Yeah, that wouldn't surprise me. But I mean, maybe. I'm reminded of stuff like Stellaris, which is operating a dual team setup: 1 team focuses on DLC, the other on patching and updating features. I realize STO can't quite do this, but I'd be happy to see it.
> @leemwatson said: > If I remember correctly from that info that was posted a couple of weeks ago, they make more money per head on STO than they do on Neverwinter, despite Neverwinter earning more overall. As for Magic Legends.....well Shandalar was what they should've aimed for; it came nowhere near to it and was practically a poor Diablo/Baulder's Gate Dark Alliance clone.
Didn't some of the STO Devs that also worked on Magic get fired?,
Would have been wiser to keep their employees and have them put back into their original departments.
Episodes cost more time and resources to make with very little return.
Ships, much quicker and cheaper to make, lots of return.
If you were an executive in charge of pretty much the only Star Trek game in town, which would you pick. Players are still buying so why worry about shovelling out story content to placate them. We have another season of Picard coming so that's more players coming in to fly the new hotness that results from that.
Nothing you said here is untrue, however, it's not the entire picture.
Episodes have a lower direct return on investment, yes.. but they're absolutely needed in order to cash in on your 'big money makers.' No one is going to buy ships through any method if there is no game to use them in. The more content the game has, the more people enjoy and play the game. The more they play, the more emotionally invested they are, the more time they spend and therefore.. the more money they spend.
The entire thing is a big eco system one feeding into the other. We all understand the monetization and how profitable these bundles and promos are, we just feel that people would be more encouraged to pay that amount of there was more on the content side.
Many of us feel that the current ratio is not optimal between content and monetization.
Absolutely agree.
And it's a crying shame. I mean, I waited eight years for them to finally remaster the Nova class and when it did finally come I was already so burnt-out on playing the same content over and over and over again that I found I wasn't actually enjoying the ship as much as I thought I would. But as have said elsewhere, I find the mobile-gaming-cash-grab mentality that drives their business model these days so distasteful that I don't really play the game anymore.
I'm currently flying the Nova on my built science character, in the Rhode Island skin, thanks to the T6 token they gave out. It's small, but I love it.
So I cannot find a breakdown of Cryptic's revenue per MMO. Doesn't surprise me. But Cryptic had a revenue of $38 million. The resource I found indicated while it's going up, the rate of growing up is a bit too variable.
Now, maybe Neverwinter or MtG is making more money. Wouldn't surprise me.
Then you look at Glassdoor (for the sake of brevity, I've removed any complaints or comments that do not pertain to game development.)
"Management tends to be clueless about the current state of the game, why things go over well with players, and how to interact with people.
Experts on the ground level are regularly ignored and told their opinion is irrelevant"
"Not pushing boundaries, ok with coasting with basic art
Management gets feedback but is slow to react or sometimes do not."
"Incompetent leadership
Many devs that don't play MMOs
Heavy focus on predatory/outdated monetization strategies with P2W"
(I omitted it: but there's a lot of "old tech" complaints.)
Several comments about P2W MMO focus, which..
I mean, I could go on ,but I think the point here is:
Cryptic won't. They focus on these tactics, expecting any more modern P2W mechanics like say, GW2 or, the sub models of ESO or FFXIV is foolhardy. It's *possible* Gearbox might do something, but the tenor of the announcement suggests they just want the revenue and projects under their umbrella.
Neverwinter might be making them money, but Magic Legends didn't. In fact, they had to give out refunds FOR the game because it got shuttered.
If I remember correctly from that info that was posted a couple of weeks ago, they make more money per head on STO than they do on Neverwinter, despite Neverwinter earning more overall.
Not disagreeing, but just adding a few points:
1: to put it as simply as possible, NW is the more profitable game.
2: the "which game makes more per person" logic doesn't really matter, because in a F2P game the VAST majority of people aren't even spending anything at all. Some small percent of people (and and even smaller percent of whales) support entire F2P games. Especially the ones with gambling.
3: the figures from that corporate brochure a few weeks/month ago were actually lifetime profits, and STO is several years older than NW. So NW has actually made nearly double the amount of profit that STO has, in a shorter amount of time.
Absolutely NW is 'more profitable' at $400 million+, and with STO making them $240 million+, values which are admirable for such a small outfit, and that others of similar size would kill for.
I can tell you, for games with the player base of NW and STO, income per head absolutely does matter, because it means they have data to target the low-spend players. The fact they 'appear to some' to not be using this is what is irrelevant as they have a plethora of items for the entire range of spend.
As I mentioned earlier, however, you'll need to invest a few million in the company itself to change the frequency of episodic release in the short term. If Cryptic's long-term plans have now changed, which we presume they now have with 5 ST series up and running, then they will be looking at recruiting for the long-term, but there's no rush to recruit a larger contingent, simply because the canon is still being written, and Cryptic aligns with canon as much as they can. Even though they're writing for 2411, events of New Worlds and Picard would likely hit elements of the game. Let the series get put out and then see what Cryptic do, because we know they work closely with CBS, and have even been given unused scripts of DSC to put in game.
As for putting new content behind a paywall, it's not going to work for a game as small as STO, ever. Whilst only Cryptic's financial records could tell us, they wouldn't have stuck with F2P if it wasn't earning them more money than when they did have subs.
"You don't want to patrol!? You don't want to escort!? You don't want to defend the Federation's Starbases!? Then why are you flying my Starships!? If you were a Klingon you'd be killed on the spot, but lucky for you.....you WERE in Starfleet. Let's see how New Zealand Penal Colony suits you." Adm A. Necheyev.
Comments
> If I remember correctly from that info that was posted a couple of weeks ago, they make more money per head on STO than they do on Neverwinter, despite Neverwinter earning more overall. As for Magic Legends.....well Shandalar was what they should've aimed for; it came nowhere near to it and was practically a poor Diablo/Baulder's Gate Dark Alliance clone.
Didn't some of the STO Devs that also worked on Magic get fired?,
Would have been wiser to keep their employees and have them put back into their original departments.
Absolutely NW is 'more profitable' at $400 million+, and with STO making them $240 million+, values which are admirable for such a small outfit, and that others of similar size would kill for.
I can tell you, for games with the player base of NW and STO, income per head absolutely does matter, because it means they have data to target the low-spend players. The fact they 'appear to some' to not be using this is what is irrelevant as they have a plethora of items for the entire range of spend.
As I mentioned earlier, however, you'll need to invest a few million in the company itself to change the frequency of episodic release in the short term. If Cryptic's long-term plans have now changed, which we presume they now have with 5 ST series up and running, then they will be looking at recruiting for the long-term, but there's no rush to recruit a larger contingent, simply because the canon is still being written, and Cryptic aligns with canon as much as they can. Even though they're writing for 2411, events of New Worlds and Picard would likely hit elements of the game. Let the series get put out and then see what Cryptic do, because we know they work closely with CBS, and have even been given unused scripts of DSC to put in game.
As for putting new content behind a paywall, it's not going to work for a game as small as STO, ever. Whilst only Cryptic's financial records could tell us, they wouldn't have stuck with F2P if it wasn't earning them more money than when they did have subs.