As many have said, TOR already lets players do this with their lockbox stuff. (And they tend to be much less stingy over rare/very rare prizing with a much larger in-game population.)
Also they did at least two account wide sales in the six month period I last played shortly after my frustration with D.R. drove me there the last time.
And they do weekly sales for their cash shop items... Man, despite the vitriol people aim at Bioware/EA, they actually seem to want to sell players stuff. (If you sub, honestly freemium-scum non-subs need not apply is kind of their attitude.)
How do we monetize this idea to catch the attention of the bean counters at Cryptic?
If more X % more Lockbox ships are / would be present in the game (after such an Unlock would be implemented) , what would be free flying / fighting promotion for that Lockbox ship right there .
It can’t reduce the value of the ships within the internal market. Part of the value of the original boxed ships are in their resell value. I’ve used my luck with ships to finance the upgrades for alts.
This is not a big concern , at least not as big as you'd believe it to be .
Demand might go up slightly due to the Unlock , but the drop rate % of the ships won't change , so any fears that :
a) suddenly the game will be overwhelmed with Lockbox ships , or
b) suddenly the prices of Lockbox ships will plummet
... are unfounded .
The SHOW offers this interesting idea: Allow players to ‘recover’ a boxed copy of the ship, bound to the account for a nominal fee in Zen.
Actually the show started off from the idea of "claimable ships" akin to the mechanic coming in the next Summer Event -- aka , once you have it , you can claim a free version on any toon .
That then morphed to the idea of a single account bound ship that can be reclaimed if deleted .
My answer :
- 1000Z for a single account bound Lockbox ship . Yes , it's steep , but it would cost Lifers 2 months of Stipend , and as for F2P-ers ... , well they really should learn that F2P games are EXPENSIVE , especially this one .
- 800Z for a single account bound Lobi ship .
... 'cuz you forgot about Lobi ships , didn't you ... ?
Lockbox and LOBI Ships i own are already paid for... and a way higher Price than a ship from the C-Store, so make this **** available for all my chars on my account.
I will not waste EC/Zen/Lobi on my alts for a ship only THIS SINGLE CHAR can use.
I got the Jem Hadar Ships for my main, which is wasted already, but flying a JHDC with JH attack Ships is just too cool ...
I would love to use the same Combo on some other toons, but paying these amounts of cash again? Hell no way ...
IF traits/Ships get account unlocks, then yes i would buy me some more. Would need to spend RL Cash for Keys to convert to EC probably but yes, sales would get up
whole idea is pretty much dead before it even tried to take off. if these ships become account wide no matter what, you spend less money to get them and as a result cryptic gets less money to reach their next quota...
In this case, I think it depends.
You might have better luck pushing this idea in the future, once we have several T6 Lockbox/Lobi ships. Then you could make a case for using such a token for the T5U ships that are "obsolete". I think that would drive key sales for older lockbox ships that don't have a Starship Trait and don't have a chance of Plasmonic Leech or Kemocite Weapons as a reward.
Pwe may think that people get lockbox ships on alts therefore their is money to be made by not doing that.
They can even bring up metrics that prove it.
Could they make more money to just allow alts to buy the ship rather than play a lottery? I think there is merit to that.
But the reality of this is: number are always accurate, people who obtain and give meaning to those numbers aren't.
whole idea is pretty much dead before it even tried to take off. if these ships become account wide no matter what, you spend less money to get them and as a result cryptic gets less money to reach their next quota.
they want you spending 300 dollars per alt because they can make a lot more money from it. but if you make it account wide, you spend 300 dollars for the lockbox ship and from there you only need to spend a few hundred dollars to unlock on every other ship. so instead of getting thousands of dollars from whales you get a quarter of that dollar mark instead.
i would be willing to bet that pwe give cryptic a mark to make each month in money terms, cryptic has to make the mark or face possible staff cuts and other dooooommmm!!!!1!1!!!!! related stuff, they need money to survive and thats the simple fact in all this. what i think of your ideas is irrelivant this is simply what cryptic decided to do a long time ago and it has not changed since and i can see this going on for another few years at least.
You don't have any facts for your argument. As you don't, I will not require myself to have any facts either.
