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Event Project and Currency Updates
gorngonzolla
Member Posts: 172 Cryptic Developer
Hi all,
We wanted to let you all know that we will be making some changes to the way we handle our Event Projects and Currencies. For the sake of thoroughness, we will be outlining the availability of these projects and their currencies. Some of the notes below are not changes, and have been marked as such. Here’s what you need to know:
We wanted to let you all know that we will be making some changes to the way we handle our Event Projects and Currencies. For the sake of thoroughness, we will be outlining the availability of these projects and their currencies. Some of the notes below are not changes, and have been marked as such. Here’s what you need to know:
- All Event ship projects from previous years that aren’t already slotted cannot be started - This is not a change
- All Event ship projects from previous years that are already slotted will remain slotted - This is not a change
- All Event Voucher currencies from previous years (e.g.: Lohlunat Prize Voucher (2015)) already owned by the player will remain in the player's inventory - This is not a change
- All Event ship projects from previous years (up to 6th Anniversary Event) that are already slotted will require the last currency for that event:
o Old Winter Event ship projects will require Winter Prize Voucher (2015)
o Old Summer Event ship projects will require Summer Prize Voucher (2015)
o Old Anniversary Event ship projects will require 6th Anniversary Prize Vouchers - The above older currencies can be purchased from the Lobi store for the normal price. This currency will be made available year round.
- All projects released after the 6th Anniversary will require the currency for that year. In other words in the 2017 Winter Event:
o The 2017 Winter Event Ship will require Winter Prize Vouchers (2017)
o The 2016 Winter Event Ship will require Winter Prize Vouchers (2016)
o All old Winter Event Ships will require Winter Prize Vouchers (2015) - Event ship projects are no longer mutually exclusive - This is a partial change. Some events had mutually exclusive projects, others did not.
- These changes only apply to our Anniversary, Summer and Winter Event projects and currencies.
FAQ:
In the 2015 Summer Event blog it was stated that old event currencies and old event ship projects would be removed from the player. Why have you changed your mind on this plan?
There were two key factors that caused us to deviate from the original plan here:
1) We had concerns that automatically removing a partially completed ship project from a player might leave them frustrated. Players might feel like their time was wasted, and this feeling would be compounded by not having any alternative way of completing the project once the currency for it is no longer available.
2) We’ve encountered some technical hurdles that prevented us from doing this in a way that would both accomplish our goals and provide a good player experience.
What is your reasoning behind making event ships no longer mutually exclusive?
Our goal here was to make sure that players know that a new ship project is available. Let’s say you still have the Ferengi Nandi Warship reputation project from the 2015 Summer Event still slotted. This means that when the next Summer Event ship project becomes available you wouldn’t see the project. We feel that this isn’t an ideal player experience, so we’ve removed that limitation.
A side effect of this is that you can theoretically have every ship project slotted in your available project slots and in an incomplete state. This will require the player to have to cancel a project in order to pick up a new one.
Will there ever be a means to acquire Event Currencies from previous years, other than purchasing them with Lobi?
No. Once an Event ends, the currencies associated with that event’s project may only be acquired from the Lobi Store.
Regards,
Phil “Gorngonzolla” Zeleski
Lead Systems Designer
Star Trek Online
0
Comments
From the post:
So, once the summer event ends in late July, the currency will be available in the Lobi store as the only means to acquire it.
For what it's worth I think it would have been better for all concerned if you had made this announcement now as you have done BUT with the changes taking effect as from after the 2016 Summer Event. This would constitute fair notice that things were going to change going forward, with the 2016 Summer Event being a "Last Chance" for those that had been planning to complete any slotted projects by participating in the 2016 Summer Event aka playing the game.
Don't be surprised by the $h1t storm that's likely to follow this announcement! It's not necessarily what you're doing but how you're doing it.
Well they only mention the pre-6th Anniversary Event currencies being avaible from the Lobi Store... It's unclear.
As far as I see it it's the same issue we had 2015 until a one-time workaround was implemented. I really don't see why the same can't be done this year and I fear this change might make it forever unattainable...
http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline#/discussion/1211570/problem-claiming-event-ships->on-other-characters
http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline#/discussion/1211309/dyson-science-destroyer
id say it is clear as crystal: yes any currency they use for the summer, winter and anniversary events will become available in the lobi store after their run giving you a chance to finish it even if you were only able to slot it
not sure on this one myself
I'm curious if there are any changes incoming to the non-ship events.
My character Tsin'xing
Here's the problem I have with this. The lobi-cost is absolutely DISGUSTING.
