i think putting the phasers and uniforms in this expensive pack is an outrage tbh, better to put it in the dill store or lobi store, the price now is too much.
Wish the ground items were separate things.....I'm a big time ground girl, and really loved the early TNG weapons, the tiny phaser and the curved phasers from season 1.
I wish that too. I'm not going to spend that much zen to get them when I don't want the ships, tokens, modules, ship slots.
If they would have created a pack with just the Uniforms and ground weapons at a reduced cost, I would have snatched it up. They keep making bundles with fluff items that many folks don't want and/or can be acquired separately.
I can understand the people that like ground things wanting to have a separate pack.
But lets all be honest now... if Cryptic added a ground only unlock pack and charged you 3k zen for it you wouldn't buy it right? People would complain that without a ship their was little value so no thanks.
I have no issues with them adding the cosmetic unlocks to ship packs. Cryptic at one time added things like ship skins and ground uniforms to the stores... and people never bought them. If they accidently bought one through the ship or ground tailor Cryptic got tickets and requests for refunds.
The launch bugs with their packs though is tiering after 15 years. Its also a bit insane that they are only looking at per toon unlocks NOW, its been an issue for years.
> @husanakx said: > I can understand the people that like ground things wanting to have a separate pack. > But lets all be honest now... if Cryptic added a ground only unlock pack and charged you 3k zen for it you wouldn't buy it right? People would complain that without a ship their was little value so no thanks. >
I would have snatched that bundle right up! Uniform and canon Phasers?!? Gimme!!!
Anyway, I grabbed the bundle because I kinda wanted the Justiciar but I absolutely had to have that uniform and those TNG Phasers. They look great but I have a few issues, the first being that aside from the cosmetic change, all three are basic Federation Phasers. The firing modes and the sounds feel copied from the basic starter weapons every Starfleet toon gets at lvl one.
The Type 1 is sadly a reskin of the TOS Type 1 and I say this because when I was phasering some Drones on Defera, some of them vaporized in a familiar blue puff of atoms… and that made me sad.
The “Dustbuster” Type 2 looks and feels great.
The TNG Season 3-7 Type 2 feels great but the handle looks a bit off, almost like they tried to merge the TNG Type 2 with the DS9/VOY/First Contact Type 2.
What really disappoints me is none of them feel unique. Like the TNG Type 3 Phaser Rifle has that awesome alternate firing “Blast” with long range. The 22nd Century Phase Pistol has the “Quick Beam” and “Drill Beam” and it out DPSs all three of the TNG Phasers!
I love the Phaser Sniper Rifle (Dsc) from the Lobi Store because it’s unique with its primary fire. The Section 31 Rifle has the “Seeking Bolt Setting” and “Sweeping Beam Setting” which is why I LOVE that rifle, there’s no other weapon like it. Even the Plasma Piercing Beam Rifle with its “Incendiary Beam Barrage” and “Piercing Beam Sweep” … it’s just seems like a missed opportunity to slap a new or copy a rare firing mode onto some weapons that are Exclusive to an expensive bundle. I’m not going to say I feel cheated but I do feel a bit let down.
STO Devs, I love you guys because you all keep this game going… would you all please consider altering these epic canon TNG Phasers in some fashion to be less basic. Please.
I can understand the people that like ground things wanting to have a separate pack.
But lets all be honest now... if Cryptic added a ground only unlock pack and charged you 3k zen for it you wouldn't buy it right? People would complain that without a ship their was little value so no thanks.
What? 3k is no where near the territory for regular c-store weapon packs or ground costume unlocks. It's also not being price as 3k in the bundling deal (by any means). Simply moving a uniform into the place of a full priced ship isn't how you approach this counter-factual. Look at the rest of the c-store. Not enough zen? Sell both the uniforms and the ground weapons in a bundle together, add a service or two to get to the right price point. This isn't a mystic art. For ground-loving players we have to by gigantic bundles beyond all justification for *just* the uniform in order to receive any additions to the c-store, and for no other reason than to provide a little extra enticement to whales who are focused first and foremost on ships (and playing to addictive psychological mechanics that couldn't care less whether the Picard season 1 flashback uniform is exclusive. Dopamine isn't that deep). No matter preference, that's a major problem of practice. There's no justification for gouging a small demographic that hard on content that's otherwise given away in episodes. And there are other ways of getting that value out of bundles.
1. Better value for money propositions. Ex. sell the flashback bundle priced to THREE ships, not four via a coupon. Cryptic has never before tried to make a summer bundle hit this high a price point and a lot of that comes down to the choice to try punching above the weight of the content being offered. That absolutely cost them some sales. Ex. mine. I wanted all three ships, but the bundle demanded a higher price tag than buying each individually and using spare service unlocks to populate them. At a point you step back from the shiny trinkets and ask what you really want from the game. And it's not turning every release into a mudd-bundle level transaction, especially to maintain interest in non-ship content. You know what would help that? Selling more diverse content at lower price points to cover against the limitations of these bundles. Ex. ground stuffs, either on their own or bundled together.
2. More intrinsically appealing content, or at least having the confidence in the underlying content that you can let the primary items speak for themselves and let their natural desirability send players rushing to throw their money at the screen. Do a poor job? That's when you need to find *other methods* of inducing players and those act as negative indicator mechanisms on value (as exclusivity can easily serve as a red flag for a dodgy deal by the social calculus of why they're necessary. See. "But wait, there's more!" and what kind of offer you image that being attached to.) Ie. you can achieve the same boost to sales of an exclusive just by getting the price point correct. We don't need games that lock off content additions for entire demographics to make up for sub-par optimization elsewhere. Call this a crutch, and recovery isn't demanding you reinforce it.
I have no issues with them adding the cosmetic unlocks to ship packs. Cryptic at one time added things like ship skins and ground uniforms to the stores... and people never bought them. If they accidently bought one through the ship or ground tailor Cryptic got tickets and requests for refunds.
Players buy new costumes as single character unlocks at lobi prices. To say they wouldn't buy them individually in the c-store these days is not supportable (even 3k for an account unlock would be better value than current practices). What, is the multi-currency gouging adding an extra special glimmer that pulls in the eyeballs? And these are most often non-FED uniforms, content that's intrinsically less desirable to the bulk of the STO population! Never have we heard Cryptic say that uniforms weren't sellers in the c-store. Bridges? Yes. Uniforms? No. The problem more likely lies in uniforms getting more expensive to produce (due to fidelity) with no meaningful bump to the costume team (ie. costumes come at larger opportunity costs) so Cryptic needed to get more out of those purchases. Ie. a price increase, via lobi dynamics. Why then add them as minor accessories in bundles, exclusive fluff you can price out of the equation per the heft of the rest of the content? It's wholly counter to the likely dynamic at play. On the one hand, they need to treat them as increasingly premium content. On the other, costumes are only marketable as garnish for bundles principally focused on other content (undervaluing costumes similar to releasing them via episode rewards).
