidbit because of the rampant negative feedback that was received.
I still can't get the old Risan ships or the breen carrier if this is how things are going to be, so I'm still not sated with this news.
Sadly, they succeeded in calming the majority down, so I'm screwed out of the ships I put work into getting.
I'd like, at this point, to remind everyone that "exclusivity" was a decision that was previously made AND overturned.... It's why players were allowed to re-slot the Breen and Risian ships... You know... If you can remember back that far. Overturning that overturned decision now... seems a curious thing indeed.
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.
They added that tidbit because of the rampant negative feedback that was received.
I still can't get the old Risan ships or the breen carrier if this is how things are going to be, so I'm still not sated with this news.
Sadly, they succeeded in calming the majority down, so I'm screwed out of the ships I put work into getting.
Perfectly understandable. It's not a perfect solution at all, but going forward it will be objectively better than what we had. It just sucks the old ships will be relegated to novelties for the old guard
After reading the explanation from salamiinferno it seems my worst fears for this game have finally been realised.
Gone are the days when a game was made to be fun so people would just play it and spend money because they wanted to.
This 'product' is caught in a war between the players who want to have fun, and the developers who want to push the boundaries of how long they can keep the player base doing the same thing over and over.
So you've relented somewhat on this issue, like you did at the winter event, but only after a massive backlash.
Is this the way it's always going to be? A test of how far you can push your player base before they crack and you have to relent? As much as I am tired of seeing some players here kick off at the slightest change, I am also grateful to them for acting as a buffer between what you would do if you could get away with it, and the players like me that just want to quietly play this game and have fun.
So you also remember that one time where they tried to nix dilithium from borg STFs too?
[...]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!
Any thoughts on expanding that to the unique rewards from mirror hell and crystal cataclysm?
Words don't express judgment the way a thumbs down or thumbs up does. It's more immediate, more visceral.
Usually when the devs work on something, its to nerf or break something. I'd much rather they did good and useful things like the ship emotes.
BTW first off useful would be fixing the bugs that still plague this game from the days of launch or some of the new major bugs that this game has popped up with. Not Creating Ship Emotes Emotes are just shinny object to give simple minded people that can not figure out how to play STO or for board players that are sick of grinding something to play with.
I have been in this game for 5 years now and emotes do not make it any easier to communicate that is just a excuse. 80% of people don't know how to bind emotes and the other 14% don't care or don't want to waste the time with emotes and if you cant figure out chat and how to set the chat options up Google it and if that don't work ask someone after that if you cant figure it out then you should not be in the game
Also when in the series did you see captain Picard or any other captain run to the nearest window hang there arm out the window with a big foam finger on it to tell the Klingons or who ever what he thought about there ship or when he was ready for battle with a big thumbs up wasn't that episode oh wait no... it was season...... oh that right it was NEVER!!!!(SO THINK ABOUT IT DEVS) I am not no Cannon freak but come on.
So just to be clear since some people think words are so hard to read and chat is so hard to use this is what I and a lot of others think about this whole idea of ship emotes and taking away the pearls :mad:
BOYCOTT THE SUMMER EVENT!!!!!! IF CRYPTIC MOVES FORWARD ON THIS
United we stand divided we fall and cryptic wins
Ive written all of this to explain how weve gotten to where we are today, a new currency for every ship every year.
That will cause many people to play even less then now. Instead of doing extra runs to save up for next year many players will just do the minimum amount of runs then stop. At the same time it hurts player who cannot do a full run and would have done half this year and half next year.
...We will be making every event ship youve ever earned and every event ship moving forward total account unlocks....
Huh. That's pretty awesome. Thanks Cryptic! Glad to hear my Delta Recruits (and any future alts I make) will be able to get past-event ships (I've got them all, at least, on my Main).
Personally, I didn't have a problem with this Retiring of the Pearls, because I expected it to happen, but having this be the outcome to all the complaints, I feel I owe the forum community a thanks, too...
