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Lockboxes: good for business, bad for everything else?
turbofalcon
Member Posts: 4 Arc User
What do you guys think of lockboxes? To me, it feels like a cheap and slimy lottery system that keeps people gambling repeatedly while they chase after that shiny new ship or console. I get that no one forces me, or anyone else to open lockboxes, but it seems most of what PW does lately is to promote a system that is inherently limited in what it can give back for the money.
On paper, it's a great business model. Why have a few people spend $30 or $50 on a ZEN ship, when you can make them gamble wayyy more than that and keep them hooked while holding the carrot right in front of them for YEARS. Does it bring anything productive? No. Absolutely not. Lockboxes bring greed, scammers and individuals who don’t care about the game, only about the money. I'd hoped that the Phonenix lockbox event was better, but 240 boxes later and no Ultra or Epic tokens, I realized it was just another game by PW to take away my money and time.
Something's gotta change. Either up the chance of players getting the main prize out of the lockbox, up the kind of rewards they get, or remove it altogether.
I imagine I'm not the first person to raise this subject, but I feel this whole lockbox thing is getting out of hand.
Thoughts?
On paper, it's a great business model. Why have a few people spend $30 or $50 on a ZEN ship, when you can make them gamble wayyy more than that and keep them hooked while holding the carrot right in front of them for YEARS. Does it bring anything productive? No. Absolutely not. Lockboxes bring greed, scammers and individuals who don’t care about the game, only about the money. I'd hoped that the Phonenix lockbox event was better, but 240 boxes later and no Ultra or Epic tokens, I realized it was just another game by PW to take away my money and time.
Something's gotta change. Either up the chance of players getting the main prize out of the lockbox, up the kind of rewards they get, or remove it altogether.
I imagine I'm not the first person to raise this subject, but I feel this whole lockbox thing is getting out of hand.
Thoughts?
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Comments
2. My thoughts are my own.
Conversely, as I've opined on several occasions, most of what they're offering for sale would actually make more sense being found in various rep stores. For example: Delta Alliance should be your go-to point for Vaadwaur gear.
No lock boxes are not good for business in the slightest, whales spend a few grand on the game, but then they have all the ships, and stop playing, which means that is only a one time thing.
While that is good for maybe a single quarter of profits or a year at most, it leaves too large of gaps with almost no profits.
lock boxes give no reason to continue playing the game and does not encourage it, which is why this game has such issue with retaining people.
I personally love this game, which means that I absolutely love lock boxes as key sales is a huge chunk of what keeps the lights on and the servers running.
And I just love all the people who buy those keys and gamble on lock boxes. The relative pittance I paid for my LTS was maybe enough to keep the game going for 1- 2 minutes, and my very occasional purchase of Zen over the course of a year might cover another few minutes. It's all those people who buy keys and gamble that allow me to keep enjoying this game. Many thanks.
You answer your own question; there is nothing anyone "needs" from lockboxes to play the game effectively. Many C-store ships, these days, are as or more effective than lockbox ones. If Cryptic were really trying to push this, the lockbox ships would be much better.
The other argument - price - is utterly subjective. Spending hundreds of pounds on a gaming hobby is unthinkable now to me, but it wasn't in my carefree youth. Whales may get pilloried but without knowing the full specifics of someone's life, you can't judge. And as Aronisa said, someone has to pay to keep the game running; if sales hold up, but the contents are non-essential to play the game, how is it a bad thing?
at least the lockbox ships arent that overpowered. so imo cryptic and PW aren't that evil as i used to think
The gear in Lockboxes should be something you roll for after completing a dungeon/raid like in WoW. Instead players are bored and do little more than refine dil to turn into zen to turn into keys. You barely have to use your starship to get the best gear in this game. That is STO endgame. Switching toons, handing in contraband and refining dil.
I would bet good money that if they made endgame content that had players actually play the game to get the gear that normally is in lockboxes, the population of the game would increase, and become less transient with people constantly quitting such as it is now.
Imagine 1-2 million more players buying T6 zen ships? There is no way lockbox profits could compare with an actual healthy player base, bringing friends into the game, and buying ships. The lockboxes are like advertising "Hey, we care more about money than actually making our game as great as it could be. This is not a labor of love, just a cash cow."
If people didn't get that impression when they first learn about the lockbox system, we wouldn't even be having this discussion.
More players = more money. Cryptic needs to get that through their stubborn skulls.
I played WoW for years. i ran the same raids and dungeons over and over because I wanted the gear. I had fun, and even getting a chance to roll on the gear you want was exciting.
Yes, the playerbase is upset about this new content. Every MMO I have ever played had people complain about change. But in the case of this game I think some VERY difficult Elite STF's that take more than 5-10 minutes to run, and give out the best gear in the game would be exciting. (If done correctly.)
Take the most recent content. The space PVE race one is little more than a hallway and a room. You stall out at doors and then blow up a reactor. The creativity on this one is about 1 out of 10. People are not going to replay it because they had fun, and so once their Competitive Rep is at 5, they likely will never play it again.
Make it fun. Make it hard and make it so you HAVE to run it if you want gear like Coalition Disruptors etc.
You have not provided any solutions other than "People will complain and the game is already broken, so why even bother?"
I have been playing this game for 5-6 years now and trust me, the players that have stuck it out have been unhappy many many many times and yet they still play. I doubt adding better STF's that have great rewards would alienate them and make them quit. If they were going to quit they would have done so already. Especially given this most recent "Nerfpocolypse" as many call it.
And then there are the RP people who wouldn't care at all about the change, they just want the lawn chairs on Risa fixed, and to be rid of people cancelling their dances by simply walking into them. The only people this change would alienate are the people who open lockboxes over and over to sell ships, and even those people would likely enjoy being able to "play" this game rather than hang out on a spacestation in front of the Exchange.