Pick a lane.
And there's nothing stopping Cryptic from bundling costumes and ground weapons with these ultra bundles if they were also available for individual buys (either with the bundle or later in mudd's. See. finding ways of increasing prices sustainably while maintaining initial psychological hooks. Ie. minimal problem solving.) and the level of excitement generated by all the new shiny isn't diminished by some of that shiny being stand-alone. See. the damn ships which generate FOMO on price and value opportunities just as well as (or better than) exclusivity and without the negative reactions that undercut the dynamic. Take RNG ships in the 12th and 13th anniversary bundles, or the lobi costumes in the New Genesis bundle or Legendary Gal-X. These are some of the most impactful reasons to engage with bundled content, outside the ships themselves. None of it requires total exclusivity and the fact you can buy this content elsewhere provides a VERY firm price point to perceived returns. You are obviously benefiting from the deal. That's very hard to say when the bonus is an exclusive without direct pricing.
The goal here is frustratingly simple, people who aren't buying these bundles anyway (unjustifiable cost-value proposition in the moment) and don't have a recourse ATM to throw their money at Cryptic (undercutting whatever buff there is to bundle sales via exclusives, if any). They heard our feedback regarding the ships of the big legendary bundles, when large ship packs roll around, don't force an alienating all-or-nothing choice on new ships. Cue 12th and 13th anniversary bundle formats which could very well have introduced new precedents for ship bundle exclusivity outside legendary (there's nothing stopping them from making any new policy regarding any bundle format). They just didn't apply that improvement thoroughly to all of the new content. Ie. the costumes. Ground is a smaller demographic and thus easier to brutalize in monetization practices without mass push back . That's a problem that needs fixing for a healthy STO ecosystem. They've also sold prized exclusives before in innocuous low-priced bundles at minimal stakes (see. genesis device, formerly a treasured bit of recognition for Foundry authors). There's no argument to make that they can't do the same with bundled costumes and/or ground weapons. They were deaf to the pain of senior foundry authors over genesis device being sold, they can certainly chose to be deaf to whatever minor consternation ensues from making exclusive costumes stand-alone purchases or parts of lower-priced ground bundles (which would also allow players who've started buying the individual ships of the bundle to get to your higher bundled price over time, vs. forever committing to giving Cryptic less money).
There just isn't initiative to continue fixing the economic model. What's here is *good enough* to survive day-to-day and the frustration and despondency of ground lovers (yes, this is a serious issue and flippancy isn't the way to go here, people I know are checking out because of these bundling games) isn't so bad it would tank their population figures. Though it certainly doesn't lend itself to a healthy ecosystem or making the most of the game's opportunities. Human costs are worth considering, even if they're not blatantly shouting themselves over your graphs. This is where Cryptic needs to do better, as these days they can cater to a primary fixation just fine (Starfleet loving space enthusiasts) but beyond that they really struggle simply out of the convenient habits they've formed in development. There hasn't been enough of a structural voice to say "do better with those you aren't focused on" which old EP's provided. Ergo, this feedback to push back on "it's fine..." as absolutely not the case, however incrementally. As the others I know who are fading off because of this aren't able/willing to articulate this on the forums.
It doesn't tank STO overnight, but it certainly doesn't help the Trek theme park experience (and the long term dynamics of STO's ecosystem) to be reduced to a single kind of ride with the occasional T-shirt on offer as an exclusive to max paying customers.
The launch bugs with their packs though is tiering after 15 years.
And STO is roughly 13.5 years old. See. 13th anniversary event/bundle being the most recent.
Post edited by duncanidaho11 on
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There seems to be an issue with the new trait on the Cyclone this morning - it's not unlocking, and causing all kind of other problems. It's not happening 100% of the time, so we're having some trouble locking it down, but we think we have a lead on it now. More info soon.
There seems to be an issue with the new trait on the Cyclone this morning - it's not unlocking, and causing all kind of other problems. It's not happening 100% of the time, so we're having some trouble locking it down, but we think we have a lead on it now. More info soon.
Good to know that its being looked into, bugs like this are pushing me away from getting said ship.
And STO is roughly 13.5 years old. See. 13th anniversary event/bundle being the most recent.
Almost 14 since beta now. But ya your right. lol
It is also still true that Cryptic has mostly stopped selling ground cosmetics on their own cause they just don't sell. Its just true sorry.
They gave up on ship skins as individual sales ages ago. What I said isn't untrue... Cryptic got more Tickets generated from the tailor that said "HEY I DIDN"T mean to buy that you crooks" then it was worth.
Lobi is also a completely different thing... that is a door prize gambling currency, one a lot of players have tons of extra of. Zen store cosmetics have just never sold very well. Players find value in getting a ship skin unlock from a ship or a costume in a bundle... but to spend even 1/3 the cost on the cosmetics separate just hasn't been a seller, when Cryptic has experimented. Bringing back on topic for years (until its S7 removal from the store) if I flew My maelstrom skinned Patrol escort in a que I would get messages basically asking me what ship is that?? You just never saw anyone using the skin cause almost no one bought it. If they can't sell a smexy skin like the Malestrom... and I think it was only like 300 zen or something. Good luck selling most cosmetics solo in the zen store.
And STO is roughly 13.5 years old. See. 13th anniversary event/bundle being the most recent.
Almost 14 since beta now. But ya your right. lol
It is also still true that Cryptic has mostly stopped selling ground cosmetics on their own cause they just don't sell. Its just true sorry.
They gave up on ship skins as individual sales ages ago. What I said isn't untrue... Cryptic got more Tickets generated from the tailor that said "HEY I DIDN"T mean to buy that you crooks" then it was worth.
Lobi is also a completely different thing... that is a door prize gambling currency, one a lot of players have tons of extra of. Zen store cosmetics have just never sold very well. Players find value in getting a ship skin unlock from a ship or a costume in a bundle... but to spend even 1/3 the cost on the cosmetics separate just hasn't been a seller, when Cryptic has experimented. Bringing back on topic for years (until its S7 removal from the store) if I flew My maelstrom skinned Patrol escort in a que I would get messages basically asking me what ship is that?? You just never saw anyone using the skin cause almost no one bought it. If they can't sell a smexy skin like the Malestrom... and I think it was only like 300 zen or something. Good luck selling most cosmetics solo in the zen store.
Except that they *do* sell cosmetics on their own. Check the lobi store. Costumes being sold for high premiums and selling well enough to justify continuing despite being mostly non-FED (which Cryptic's stated time and again and again that players have significantly less interest in). With a full FED uniform from a live show, the point "it won't sell" doesn't stand any level of scrutiny. You can say it as a possibility but we can do better than merely state the possible states of the universe. We can say which is more likely given stated and observed trends. This isn't one of those. It's the opposite. It's exceedingly unlikely that Cryptic couldn't sell this on its own. They evidently saw more value in putting it as a bundle exclusive but to everything we can assess that decision deserves a straight "what the hell?" Because nothing about that lines up per scrutiny. They have internal data and professional insight. But both the interpretation and the state of industry analysis on human behavior can both be question as possibly (and given the non-scientific nature of game development, relying on trends and memetic strategies: exceedingly likely) faulty.
