I probably shouldn't be part of this discussion as I don't play the lockbox gamble..
However, I do support the idea of an 'account unlock' for lockbox/promotion ships, might even encourage me to drain my account bank of credits to purchase one of these beasties from the exchange.
I would also pay good zen for account unlocks for Lobi store ships, I've been sitting on a little over 800 Lobi for more than a year now, the only reason I haven't bought a big shiny Lobi ship being I can't decide which character to put it on. If I could purchase an account unlock...
I won't ask Cryptic to 'give away' account unlocks for these premium ships, but it would be nice if they would bend a little and offer the account unlock for a modest fee.
Also, I'd like to add, unless Cryptic does something to ease the cost of outfitting alts with premium ships, I likely won't ever consider purchasing or even gambling for one.
Having 12 toons and trying to pick just one to unpack a premium ship for and neglecting the rest would not make me happy, no matter how awesome the ship is.
Id like to offer a third possibility 2000 Zen for an account wide unlock for any one lockbox. Same mechanic as above, a token from the Zen Store. No limits on how many alts can use the ship. No need to worry about keeping ANY lockbox ship in your inventory. Make the ship recoverable if they pay the unlock fee.
I'd be willing to pay 2000 zen to unlock a premium ship across an account. Depending on the ship, I might even call it a good deal.
I don't own any lock box ships and wouldn't own any lockbox ships. I don't think they belong in the game at all unless there was an unaligned faction to contain them.
Also until they get the bugs under control and start making some reason plots for their story arcs, I done with paying for anything.
First of all YES 1000% YES I Support Account Wide Unlocks for ALL Lockbox, Lobi and Promotional Ships.
It was always Annoying that Lockbox / Lobi and Promotional Ships were bound to a Single Character, thus making them WAY less Apealing to me. Never than the less i have some of those Ships on several of my Characters, but NONE of them Twice, there is no Way in HELL i would Spend so much to get the same Ship again.
And to be Honest iam not really Interested to buy more Lockbox / Lobi / Promotional Ships (or open Boxes) having to Decide on which Character to use it is a FUNKILLER, i would like to be able to test it / use it on more than Just 1 Character, before i decide which Character will use it as his main Ship (ALL my Characters have their own unique Ship) maybe if i get a Different Ship for one of my Characters, use the Lockbox / Lobi / Promotional Ship he allready has on another Character???
For Example one of my main Engis has the Jem Hadar Dreadnought Carrier + the Jem Hadar Attack Ship (for the Pets)
1. Hes my Main Engi a Vulcan, and i would so like to Put him into the Fed Command Cruiser (i have the Cross Faction Pack) but that Feels like Wasting the JHDC AND the JHAS! So hes Stuck with that Ship so it would be GREAT if i could Utillize both the JHDC and the JHAS on an other Character (the JHAS for the Pets again)
2.Regarding the JHAS....i had to buy that Ship in order to get the JHAS Pets on my JHDC (RIPP off?)....and now its sitting there and Catching Dust...i also really would like to use that Ship on one of my other Characters, but will i get it again, Spending some Hundreds of Million EC or waiting for the Next Promotional Re-Run for it and opening Hundreds of Boxes?
The Answer is NADA, NEVER.
So an Account Wide Unlock for EVERY Possible Ship that we ever get, no matter from where it comes is a DAMN GOOD IDEA. And Definately would make me Buy more of them and even Gamble from time to time, since than i could say HEY its worth it, cause Account Wide! :rolleyes:
AN INTERESTING CONVERSATION LOCKBOX SHIPS: WOULD YOU PAY TO UNLOCK IT ON ALL YOUR ALTS?
The first number suggested was 1000 Zen. For 1/3 the price of a new ship, I can have a Wells or a Dominion Strike Ship on another alt. For the long-term dedicated player, that would be very cost prohibitive. In my case would I drop $110 to have that same ship available to all my alts? Uh, no. I do love the game, but I have to draw the line when I cant store all the ships I want.
The second number suggested was the very reasonable amount of 250 Zen. This would definitely entice me to buy the ship for all of my alts, AND I might even let go of some that are using up space in my collection knowing I could recover them later on should I so desire.
Id like to offer a third possibility 2000 Zen for an account wide unlock for any one lockbox. Same mechanic as above, a token from the Zen Store. No limits on how many alts can use the ship. No need to worry about keeping ANY lockbox ship in your inventory. Make the ship recoverable if they pay the unlock fee.
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?
If anything I would agree with the 250 zen you cant honestly expect people to pay $20+ for a ship that already cost about $40 (my average very bad luck i guess), In all honestly I would think if they really wanted to increase revenue in the game their first goal should be working out all the issues driving the players away and stop acting as if all is well.