"Thanks Guys!"
You can find/contact me in game as @PatricianVetinari. Playing STO since Feb 2010.
Comments
The thing is, this is supposed to be a game, entertainment if you will. So why do you devs build MMOs to be more like a job. Why do I need to log in 30 days in a row to do a monotonous task that was fun the first 2 or so times over and over again? I mean, if I miss a day with this new system I completely wasted all the time of the other 29 days because it will be impossible to later fulfill the requirements to gain the item/reward/whatever. Your response would be probably something like "its a game you don't have to do it if you don't want to." But that's the thing, I DO want to, I want to play the game, I want to get the thing that you're teasing me with, but now I can't because of time constraints, real life, sickness, my REAL job, etc.
This is just as bad as when you decided to "remove content" from Champions. New players would never be able to get stuff that is in the game that other players have, because you removed they ability to ever get it again.
So, this seems to be an indicator that you're interested in an elitist player base that goes around showing off things they "worked" for that others can not ever work for in a similar way. You know, the player base that is either, rich, living off of the government, disabled, retired etc. Not the average person that can't play a game on a schedule.
Granted, life isn't fair, but that's why we have entertainment, you know games, so we can forget about how much life sometimes sucks for all of us.
So yes, thank you for telling us in this post that STO is in fact NOT a game, its a job, were you pay money instead of earning it. You do your time and the work when you say and maybe you get something, otherwise you miss out.
In the earlier post by mr. Inferno we heard something to the effect of "the players get what they want and the devs get what they want." What exactly do the devs want? Other than a paycheck, and the continued promise of one by working, I don't see what they get out of this change? You just laid a bunch of people off recently, was it because of the event metrics? You know, the metrics that said that some people did the even twice on two characters because they had the time THAT year, so that if next year they didn't, they'd be covered?
Lots of thought but you still ambush players w/ the news right before the event.
After the alt friendliness, earning a ship was 1000 + 40X (X = # of alts)
People still had to grind out the 1000. Could have been 3 toons on one year (like I did) so my 'participation' was 3x what it 'should' have been that year. So, if anything, your metrics for year 1 was inflated. If you had factored in the metrics over a few years you would have seen a stabilization of metrics. Instead you got all knee-jerk and nuked everything. Flying through rings and running the ice race till I could do it w/ my eyes closed from the horrific repetition I did on year 1 to get 3000 items. This year I'd either have to grind out another 1000 for next year or grind out 1000 next year. No Matter What I'd have to average out grinding 1000 items per year on some toon!
I'd not mind the change but for one thing... the ambush. If you had said we're changing the items every year starting next year then people would know not to stockpile/save this year and plan accordingly. Hell, you'd not even have to offer to buy-back excess for some trinkets hoping to soothe the angry mob you created by this announcement. But I guess Cryptic can't plan that far ahead? Can't see over the next lockbox you have to crank out.
So, does this mean they will be reclaimable like C-store / Vet ships? Can I discharge one to free up some garage space and not have them sitting there forever for the few times I may feel like driving one around for a few days?
Extending the events a bit wouldn't hurt, the 14 day ones with 21 total days should be a month long. Both events fall right when people go off on vacations, specially the Winter one. The only reason I got the Winter ship was because I had saved autographs because I was out on vacation for two weeks and missed some weekends. Now I'll have to drop a bunch of EC for lobi every time there is an event which coincides with vacations.
On the other hand, the ship unlock solution is very welcome. I've ran out of space to store so many reward and lockbox ships.
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them."
-Thomas Marrone
I'm fine with the currency change.
What you didn't address was why you're retiring the old Risian ships and you didn't say whether or not we'll be able to get them in some way. I didn't participate in the event last year so I never got the Luxury Cruiseliner. I was planning on getting it this year but you guys said it won't be possible anymore in the blog.