First, Ducks.
Second, you make an assumption that there is a pool of players financially significant to PWE that somehow purchases Lock Box Ships for all their characters. Your indication is that they spend cash to purchase keys. I think you're wrong. I don't think there is a sizable pool of players that purchase ships for their own personal use on all their alts.
Third, Marmots.
Fourth, you totally dismiss the possibility of opening up a market that doesn't exist. You simply disregard it. I've spent $300 to get a ship on a bad run. Now how often do you think I would do that? For the same ship on different characters? Never. In the history of ever have I done that. But for ten bucks? Sure I'm in. So potentially they get the average upfront cash off of a player (good, its something we all agree to) and on the back end they get additional revenue that may in fact be of greater value than what they got on the front end.
Fifth, Buttercups.
Sixth, and finally, how does that add up to a net loss for Cryptic? Well it doesn't because it doesn't really touch the secondary ship market. That exchange market is pretty well solidified on the cost of the Lobi ships that are related to the Lock Box ships. That's a given. We aren't changing the price of the lobi that it takes to get them. Actually, in point of fact, this may have the effect of driving up the cost of lobi ships, as there would be less lobi floating around for people to invest in ships IF your model is correct. But I don't think so. I think the Lobi supply will be stable. And the pool of actual Lock Box ships isn't very large to begin with. And if I'm actually opening up hundreds of boxes to get ships for myself, I'm not putting them on the exchange anyway. So people will still grind Dil for Zen. People will still buy Zen to buy keys to buy cash to buy a ship off of the exchange.
So in summation I don't see the loss. I'm not seeing this large group of whales that supposedly open potentially hundreds of lock boxes each. By hundreds I mean three hundred to nine hundred, assuming three characters each. Just to get one type of ship. So where's the hurt?
Just do the math on it:
actual T6 ship costs 3k Zen and is an account unlock and reclaimable after you trash it.
Lobi Ship starts at 800 Lobi, 900 for a T6 one... that is 200 keys for a Price of 100Z en per Key? 1125Zen for 10keys actually but i am lazy atm... so 200x100 = 20.000 Zen for a ****ing T6 Lobi ship only a single Char can use? ... well we get other nice stuff out of the boxes, like useless Ground weapons, worthless Ships (Malon anyone?!) and traits which are worth 100k EC Wohooooo!
So ask for more Zen to unlock them for the whole account and all you will get from me is my middle finger.
make them free account unlocks and i will buy some, even old ones...
I've often wondered this, but, at the end of the day people already do pay to get lockbox ships on multiple chars, they pay a lot
and. I hate to say it, account unlocks would generate money but it would be at the expense of cool-ness and exclusivity
it's a very painful system, but I'll still go with no
You can still only fly one ship at a time. So. I mean...
Never mind.
And saying 'people already do pay etc.,' doesn't really bring much to us. All it does is look at one side, and it doesn't look very hard at it. Here, lets look.
One person spends three hundred dollars to get two ships. He does average.
Ten folks spend an average of one hundred and fifty dollars to get one ship each. Average.
They don't buy any more boxes because they just aren't going in that deep.
Great. Revenue is 1800 dollars.
Suppose instead we charge ten dollars per extra ship after you unlock it once?
Okay on the front end we get 1650 dollars.
IF each person bought one extra ship we'd have 1760 dollars.
IF each person bought two extra ships we'd have 1870 dollars.
Okay. That's a guess. The FIRST guy that was willing to spend $300 on two characters on a gamble would likely just buy extras for all his characters. The second group would likely buy at least one more, but maybe not. Some of them would by two. And that's right away. But down the road, if the ship is good, and they have a new character or whatever, will they get another unlock? Why wouldn't they.
So even at a low cost of ten dollars what would they stand to gain? Some extra revenue stream from engaged happy customers. Customers that even if they DON'T buy an extra ship will now perceive the system as 'fair' and would probably be more likely to buy a Lock Box in the future as they can see it as sort of an guarantee of access to cool ships for future use.
So you increase revenue.
You make more people happier.
You make more people that want to return to that same market because they see it as more than fair.
I've often wondered this, but, at the end of the day people already do pay to get lockbox ships on multiple chars, they pay a lot
But not all. Those who have paid to get some duplicate ships aren't necessarily excluded by turning them in one way or another into account unlocks. Take the event grinds for example. Some people participated in the grind multiple times over to get bonus ships. It was long and boring, but when the news came "hey, cryptic is opening up discounts for ownership" what people didn't do was complain.
Its just what they wanted. Now of course there was wasted involved and for lock box ship copies that waste is going to be greater, but besides adjusting the balance a bit (which is where making it a c-store account service could come in, as opposed to just a general update) that incredibly useful feature wouldn't represent a TRIBBLE-over (because those players could easily have additional characters that would benefit from their lock box ships.)
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Actually, i like the ideas posted by the OP, i'd gladly pay a zen token to unlock account-wide my lobi or lockbox ships. For example, i've a recluse on my eng toon i'd like to see on my sci or tac to build something different :P
I guess so. One of the major reasons I don't open lock boxes or buy things from the lobi store is because they are bound to a specific character. I am not going to dish out potentially hundreds of dollars on an item or ship that I can only use on one toon.
Now if they let us buy an unlock token that would....well unlock the ship for the account, or added an account "drydock" that lets you purchase special ship slots which can have lobi or box ships slotted and unlocked account wide. Well then yes. Cryptic would get potentially hundreds of dollars from me, it depends on how many boxes I would have to open.
Would I go after every lockbox and lobi ship? No, but there are a few that I would love to have.
I am saying this as I do not have any lobi or lockbox ships.
I have opened about 40-50 boxes no ship for me -- ever. I felt a little scammed (not much, as it was LTS stipend zen I blew), especially if I found one it would be bound to the toon that opened it, and I have 3 active alts that may like to use it.
So I decided to take the "why bother" and just to Zen/Fleet Ships. I guess I could buy them from the exchange but at the price single toon unlock seems like a waste of resources to me.
Now if they were account wide unlocks I would buy off the exchange. I don't think it would increase my interest in keys/lock-boxes though, the percentage chance is silly low for my taste.
Which from my perspective seems good for players selling them as I will look to buy there, but bad for Cryptic as I hate spending real money for random chance. So in a way I can spend virtual cash (EC) for 100% chance to get what I want, or real money for a .04% chance. Odd isn't it? It seems it should be the other way, sell the ships for money and have the rarer (random) ships "keys" bought with in game currency.
I wouldn't indirectly pay to turn my Lockbox and Lobi ships into account unlocks, but if they became account unlocks I'd end up buying a lot more.
Right now my oldest character, a Fed, is pretty much retired. He has a bunch of Lobi and Lockbox ships, and I don't buy new ships for him because it would feel like I'm wasting my already owned Lobi and Lockbox ships.
My other characters are either not Fed, or are characters I wouldn't spend real money to gear up.
Getting a Lockbox/Promo Ship can be expensive enough already. And you guys want to pay more on top of that?
Not as expensive as having to try and get it multiple times for several alts.
Many games have an unlock cost. SWTOR allows you to win something from their Packs and then pay an additional fee to add it to your Collection - allowing you to use it on multiple alts.
I have no issue if STO adopted something like that. Though it would probably have a big effect on Exchange ship sales.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
What's an alt? Since Delta Rising, I only have 1 character. Anything else on my account is just a slave that exists to pump out contraband and other things to benefit my character.
What's an alt? Since Delta Rising, I only have 1 character. Anything else on my account is just a slave that exists to pump out contraband and other things to benefit my character.
Yeah, pretty much this. Even my Delta Recruit has been resigned to being another dilithium miner and contraband farmer.
All three of these ideas have merit. It accomplishes the goal of providing Cryptic with an additional revenue stream, it increases the chances that I will spend more to get them in the first place, and it maintains the rarity of the ships in game (The argument for long-term players is that we would not be introducing more alien ships, as we can only play one ship at a time.) Plus, it would be an incentive for me to play more.
What do you think?
All three of the ideas have merit. I support the idea. I would use the service. I can explain the economics of it as a benefit to Cryptic.
HOWEVER...
This is an idea ill-adapted to discussing on the forums because most people don't easily follow the economics of surpluses and make strong assumptions that big spenders are rich and have infinitely inelastic demand. You and I know this isn't true about "whales" because Cryptic would be dominating financially (not just doing well, they'd OWN THE MARKET) but it's difficult to establish buying patterns without data and Cryptic isn't going to supply us with data to have these discussions.
I severely doubt even most whales would pay for the same lockbox ship twice so this is a net revenue increase.
Beyond that, forum posters tend to be self-interested and won't honestly admit what people would pay, sometimes as a negotiating stance and sometimes because forum posters are not representative. It's difficult to have an honest discussion that treats players as consumers because people instinctively rebel against being classed that way, you get input from non-buyers (sometimes loud and repetitive input), people try to negotiate for personal advantage by lowballing their demand, forums are not representative, etc.
What you have is a very good idea that would best be directly forwarded to Cryptic without much in the way of other user feedback. You might also look at other companies which have actually had paid services to convert chance box prices into account unlocks. There are a few of these out there.
My one bit of feedback is that I would suggest that the account upgrade unlock token should, in this case, be non-sellable to stimulate direct purchase rather tha ZEN exchange purchase which has dilluted value due to free ZEN from stipends and sales. You still get some of that IF the player buying the token uses it but... We're again getting into complicated issues that the forum is poorly suited for discussing.
My one bit of feedback is that I would suggest that the account upgrade unlock token should, in this case, be non-sellable t
SWTOR handles this as a service not as a token, so it is tied to the account.
Once you have a lockbox item, you go into their Collection UI, then pay a zen-equivalent fee to make the item unlocked for all characters. It then lets you reclaim copies at any time so (in STO) if you dismissed a ship it would not be gone forever.
SWTOR handles this as a service not as a token, so it is tied to the account.
Once you have a lockbox item, you go into their Collection UI, then pay a zen-equivalent fee to make the item unlocked for all characters. It then lets you reclaim copies at any time so (in STO) if you dismissed a ship it would not be gone forever.
If nothing else, this is handy because it provides options when something gets broken.
I'm looking into the SWTOR pricing and how they handle it.
I think Lobi costumes would be a similar candidate for account conversion and maybe reputations or even levels or spec points. I realize you're talking some real controversy there. I'm not suggesting it be cheap or available to people who don't have them through normal earning but you have a combination of things there that I'd blow $150 on and be more receptive to spending in the future.
I'd probably pay:
750 ZEN per costume x 5 = 3750
2000 ZEN per ship x 3 (at least) = 6000
1000 ZEN per 10 levels x 6 = 6000
That's $157.50 right there. I might make it a point to buy some or all from sale price ZEN or during sales but I'd buy it all.
I'd probably be up for maybe 250 ZEN per rep tier. That's another 10k ZEN. Again, not all at once. Maybe using stipend or sales or dilithium exchange but I'd do it.
There's over $250 you'd get "sunk" from me even if it's not all at once and involves some mitigation from sales/stipend/conversion, before looking at account unlock of spec points or DOff commendations. Plus greater eagerness to pick up new lockbox items. Some I have wanted and fought off the urge to buy because I might want them later on a different character. This usually makes me able to defeat my urge to buy some things because I think:
Maybe there's another character I'd rather have them on. But I don't want to roll a new character because of the other effort involved not just in leveling but advancing to identical status to my main.
Honestly, I'd be completely upfront if Cryptic ever wanted to do a focus group on how people who are tempted to buy resist sales pitches. I have a whole well of strategies I use to talk myself out of spending because I could very easily give into the urge to load up a bit more on a credit card or pick up some extra work somewhere or grind dilithium. But I don't because I have ways of talking myself out of purchases and a big thing that I use to talk myself out of spending is that I just can't justify bringing another character or multiple others up to par with my main.
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Also they did at least two account wide sales in the six month period I last played shortly after my frustration with D.R. drove me there the last time.
And they do weekly sales for their cash shop items... Man, despite the vitriol people aim at Bioware/EA, they actually seem to want to sell players stuff. (If you sub, honestly freemium-scum non-subs need not apply is kind of their attitude.)
If more X % more Lockbox ships are / would be present in the game (after such an Unlock would be implemented) , what would be free flying / fighting promotion for that Lockbox ship right there .
This is not a big concern , at least not as big as you'd believe it to be .
Demand might go up slightly due to the Unlock , but the drop rate % of the ships won't change , so any fears that :
a) suddenly the game will be overwhelmed with Lockbox ships , or
b) suddenly the prices of Lockbox ships will plummet
... are unfounded .
Actually the show started off from the idea of "claimable ships" akin to the mechanic coming in the next Summer Event -- aka , once you have it , you can claim a free version on any toon .
That then morphed to the idea of a single account bound ship that can be reclaimed if deleted .
My answer :
- 1000Z for a single account bound Lockbox ship . Yes , it's steep , but it would cost Lifers 2 months of Stipend , and as for F2P-ers ... , well they really should learn that F2P games are EXPENSIVE , especially this one .
- 800Z for a single account bound Lobi ship .
... 'cuz you forgot about Lobi ships , didn't you ... ?
I will not waste EC/Zen/Lobi on my alts for a ship only THIS SINGLE CHAR can use.
I got the Jem Hadar Ships for my main, which is wasted already, but flying a JHDC with JH attack Ships is just too cool ...
I would love to use the same Combo on some other toons, but paying these amounts of cash again? Hell no way ...
IF traits/Ships get account unlocks, then yes i would buy me some more. Would need to spend RL Cash for Keys to convert to EC probably but yes, sales would get up
In this case, I think it depends.
You might have better luck pushing this idea in the future, once we have several T6 Lockbox/Lobi ships. Then you could make a case for using such a token for the T5U ships that are "obsolete". I think that would drive key sales for older lockbox ships that don't have a Starship Trait and don't have a chance of Plasmonic Leech or Kemocite Weapons as a reward.
They can even bring up metrics that prove it.
Could they make more money to just allow alts to buy the ship rather than play a lottery? I think there is merit to that.
But the reality of this is: number are always accurate, people who obtain and give meaning to those numbers aren't.
You don't have any facts for your argument. As you don't, I will not require myself to have any facts either.
First, Ducks.
Second, you make an assumption that there is a pool of players financially significant to PWE that somehow purchases Lock Box Ships for all their characters. Your indication is that they spend cash to purchase keys. I think you're wrong. I don't think there is a sizable pool of players that purchase ships for their own personal use on all their alts.
Third, Marmots.
Fourth, you totally dismiss the possibility of opening up a market that doesn't exist. You simply disregard it. I've spent $300 to get a ship on a bad run. Now how often do you think I would do that? For the same ship on different characters? Never. In the history of ever have I done that. But for ten bucks? Sure I'm in. So potentially they get the average upfront cash off of a player (good, its something we all agree to) and on the back end they get additional revenue that may in fact be of greater value than what they got on the front end.
Fifth, Buttercups.
Sixth, and finally, how does that add up to a net loss for Cryptic? Well it doesn't because it doesn't really touch the secondary ship market. That exchange market is pretty well solidified on the cost of the Lobi ships that are related to the Lock Box ships. That's a given. We aren't changing the price of the lobi that it takes to get them. Actually, in point of fact, this may have the effect of driving up the cost of lobi ships, as there would be less lobi floating around for people to invest in ships IF your model is correct. But I don't think so. I think the Lobi supply will be stable. And the pool of actual Lock Box ships isn't very large to begin with. And if I'm actually opening up hundreds of boxes to get ships for myself, I'm not putting them on the exchange anyway. So people will still grind Dil for Zen. People will still buy Zen to buy keys to buy cash to buy a ship off of the exchange.
So in summation I don't see the loss. I'm not seeing this large group of whales that supposedly open potentially hundreds of lock boxes each. By hundreds I mean three hundred to nine hundred, assuming three characters each. Just to get one type of ship. So where's the hurt?
Peace.
and. I hate to say it, account unlocks would generate money but it would be at the expense of cool-ness and exclusivity
it's a very painful system, but I'll still go with no
actual T6 ship costs 3k Zen and is an account unlock and reclaimable after you trash it.
