Cryptic's reasoning is that the really high price of the bundle will more than make up for the sales that they are losing by only offering these ships in a bundle. Sadly, the fact they keep releasing these bundles is proof enough that they view this marketing strategy as a success.
Honestly, 50 bucks a piece for account unlock promo ships is not a bad deal. Unfortunately I am not interested in any of the promo ships beyond the JHD ships...so...this basically becomes 150 bucks for an account unlock promo ship...which is more than I wanna pay. If they had account unlock JHD promo ship for 4k-6k zen...Yep, sign me up.
It's not a bad deal in comparison to the previous release methods, but objectively spending almost full MSRP of any other game for a piece of gear IS rather outrageous. I bought it myself, but I definitely felt ripped off while doing it.
It's like if an amusement park gets less visitors per month/year so they decide to raise the ticket price to compensate for the loss of revenue.
The problem with this analogy is that, from everything we know, the exact opposite is happening. STO has been doing better then it was previously since ViL came out, and the Discovery content started.
So now, instead of releasing as many ships in lockboxes, which take anywhere from like 200-250 dollars worth of keys to get a single ship out of, and said ships are single character unlocks, they can now offer account wide options of these ships for like 147 dollars for a three pack.
Things are getting less expensive for the STO community overall. Three lockbox ships previously cost someone, somewhere, anywhere from 600 to 750 dollars worth of keys to get, now you can get three for 147.
Cite some numbers backing-up your statements. If I, or someone else, states that STO/Cryptic is in a decline over the last few years without stating: "I feel or think" you'd want such a statement to be backed-up with evidence, & rightfully so, not just speculation & insinuation labeled as fact so, somtaawkhar, please try to do the same.
You state: "from everything we know, the exact opposite is happening. STO has been doing better then it was previously since ViL came out, and the Discovery content started." Nice positive statement, so back it up with evidence. Can you? I don't think Cryptic has released any official numbers, & if they have, cite them. Mere words isn't evidence.
I recently, I think a week or two ago, watched a YouTube video citing that STO now has more console players than PC players. I find that difficult to believe but when I play I'm noticing TFOs taking longer to go active & most prices still inflating. While I have no problem thinking some items in STO may be getting cheaper, there's always fluxuations, I'm not finding that the case regarding the certain items I use as economic indicators. There's a reason why some ships have inflated higher than the Exchange price limit & it's not because they're getting cheaper, but that's only 1 example.
It's like if an amusement park gets less visitors per month/year so they decide to raise the ticket price to compensate for the loss of revenue.
The problem with this analogy is that, from everything we know, the exact opposite is happening. STO has been doing better then it was previously since ViL came out, and the Discovery content started.
So now, instead of releasing as many ships in lockboxes, which take anywhere from like 200-250 dollars worth of keys to get a single ship out of, and said ships are single character unlocks, they can now offer account wide options of these ships for like 147 dollars for a three pack.
Things are getting less expensive for the STO community overall. Three lockbox ships previously cost someone, somewhere, anywhere from 600 to 750 dollars worth of keys to get, now you can get three for 147.
Cite some numbers backing-up your statements.
He is referring to dev statements (usually Geko). They never actually mention numbers, but I've read several statements about how well the game is doing, or it's had it's best year since "X expansion", or something similar. So it all boils down to whether you believe Geko or not. IMO, if the game weren't doing well Geko probably wouldn't be saying anything at all, rather than outright lying.
That said, I have a hard time believing they would be continually investing in Trek actor VO if the game were not doing well. As long as they keep getting actors, the game is probably making good money to be able to justify those expenses.
It's like if an amusement park gets less visitors per month/year so they decide to raise the ticket price to compensate for the loss of revenue.
The problem with this analogy is that, from everything we know, the exact opposite is happening. STO has been doing better then it was previously since ViL came out, and the Discovery content started.
So now, instead of releasing as many ships in lockboxes, which take anywhere from like 200-250 dollars worth of keys to get a single ship out of, and said ships are single character unlocks, they can now offer account wide options of these ships for like 147 dollars for a three pack.
Things are getting less expensive for the STO community overall. Three lockbox ships previously cost someone, somewhere, anywhere from 600 to 750 dollars worth of keys to get, now you can get three for 147.
Cite some numbers backing-up your statements.
He is referring to dev statements (usually Geko). They never actually mention numbers, but I've read several statements about how well the game is doing, or it's had it's best year since "X expansion", or something similar. So it all boils down to whether you believe Geko or not. IMO, if the game weren't doing well Geko probably wouldn't be saying anything at all, rather than outright lying.
That said, I have a hard time believing they would be continually investing in Trek actor VO if the game were not doing well. As long as they keep getting actors, the game is probably making good money to be able to justify those expenses.
While he didn't give numbers, Thomas said during one of his streams last week that 2020 was STOs best year ever.
Well I'm not calling anyone liars but part of some of their jobs, if not all, is placing a positive spin on things for the betterment of the company & game. That's part of their position, duty, & job. I'd also believe such a statement that STO has more players than it did when it initially released for example.
I'm just not a fan of dismissing any dissenting view or statement without showing the proof then stating another's statement is actual evidence which with somtaawkhar's wording likes to do sometimes. Something we all should be hesitant to do.
A statement isn't proving evidence pro or con. A statement might be correct or incorrect but on its own isn't evidence & even though I think a Cryptic employee making a statement, imo, should have more credibility if it's about STO that's my opinion based upon their previous statements proving true or false or still up in the air.