I have the Samsar project that I never finished. I never finished it because Delta Rising pretty much made me quit the game for a while. I then screwed up this last anniversary and didn't finish it on my main instead doing the new ship. Yes I realize this was a mistake and my own fault but I just figured alright I'll go do it next year. Now this happens.
So now I can still get the Samsar but I have to now pay in Lobi. I don't really have a problem with this, but this is a standard T6 ship that originally was FREE, and now I have to pay in master keys. Now I'd gladly just drop $30 on it since it's a T6 ship and that's the cost of a T6 ship. But through Lobi that's not the cost.
To get my ship I need 560 Qmendations. 5 Lobi will get you 10-20 of them. I'll be generous here and base it on 15 for every 5 lobi. Now each key gets you a minimum of 4 Lobi and I'm going to base it on that because getting a lot more is pretty damn rare from what I've seen. Even if I get some more I'm looking at about a minimum cost of $45 in keys to get the ship. Assuming the worst, only getting 10 Qmendations from every 5 lobi and 4 for every key I'm looking at nearly $70 to get this ship. Someone who needs all 1000 is looking at possibly as high as $125.
Now I get it Cryptic, you want money and you want us to pay more for not finishing it. I can understand that. But these prices are absolutely disgusting and just make you look insanely greedy.
So here's my recommendation. FOR OLD PROJECTS ONLY. Make it 5 lobi for 20-30 Qmendations. This would bring a maximum price of about $64. Still a lot of money but not a disgusting $125 for one ship that WAS FREE. For all NEW projects, Summer 2016, Winter 2016 and so on they can continue to be the same price. But just for Anniversary 2016 and older projects do this.
The reason why is simple, all of us who kept these projects slotted assumed that we would be able to finish them for free in the future, personally I think charging us for them is complete BS but if that's the way your going to do it I'll go along with it, but charging the same price as someone who just wants to get a future ship early isn't fair. Do something good and right and make this change.
Boooo.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
I absolutely agree. I'm glad I managed to finish all projects before this is going live.
It's STUPIDLY expensive. Once again someone at Cryptic had their I-See-What-I-Want-To-See-Glasses on and saw the community asking for old Event ships being made available via Lobi.
That person failed to see that we were talking about making them available via Lobi no matter if your account even existed at the time of the event. NOBODY said it would be worth it to spend Lobi to finish a previously free Event Ship Project.
We are exchange currencies for other currencies all the time. What's the problem with adding a NPC that converts newer Event Currencies for older ones? The tech is clearly there.
To me this sounds like an obvious lazy+moneygrab solution.
This is one of the things that slowly drive me away from the game.
And before you ask, no one can't haz my stuffz. If I ever decide to leave the I at least want to help new players by being an EC-sink.
1. Does the availability for currency through lobi also apply for special events such as the Mirror Universe Invasion, Elachi Alert and CE event?
2. When do these changes go live?
Which, mind you, I'm not inherently against because I think players should be rewarded for planning ahead.
However, this is the exact same reasoning your team made when it came to retiring old event currencies for "exclusivity" and seeing lower amounts of participation while the rewards themselves were still being claimed.
Do this sooner rather than later, because I swear to Sisko if I see a dev blog saying just how "Shocked" and "Surprised" you are that people are doing the exact same thing with Elachi/MU/CC special currencies as they did with anniversary/winter/summer currencies, I'm going to turn my snark setting up to 11 before getting over it and going about my normal life.
Admittedly, I also have some personal interest in it. I'd like to claim some of my rewards from past events on my alts, like the Zefram Cochrane Shotgun and the Emergency Conn Officer Hologram.
As I understood it it goes live with this years Summer Event, so in about two days depending on where your are on the globe.
I would not be surprised if Cryptic simply consider endgame ships as a lot more valuable and significant, which is why they warrant extra dev time compared to the other events. And inventing extra currencies might not really be worth it.
I would not be surprised however if they'd change something about storing these special marks if they ever also give us account unlocks for the Elachi/MU/CC items.
Would indeed be nice.
Wait until it becomes prevalent enough that their metrics show a noticable downward participation trend just like with the anniversary/winter/summer event ships (because that had been going on for a while before they fixed it), before they do the exact same thing, leading to the exact same amount of outrage by players who decided to "game" the system by planning ahead, and thinking it was perfectly fine to do it that way without repercussion because it had been untouched for so long.