Edit: This does give a clue as to why the Kobali Samsar cruiser was never added to the lobi store. Since I got it during the anniversary event I'm assuming I'll have it as an account unlock soon and be able to claim it on my delta recruits, if I'm reading your post right.
But why not monetize the old Risian ships? Can we get a confirmation sooner rather than later if and how they will continue to be available? Because exclusive ships don't make any $ sense, and surely many new people might want them in their collections as well as the new event ship.
So what? If we played every single alt through the grind, shouldn't WE get to decide how we spend the pearls?
I want to play your game again, believe me I do, but you're making it really easy to not come back.
I have to admit that I was excited to do the summer event for my first time and seeing what new ship you guys would come up with anyway, but this definitely makes it better! After all the horror of the last couple of days I think this is a very good job and I will certainly enjoy knowing that future characters can get ships that I've already unlocked.
I do, however, have one concern that isn't addressed by this - Will players who have only unlocked some of the ships from a previous event set ever be able to go back and unlock the rest to complete their sets?
I am a new player who started mid-way through the winter event this last year. I was, with careful timing, *barely* able to grind out the Breen carrier on the first character I had made. I also made good progress on the Chel Grett Warship with my second character having mistakenly believed that was the one that allowed you to purchase the extra-nifty carrier pets. I did realize my mistake and took comfort in the fact that I would be able to earn the Plesh Brek at the event this year. I'd really like to be able to complete my event item set and get the improved pets.
Thanks for your time and for addressing this issue. I know that you can never please everyone, but I do really appreciate this attempt to help improve things in the future.
Wow... Good job. If you did this more often, explain things to the community, you could avoid a lot of rage. This is a great change. Glad to know you actually listen to the community.
This probably wouldn't be such a big deal if we weren't currently in the middle of an event that's purpose was to bring new players in and old players back.
I want to be able to pick up the past event ships (which I understood I would be able to because of the history of being able to). Now what are you going to do about this issue or will this concern be swept under the rug?
But honestly? You should have posted this days ago. As part of the original announcement.
Sir, I'd have to say that the thought process at play here behind these decisions is really baffling. You don't sound like a video game developer with the sole goal of providing a fun experience for their players. You sound like an accountant or administrator of a organization who's job it is is to dispense amusement and rewards in regulated quantities to a bunch of whiny exploiters. Understand what I'm saying?
Is this a video game or not? Why don't you guys consider why people do the things they do in your game? Bottom line is, the seasonal events suck. They are not fun. That is why people hoard your commodities. There is nothing fun about running the jet pack race every day (skip a day or two because you can) to get the ship, no matter how good the ship is. It's a total boring grind that requires no thought and I've had it with the mindless grind.
There is nothing fun about running the ice game. There is no challenge. Nothing stimulating or interesting. It sucks. I have ignored the seasonal events every year because the grind just sucks. I finally broke down last year's Winter event to get the Carrier and I hated every minute of it and it's not something I would ever do again regardless of the ship being offered. Mr Salami, I urge you and Geko to run your own toons through each and every seasonal event for the next couple of years and tell me what that experience was like. I guarantee you will be bored to tears and bitter from having your time wasted for something that is not enjoyable whatsoever.
I really urge you guys that run this game to go out and play some of the AAA MMOs out there so you can get a better idea of what fun and quality game play in an MMO looks like in today's market. It seems like you guys are resting on your laurels so hard and stuck in the past that STO will never be able to move out of its little niche market because you all are holding it back with your terrible choices.
Delta Rising was awful. The R&D system is a sad joke of a crafting system compared to other MMOs. The sector space revamp with the walls coming down was done half-assed and was completely overshadowed by the terrible low-res space backgrounds we now have. Your QA team is too small and too slow to respond to and to fix bugs. The game is a mess and has not gotten better with all the management changes over the last couple of years.
It's time for a wake up call at Cryptic.