Simply put: they haven't tested the effect of removing exclusive costumes from bundles to compare sales. Recent anniversary bundles provided great single-factor testing environments (vary costume release scheme, watch sale differences on very analogous content/formatting keeping in mind depreciation by repetition and moving to B-Tier FED ships). They kept to their meme for how to engage players instead. We might look to two ship bundles without exclusives versus the Flashback Bundle, but the prices and content volume are so very different that whatever effect of exclusives is going to be completely invisible to all the other ways in which the bundle varies from more focused ones. Literally: if they put the Picard Season 1 uniform and phasers as a stand-alone pack (say 1k-1.5k zen) in addition to the big bundle there is no statistical method on the planet that would be able to tell them what effect that had on buffing or undermining bundle sales. No one in power would have been able to say "that decision cost us X% of sales by not stiffing ground players into ponying up to the nth degree for inclusion!" because for an unprecedented format (3 ships have never been sold this way before) with a rare trio of starships trying a new combinatorial theme, overlapping factors could not be disentangled. Ie. they were free and clear to try something different with c-store costumes. They chose to put their effort into trying to inflate the price tag by any means necessary from what 3 new c-store ships typically command (very close to a full anniversary bundle, without RNG ships and with fewer new ships) which is something we can say is far more likely to torpedo interest in the bundle by failing the basic value proposition vs. alternative spends (ex. anniversary bundles) than any secondary concern for whether the costumes were wholly exclusive.
Basically: of all the things that could go wrong here, pressing the boot down further on ground players (out of a lack of consideration, not malice) is not high on the list for things that could *help* improve player willingness to spend money.
Not spending 1/3 the cost estimate on a cosmetic also needs a reality check. Players are being monetized at nearly equivalent rates in the lobi store for costumes to full T6 ships, more if they buy copies of the uniform across the account. Cryptic hasn't let up on those sales. There is no data what-so-ever to claim players aren't willing to fork out for costumes. That's the hard sell-angle being used here. Want new FED uniforms? Don't care about ships? Too bad, your only option is to pay nearly $100 for the privilege here. What a deal! (justified by content that's not of interest, which either horrifically jacks up the price or forces an uninterested player into basically gaslighting themselves over just how much value they see in more ship content to healthily engage.)
How is that the way to go? Maybe they get a few bonus sales that way (not that generates a net profit given the loss of stand alone costume sales) but I'm seeing very constructive community members check out from the game nearly completely over this nonsense (which you can factor in here as long-term opportunity costs for this strategy, further depreciating the "bonus sales" from ground players being forced up into bundles to get around exclusivity. And no, I don't think Cryptic is this integrative with their analyses). There's no hope of reasonable delivery of favored content forms because of how consistent Cryptic is in making the harshest possible call on things people look forward to (given how utterly settled they are in a status quo, handwaving human costs as not their fault the community is just salty and game development is hard). So why bother paying when the simpler course of action is to cut the emotional ties that Cryptic relies on to make the hard sell? Where happiness lies for many at this point is removing oneself from the depressing monetization schemes the game is falling into out of a lack of care for those outside its core fixation (it's not necessary, declining community dynamics and player-dev connectivity just make this stuff nearly impossible to get on their radar). And once that trust is lost, good luck trying to get it back or build a culture of trust within your community to help steer conversations productively (for more on this, try finding discussion for what happens to businesses after they fall of user confidence cliffs. Your numbers being okay aren't enough to justify long-term business decisions against user feedback, metrics tell you very little about the social frameworks that underpin your systems and when you're about to transition to a much less profitable stable-state as those frameworks degrade.)
It's a dropped ball for low stakes with wide impacts. Easy fixes, at least in varying form of releases (let people *hope*) or providing alternative homes for exclusive costumes later (ex. Mudd's), but just having the conversation in the first place is getting to be increasingly difficult.
---
Also on the point of counting support tickets: Cryptic invested in new VO for the summer event dance instructors because (per Ten Forward) one person mistook not having lines recorded for their conversation dialog as a bug. One person, one support ticket, inspired a major change. So don't play the numbers game here, they'll cater to the smallest possible minority when they're consciously aware of their needs. That's where we have justification for art development effort on IDW deep cuts and levels of map detail that the vast majority of players won't consciously appreciate. But someone will and that reaction they feel is worth building to, no matter how it fits in a wider context or that it incurs heavy resource costs. It gives the game and development process a depth of experience. We just don't see that same consideration applied to the ground tailor, broken assets are almost never addressed (separate but related issue) and its monetized in very problematic ways. It's an empathy deficit, first and foremost.
Post edited by duncanidaho11 on
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Lobi is not Zen. Anything they have sold on its own for Zen hasn't really moved.
Lobi can be accumulated with zero real money spent personally.... using game currency to buy keys or promo packs. They also give 1500 lobi away every year.
Be careful what you wish for in this case. If they took things out of the buddle's don't expect to find new things in the lobi store for 50 lobi or something. Sure they could likely get away with selling TNG cosmetics for 400-600 lobi a pop. So we probably shouldn't give them ideas.
Lobi is not Zen. Anything they have sold on its own for Zen hasn't really moved.
Lobi can be accumulated with zero real money spent personally.... using game currency to buy keys or promo packs. They also give 1500 lobi away every year.
...zen can be spent with "zero real money spent." STO is a F2P game. Everything but an LTS or defunct event items that haven't worked their way to mudd's yet can be earned with "zero real money spent personally." That doesn't mean Cryptic hasn't made money on the exchange because at some critical point the resources you used were traded to another player 1:1 for the zen acquired, . Doesn't matter of its dil or EC, you're handing over cash to someone in exchange for your time, saving them from grind and saving you from paying. This is the illusion of free content. It's not really free, what you're doing is just moving through a bottleneck that would otherwise impinge on you and your trading partner and doing that by turning a money-generating wheel for the company. Every lobi you earn was paid for using EC which was given to a player in exchange for their zen and $$$ (be it direct purchases or the price of their LTS. You can price this out to calculate the exact worth (by current exchange rates) of your EC/Lobi in real dollar terms. It's this obfuscation which companies use to try hiding inflated prices (ex. the price of lobi gear) as you're generally not likely to work out the real cost of multiply-translated currencies. This is F2P industry standard practice. It's not the worst thing the industry does and STO's been fairly good about making the cost-benefits reasonable if you do care to process the numbers. But it means folks to sometimes mistake their in-game currencies as having no in-game monetary value. They do through the conversions of trade.