While I like the idea here the implementation gets fuzzy. The only thing I could see paying zen to unlock lobi ships for all char on an account doing is making the Dilithium exchange rates higher than what they are already. Which wouldn't in turn generate a profit for Cryptic. As well, over time it would end up decreasing the amount of EC one would pay for a ship on the market cause once you have them all unlocked for all char on your account your not going to make another account to start over.
What might generate some profit though while still running with this idea....
Once one char on an account has unlocked a Lobi ship (either from an exchange purphase or lobi crystal purchase), other char on the same account can buy that same lobi ship at a discounted rate (only with lobi crystals) and in doing so that ship is bound to character.
Implementation would be as simple as using the existing reclaim store architecture yet adding a lobi crystal price to reclaim the ship.
I could then see ships on the exchange still hover around the same price since the exchange is a player controlled market. Buy low, sell high. Too much supply...wait for demand to catch up.
Yet it would still generate a profit for Cryptic while only slightly cutting what it could be because.....I'll speak for myself to say that while I have a Benthan, Astika, and Orb Weaver unlocked on one toon right now I'm not looking to unlock them at all on others characters because of the current prices. Though...If what I propose was implemented then I would look to unlock them because it would be a lot funner playing the game from my multiple characters instead of just the one for the most part. I would imagine I'm not the only that feels this way too.
Maybe. I don't use very many lockbox ships- I have a temporal science vessel, a JHDC, and a Tuffli- but it would certainly be nice if I could claim them on multiple characters.
I would definitely pay to unlock access to lock box ships for all my characters. If not for the ship itself but for the trait. As for the value, demand might actually go up for those reasons
Then again, both options would also reduce the number of folks that buy duplicates under the current system...
The question is whether you could generate more revenues by having a lower price per duplicate by having more takers.
I think I did napkin math on this once that showed that at 2k ZEN, you'd actually only need a maximum of 7 times the participation that you get with a full second lockbox. I forget exactly how I arrived at that because the intuitive number would be much higher. Maybe I assigned a dollar value to the Lobi that would not be generated?
I forget exactly. It's in an old post that would probably take hours to track down. I'd probably come up with a fresh model if the devs are interested.
So if we have 100 players who buy a full second lockbox, 700 players paying 2k ZEN would be the equivalent in a worst case scenario.
You do have initial costs of developing the UI and everything for the account claim but you might be able to amortize that a bit across a few projects if you do a few more things while you're "under the hood".
Like I say, I think one question would be whether to stop at lockbox ships. Maybe adjust all ship prices to work this way. There are some strategic benefits to that. Or maybe just lockbox and pre-T5 ships, with scaling pricing.
I actually think if they were looking at this mechanic, you might want to look at other places you can add it. It would probably be annoying and a weak choice to add it to every specialization skill, for instance, but maybe for wholly completed specializations, reputations, etc. it would make sense.
I think the question is probably less whether some form of this is a good idea. I think it is, although I don't have the hard metrics to know for sure. (Like I say, at best, I can model the participation difference it would take.) I think the question before doing something like this is, since there's a cost to implement it in terms of UI labor, invisible accolade tracking, and database hookups, are there other things that could be done at the same time that could also use part or most of that labor? It might be more costly to do those things in steps and cheaper in the long run to implement multiple versions of the "pay for account unlock" throughout the game's systems all at once.
If anything I would agree with the 250 zen you cant honestly expect people to pay $20+ for a ship that already cost about $40 (my average very bad luck i guess), In all honestly I would think if they really wanted to increase revenue in the game their first goal should be working out all the issues driving the players away and stop acting as if all is well.
$40 is very good luck actually. You'd need to spend well over a hundred to have a decent chance.
Odds are almost 84% against that happening.
Around 139 lockboxes gives you 50/50 odds of a ship. 919 would give you 99% odds. You can never have 100% odds without just buying one off the exchange.
New lockbox ships are going to be where most of the high volume activity is.
Exchange price is around 120M EC. That means someone could buy $45 worth of keys at the fairly sellable price of 3M per key to get it.
However, we can also estimate that there's one that dropped in every 200 lockboxes. Meaning that we can estimate that 1100 Lobi was generated. That's around 1.2 Lobi ships, valued at maybe 100M each. That works out to an additional $45 worth of ZEN in key sales.
We'll ignore other lockbox prizes although some are significant.
So what we have here is:
Seller (which we can estimate through law of large numbers): Spent $225
Buyers: Spent $90.
Total revenue generated for 2.2 ships = $315 = $143.20 per single player ship generated.
The equivalent of about 5 account-bound ship sales.
So, on the surface, if they had about 5 times the sales, they'd be justified in charging the account bound ship price of 3k ZEN. But I'm not sure I'm done playing with this. Among other things, this will cause the exchange rate of sale to lower slightly but the price to jump up.
You can estimate this from the average prospective buyer's perspective (using rational market theory, which is imperfect here) that a lockbox ship has an opportunity cost of 5 ships -- provided there are 5 ships that they do not own, which may not be a given for collectors. So we're into some tricky assumptions here that are difficult without Cryptic numbers.
If Cryptic has some measure of price sensitivity for T6 ships, it can be determined how many additional sales would be generated and if these would be worthwhile and at what rate they would need to be worthwhile. My guess would be that people getting multiples of single-unlock ships are so exceedingly rare that it's worthwhile.
At 3k ZEN per unlock, you'd need to sell 5 times as many.
At 2k ZEN per unlock, you'd need to sell 7 times as many.
At 1.5k ZEN per unlock, you'd need to sell 9.5 times as many.
At 1k ZEN per unlock, you'd need to sell 14 times as many.
Any of these may be doable. I'd need numbers.
Of course, one way to obfuscate the high value and stimulate lockbox sales is to take the account unlock token and put it in a lockbox, make it a Lobi reward, a dilithium cost, or an event playtime perk. ::cool: This could also be a temporary measure to assess value before putting it on the C-Store.
^ the above is a good model but it does leave out one aspect:
The ability to unlock at any time increases the value of the lock box ship to some buyers, meaning that the overall demand for the ships should increase.
My anecdote is of course not data, but I would purchase more ships if I could unlock them. A ship at $45 for one alt has less value to me than a ship for $45 + $20 that is usable on all 9 alts, across 3 factions.
That is, instead of paying $45 or $90 to buy 1-2 copies under the current system I usually spend $0 and buy none.
Edit: even if they don't plan to unlock immediately, some players would see value in having that option as future proofing, making the initial $45 purchase easier to justify. Or for the gamblers, increasing the value of the jackpot.
^ the above is a good model but it does leave out one aspect:
The ability to unlock at any time increases the value of the lock box ship to some buyers, meaning that the overall demand for the ships should increase.
My anecdote is of course not data, but I would purchase more ships if I could unlock them. A ship at $45 for one alt has less value to me than a ship for $45 + $20 that is usable on all 9 alts, across 3 factions.
That is, instead of paying $45 or $90 to buy 1-2 copies under the current system I usually spend $0 and buy none.
Edit: even if they don't plan to unlock immediately, some players would see value in having that option as future proofing, making the initial $45 purchase easier to justify. Or for the gamblers, increasing the value of the jackpot.
Great point!
We'd need Cryptic numbers to assess price sensitivity. For an apples-to-apples comparison, it would help to look at T6 ships only. (Lower tier ships are not the same.)
In any case, we are talking numbers that either we don't have or for which a perfect model may not exist.
An important thing to keep in mind is that absolute sales are gated by the number of lockbox ships which exist. You can estimate how many more you might sell but it's tricky.
I think your best bang for the buck would be to lower the price of all ships, make all ships purchased after that date single-unlock, and make the account upgrade a function for all ships.
That doesn't necessarily mean the prices would all be the same but you'd have a much bigger pool of sales to weight the cost of programming work against.
So maybe T1-4 ships get reduced by half with their full value as an account unlock price, T5 ships become 1650 ZEN with a 350 ZEN account unlock, T6 become 2250 ZEN with a 750 ZEN account unlock. Lockbox ships get a 1500 ZEN unlock.
There's limited participation generating revenue for the fixed work expenses of implementing this with lockbox ships, although you're probably right that participation would boost some. But it's possible to lose money on the fixed expense work whereas shifting this to apply to all ships broadens the participation pool and simultaneously addresses the issue with T1-4 ships not selling very much.
You might even want to reverse those sample numbers I gave a bit for ships because you want to optimize around participation. People may actually be more likely to upgrade low tier ships for a standard fee.
Edit: even if they don't plan to unlock immediately, some players would see value in having that option as future proofing, making the initial $45 purchase easier to justify. Or for the gamblers, increasing the value of the jackpot.
As a sidebar, Cryptic can control this somewhat by running more Delta Recruit style events. The more Cryptic encourages alts, the better the sales pitch here.
Likewise, offering more items (specializations, reps, DOff commendations, crafting level, some gear, item upgrades) as account unlocks or somehow discounted for future use has synergy with the whole thing.
If the price of upgrading a second ship gear set on my account goes down by half, alting becomes more viable which increases the likelihood of doing it with an alt.
This is a system which feeds itself and has synergy with itself.
Even with just the ships:
If I do this on a Temporal Destroyer, the odds are increased I'll do this on a temporal science vessel.
And if I do this on one ship, odds are elevated I'll do it on two.
The more value I place in my alts, the better off I am doing this for another transaction. And each transaction increases the value I place in alts by a little.
AN INTERESTING CONVERSATION LOCKBOX SHIPS: WOULD YOU PAY TO UNLOCK IT ON ALL YOUR ALTS?
Amidst the hubbub over the pearls and how you earn free ships during special events, an interesting discussion started to emerge around lockbox ships. Currently lockbox ships are bind to character upon opening, unlike Zen store ships which become account wide assuming you meet the level and faction criteria.