I can make the statement: I think Cryptic has released more gamble starships than direct-buy starships over the last couple of years. I might be correct or incorrect about that, I haven't done the proper research then cited it to prove or disprove. If there's been more gamble starships released in the last couple of years that can be true along with that there's overall more direct-buy starships than gamble starships, both can be true & it offers more statistical context.
I want STO to flourish, it's a fun game despite some of its tarnish & it's the only ST mmorpg. I wish it did well enough to garner the interest & dedication to fix the plethora of glitches, upgrade the graphics, add more content, perhaps given more investment, et cetera. I think their team might be too small to cover everything involved with STO well otherwise some of STO's cancelling of game aspects wouldn't happen if everything was going oh so well.
My only issue with the claims of success is that there is no context provided with them. How is 'success' being defined? Account logins? Player session length? Number of new characters created? Number of TFOs ran? PvP Activity? Size of the development team? How much money they were able to harvest from their players?
As for price gouging justifications.. As always, worth is subjective and up to each individual to decide for themself. However, just because something is cheap relative to a 'normal' asking price, doesn't make the 'deal' actually cheap itself.
Personally, I am content with allotting roughly $10 a week as a recreation budget. I could certainly spend more, but honestly, I tend to scoff at anything that proposes that I pay more than ~$50 per month/for a single recreational purchase. (I still make a few exceptions for birthday/holidays/etc.) Clearly, I'm not the addiction-driven target audience of modern marketing departments, but I do still like to support people for making things that I enjoy and have options to do so. (Sadly, a lot of those options have been disappearing with the new focus on bloated bundles.)
As for my speculation about why the recent shift to the bundles, I imagine it's a mix of legislation concerns, new market trends(surprised we haven't seen BattlePasses added yet), and.. well.. this video explains the symbiosis of modern games and the corporate culture better than I ever could: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPZkfYWp9uo
Comments
It's not a bad deal in comparison to the previous release methods, but objectively spending almost full MSRP of any other game for a piece of gear IS rather outrageous. I bought it myself, but I definitely felt ripped off while doing it.
Cite some numbers backing-up your statements. If I, or someone else, states that STO/Cryptic is in a decline over the last few years without stating: "I feel or think" you'd want such a statement to be backed-up with evidence, & rightfully so, not just speculation & insinuation labeled as fact so, somtaawkhar, please try to do the same.
You state: "from everything we know, the exact opposite is happening. STO has been doing better then it was previously since ViL came out, and the Discovery content started." Nice positive statement, so back it up with evidence. Can you? I don't think Cryptic has released any official numbers, & if they have, cite them. Mere words isn't evidence.
I recently, I think a week or two ago, watched a YouTube video citing that STO now has more console players than PC players. I find that difficult to believe but when I play I'm noticing TFOs taking longer to go active & most prices still inflating. While I have no problem thinking some items in STO may be getting cheaper, there's always fluxuations, I'm not finding that the case regarding the certain items I use as economic indicators. There's a reason why some ships have inflated higher than the Exchange price limit & it's not because they're getting cheaper, but that's only 1 example.
He is referring to dev statements (usually Geko). They never actually mention numbers, but I've read several statements about how well the game is doing, or it's had it's best year since "X expansion", or something similar. So it all boils down to whether you believe Geko or not. IMO, if the game weren't doing well Geko probably wouldn't be saying anything at all, rather than outright lying.
That said, I have a hard time believing they would be continually investing in Trek actor VO if the game were not doing well. As long as they keep getting actors, the game is probably making good money to be able to justify those expenses.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
While he didn't give numbers, Thomas said during one of his streams last week that 2020 was STOs best year ever.
I'm just not a fan of dismissing any dissenting view or statement without showing the proof then stating another's statement is actual evidence which with somtaawkhar's wording likes to do sometimes. Something we all should be hesitant to do.
A statement isn't proving evidence pro or con. A statement might be correct or incorrect but on its own isn't evidence & even though I think a Cryptic employee making a statement, imo, should have more credibility if it's about STO that's my opinion based upon their previous statements proving true or false or still up in the air.
I can make the statement: I think Cryptic has released more gamble starships than direct-buy starships over the last couple of years. I might be correct or incorrect about that, I haven't done the proper research then cited it to prove or disprove. If there's been more gamble starships released in the last couple of years that can be true along with that there's overall more direct-buy starships than gamble starships, both can be true & it offers more statistical context.
I want STO to flourish, it's a fun game despite some of its tarnish & it's the only ST mmorpg. I wish it did well enough to garner the interest & dedication to fix the plethora of glitches, upgrade the graphics, add more content, perhaps given more investment, et cetera. I think their team might be too small to cover everything involved with STO well otherwise some of STO's cancelling of game aspects wouldn't happen if everything was going oh so well.
As for price gouging justifications.. As always, worth is subjective and up to each individual to decide for themself. However, just because something is cheap relative to a 'normal' asking price, doesn't make the 'deal' actually cheap itself.
Personally, I am content with allotting roughly $10 a week as a recreation budget. I could certainly spend more, but honestly, I tend to scoff at anything that proposes that I pay more than ~$50 per month/for a single recreational purchase. (I still make a few exceptions for birthday/holidays/etc.) Clearly, I'm not the addiction-driven target audience of modern marketing departments, but I do still like to support people for making things that I enjoy and have options to do so. (Sadly, a lot of those options have been disappearing with the new focus on bloated bundles.)
As for my speculation about why the recent shift to the bundles, I imagine it's a mix of legislation concerns, new market trends(surprised we haven't seen BattlePasses added yet), and.. well.. this video explains the symbiosis of modern games and the corporate culture better than I ever could: