Painful Lessons - Ship Reward Packs

szerontzur

So, I just made a big stupid and figured I'd share it in the hopes that others might avoid the thousand yard stare currently adorning my face. (Lessons at the end.)

I had some fairly lofty ambitions going into this Summer Event; I figured I'd probably upgrade one of my characters to a promo ship around the end of the event as a birthday present to myself. Well, IRL stuff got in the way, and the market was a bit more temperamental than I expected. Birthday rolls around and I'm still ~200m EC short of my goal. I kind of shrug it off, because it clear ahead of time that things fell below the initial estimate.

Now, I generally like to keep a T6 Infinity Ship Pack in reserve for a rainy day. I had been musing over the idea of using it for a couple of my other characters, and been keeping tabs on the prices of those ships on the market to figure out the best value for its potential use. Then, the idea hit me that I could potentially sell one of those options due to it relatively high value.. and if it didn't sell in a reasonable amount of time, I could just use the ship on that character instead. Plus if it did sell, it would be an excellent margin to grab several other fun goodies at the same time.

Well, this is where I got into trouble. I'm reluctant to disclose the exact ships due to the predatory nature of the market, but the ship in question was a KDF vessel and the Infinity Pack was on a Fed character. I figured, well, there are those cross-faction packs, I'll just convert it into that and then grab the ship out of that pack on a KDF character(I do most of my market stuff on one of my KDF characters anyways). Well, I converted it into the cross-faction pack and picked it up on my KDF marketeer. Then, I opened the pack, expecting to get a box for the KDF ship. Instead, I got the ship.. instantly commissioned(on a character who specced for a completely different playstyle and already has a ship that suits them perfectly).

So, here I am. No birthday ship; no new shiny ship on a character who can actually make use of it; about 700m+ EC of liquid assets up in smoke.


TL;DR:
1.) Multi-Faction Reward Packs don't unpack into their Faction-specific Reward Pack(they give you the ship directly).
2.) Don't mess around with Reward Packs on characters who cannot/won't potentially make use of the items inside.


Thanks for reading my blog. Hope you have a better day than mine! (And, feel free to share your own oopsies.)

seaofsorrows

These can be a bit tricky.. one time I opened a pack on Tribble first just to see what would happen.

Sorry to hear man, thanks for sharing the experience to try and help others.

maina

Happy late Birthday?

Do you still have the ship you didn't want? I just sold a Kelvin choice pack, I'd be willing to see if I can buy the ship you want to trade for the ship you don't want. I'll just flip it for my money back.

szerontzur

seaofsorrows wrote: »

These can be a bit tricky.. one time I opened a pack on Tribble first just to see what would happen.

Sorry to hear man, thanks for sharing the experience to try and help others.

Yeah, the convolution was that the Infinity Pack was on a Fed character and targeted ship was KDF. I dismissed the option without considering testing the cross-faction pack on Tribble first. (I also made the erroneous assumption that because there were boxed versions of the KDF ship on the exchange, that the cross-faction pack would open into the tradable version of the KDF ship.)

maina wrote: »

Happy late Birthday?

Do you still have the ship you didn't want? I just sold a Kelvin choice pack, I'd be willing to see if I can buy the ship you want to trade for the ship you don't want. I'll just flip it for my money back.

Thanks for the well wishes.

The issue is that the ship automatically commissioned, so it's already bound to one of my characters (and not the one I was interested in potentially using it on). Kudos for offering to help though.

Unknown

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alcyoneserene

So the only mistake was opening and binding it on the wrong KDF character the way I understood it.

You said even if it didn't sell you could use the ship. In that case, the loss of potential income towards a promo ship is indeed a big letdown, but say it never sold, you would have used it as it is.

Respec isn't that expensive if you just do it once, and it's very much possible to make a generalist skill tree that works on any ship, that's got 1 or 2 tac ultimates, and all the important science ones for any science vessel too. Most engineer options are redundant anyways.

Having 2 nice ships on a character I also don't see as anything bad, just write down the stuff that doesn't save into loadouts to swap between the two.