For the purposes of this discussion, Im talking about lockbox ships that fall into the 0.04% chance of getting during the launch of new lockboxes, or most recently the R&D packs. The Sheshars, Dominion Strike ships and the like.
For the vast majority of players, these ships are practically unattainable. While its not out of the realm of possibility that a single key could produce the magic golden ticket, the reality is that some players spend hundreds of dollars to attain them. They are status symbols, and with the addition of Ship Mastery traits a valued resource for more than just their pretty skins.
The discussion is this: Would you as a player, who already owns a valuable lockbox ship be willing to pay something extra to have that ship on another alt? For most of us, that answer is hell yes, but the real issue is how would they do it? Cryptic is a business, and like any business they need to extract value from this process. And if the current model is working why would they potentially dilute it?
How do we monetize this idea to catch the attention of the bean counters at Cryptic?
Whatever method it is, it has to increase interest in buying lockboxes. If I know that for a small fee I can share the lockbox within my account, I will VERY likely spend more to try and get the lockbox ships. What I buy from the Zen store is irrelevant; keys to try my luck with the RNG Gods or items to sell to buy the ship off the exchange. The act of making the purchase is what counts.
It cant reduce the value of the ships within the internal market. Part of the value of the original boxed ships are in their resell value. Ive used my luck with ships to finance the upgrades for alts.
It has to preserve the limited nature of the ships. Cryptic does have some restrictions on it from CBS in terms of what it can and cannot sell. These ships were meant to be rare for a reason.
The boys over at The SHOW (the weekly conversation from Oden Knight with SarcasmDetecor, Timber Wolf, Snipey47 and SOB) poised this question in last weeks podcast and followed up with some great ideas which could make this work for Cryptic as a way to monetize it moving forward.
We already know that the coding required to rebox a ship isnt in the realm of possibility at the moment, nor is making the lockbox ships an account-wide unlock for free. Neither would provide Cryptic with a way to make money, and while it would be an awesome quality of life move on behalf of the producers, it simply would do nothing to advance the games business model.
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. The mechanic might be a Ship Recovery Token offered for sale in the Z-Store, or something similar. But how much?
The first number suggested was 1000 Zen. For 1/3 the price of a new ship, I can have a Wells or a Dominion Strike Ship on another alt. For the long-term dedicated player, that would be very cost prohibitive. In my case would I drop $110 to have that same ship available to all my alts? Uh, no. I do love the game, but I have to draw the line when I cant store all the ships I want.
The second number suggested was the very reasonable amount of 250 Zen. This would definitely entice me to buy the ship for all of my alts, AND I might even let go of some that are using up space in my collection knowing I could recover them later on should I so desire.
Id like to offer a third possibility 2000 Zen for an account wide unlock for any one lockbox. Same mechanic as above, a token from the Zen Store. No limits on how many alts can use the ship. No need to worry about keeping ANY lockbox ship in your inventory. Make the ship recoverable if they pay the unlock fee.
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?
Not at all. I expect that feature to be free of charge.
[SIGPIC] [/SIGPIC]
I will always choose a lazy person to do a difficult job...
Not at all. I expect that feature to be free of charge.
What finances the labor it takes to implement it?
I could see maybe if you'd said for in-game currency or for gold subscribers or tied to a difficult content completion or something else because there are theories of how that brings in revenue to finance the work.
But what you're asking for is for more people to work for free.
And it's a bit hypocritical if you've bought anything under the old system because you clearly don't REALLY expect it to be free if you're spending money for something without it.
I could see maybe if you'd said for in-game currency or for gold subscribers or tied to a difficult content completion or something else because there are theories of how that brings in revenue to finance the work.
But what you're asking for is for more people to work for free.
And it's a bit hypocritical if you've bought anything under the old system because you clearly don't REALLY expect it to be free if you're spending money for something without it.
That was what I was mulling over. As I said, I don't know if I'd change my habits as far as purchasing/using Master Keys if I had to pay an additional Zen cost in addition to gambling on the lock boxes themselves. I would be more inclined to gamble if the outcome were an account unlock... likewise for buying one from other players off the Exchange.
That's the payoff... more active participation in the gambling mechanic they've developed. More folks buying Keys could (but not necessarily would) pay for the cost of implementing such a system. If they simply made any unopened Crates sealed and used those sealed Crates as specific inputs for specific Event Rep projects to claim the account unlock, they could tap into an existing system. That would save significantly on any development costs, increasing any relative gain from increased sales numbers. Admittedly, that would irk current owners... but since at no point was a current owner promised an account unlock for that ship (unlike the whole "T6 capabilities" shenanigans with the JHAS/JHSS) it would be fair. Plus, that wouldn't prevent players from using any future Crates (including any stockpiled for one alt or another) for an account unlock, which would be awesome.
Then again, we've still got Delta Rising's progression scheme in effect... until that's dealt with, most players aren't going to give a TRIBBLE about their alts anyway. Who needs a lock box ship on a character only intended for doffing and casual play? That's probably the biggest hurdle to implementing such a system and making it profitable... we don't actually need to gear up alts unless we're diehard alt-o-holics (like me). Of course, my response to Delta Rising was to go more casual than I had been, which actually limits my desire to pick up any ships from lock boxes or the C-Store (or the suggested hybrid unlock).
I have ONE lock box ship, and that is solely from me trying to find something the KDF can do in Science that isn't better Fedside. I don't think I've found it yet... TRIBBLE ship selection is still TRIBBLE, something that's tough to overcome. Then again, I haven't finished the intended build thanks to Summer and the quieting of the queues for the Summer Event. :P
[EDIT] Nope, it didn't work. The Charged Particle Burst from Overwhelming force gets exactly NO benefit from your Deteriorating Secondary Deflector. Bummer.
With each passing day I wonder if I stepped into an alternate reality. The Cubs win the world series. Donald Trump is President. Britain leaves the EU. STO gets a dedicated PvP season. Engineers are "out of control" in STO.
Then again, we've still got Delta Rising's progression scheme in effect... until that's dealt with, most players aren't going to give a TRIBBLE about their alts anyway. Who needs a lock box ship on a character only intended for doffing and casual play? That's probably the biggest hurdle to implementing such a system and making it profitable... we don't actually need to gear up alts unless we're diehard alt-o-holics (like me). Of course, my response to Delta Rising was to go more casual than I had been, which actually limits my desire to pick up any ships from lock boxes or the C-Store (or the suggested hybrid unlock).
I have ONE lock box ship, and that is solely from me trying to find something the KDF can do in Science that isn't better Fedside. I don't think I've found it yet... TRIBBLE ship selection is still TRIBBLE, something that's tough to overcome. Then again, I haven't finished the intended build thanks to Summer and the quieting of the queues for the Summer Event. :P
[EDIT] Nope, it didn't work. The Charged Particle Burst from Overwhelming force gets exactly NO benefit from your Deteriorating Secondary Deflector. Bummer.
This is ultimately why I think account unlocking can't and probably shouldn't stop with JUST the lockbox ship. It's a whole process that feeds on itself.
Some account unlocks might be free if they're covered mostly by the same tech and programming work as the paid unlocks.
Maybe, for instance, you DO make profession specializations and crafting level and DOFF commendations free account unlocks (only as an all or nothing thing for people who have completed a full category/commendation, not point-by-point) but you charge for reps and ships.
I think in the end, either almost everything has to be account wide (with some things being paid for to reap the financial gains of alts) or they need to let us copy characters (with a change of species and maybe minus inventory and assets) to exploit full demand and invigorate alts.
I think there is at the least a case for crafting and DOffing being free account unlocks. Because DOffing more on alts generates demand for Duty Officers and I think people would DOff more if they started at top tier on alts where more assignments would be available.
Likewise, leveling crafting doesn't make Cryptic any money in a reliable way; heck, it KEEPS Cryptic from making money by filling up R&D slots with projects that don't take dilithium inputs. Whereas a maxed crafter is spending dilithium which sinks dilithium which drives the exchange.
Same for reps. People MAKE dilithium leveling reps. 50k+ per alt. Whereas if alts started out maxed, players would be sinking more dilithium.
I've already spent a fortune getting at least 1 Sheshar, so I did the time..
This right here. The money I dropped on my Manasa and Astika will NOT be dropped again. As much as I love those ships with all my heart, I simply refuse to drop that much money to unlock them again.
Now, 2000 ZEN for account wide unlock? That would be just fine.
"Polls are so annoying, let's make a poll to see who agrees!"
Yes I would pay to do an account lock on my lockbox ships. It took me nearly a year to save up for a d'kora alone so frankly, I'm tired of having to regrind that long for just one ship which I should already have access to.
If the devs have their misgivings about this, they could implement this only for older lock boxes that have been out for at least 6 months.
I like the idea...and I would definitely use the service if it ever became available...which leads me to my question...if something like what the OP presented were possible...would it also be within cryptics scope to allow us to join our accounts into one ...by that I mean...I have three accounts with 11 characters all together...I would love to have them all in one place so that I don't have to keep logging out and into each one just to complete events or dailies...I would be willing to pay the monthly fee plus the cost for the extra characters.
Comments
However, I do support the idea of an 'account unlock' for lockbox/promotion ships, might even encourage me to drain my account bank of credits to purchase one of these beasties from the exchange.
I would also pay good zen for account unlocks for Lobi store ships, I've been sitting on a little over 800 Lobi for more than a year now, the only reason I haven't bought a big shiny Lobi ship being I can't decide which character to put it on. If I could purchase an account unlock...
I won't ask Cryptic to 'give away' account unlocks for these premium ships, but it would be nice if they would bend a little and offer the account unlock for a modest fee.
Also, I'd like to add, unless Cryptic does something to ease the cost of outfitting alts with premium ships, I likely won't ever consider purchasing or even gambling for one.
Having 12 toons and trying to pick just one to unpack a premium ship for and neglecting the rest would not make me happy, no matter how awesome the ship is.
Edit:
I'd be willing to pay 2000 zen to unlock a premium ship across an account. Depending on the ship, I might even call it a good deal.
I don't own any lock box ships and wouldn't own any lockbox ships. I don't think they belong in the game at all unless there was an unaligned faction to contain them.
Also until they get the bugs under control and start making some reason plots for their story arcs, I done with paying for anything.
I see it as an excellent idea that would give these expensive items far more potential value to me.
With an added benefit of giving me an incentive to play some of my alts a lot more.
Perhaps even nudge me into trying to aquire more LB ships.
If not, I support this.
It was always Annoying that Lockbox / Lobi and Promotional Ships were bound to a Single Character, thus making them WAY less Apealing to me. Never than the less i have some of those Ships on several of my Characters, but NONE of them Twice, there is no Way in HELL i would Spend so much to get the same Ship again.
And to be Honest iam not really Interested to buy more Lockbox / Lobi / Promotional Ships (or open Boxes) having to Decide on which Character to use it is a FUNKILLER, i would like to be able to test it / use it on more than Just 1 Character, before i decide which Character will use it as his main Ship (ALL my Characters have their own unique Ship) maybe if i get a Different Ship for one of my Characters, use the Lockbox / Lobi / Promotional Ship he allready has on another Character???
For Example one of my main Engis has the Jem Hadar Dreadnought Carrier + the Jem Hadar Attack Ship (for the Pets)
1. Hes my Main Engi a Vulcan, and i would so like to Put him into the Fed Command Cruiser (i have the Cross Faction Pack) but that Feels like Wasting the JHDC AND the JHAS! So hes Stuck with that Ship
2.Regarding the JHAS....i had to buy that Ship in order to get the JHAS Pets on my JHDC (RIPP off?)....and now its sitting there and Catching Dust...i also really would like to use that Ship on one of my other Characters, but will i get it again, Spending some Hundreds of Million EC or waiting for the Next Promotional Re-Run for it and opening Hundreds of Boxes?
The Answer is NADA, NEVER.
So an Account Wide Unlock for EVERY Possible Ship that we ever get, no matter from where it comes is a DAMN GOOD IDEA. And Definately would make me Buy more of them and even Gamble from time to time, since than i could say HEY its worth it, cause Account Wide! :rolleyes:
If anything I would agree with the 250 zen you cant honestly expect people to pay $20+ for a ship that already cost about $40 (my average very bad luck i guess), In all honestly I would think if they really wanted to increase revenue in the game their first goal should be working out all the issues driving the players away and stop acting as if all is well.
What might generate some profit though while still running with this idea....
Once one char on an account has unlocked a Lobi ship (either from an exchange purphase or lobi crystal purchase), other char on the same account can buy that same lobi ship at a discounted rate (only with lobi crystals) and in doing so that ship is bound to character.
Implementation would be as simple as using the existing reclaim store architecture yet adding a lobi crystal price to reclaim the ship.
I could then see ships on the exchange still hover around the same price since the exchange is a player controlled market. Buy low, sell high. Too much supply...wait for demand to catch up.
Yet it would still generate a profit for Cryptic while only slightly cutting what it could be because.....I'll speak for myself to say that while I have a Benthan, Astika, and Orb Weaver unlocked on one toon right now I'm not looking to unlock them at all on others characters because of the current prices. Though...If what I propose was implemented then I would look to unlock them because it would be a lot funner playing the game from my multiple characters instead of just the one for the most part. I would imagine I'm not the only that feels this way too.
The question is whether you could generate more revenues by having a lower price per duplicate by having more takers.
I think I did napkin math on this once that showed that at 2k ZEN, you'd actually only need a maximum of 7 times the participation that you get with a full second lockbox. I forget exactly how I arrived at that because the intuitive number would be much higher. Maybe I assigned a dollar value to the Lobi that would not be generated?
I forget exactly. It's in an old post that would probably take hours to track down. I'd probably come up with a fresh model if the devs are interested.
So if we have 100 players who buy a full second lockbox, 700 players paying 2k ZEN would be the equivalent in a worst case scenario.
You do have initial costs of developing the UI and everything for the account claim but you might be able to amortize that a bit across a few projects if you do a few more things while you're "under the hood".
Like I say, I think one question would be whether to stop at lockbox ships. Maybe adjust all ship prices to work this way. There are some strategic benefits to that. Or maybe just lockbox and pre-T5 ships, with scaling pricing.
I actually think if they were looking at this mechanic, you might want to look at other places you can add it. It would probably be annoying and a weak choice to add it to every specialization skill, for instance, but maybe for wholly completed specializations, reputations, etc. it would make sense.
I think the question is probably less whether some form of this is a good idea. I think it is, although I don't have the hard metrics to know for sure. (Like I say, at best, I can model the participation difference it would take.) I think the question before doing something like this is, since there's a cost to implement it in terms of UI labor, invisible accolade tracking, and database hookups, are there other things that could be done at the same time that could also use part or most of that labor? It might be more costly to do those things in steps and cheaper in the long run to implement multiple versions of the "pay for account unlock" throughout the game's systems all at once.
$40 is very good luck actually. You'd need to spend well over a hundred to have a decent chance.
Odds are almost 84% against that happening.
Around 139 lockboxes gives you 50/50 odds of a ship. 919 would give you 99% odds. You can never have 100% odds without just buying one off the exchange.
New lockbox ships are going to be where most of the high volume activity is.
Exchange price is around 120M EC. That means someone could buy $45 worth of keys at the fairly sellable price of 3M per key to get it.
However, we can also estimate that there's one that dropped in every 200 lockboxes. Meaning that we can estimate that 1100 Lobi was generated. That's around 1.2 Lobi ships, valued at maybe 100M each. That works out to an additional $45 worth of ZEN in key sales.
We'll ignore other lockbox prizes although some are significant.
So what we have here is:
Seller (which we can estimate through law of large numbers): Spent $225
Buyers: Spent $90.
Total revenue generated for 2.2 ships = $315 = $143.20 per single player ship generated.
The equivalent of about 5 account-bound ship sales.
So, on the surface, if they had about 5 times the sales, they'd be justified in charging the account bound ship price of 3k ZEN. But I'm not sure I'm done playing with this. Among other things, this will cause the exchange rate of sale to lower slightly but the price to jump up.
You can estimate this from the average prospective buyer's perspective (using rational market theory, which is imperfect here) that a lockbox ship has an opportunity cost of 5 ships -- provided there are 5 ships that they do not own, which may not be a given for collectors. So we're into some tricky assumptions here that are difficult without Cryptic numbers.
If Cryptic has some measure of price sensitivity for T6 ships, it can be determined how many additional sales would be generated and if these would be worthwhile and at what rate they would need to be worthwhile. My guess would be that people getting multiples of single-unlock ships are so exceedingly rare that it's worthwhile.
At 3k ZEN per unlock, you'd need to sell 5 times as many.
At 2k ZEN per unlock, you'd need to sell 7 times as many.
At 1.5k ZEN per unlock, you'd need to sell 9.5 times as many.
At 1k ZEN per unlock, you'd need to sell 14 times as many.
Any of these may be doable. I'd need numbers.
Of course, one way to obfuscate the high value and stimulate lockbox sales is to take the account unlock token and put it in a lockbox, make it a Lobi reward, a dilithium cost, or an event playtime perk. ::cool: This could also be a temporary measure to assess value before putting it on the C-Store.
^ the above is a good model but it does leave out one aspect:
The ability to unlock at any time increases the value of the lock box ship to some buyers, meaning that the overall demand for the ships should increase.
My anecdote is of course not data, but I would purchase more ships if I could unlock them. A ship at $45 for one alt has less value to me than a ship for $45 + $20 that is usable on all 9 alts, across 3 factions.
That is, instead of paying $45 or $90 to buy 1-2 copies under the current system I usually spend $0 and buy none.
Edit: even if they don't plan to unlock immediately, some players would see value in having that option as future proofing, making the initial $45 purchase easier to justify. Or for the gamblers, increasing the value of the jackpot.
Great point!
We'd need Cryptic numbers to assess price sensitivity. For an apples-to-apples comparison, it would help to look at T6 ships only. (Lower tier ships are not the same.)
In any case, we are talking numbers that either we don't have or for which a perfect model may not exist.
An important thing to keep in mind is that absolute sales are gated by the number of lockbox ships which exist. You can estimate how many more you might sell but it's tricky.
I think your best bang for the buck would be to lower the price of all ships, make all ships purchased after that date single-unlock, and make the account upgrade a function for all ships.
That doesn't necessarily mean the prices would all be the same but you'd have a much bigger pool of sales to weight the cost of programming work against.
So maybe T1-4 ships get reduced by half with their full value as an account unlock price, T5 ships become 1650 ZEN with a 350 ZEN account unlock, T6 become 2250 ZEN with a 750 ZEN account unlock. Lockbox ships get a 1500 ZEN unlock.
There's limited participation generating revenue for the fixed work expenses of implementing this with lockbox ships, although you're probably right that participation would boost some. But it's possible to lose money on the fixed expense work whereas shifting this to apply to all ships broadens the participation pool and simultaneously addresses the issue with T1-4 ships not selling very much.