You're right in that they likely don't equate the events, but then they'd be intellectually dishonest by saying that the exact same "exploit" (and I really hate calling it that) only matters for one type of event and not the other.
Inventing new currencies is as simple as putting the year next to it, or if it occurs two times a year, a seasonal prefix to the year
Example: Crystalline Shard (Spring 2016)
This isn't to say that it would be easy to do this, as I'd rather not trivialize the under-the-hood work on a system I don't understand, but if they can do it for one type of event, they can do it for the other.
Which one was that?
Exploits and bugs get fixed depending on how prevalent they are and how seriously the effect the game. Ships were serious enough, queued events weren't (yet). There isn't really much intellectually dishonesty about that, I think.
I think the real problem for the ship events was when the account unlocks came. When you still needed to unlock ships per character, being able to get ahead only really meant something for people that had only one character.
And the "real" exploit was only possible if you actually had multiple characters, because then you could have the event prepared on multiple characters.
The reward from Crystalline Entity and similar queue events is primarily per character. Continuing to do the event on a different character keeps giving you rewards every time, basically.
But it means you have to keep this currency around for a very long time even though no one can really obtain it anymore, at least not in the quantities it was designed for. That's basically a technical debt. You need to be sure it's worth it.
Of course, they kinda freed up a lot of this when they changed all our items to the new dynamic (?) item system, but they still don't necessarily want to start doing that again.
As to the 'exclusivity' BS. There are things in STO you have which I cannot get. So what? It's an MMO. ALL MMO's have things in them not everyone can get. Is it fair? Probably not. But to get yourself this worked up when there are so many other things in your life which matter so much more. That is, if you have a life away from this game.
And if you don't? That's kinda sad. So here's one more thing you have which I don't need or want. Pity.
I'm going to strongly suggest Cryptic rethink their stance on this one with the console release on the horizon. I get wanting to change out the rewards from time to time as that's to be expected. With the console release set to take place with the new Agents of Yesterday expansion we're going to see a good influx of console players. With this alot of the new console players are going to go on youtube to check out the game. In doing so they're going to see ships such as the Kobali Samsar, the Breen Ships, Ferengi Nandi, and other event ships. When they see these ships they're going to want to acquire them, especially if they're a Dominion fan. When they look at getting them they're going to see that they can't get them and they're going to be angry, and rightfully so. They're coming into the game and already there's iconic ships like the Breen Chel Gret that they already are never going to be able to acquire. For people who enjoyed Voyager, they can't get the Voth Bulwark, or the Krenim Science ship.
They've not even joined into the game yet, and already they're being told there's several ships they can't have. That's not going to go over well with the console players and will keep many more players from joining the game that otherwise would join. It in no way hurts the game by allowing people an alternative means of acquiring these ships from previous events. I myself have acquired most of the event ships save for 2 of the Breen ships. I acquired them through the events yet it in no way hurts me by allowing others to acquire the ships such as the Samsar that I already have. My gameplay is not effected by them unlocking the ship. Plus there is already precident in game for the previous ships to be added to the lobi store at the very least with the Dyson Science destroyer. The original Odyssey was added to the fleet ships also. These event ships may not be the most powerful ever, but people should still have the option to obtain them. Cryptic would make alot more money by allowing alternative acquisitions. Believe me when I say that console players won't take something like this laying down as the issues with various other games over the years should prove.
Most folks only make one big purchase for their account like a lockbox ship as they simply can't afford anything else. By having these ships be one time only or you don't get it, you take options away from players. when people see these ships such as the Samsar in the lobi store or even on the exchange, they're going to pick them up because it will give them more options. Tanks are denied a very viable option with the Kobali core and console from the Samsar, and a good ship in the Samsar itself. To be perfectly honest, I see no legitimate reason for there not to be an alternative means of acquisition.
The problem with this is that it changed something that wasn't broken. Up until this we could just use the current year currency retroactively on previous projects. This was not broken and was no need to fix. The other problem as well is that the lobi to voucher ratio can be very poor. For the typical price of 5 lobi, you can get a box of vouchers that contains 2-5 vouchers with no guarantee of the 5 and 3 being the median one usually gets. If the game just absolutely hates you and you only get the 2 vouchers each time, this can easily push an event ship into the range of 1000+ lobi depending on how many marks you need which is ridiculous. if Cryptic is going to go this route then I would suggest making it a set amount of vouchers you get, even if it's a straight up 1:1 ratio as it at least keeps costs consistent. Despite the issues here I'm glad that the currency is at least being made available year round.