Perhaps an additional prompt to such boxes confirming that we're opening the specific big prize and binding it to character would help. So many additional prompts elsewhere that are also redundant, like are you sure you want to beam out, leave map, etc., while the ones that matter are missing.

szerontzur

alcyoneserene wrote: »

So the only mistake was opening and binding it on the wrong KDF character the way I understood it.

You said even if it didn't sell you could use the ship. In that case, the loss of potential income towards a promo ship is indeed a big letdown, but say it never sold, you would have used it as it is.

Respec isn't that expensive if you just do it once, and it's very much possible to make a generalist skill tree that works on any ship, that's got 1 or 2 tac ultimates, and all the important science ones for any science vessel too. Most engineer options are redundant anyways.

Having 2 nice ships on a character I also don't see as anything bad, just write down the stuff that doesn't save into loadouts to swap between the two.

Perhaps an additional prompt to such boxes confirming that we're opening the specific big prize and binding it to character would help. So many additional prompts elsewhere that are also redundant, like are you sure you want to beam out, leave map, etc., while the ones that matter are missing.

Yeah, that's the real kick in the pants. If I had opened the pack/tried to sell it on the character I would have potentially used the ship on, it wouldn't have stung as much. Alas, Hindsight is 20/20.. (and the current year, if you'll pardon the pun.)

Unfortunately, the character that opened it is my dedicated Drain specialist. No other playstyle is as unforgiving to build for as Drain is right now. Ship selection has very strict requirements, and it demands a lot build focus(traits/gear/skills) to get even decent results. Furthermore, dedicated DEW Gunships are pretty much the antithesis of the playstyle, so that ship would/will do nothing but rot on that character.

I agree about the confirmation box for character-binding ships. It was the first thing that ran through my head as a measure that could have prevented this mess - a big "Hey Stupid! If you open this Box, the ship inside is going to bind to your character! Are you sure you're ready for this much commitment!?" kind of thing. I mean, I've certainly had regrets for some of the ships I've gotten in the past(Na'kuhl ships come to mind), but I'm fine with the sunk cost of them because I knew what I was doing when I bound them to the characters. Seeing the commission dialogue open up when I was expecting a boxed ship however.. put my heart right in my stomach when I realized what just had happened. It's the reason I started the thread - I don't want other people to experience that awful kind of confusion.

fleetcaptain5

These issues could be prevented if they'd just allow players to switch ships between characters.

Even if it could be done only once. The absurd prices (like over $200 in keys for a promo ship) means that I'd consider it reasonable to argue that these items should be account unlocks.

But even if that is one step too far for them for whatever reason, at least allow players to correct mistakes.

angrytarg

You might be able to ask customer support to repack the ship. I once deleted a rep item by mistake and could not reclaim it. CS was able to revert the action on the character. Maybe they are nice like that. [img]http://asterpw.github.io/pwicons/emotes/pig-39.gif[/img]​​

theanothername

Ouch!

Try what @angrytarg said. Worst case means no change.

Regardless of the outcome: Happy belated Birthday! Bury the frustration under a 2nd Birthdaycake

gaevsman

They should put a warning window when you umpack, letting you know you will bind the ship to your char if you open it, it would solve sooo many problems... sorry for your loss, and happy birthday!

Unknown

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foxrockssocks

They just need to implement a repacking mechanic. It fixes mistakes and desires to try a rare ship on a different character.

worgaus

Admittedly it's been a while but I seem to remember it being fairly clear where the "point of no return" was, but I suppose if you had been drinking or something it might be an issue.

Did you try to contact Support? As long as this is your first time they might surprise you and help you fix it. Or they might have right after you did it, now that you've had it for a while and quite possibly used it, telling them it was an accident might be a harder sell at this point.

szerontzur

Actually, the submission of a ticket was the first thing I did when I realized what had happened. I purposefully avoided touching the ship and haven't really logged on, period, since the incident. I figured it was unlikely chance, as ships probably take up a lot of database space and messing with them is probably a big hassle. I actually got an initial response surprisingly quickly, but it took until this evening for it to escalate up the ladder and receive the bad news. I was prepared for even an account rollback, but if that was something they actually considered, it was also denied. (And yes, in the 8+ years I have played, I have never made an item restoration request before.)