Lobi Ship starts at 800 Lobi, 900 for a T6 one... that is 200 keys for a Price of 100Z en per Key? 1125Zen for 10keys actually but i am lazy atm... so 200x100 = 20.000 Zen for a ****ing T6 Lobi ship only a single Char can use? ... well we get other nice stuff out of the boxes, like useless Ground weapons, worthless Ships (Malon anyone?!) and traits which are worth 100k EC Wohooooo!
So ask for more Zen to unlock them for the whole account and all you will get from me is my middle finger.
make them free account unlocks and i will buy some, even old ones...
You can still only fly one ship at a time. So. I mean...
Never mind.
And saying 'people already do pay etc.,' doesn't really bring much to us. All it does is look at one side, and it doesn't look very hard at it. Here, lets look.
One person spends three hundred dollars to get two ships. He does average.
Ten folks spend an average of one hundred and fifty dollars to get one ship each. Average.
They don't buy any more boxes because they just aren't going in that deep.
Great. Revenue is 1800 dollars.
Suppose instead we charge ten dollars per extra ship after you unlock it once?
Okay on the front end we get 1650 dollars.
IF each person bought one extra ship we'd have 1760 dollars.
IF each person bought two extra ships we'd have 1870 dollars.
Okay. That's a guess. The FIRST guy that was willing to spend $300 on two characters on a gamble would likely just buy extras for all his characters. The second group would likely buy at least one more, but maybe not. Some of them would by two. And that's right away. But down the road, if the ship is good, and they have a new character or whatever, will they get another unlock? Why wouldn't they.
So even at a low cost of ten dollars what would they stand to gain? Some extra revenue stream from engaged happy customers. Customers that even if they DON'T buy an extra ship will now perceive the system as 'fair' and would probably be more likely to buy a Lock Box in the future as they can see it as sort of an guarantee of access to cool ships for future use.
So you increase revenue.
You make more people happier.
You make more people that want to return to that same market because they see it as more than fair.
Where's the downside?
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But quite frankly, I would like the social stuff to be account based. Now, I would be interested, and actually buy the costumes.
Because of the horrible grind i pretty much retired most of my alts.
But not all. Those who have paid to get some duplicate ships aren't necessarily excluded by turning them in one way or another into account unlocks. Take the event grinds for example. Some people participated in the grind multiple times over to get bonus ships. It was long and boring, but when the news came "hey, cryptic is opening up discounts for ownership" what people didn't do was complain.
Its just what they wanted. Now of course there was wasted involved and for lock box ship copies that waste is going to be greater, but besides adjusting the balance a bit (which is where making it a c-store account service could come in, as opposed to just a general update) that incredibly useful feature wouldn't represent a TRIBBLE-over (because those players could easily have additional characters that would benefit from their lock box ships.)
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Now if they let us buy an unlock token that would....well unlock the ship for the account, or added an account "drydock" that lets you purchase special ship slots which can have lobi or box ships slotted and unlocked account wide. Well then yes. Cryptic would get potentially hundreds of dollars from me, it depends on how many boxes I would have to open.
Would I go after every lockbox and lobi ship? No, but there are a few that I would love to have.
I have opened about 40-50 boxes no ship for me -- ever. I felt a little scammed (not much, as it was LTS stipend zen I blew), especially if I found one it would be bound to the toon that opened it, and I have 3 active alts that may like to use it.
So I decided to take the "why bother" and just to Zen/Fleet Ships. I guess I could buy them from the exchange but at the price single toon unlock seems like a waste of resources to me.
Now if they were account wide unlocks I would buy off the exchange. I don't think it would increase my interest in keys/lock-boxes though, the percentage chance is silly low for my taste.
Which from my perspective seems good for players selling them as I will look to buy there, but bad for Cryptic as I hate spending real money for random chance. So in a way I can spend virtual cash (EC) for 100% chance to get what I want, or real money for a .04% chance. Odd isn't it? It seems it should be the other way, sell the ships for money and have the rarer (random) ships "keys" bought with in game currency.