They never should have been mutually exclusive to start with to be perfectly honest as more often than not this was a stumbling stone that prevented people from enjoying a current year project because they didn't want to cancel their project from a previous year. Still I'm glad to see this has been reversed.
This NEVER should have been a thing at all as it punishes the players. Just as a hypothetical if a person acquired 999 of the 1000 needed marks but was unable to acquire that last mark until after the event ended, it essentially gives that player the finger by removing their project, thus wasting their time. In that case the player would be very very angry and rightfully so. All they needed was one mark and to have it taken from them is the kind of thing that makes players want to quit the game when stuff like that happens. Again I'm very glad to see that Cryptic has reversed course on this one. Taking something from the player that they worked for like that is NEVER going to provide a good experience.
Overall I'm glad to see Cryptic is at least listening to the concerns of players, however with the console release coming soon enough I still believe Cryptic needs to strongly rethink their stance on not allowing previous year ships to be acquired again. I guarantee it absolutely will not go over well at all by starting out the console players and them knowing there's things in game they'll never be able to get. If this were something just as an achievement that didn't provide a tangible item that can effect that person's gameplay then it wouldn't be a big deal. If you want to give people something new to work for, put the previous ships in the lobi store like you did with the Dyson Science Destroyer, I promise you will see people pick it up.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
Also, I think this one needs some clarification: I slotted the Winter '15 event ship on a few characters but then canceled those projects after realizing I wouldn't finish them in time. Or are you just saying that you won't remove them from your side?
Hmmm...
So you are claiming you had a pile of currency, an unfinished ship project that needed that currency, then you chose to trade away the currency? Oh well, that's too bad.
This will help people that had applied the currency to the project though.
The problem with this line of thinking is that typically in other MMOs when something like this happens the thing in question is usually an achievement or a vanity item of some type that has no bearing or effect on the game at all by not having it. The problem with the ships is that most if not all of them are tied into active sets that cannot be completed. The original Odyssey and Ambassador class ships are the only exception to this rule and even then alternative means of acquiring them were introduced into the game as they were added to the fleet shipyard.
Then you have ships like the Ferengi Nandi, Breen Chel Gret, Plesh Brek, Sar Theln, Rezreth, the original Dyson Science Ship, Kobali Samsar, Risian Cruisers, and the most recent Krenim Science ship. All of these ships are tied into active sets that players can still obtain the other parts of but never complete in game. Of those ships that I named in that list a moment ago, the only one with an alternative means of acquisition is the Dyson Science Ship. No other ship on that list has an alternative means of acquiring it. The precedent for doing so is already there. The Kobali set is one of the strongest tank sets in game with all of the healing potential it can provide you yet is severely reduced in effectiveness without the warp core. Then you have the 4 piece command set that the Samsar is part of. The 4 piece set may not be the most powerful in game but the option for people to complete it if that's what they want to run should still be there. Same thing for the t6 flagship pack, the 4 piece set for those ships may not be the strongest ever but the ability to complete them with the Krenim console should still be there. As it sits right now the Command ships and the Flagships are sold on the cstore with real life cash coming into play. If someone goes to buy those ships they do so under the premise that they can complete the 4 piece set as it never makes clear that you can't do so. When they buy those ships then they may feel as though they've wasted their cash since they can't complete the set, and rightfully so would be angry.
At the very least to some people it may feel like a bait and switch or outright dishonest business. No matter which way you go, it doesn't look good.
Now enter the console players who will be joining the game. Alot of the console players will be experiencing the game for the first time and content we've had for years will be brand spanking new to them. When this happens they're going to go on youtube and see ships like the Nandi, Samsar, Breen ships and others that they may want to pick up. When they do this they're going to find out that they can't get those ships. So already starting out you're handing the console players a new game but slapping them in the face at the same time by telling them, oh by the way all of those ships, yeah you can't have those because you weren't here for the event several years ago. I can tell you right now from experience as having dealt with console gamers and having been one for the longest time, in addition to being a former professional gaming ladder admin, it will NOT go over well with console gamers. They will be angry and rightfully so.
As for the exclusivity thing, it's a bunk argument because in no way does someone else acquiring those ships after me in any way effect my gameplay. By the logic of exclusivity people who didn't buy the t6 flagships like I did on the opening day shouldn't be allowed to have them. There's no legitimate reason for it. Overall it's a very bad mistake on their part by not having an alternative means of getting these ships in game even if it is lobi store. As good as some of those consoles and set pieces are, people will most certainly buy them, so it's money left on the table for no reason at all.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator