salamiinferno said:
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 wouldn’t. Again, this meant participation was down while rewards were still earned at the same rate.
The changes don't address this.
All you had to do is retire the currency and not the ships. Then people could pick what ship they wanted to use it that events currency for.
And that was the concern of players. Not currency expiring, but the ships being retired. People can still spend lobi to speed it up also, so money making by your company isn't affected either.
And your change actually make another problem in participation worse.
There are times I (and others) don't want a particular ship from an event. For example Carriers. I have no interest in them at all.
Now instead of having the chance to get a past ship during the event, and possibly even spending money to speed it up, I will just not participate at all.
Again retire the currency. That is fine. That isn't the main concern being raised by the players. Don't retire the ships though.
You actually are hurting your bottom line with your change.
but it was one that we needed to make to maintain the integrity of this event and these ships.
Where have been huge complaints from players on this? There is no outcry from players making this complaint.
Allow me to be clear.
Cryptic is by now painfully aware that people are upset over retiring the Risian ships. This thread is not a news flash for them.
It remains to be seen whether the Devs will address this point or not.
Civil feedback from people who have not made their voices heard already is welcome.
But given recent events, I need to set some ground rules for this thread.
The first time someone starts throwing around insults or flaming the Devs or other forum users, I will shut this thread down.
The first time any of the forum rules are violated, in fact. This includes posting rants over and over. ~Bluegeek
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Once again Cryptic have failed to communicate properly and it took a big thread of disgruntled people before a full explanation was given and then a compromise.
They should of had the full reasons explained and more importantly announced what will be the prizes for this years event and what plans if any there were for the retiring ships. All done in one fell swoop. So we had the good, the bad and the ugly rather than just the ugly
Public relations maybe they need to hire someone to perform that role
Instead of that they've created a negative vibe and disatifaction within the player base and at this point in time have likely severely damaged peoples want and interest in this years event.
Feedback has been gathered, summarized, considered and responded to already. Starting 20 new threads is not productive.
True best way of venting our frustration now is to make a choice of letting it go and moving on still with a bad taste in the mouth or do our talking in the game when the events start by choosing not to play any of the event activities. Thats best response anyone who strongly disagrees with these changes can make.
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Both of you could not be more wrong, there are people here who have not given feedback and beyond that there are tons of working busy people that don't follow everything 24/7 who are going to feel completely ambushed when this event starts.
The title of this thread is perfect and the OP is well written without snark and rage. This OP topic, has not been completely heard.
I agree with this. People love those ships from the events, make new ones, even better. But do not cutoff old ones. Please visit the reddit thread if you want more comprehensive information.
Beyond all that, they are hurting their bottom line. The new delta people are at a critical point right now. They are leveled substantially and hitting serious paywalls. I had a conversation with one of them, they are trying to figure out what to do. Those free ships are the on-ramps to the paywall-highway. They will transition people into buying.
As for retiring things and adding something T6ish. Great, do that! But don't delete the old stuff. Plenty of people like to collect stuff for the fun of it. (gotta catchem all!) and this pretty much just tosses that gameplay in the garbage. Who turns away customers, it baffles me completely.
As for making something event exclusive, restrict that to social gear. There's plenty of opportunity to make something event exclusive without touching weapons or ships.
If the older ones had been retired and all that was there was the new T6, I would not have been as motivated, at all. What's the point of getting one if you can't complete the set?
I believe they are really missing out here. Like why wasn't the Samsar put in the ship store for dilthium or fleet credit before the ship sale. Have you any idea how many more of those one hundred dollar command ship bundles they would have sold if people were able to complete the console on their delta recruits? I'm baffled by this.
heh, well swg is living (dead?) proof you can "improve" things too much, even with well intentioned changes
This reminds me of emergency medical training when I was a kid. The doctor told us how important it was to instruct people NOT to fully amputate damaged limbs because people, in some bizarre altered state, would do that to "clean things up".
for any player who has never bothered to make sure they had got these ships in the passed you only have yourself to blame bearing in mind that just because something was available in game once does not mean it will always be available.
as I have said this does not affects new characters on old accounts, providing you have got the ships on even just one of your older characters you are free to claim them from the c-store on any of your existing characters or any characters you create in the future.
if you did not get the previous event ships on any of the existing characters on your accounts when they were available, well you could not have wanted them very much could you.
the only players that are going to miss out are new players that come after these ships were available as there are other things in the game that have been retired and are no longer available I don't see this as an issue.
in actual fact as they are now account unlocks you also have the benefit of dismissing and reclaiming event ships just as if they were c-store ships as far as I can tell.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
Who's with me? XD
And yes, Cryptic, I can be a naughty boy...
I ended up one run short for Q autographs or whatever they're called because of a ridiculously busy Winter with family problems etc. Very much wanted the ship, as I have done with each one so far. Now know what effort I made was a waste as the ship is going to be kept from me, whereas before I only needed to do 1 run to catch up and be sorted, now I'm not going to get it at all.
Given the current situation I agree that IF retiring anything to do with the events is ABSOLUTELY necessary than the the currency should be the one thing to be retired. But let me throw some perspective on this....
Yes, it is understandable that the old T5(current T5-U) event ships would be retired... but that is only because Cryptic/PWE CHOSE to add a whole new Tier of ships(i.e. T6) and a plethora of them over the course of the past 4 or so months. Which, naturally, made the old T5s(even when upgraded to T5-U) obsolete.
Had we, as a community, chose to put up more of a stink over the introduction of T6 ships... I don't think we would be in the same situation we are in today.....
But,again, since we are in the situation we are in (by the choice of Cryptic/PWE) we have no choice but to submit to their call of BOHICA.
It's either that, or we quit.
Despite what their metrics said, the summer, winter, and anniversary events are very popular. Especially for those that can't play 24/7. Retiring the currency, fine. Retiring the ship to prevent future characters from earning, BS. Spent all event getting the currency to get your new ship only to fall just shy of completing it before it's over? You're screwed. All that effort will go to waste. Now, it's set up so either you slot the event project when you have enough or you just TRIBBLE yourself. See a problem there devs?
Most players I have known didn't mind grinding out the currency for the next years ships. And they loved being able to claim those ships. And honestly, it was almost the ONLY grind I actually enjoyed.
Now if you want to make them exclusive, Remove them from the lobi store, and make it so the only way to get them is through the event. And make it so you have to run the event to get the currency and NOT PURCHASE THEM THROUGH LOCKBOXES. There, exclusivity made. But removing them entirely......c'mon, don't you know that players actually have a life OUTSIDE of STO?
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You are correct although don't be surprised if the patch for the ship retirement deletes your active ships because knowing the flukes Cryptic has, that is a possibility. :rolleyes:
Might be more accurate to say that the event reputation projects which reward those ships are being retired.
Other aspects of the announcement as well as Salami_Inferno's post would not make sense if the ships themselves were being removed from the game completely.
I don't recall them ever removing any item that has been claimed by a player. Heck, I still found old crafting particles on one character just this past week and another one hung on to a completely useless Delta Flyer schematic for years.
Nerf, yes. Remove, no. If they meant removed, they would have specifically said removed. I think.
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I'd like to suggest they do that with every "limited" time ship/console/etc. If you don't want to pay for it, grind it out during the event. I'd have spent money to get that shotgun only available during the event as I didn't have time to grind it out while it was available.
It's not game breaking that I don't have it, but if Cryptic wants to know things that would get me to give them my money, making limited time items available to buy with real money is one of those things.
It's almost like they only want to sell ships... ships and only ships...
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As for the idea that well "everyone who wanted it should have it". I think you forget who the customers are. Trek was on ages ago, people play from time to time have lives, and obligations, and commitments. It's part of why the delta rising difficulty changes where so tough on many people, why the ques are still under populated. There's a sizable group here that's just not 14yo pro-gamer. (though I support the difficulty changes, everyone needs challenges)
I think I found a dev-post on reddit, that sounds so strange, should the official forums be the only source of news? Anyway, it seems new stuff will be account unlocks.
I liked the past winter event better, with alt-discounts. Better participation, more people in the winter wonderland, more life.
More like wishful thinking. The Devs have not said anything of the sort. But, some promo ships were made available through the fleet system and the DSD promo was put in the lobi store so there's some precedent for the idea that past ships might be made available.
Some of the Devs have semi-personal accounts on Twitter/Reddit/etc where they comment on the game.
Trendy's doing her best to make sure that really official news appears on the official website one way or the other. But they do have customers that don't use the forums and it's not entirely inappropriate for them to reach out via other mediums as well.
We forum users sometimes forget that the Community is actually bigger than just the forums.
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But if it is important information, then it should be released in as many ways as possible. If a dev makes a post about Inspiration affecting lag on Reddit, then it should be available on the forums, Twitter, Facebook, and whatever else they use.
When cryptic are set on something, they take it all the way. Even if its a bad idea. Which for some reason I cannot fully understand why.
You are correct, retiring the currency would make more sense rather than the ships.
I also dont see how it trivilized the event. Frankly I dont think replaying the event is based on what they get from it but based on the replayability of the content within the event itself.
If the event was actually fun then people would replay it.
Moaning about alts being the cause of lack of participation is silly unless their metrics are based on acccounts and not characters. Frankly if they want people to play the event they should make the events much more appertizing to players a new ship alone will not do it. sure people want it but a lot of people dont always find the events fun. They need to be a bit more broard with their approach to content within events and make them more engaging for multiple players not just a solo-run. Because frankly most of the time these events end up being soloable there are sometimes some group aspects to it but overall the events are solo heavy and its boring that way.
You may have noticed over the years that there has been an increased push toward solo activities. Cryptic didn't do that out of the blue. Folks have asked for it. Lots of folks simply do not want to play with other folks. Some folks go so far as resenting that they have to play with other folks...