Basically I don't see the point you're trying to make having the least bit of grounding. Ships sold on their own that have sold well include the Hydra, Gagarin, and Lexington (presumably). Everything in the lobi store is also sold individually. Costumes are sold individually and frequently in the lobi store. They're expensive, restricted in use, mostly non-FED, and still get development effort even when it's not being used to populate enemy NPC's (see most recently the Majalan set.) If it wasn't earning Cryptic cash, they wouldn't be continually invested in the product. But even in the worst-case scenario for what should foster demand mechanically, players still go for it. They climb mountains for the least content to support the tailor.
And the product here is a canon FED uniform. Won't sell? That's bull. Cryptic has NEVER said that they stopped selling costumes in the c-store because of demand (unlike they have for other content). What they have said is that costumes are very expensive to make. Ie. they needed to move the price up a bit and lobi's been doing that just fine (and representing one of the VERY few items in the game that's still popular enough that it can justify non-FED content being sold.) There's furthermore no argument to be made that the act of making an item exclusive necessarily generates more interest. See. all standard c-store ships. From the latest bundle Cryptic could have taken one ship and made it exclusive. Say the Justiciar. But they didn't, and the answer that just flashed in your mind for why it'd be a terrible idea needs to be more thoroughly applied to the bundle's content. Space gets the consideration, as it's the economic pillar of the game. But ground doesn't, because the team can literally afford to get the release model wrong without bricking their income. Recognizing when a situation is deleterious none-the-less is the issue here. The status quo is perfectly capable of hiding a lot of dysfunction.
The 1500 lobi each year is mutually exclusive to the other event campaign choices (not that those matter much to ground folks but it's not entirely a freebie. You put in the work for it through event campaign completion.)
Be careful what you wish for in this case. If they took things out of the buddle's don't expect to find new things in the lobi store for 50 lobi or something. Sure they could likely get away with selling TNG cosmetics for 400-600 lobi a pop. So we probably shouldn't give them ideas.
No let's give them ideas, because selling TNG cosmetics for 400 lobi a pop is STILL better than selling single costumes through timed-discount mega-bundles. Because it's something that can actually be obtained reasonably over time for interested players (even at insane price tags, they are marginally less insane than the current cost-benefit and are more amenable to long-term grinding). What we have with exclusive costumes is the dysfunctional nadir of system possibilities beyond a dead game and is directly contributing to my fellow community members falling out of STO (who are incredibly constructive when not lamenting the state of STO monetization and its careless use of exclusives). DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT. Doesn't matter what it is, through experimentation and iteration you'll get somewhere better.
Be careful with what you settle for because odds are it's not as good as you think it is (especially for other people, and especially those you don't hear from all the time).
Post edited by duncanidaho11 on
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That is actually an advantage if one wants to get the most out of the Nadeon Bomb console which leaves a Phaser Cloud in space boosted by EPG.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
That is actually an advantage if one wants to get the most out of the Nadeon Bomb console which leaves a Phaser Cloud in space boosted by EPG.
The problem concerns role-play and continuity more than roll-play. Namely, the original Patrol Escort wasn't a science ship, it was a tactical-engineering ship, so the new science version does not work well with the original setup, nor is it a good fit roleplaying/theme wise for the characters who flew the original. In other words, it is a totally different ship, with a completely different role, that just happens to have a bit of visual resemblance to the original instead of being a T6 upgrade of the original.
And yes, a science ship can make slightly better use of the Nadeon Bomb if you happen to have the Tempest already, but the Cyclone is not a Legendary so it does not include all the previous consoles so the number of people using it with the Cyclone would probably be rather small.
That is actually an advantage if one wants to get the most out of the Nadeon Bomb console which leaves a Phaser Cloud in space boosted by EPG.
The problem concerns role-play and continuity more than roll-play. Namely, the original Patrol Escort wasn't a science ship, it was a tactical-engineering ship, so the new science version does not work well with the original setup, nor is it a good fit roleplaying/theme wise for the characters who flew the original. In other words, it is a totally different ship, with a completely different role, that just happens to have a bit of visual resemblance to the original instead of being a T6 upgrade of the original.
And yes, a science ship can make slightly better use of the Nadeon Bomb if you happen to have the Tempest already, but the Cyclone is not a Legendary so it does not include all the previous consoles so the number of people using it with the Cyclone would probably be rather small.
It is a different niche, but that was already true when it became an intel ship with battle cloak.
But it is indeed difficult to transfer the build from a patrol escort to the Cyclone.
Personally i hope the ship restriction for the old Nadeon Bomb console is lifted and i can use it on some real EPG heavy ships.
Going back to discussing the pack, i have not yet convinced myself to use a coupon for the Augur.
Doubt regarding the Cyclone has not lessened either. It would be a nice role play option, but the cyclone is IMO not unique enough with a myriad of escorts in my inventory already.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
I can understand the people that like ground things wanting to have a separate pack.
But lets all be honest now... if Cryptic added a ground only unlock pack and charged you 3k zen for it you wouldn't buy it right? People would complain that without a ship their was little value so no thanks.
A lobi costume at full price is as high as 5k zen once you run the numbers (opening packs, full price for keys, not factoring in value of other gear). You can repeat this line all you like but it's not supportable by any quantifiable argument. Folks are paying *more* for character bound mostly non-FED gear, showing a level of dedication to expanding costume options (against both the practical hurdles of engagement and the fact this is working against the Starfleet bias of the IP) that should be treated better than making FED costumes mere bundle exclusives, sacrificed at the altar of marginal ship sales (without net considerations of effects, ex. how this bottlenecks ecosystems). No thanks to your suppositions.
I have no issues with them adding the cosmetic unlocks to ship packs. Cryptic at one time added things like ship skins and ground uniforms to the stores... and people never bought them. If they accidently bought one through the ship or ground tailor Cryptic got tickets and requests for refunds.
You're conflating single ship skins with all other cosmetics, rather than looking at direct equivalents being sold now. I don't take that as constructive reasoning that needs any more consideration. It's faulty to say the least and you've already stated it. If you want to discuss stuff, I'm more than happy. But as is, best to leave it be.
It is a different niche, but that was already true when it became an intel ship with battle cloak.
But it is indeed difficult to transfer the build from a patrol escort to the Cyclone.
Personally i hope the ship restriction for the old Nadeon Bomb console is lifted and i can use it on some real EPG heavy ships.
It should be lifted soon, most likely a simple bug (unlike the rest of the Cyclone's problems...) The science side does theoretically line up better for a bombardment ship since you can use anomaly spam *as* a form of bombardment or a supporting facet through grav well. I'll be trying it out when the Nadeon console is available, but for now I'm my cyclone as a DEW-EPG-Torp platform with scary results (all but two boff seats are triggering Spore Infused Anomalies, could get that to 100% if I really wanted to, and using polaron provides a lot of synergy to all three build pillars without forcing heavy compromises.)