My mistake then... though I wonder how crazy I must be to have 400 glossy's on like... 3 or 4 chracters
This seems more than fair, since one of the biggest gripes since the beginning of the seasonal ship events have been centered around the fact that newly created characters weren't able to claim event ships. Anyone remember the "reboxing of ships" idea?
http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/10052253
Why are you not rejoicing?
Can you do something like this for lockbox and lobi ships? Or atleast make those ships reclaimable for the character they are on?
Gone are the days when a game was made to be fun so people would just play it and spend money because they wanted to.
This 'product' is caught in a war between the players who want to have fun, and the developers who want to push the boundaries of how long they can keep the player base doing the same thing over and over.
So you've relented somewhat on this issue, like you did at the winter event, but only after a massive backlash.
Is this the way it's always going to be? A test of how far you can push your player base before they crack and you have to relent? As much as I am tired of seeing some players here kick off at the slightest change, I am also grateful to them for acting as a buffer between what you would do if you could get away with it, and the players like me that just want to quietly play this game, spend some money and have fun.
Okay so maybe I'm not done.
But communication is key. You had to realize this announcement was going to make a lot of people upset. Why not include the above quoted information in the announcement? I wouldn't have had nearly the knee-jerk reaction I did if this little tidbit was included. Honestly I don't think I own any of the seasonal event ships, so it wasn't even access to them I was angry about, it was just the principle of locking them out with no apparent reason that angered me. But unlocking the ships per account like this is a fantastic thing.
I Support Disco | Disco is Love | Disco is Life
They added that tidbit because of the rampant negative feedback that was received.
I still can't get the old Risan ships or the breen carrier if this is how things are going to be, so I'm still not sated with this news.
Sadly, they succeeded in calming the majority down, so I'm screwed out of the ships I put work into getting.
Perfectly understandable. It's not a perfect solution at all, but going forward it will be objectively better than what we had. It just sucks the old ships will be relegated to novelties for the old guard
I Support Disco | Disco is Love | Disco is Life
So you also remember that one time where they tried to nix dilithium from borg STFs too?
http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/10052253
Why are you not rejoicing?
Any thoughts on expanding that to the unique rewards from mirror hell and crystal cataclysm?
BTW first off useful would be fixing the bugs that still plague this game from the days of launch or some of the new major bugs that this game has popped up with. Not Creating Ship Emotes Emotes are just shinny object to give simple minded people that can not figure out how to play STO or for board players that are sick of grinding something to play with.
I have been in this game for 5 years now and emotes do not make it any easier to communicate that is just a excuse. 80% of people don't know how to bind emotes and the other 14% don't care or don't want to waste the time with emotes and if you cant figure out chat and how to set the chat options up Google it and if that don't work ask someone after that if you cant figure it out then you should not be in the game
Also when in the series did you see captain Picard or any other captain run to the nearest window hang there arm out the window with a big foam finger on it to tell the Klingons or who ever what he thought about there ship or when he was ready for battle with a big thumbs up wasn't that episode oh wait no... it was season...... oh that right it was NEVER!!!! (SO THINK ABOUT IT DEVS) I am not no Cannon freak but come on.
So just to be clear since some people think words are so hard to read and chat is so hard to use this is what I and a lot of others think about this whole idea of ship emotes and taking away the pearls :mad:
BOYCOTT THE SUMMER EVENT!!!!!! IF CRYPTIC MOVES FORWARD ON THIS
United we stand divided we fall and cryptic wins
Huh. That's pretty awesome. Thanks Cryptic! Glad to hear my Delta Recruits (and any future alts I make) will be able to get past-event ships (I've got them all, at least, on my Main).
Personally, I didn't have a problem with this Retiring of the Pearls, because I expected it to happen, but having this be the outcome to all the complaints, I feel I owe the forum community a thanks, too...
"Thanks Guys!"
You can find/contact me in game as @PatricianVetinari. Playing STO since Feb 2010.