You might even want to reverse those sample numbers I gave a bit for ships because you want to optimize around participation. People may actually be more likely to upgrade low tier ships for a standard fee.
As a sidebar, Cryptic can control this somewhat by running more Delta Recruit style events. The more Cryptic encourages alts, the better the sales pitch here.
Likewise, offering more items (specializations, reps, DOff commendations, crafting level, some gear, item upgrades) as account unlocks or somehow discounted for future use has synergy with the whole thing.
If the price of upgrading a second ship gear set on my account goes down by half, alting becomes more viable which increases the likelihood of doing it with an alt.
This is a system which feeds itself and has synergy with itself.
Even with just the ships:
If I do this on a Temporal Destroyer, the odds are increased I'll do this on a temporal science vessel.
And if I do this on one ship, odds are elevated I'll do it on two.
The more value I place in my alts, the better off I am doing this for another transaction. And each transaction increases the value I place in alts by a little.
Not at all. I expect that feature to be free of charge.
...because he will find an easy way to do it.
-Bill Gates
What finances the labor it takes to implement it?
I could see maybe if you'd said for in-game currency or for gold subscribers or tied to a difficult content completion or something else because there are theories of how that brings in revenue to finance the work.
But what you're asking for is for more people to work for free.
And it's a bit hypocritical if you've bought anything under the old system because you clearly don't REALLY expect it to be free if you're spending money for something without it.
That was what I was mulling over. As I said, I don't know if I'd change my habits as far as purchasing/using Master Keys if I had to pay an additional Zen cost in addition to gambling on the lock boxes themselves. I would be more inclined to gamble if the outcome were an account unlock... likewise for buying one from other players off the Exchange.
That's the payoff... more active participation in the gambling mechanic they've developed. More folks buying Keys could (but not necessarily would) pay for the cost of implementing such a system. If they simply made any unopened Crates sealed and used those sealed Crates as specific inputs for specific Event Rep projects to claim the account unlock, they could tap into an existing system. That would save significantly on any development costs, increasing any relative gain from increased sales numbers. Admittedly, that would irk current owners... but since at no point was a current owner promised an account unlock for that ship (unlike the whole "T6 capabilities" shenanigans with the JHAS/JHSS) it would be fair. Plus, that wouldn't prevent players from using any future Crates (including any stockpiled for one alt or another) for an account unlock, which would be awesome.
Then again, we've still got Delta Rising's progression scheme in effect... until that's dealt with, most players aren't going to give a TRIBBLE about their alts anyway. Who needs a lock box ship on a character only intended for doffing and casual play? That's probably the biggest hurdle to implementing such a system and making it profitable... we don't actually need to gear up alts unless we're diehard alt-o-holics (like me). Of course, my response to Delta Rising was to go more casual than I had been, which actually limits my desire to pick up any ships from lock boxes or the C-Store (or the suggested hybrid unlock).
I have ONE lock box ship, and that is solely from me trying to find something the KDF can do in Science that isn't better Fedside. I don't think I've found it yet... TRIBBLE ship selection is still TRIBBLE, something that's tough to overcome. Then again, I haven't finished the intended build thanks to Summer and the quieting of the queues for the Summer Event. :P
[EDIT] Nope, it didn't work. The Charged Particle Burst from Overwhelming force gets exactly NO benefit from your Deteriorating Secondary Deflector. Bummer.
This is ultimately why I think account unlocking can't and probably shouldn't stop with JUST the lockbox ship. It's a whole process that feeds on itself.
Some account unlocks might be free if they're covered mostly by the same tech and programming work as the paid unlocks.
Maybe, for instance, you DO make profession specializations and crafting level and DOFF commendations free account unlocks (only as an all or nothing thing for people who have completed a full category/commendation, not point-by-point) but you charge for reps and ships.
I think in the end, either almost everything has to be account wide (with some things being paid for to reap the financial gains of alts) or they need to let us copy characters (with a change of species and maybe minus inventory and assets) to exploit full demand and invigorate alts.
Likewise, leveling crafting doesn't make Cryptic any money in a reliable way; heck, it KEEPS Cryptic from making money by filling up R&D slots with projects that don't take dilithium inputs. Whereas a maxed crafter is spending dilithium which sinks dilithium which drives the exchange.
Same for reps. People MAKE dilithium leveling reps. 50k+ per alt. Whereas if alts started out maxed, players would be sinking more dilithium.
This right here. The money I dropped on my Manasa and Astika will NOT be dropped again. As much as I love those ships with all my heart, I simply refuse to drop that much money to unlock them again.
Now, 2000 ZEN for account wide unlock? That would be just fine.
Yes !
If the devs have their misgivings about this, they could implement this only for older lock boxes that have been out for at least 6 months.
Are there other players who feel the same...?