The flanking side is a bit of a wash though, as without raider flanking and with only a 15% bonus damage buff from its battlecloak (ie. the standard amount for a stock cloak) the Cyclone is not the ship you want to use with this build. Adamant or Eagle are a lot better to throw the Cyclone's console and a flanking build on. That's fine (the Cyclone is a great ship by itself) but I'd call this a technical miss from the systems team on how they chose to approach this build type. Improving the battle cloak and/or giving raider flanking to the Cyclone would make it a more appealing choice for its own intended build.
It doesn't affect every character per Kael's comment, so it's an inconsistent bug impacting the game in a novel way. They have a lead on the problem but this isn't likely to be fixed with an emergency patch the next day. 1-2 weeks is the more reasonable timeframe. It'll be a high priority, but keep the snark to a minimum here as the expectation displayed is not at all reasonable for the bug-bashing process. We want due diligence, not panicked duct-taping to mollify forum angst (likely not fixing any complex issue and potentially introducing new problems). The rule of thumb to apply here is that at 3 weeks we can reasonably start to poke them about progress.
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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That is actually an advantage if one wants to get the most out of the Nadeon Bomb console which leaves a Phaser Cloud in space boosted by EPG.
The problem concerns role-play and continuity more than roll-play. Namely, the original Patrol Escort wasn't a science ship, it was a tactical-engineering ship, so the new science version does not work well with the original setup, nor is it a good fit roleplaying/theme wise for the characters who flew the original. In other words, it is a totally different ship, with a completely different role, that just happens to have a bit of visual resemblance to the original instead of being a T6 upgrade of the original.
And yes, a science ship can make slightly better use of the Nadeon Bomb if you happen to have the Tempest already, but the Cyclone is not a Legendary so it does not include all the previous consoles so the number of people using it with the Cyclone would probably be rather small.
The Augur Has a similar issue, the original ships had a cmd sci and lt.com sci, sure you could use the universal lt.com as a science seat, but why not just make the tact lt.com the uni at that point. https://sto.fandom.com/wiki/Fleet_Nimbus_Deep_Space_Science_Vessel
I would rather choose to make my pure science build ship, more tactical if I wanted to. But honestly the biggest issue is more that not only is it not really like the T5 ship, it has a setup exactly like another science ship released not that long ago.
As I've said countless times before the problem is rarely in the most obvious place to look (it's not like code produces message "fix this to remove the bug you lazy ****" like some players seem to think) and if the bug manifestaation is inconsistent it can be very hard to check aren't sure what is causing the bug again it's typically not most obvious part but something else 20 or so sets down the line that can be causing the issue, to the point that the piece of code causing the bug might seem unrelated to the bug.
Worst case scenario Cryptic devs will have to over the code line by line looking for things that are off or that are technically right but when pair with another system can cause issues.
I'd say 1-2 weeks is the bare minimum people should be expecting if Cryptic is given good info as to what seems to be causing the bug, but if they are given the typical "there's a problem fix it!" lines while desperately trying to avoid giving anything that could help fixing that issue we could looking at fixing time of months.
Anyone else thing the Justicar (cruiser) console Micro-Warp Shockwave will primarily be a PVP use ?
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
No matter what anyone says, the fact is, is that this bug is pretty game breaking. Not only can you not acquire more traits, So there's no point in leveling ships, but there are players that respecced their accounts, often times their main accounts, and they can't slot any traits. Space, ground, rep, starship, nothing. It truly destroyed the game for many players.
Things like this happen from time to time, is what it is.
But my problem is that cryptic has yet to take down the bundle or the offending ships that is causing the issue, but are continuing to sell it to the public. There's no warnings, no statements, no nothing. Just silence as more and more players are buying this thing and crushing their accounts. Even if they couldn't remove it, which makes no sense, they can remove them at will, they do so all the time, I would have rather they greyed it out, to where players could not purchase it, and would have to seek answers as to why they can't buy it. Yet, they are continuing to offer it... to the public.
Not sure what we are supposed to take from that course of action, but whatever it is, it's not good.
I would rather the forum be filled with complaints of not being able to buy it as opposed to cries of how their accounts are broken.
The longer this is taking, without any communication, the more i think roll back, and i hope that's not the case. But because they aren't being transparent, because they aren't communicating, because they are not sharing any status updates, then it's going to get worse. The longer this continues the more their are chances of players buying lock box ships and premiums, buying bundles, buying cstore ships, and they will lose them and their will be no recourse for them
No matter what anyone says, the fact is, is that this bug is pretty game breaking. Not only can you not acquire more traits, So there's no point in leveling ships, but there are players that respecced their accounts, often times their main accounts, and they can't slot any traits. Space, ground, rep, starship, nothing. It truly destroyed the game for many players.
Things like this happen from time to time, is what it is.
But my problem is that cryptic has yet to take down the bundle or the offending ships that is causing the issue, but are continuing to sell it to the public. There's no warnings, no statements, no nothing. Just silence as more and more players are buying this thing and crushing their accounts. Even if they couldn't remove it, which makes no sense, they can remove them at will, they do so all the time, I would have rather they greyed it out, to where players could not purchase it, and would have to seek answers as to why they can't buy it. Yet, they are continuing to offer it... to the public.
Not sure what we are supposed to take from that course of action, but whatever it is, it's not good.
I would rather the forum be filled with complaints of not being able to buy it as opposed to cries of how their accounts are broken.
The longer this is taking, without any communication, the more i think roll back, and i hope that's not the case. But because they aren't being transparent, because they aren't communicating, because they are not sharing any status updates, then it's going to get worse. The longer this continues the more their are chances of players buying lock box ships and premiums, buying bundles, buying cstore ships, and they will lose them and their will be no recourse for them
read earlier in this thread Friday they are looking into it. I doubt they had some one working on the problem over the weekend. While agree this issue should have been found before release, and I too would like another update, we aren't likely till Tuesday. This is why I don't fall for Fomo any more and wait till issues are fixed to buy the things I want.
But my problem is that cryptic has yet to take down the bundle or the offending ships that is causing the issue, but are continuing to sell it to the public. There's no warnings, no statements, no nothing. Just silence as more and more players are buying this thing and crushing their accounts
Cryptic's stated that there's a bug with the Cyclone trait and cross posted that to these forums. And as noted the trait isn't bugged for all players. Taking the bundle down for all players would in that light be fairly silly (especially as "taking it down" would block access to the ship for players who bought it and aren't affected). It *only* happens with the Cyclone as well, so taking down the full bundle would be doubly-silly (sorry folks, the rest of the content including exclusives are unavailable just because of something with partial impacts).
And as someone affected by this bug on their main, I'm totally fine with the ship being available. It's going to get fixed, the issue is not fatal to characters (especially if they're fully developed. On my main it's totally irrelevant in the short term). You can potentially hit trouble but even then it's not fatal to playtime (bricked characters can be parked in the short term). Persistent server issues, when they've arisen, have much more impactful consequences to the game's playability than this bug, though severe. Perspective is useful to avoid hyperfixation-driven anxiety.
Knowledge is power. The sky is not falling, it's only been a few days, and the info given is plenty sufficient for where we are so far.
Post edited by duncanidaho11 on
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> @duncanidaho11 said: > https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline#/discussion/1264924/sto-short-news-updates/p2 > > > > Cryptic's stated that there's a bug with the Cyclone trait and cross posted that to these forums. And as noted the trait isn't bugged for all players. Taking the bundle down for all players would in that light be fairly silly (especially as "taking it down" would block access to the ship for players who bought it and aren't affected). It *only* happens with the Cyclone as well, so taking down the full bundle would be doubly-silly (sorry folks, the rest of the content including exclusives are unavailable just because of something with partial impacts). > > And as someone affected by this bug on their main, I'm totally fine with the ship being available. It's going to get fixed, the issue is not fatal to characters (especially if they're fully developed. On my main it's totally irrelevant in the short term). You can potentially hit trouble but even then it's not fatal to playtime (bricked characters can be parked in the short term). Persistent server issues, when they've arisen, have much more impactful consequences to the game's playability than this bug, though severe. Perspective is useful to avoid hyperfixation-driven anxiety. > > Knowledge is power. The sky is not falling, it's only been a few days, and the info given is plenty sufficient for where we are so far.
> @kurtron said: > Cryptic's really got to start communicating on more than just Twitter
Which they are doing by the cross-posting of their comments on these forums. The communication is getting better since the Gearbox acquisition. In General Discussion, there is an STO Short News Updates section, Kael communicated here, and @baddmoonrizin and others are helping as well sharing their posts.
Cryptic's stated that there's a bug with the Cyclone trait and cross posted that to these forums
Cryptic's really got to start communicating on more than just Twitter
They cross posted it here on the forums in a dedicated thread for cross posting located in this very subforum. It's easier to note where those updates go rather than generally stating they need to cast a wider net (without putting skin in the game by suggesting *how*). Sometimes it's the user's job to find communication channels rather than passively assuming info will filter to them. Learning is an active process and it's not always someone else's fault that information isn't reaching you.
Also, patch notes:
Resolved an issue that prevented captains form obtaining the trait Adaptive Tactical Algorithms when reaching Tier V of the starship Mastery for The Cyclone Intel Patrol Escort [T6]. In addition, this fix resolves other issues that may have occurred to captains who attempted to respec their skills after the trait failed to unlock
Resolved various ship customization issues with The Cyclone Intel Patrol Escort [T6]:
Fixed Maelstrom variant to allow usage of new window types (Type 0, Type 5, Type 6, Galaxy).
Added intel materials to the Cyclone.
Added a variety of missing details to the Cyclone, including turrets and navigation lights.
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Comments
I wish that too. I'm not going to spend that much zen to get them when I don't want the ships, tokens, modules, ship slots.
If they would have created a pack with just the Uniforms and ground weapons at a reduced cost, I would have snatched it up. They keep making bundles with fluff items that many folks don't want and/or can be acquired separately.
But lets all be honest now... if Cryptic added a ground only unlock pack and charged you 3k zen for it you wouldn't buy it right? People would complain that without a ship their was little value so no thanks.
I have no issues with them adding the cosmetic unlocks to ship packs. Cryptic at one time added things like ship skins and ground uniforms to the stores... and people never bought them. If they accidently bought one through the ship or ground tailor Cryptic got tickets and requests for refunds.
The launch bugs with their packs though is tiering after 15 years. Its also a bit insane that they are only looking at per toon unlocks NOW, its been an issue for years.
> I can understand the people that like ground things wanting to have a separate pack.
> But lets all be honest now... if Cryptic added a ground only unlock pack and charged you 3k zen for it you wouldn't buy it right? People would complain that without a ship their was little value so no thanks.
>
I would have snatched that bundle right up! Uniform and canon Phasers?!? Gimme!!!
Anyway, I grabbed the bundle because I kinda wanted the Justiciar but I absolutely had to have that uniform and those TNG Phasers. They look great but I have a few issues, the first being that aside from the cosmetic change, all three are basic Federation Phasers. The firing modes and the sounds feel copied from the basic starter weapons every Starfleet toon gets at lvl one.
The Type 1 is sadly a reskin of the TOS Type 1 and I say this because when I was phasering some Drones on Defera, some of them vaporized in a familiar blue puff of atoms… and that made me sad.
The “Dustbuster” Type 2 looks and feels great.
The TNG Season 3-7 Type 2 feels great but the handle looks a bit off, almost like they tried to merge the TNG Type 2 with the DS9/VOY/First Contact Type 2.
What really disappoints me is none of them feel unique. Like the TNG Type 3 Phaser Rifle has that awesome alternate firing “Blast” with long range. The 22nd Century Phase Pistol has the “Quick Beam” and “Drill Beam” and it out DPSs all three of the TNG Phasers!
I love the Phaser Sniper Rifle (Dsc) from the Lobi Store because it’s unique with its primary fire. The Section 31 Rifle has the “Seeking Bolt Setting” and “Sweeping Beam Setting” which is why I LOVE that rifle, there’s no other weapon like it. Even the Plasma Piercing Beam Rifle with its “Incendiary Beam Barrage” and “Piercing Beam Sweep” … it’s just seems like a missed opportunity to slap a new or copy a rare firing mode onto some weapons that are Exclusive to an expensive bundle. I’m not going to say I feel cheated but I do feel a bit let down.
STO Devs, I love you guys because you all keep this game going… would you all please consider altering these epic canon TNG Phasers in some fashion to be less basic. Please.
What? 3k is no where near the territory for regular c-store weapon packs or ground costume unlocks. It's also not being price as 3k in the bundling deal (by any means). Simply moving a uniform into the place of a full priced ship isn't how you approach this counter-factual. Look at the rest of the c-store. Not enough zen? Sell both the uniforms and the ground weapons in a bundle together, add a service or two to get to the right price point. This isn't a mystic art. For ground-loving players we have to by gigantic bundles beyond all justification for *just* the uniform in order to receive any additions to the c-store, and for no other reason than to provide a little extra enticement to whales who are focused first and foremost on ships (and playing to addictive psychological mechanics that couldn't care less whether the Picard season 1 flashback uniform is exclusive. Dopamine isn't that deep). No matter preference, that's a major problem of practice. There's no justification for gouging a small demographic that hard on content that's otherwise given away in episodes. And there are other ways of getting that value out of bundles.
1. Better value for money propositions. Ex. sell the flashback bundle priced to THREE ships, not four via a coupon. Cryptic has never before tried to make a summer bundle hit this high a price point and a lot of that comes down to the choice to try punching above the weight of the content being offered. That absolutely cost them some sales. Ex. mine. I wanted all three ships, but the bundle demanded a higher price tag than buying each individually and using spare service unlocks to populate them. At a point you step back from the shiny trinkets and ask what you really want from the game. And it's not turning every release into a mudd-bundle level transaction, especially to maintain interest in non-ship content. You know what would help that? Selling more diverse content at lower price points to cover against the limitations of these bundles. Ex. ground stuffs, either on their own or bundled together.