Just an opinion
Right now my oldest character, a Fed, is pretty much retired. He has a bunch of Lobi and Lockbox ships, and I don't buy new ships for him because it would feel like I'm wasting my already owned Lobi and Lockbox ships.
My other characters are either not Fed, or are characters I wouldn't spend real money to gear up.
Many games have an unlock cost. SWTOR allows you to win something from their Packs and then pay an additional fee to add it to your Collection - allowing you to use it on multiple alts.
I have no issue if STO adopted something like that. Though it would probably have a big effect on Exchange ship sales.
Yeah, pretty much this. Even my Delta Recruit has been resigned to being another dilithium miner and contraband farmer.
All three of the ideas have merit. I support the idea. I would use the service. I can explain the economics of it as a benefit to Cryptic.
HOWEVER...
This is an idea ill-adapted to discussing on the forums because most people don't easily follow the economics of surpluses and make strong assumptions that big spenders are rich and have infinitely inelastic demand. You and I know this isn't true about "whales" because Cryptic would be dominating financially (not just doing well, they'd OWN THE MARKET) but it's difficult to establish buying patterns without data and Cryptic isn't going to supply us with data to have these discussions.
I severely doubt even most whales would pay for the same lockbox ship twice so this is a net revenue increase.
Beyond that, forum posters tend to be self-interested and won't honestly admit what people would pay, sometimes as a negotiating stance and sometimes because forum posters are not representative. It's difficult to have an honest discussion that treats players as consumers because people instinctively rebel against being classed that way, you get input from non-buyers (sometimes loud and repetitive input), people try to negotiate for personal advantage by lowballing their demand, forums are not representative, etc.
What you have is a very good idea that would best be directly forwarded to Cryptic without much in the way of other user feedback. You might also look at other companies which have actually had paid services to convert chance box prices into account unlocks. There are a few of these out there.
My one bit of feedback is that I would suggest that the account upgrade unlock token should, in this case, be non-sellable to stimulate direct purchase rather tha ZEN exchange purchase which has dilluted value due to free ZEN from stipends and sales. You still get some of that IF the player buying the token uses it but... We're again getting into complicated issues that the forum is poorly suited for discussing.
SWTOR handles this as a service not as a token, so it is tied to the account.
Once you have a lockbox item, you go into their Collection UI, then pay a zen-equivalent fee to make the item unlocked for all characters. It then lets you reclaim copies at any time so (in STO) if you dismissed a ship it would not be gone forever.
If nothing else, this is handy because it provides options when something gets broken.
I'm looking into the SWTOR pricing and how they handle it.
I think Lobi costumes would be a similar candidate for account conversion and maybe reputations or even levels or spec points. I realize you're talking some real controversy there. I'm not suggesting it be cheap or available to people who don't have them through normal earning but you have a combination of things there that I'd blow $150 on and be more receptive to spending in the future.
I'd probably pay:
750 ZEN per costume x 5 = 3750
2000 ZEN per ship x 3 (at least) = 6000
1000 ZEN per 10 levels x 6 = 6000
That's $157.50 right there. I might make it a point to buy some or all from sale price ZEN or during sales but I'd buy it all.
I'd probably be up for maybe 250 ZEN per rep tier. That's another 10k ZEN. Again, not all at once. Maybe using stipend or sales or dilithium exchange but I'd do it.
There's over $250 you'd get "sunk" from me even if it's not all at once and involves some mitigation from sales/stipend/conversion, before looking at account unlock of spec points or DOff commendations. Plus greater eagerness to pick up new lockbox items. Some I have wanted and fought off the urge to buy because I might want them later on a different character. This usually makes me able to defeat my urge to buy some things because I think:
Maybe there's another character I'd rather have them on. But I don't want to roll a new character because of the other effort involved not just in leveling but advancing to identical status to my main.
Honestly, I'd be completely upfront if Cryptic ever wanted to do a focus group on how people who are tempted to buy resist sales pitches. I have a whole well of strategies I use to talk myself out of spending because I could very easily give into the urge to load up a bit more on a credit card or pick up some extra work somewhere or grind dilithium. But I don't because I have ways of talking myself out of purchases and a big thing that I use to talk myself out of spending is that I just can't justify bringing another character or multiple others up to par with my main.