2. More intrinsically appealing content, or at least having the confidence in the underlying content that you can let the primary items speak for themselves and let their natural desirability send players rushing to throw their money at the screen. Do a poor job? That's when you need to find *other methods* of inducing players and those act as negative indicator mechanisms on value (as exclusivity can easily serve as a red flag for a dodgy deal by the social calculus of why they're necessary. See. "But wait, there's more!" and what kind of offer you image that being attached to.) Ie. you can achieve the same boost to sales of an exclusive just by getting the price point correct. We don't need games that lock off content additions for entire demographics to make up for sub-par optimization elsewhere. Call this a crutch, and recovery isn't demanding you reinforce it.
Players buy new costumes as single character unlocks at lobi prices. To say they wouldn't buy them individually in the c-store these days is not supportable (even 3k for an account unlock would be better value than current practices). What, is the multi-currency gouging adding an extra special glimmer that pulls in the eyeballs? And these are most often non-FED uniforms, content that's intrinsically less desirable to the bulk of the STO population! Never have we heard Cryptic say that uniforms weren't sellers in the c-store. Bridges? Yes. Uniforms? No. The problem more likely lies in uniforms getting more expensive to produce (due to fidelity) with no meaningful bump to the costume team (ie. costumes come at larger opportunity costs) so Cryptic needed to get more out of those purchases. Ie. a price increase, via lobi dynamics. Why then add them as minor accessories in bundles, exclusive fluff you can price out of the equation per the heft of the rest of the content? It's wholly counter to the likely dynamic at play. On the one hand, they need to treat them as increasingly premium content. On the other, costumes are only marketable as garnish for bundles principally focused on other content (undervaluing costumes similar to releasing them via episode rewards).
Pick a lane.
And there's nothing stopping Cryptic from bundling costumes and ground weapons with these ultra bundles if they were also available for individual buys (either with the bundle or later in mudd's. See. finding ways of increasing prices sustainably while maintaining initial psychological hooks. Ie. minimal problem solving.) and the level of excitement generated by all the new shiny isn't diminished by some of that shiny being stand-alone. See. the damn ships which generate FOMO on price and value opportunities just as well as (or better than) exclusivity and without the negative reactions that undercut the dynamic. Take RNG ships in the 12th and 13th anniversary bundles, or the lobi costumes in the New Genesis bundle or Legendary Gal-X. These are some of the most impactful reasons to engage with bundled content, outside the ships themselves. None of it requires total exclusivity and the fact you can buy this content elsewhere provides a VERY firm price point to perceived returns. You are obviously benefiting from the deal. That's very hard to say when the bonus is an exclusive without direct pricing.
The goal here is frustratingly simple, people who aren't buying these bundles anyway (unjustifiable cost-value proposition in the moment) and don't have a recourse ATM to throw their money at Cryptic (undercutting whatever buff there is to bundle sales via exclusives, if any). They heard our feedback regarding the ships of the big legendary bundles, when large ship packs roll around, don't force an alienating all-or-nothing choice on new ships. Cue 12th and 13th anniversary bundle formats which could very well have introduced new precedents for ship bundle exclusivity outside legendary (there's nothing stopping them from making any new policy regarding any bundle format). They just didn't apply that improvement thoroughly to all of the new content. Ie. the costumes. Ground is a smaller demographic and thus easier to brutalize in monetization practices without mass push back . That's a problem that needs fixing for a healthy STO ecosystem. They've also sold prized exclusives before in innocuous low-priced bundles at minimal stakes (see. genesis device, formerly a treasured bit of recognition for Foundry authors). There's no argument to make that they can't do the same with bundled costumes and/or ground weapons. They were deaf to the pain of senior foundry authors over genesis device being sold, they can certainly chose to be deaf to whatever minor consternation ensues from making exclusive costumes stand-alone purchases or parts of lower-priced ground bundles (which would also allow players who've started buying the individual ships of the bundle to get to your higher bundled price over time, vs. forever committing to giving Cryptic less money).
There just isn't initiative to continue fixing the economic model. What's here is *good enough* to survive day-to-day and the frustration and despondency of ground lovers (yes, this is a serious issue and flippancy isn't the way to go here, people I know are checking out because of these bundling games) isn't so bad it would tank their population figures. Though it certainly doesn't lend itself to a healthy ecosystem or making the most of the game's opportunities. Human costs are worth considering, even if they're not blatantly shouting themselves over your graphs. This is where Cryptic needs to do better, as these days they can cater to a primary fixation just fine (Starfleet loving space enthusiasts) but beyond that they really struggle simply out of the convenient habits they've formed in development. There hasn't been enough of a structural voice to say "do better with those you aren't focused on" which old EP's provided. Ergo, this feedback to push back on "it's fine..." as absolutely not the case, however incrementally. As the others I know who are fading off because of this aren't able/willing to articulate this on the forums.
It doesn't tank STO overnight, but it certainly doesn't help the Trek theme park experience (and the long term dynamics of STO's ecosystem) to be reduced to a single kind of ride with the occasional T-shirt on offer as an exclusive to max paying customers.
And STO is roughly 13.5 years old. See. 13th anniversary event/bundle being the most recent.
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Seems like it has the wrong stats.
0.7 Aux ? Certainly that's meant to be 7 AUX
2.6 EPG ? I can only assume that was meant to be 26 EPG
And even the damage seems off, with 450 EPG it only does 650'ish damage, I have to assume that was meant to be 6500'ish
I feel like the decimal point was put in the wrong spot, otherwise this is the worst console in the game by far.
Oh which ship?
Good to know that its being looked into, bugs like this are pushing me away from getting said ship.
It is also still true that Cryptic has mostly stopped selling ground cosmetics on their own cause they just don't sell. Its just true sorry.
They gave up on ship skins as individual sales ages ago. What I said isn't untrue... Cryptic got more Tickets generated from the tailor that said "HEY I DIDN"T mean to buy that you crooks" then it was worth.
Lobi is also a completely different thing... that is a door prize gambling currency, one a lot of players have tons of extra of. Zen store cosmetics have just never sold very well. Players find value in getting a ship skin unlock from a ship or a costume in a bundle... but to spend even 1/3 the cost on the cosmetics separate just hasn't been a seller, when Cryptic has experimented. Bringing back on topic for years (until its S7 removal from the store) if I flew My maelstrom skinned Patrol escort in a que I would get messages basically asking me what ship is that?? You just never saw anyone using the skin cause almost no one bought it. If they can't sell a smexy skin like the Malestrom... and I think it was only like 300 zen or something. Good luck selling most cosmetics solo in the zen store.
Except that they *do* sell cosmetics on their own. Check the lobi store. Costumes being sold for high premiums and selling well enough to justify continuing despite being mostly non-FED (which Cryptic's stated time and again and again that players have significantly less interest in). With a full FED uniform from a live show, the point "it won't sell" doesn't stand any level of scrutiny. You can say it as a possibility but we can do better than merely state the possible states of the universe. We can say which is more likely given stated and observed trends. This isn't one of those. It's the opposite. It's exceedingly unlikely that Cryptic couldn't sell this on its own. They evidently saw more value in putting it as a bundle exclusive but to everything we can assess that decision deserves a straight "what the hell?" Because nothing about that lines up per scrutiny. They have internal data and professional insight. But both the interpretation and the state of industry analysis on human behavior can both be question as possibly (and given the non-scientific nature of game development, relying on trends and memetic strategies: exceedingly likely) faulty.
Simply put: they haven't tested the effect of removing exclusive costumes from bundles to compare sales. Recent anniversary bundles provided great single-factor testing environments (vary costume release scheme, watch sale differences on very analogous content/formatting keeping in mind depreciation by repetition and moving to B-Tier FED ships). They kept to their meme for how to engage players instead. We might look to two ship bundles without exclusives versus the Flashback Bundle, but the prices and content volume are so very different that whatever effect of exclusives is going to be completely invisible to all the other ways in which the bundle varies from more focused ones. Literally: if they put the Picard Season 1 uniform and phasers as a stand-alone pack (say 1k-1.5k zen) in addition to the big bundle there is no statistical method on the planet that would be able to tell them what effect that had on buffing or undermining bundle sales. No one in power would have been able to say "that decision cost us X% of sales by not stiffing ground players into ponying up to the nth degree for inclusion!" because for an unprecedented format (3 ships have never been sold this way before) with a rare trio of starships trying a new combinatorial theme, overlapping factors could not be disentangled. Ie. they were free and clear to try something different with c-store costumes. They chose to put their effort into trying to inflate the price tag by any means necessary from what 3 new c-store ships typically command (very close to a full anniversary bundle, without RNG ships and with fewer new ships) which is something we can say is far more likely to torpedo interest in the bundle by failing the basic value proposition vs. alternative spends (ex. anniversary bundles) than any secondary concern for whether the costumes were wholly exclusive.
Basically: of all the things that could go wrong here, pressing the boot down further on ground players (out of a lack of consideration, not malice) is not high on the list for things that could *help* improve player willingness to spend money.
Not spending 1/3 the cost estimate on a cosmetic also needs a reality check. Players are being monetized at nearly equivalent rates in the lobi store for costumes to full T6 ships, more if they buy copies of the uniform across the account. Cryptic hasn't let up on those sales. There is no data what-so-ever to claim players aren't willing to fork out for costumes. That's the hard sell-angle being used here. Want new FED uniforms? Don't care about ships? Too bad, your only option is to pay nearly $100 for the privilege here. What a deal! (justified by content that's not of interest, which either horrifically jacks up the price or forces an uninterested player into basically gaslighting themselves over just how much value they see in more ship content to healthily engage.)
How is that the way to go? Maybe they get a few bonus sales that way (not that generates a net profit given the loss of stand alone costume sales) but I'm seeing very constructive community members check out from the game nearly completely over this nonsense (which you can factor in here as long-term opportunity costs for this strategy, further depreciating the "bonus sales" from ground players being forced up into bundles to get around exclusivity. And no, I don't think Cryptic is this integrative with their analyses). There's no hope of reasonable delivery of favored content forms because of how consistent Cryptic is in making the harshest possible call on things people look forward to (given how utterly settled they are in a status quo, handwaving human costs as not their fault the community is just salty and game development is hard). So why bother paying when the simpler course of action is to cut the emotional ties that Cryptic relies on to make the hard sell? Where happiness lies for many at this point is removing oneself from the depressing monetization schemes the game is falling into out of a lack of care for those outside its core fixation (it's not necessary, declining community dynamics and player-dev connectivity just make this stuff nearly impossible to get on their radar). And once that trust is lost, good luck trying to get it back or build a culture of trust within your community to help steer conversations productively (for more on this, try finding discussion for what happens to businesses after they fall of user confidence cliffs. Your numbers being okay aren't enough to justify long-term business decisions against user feedback, metrics tell you very little about the social frameworks that underpin your systems and when you're about to transition to a much less profitable stable-state as those frameworks degrade.)
It's a dropped ball for low stakes with wide impacts. Easy fixes, at least in varying form of releases (let people *hope*) or providing alternative homes for exclusive costumes later (ex. Mudd's), but just having the conversation in the first place is getting to be increasingly difficult.
---
Also on the point of counting support tickets: Cryptic invested in new VO for the summer event dance instructors because (per Ten Forward) one person mistook not having lines recorded for their conversation dialog as a bug. One person, one support ticket, inspired a major change. So don't play the numbers game here, they'll cater to the smallest possible minority when they're consciously aware of their needs. That's where we have justification for art development effort on IDW deep cuts and levels of map detail that the vast majority of players won't consciously appreciate. But someone will and that reaction they feel is worth building to, no matter how it fits in a wider context or that it incurs heavy resource costs. It gives the game and development process a depth of experience. We just don't see that same consideration applied to the ground tailor, broken assets are almost never addressed (separate but related issue) and its monetized in very problematic ways. It's an empathy deficit, first and foremost.
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Lobi can be accumulated with zero real money spent personally.... using game currency to buy keys or promo packs. They also give 1500 lobi away every year.
Be careful what you wish for in this case. If they took things out of the buddle's don't expect to find new things in the lobi store for 50 lobi or something. Sure they could likely get away with selling TNG cosmetics for 400-600 lobi a pop. So we probably shouldn't give them ideas.
...zen can be spent with "zero real money spent." STO is a F2P game. Everything but an LTS or defunct event items that haven't worked their way to mudd's yet can be earned with "zero real money spent personally." That doesn't mean Cryptic hasn't made money on the exchange because at some critical point the resources you used were traded to another player 1:1 for the zen acquired, . Doesn't matter of its dil or EC, you're handing over cash to someone in exchange for your time, saving them from grind and saving you from paying. This is the illusion of free content. It's not really free, what you're doing is just moving through a bottleneck that would otherwise impinge on you and your trading partner and doing that by turning a money-generating wheel for the company. Every lobi you earn was paid for using EC which was given to a player in exchange for their zen and $$$ (be it direct purchases or the price of their LTS. You can price this out to calculate the exact worth (by current exchange rates) of your EC/Lobi in real dollar terms. It's this obfuscation which companies use to try hiding inflated prices (ex. the price of lobi gear) as you're generally not likely to work out the real cost of multiply-translated currencies. This is F2P industry standard practice. It's not the worst thing the industry does and STO's been fairly good about making the cost-benefits reasonable if you do care to process the numbers. But it means folks to sometimes mistake their in-game currencies as having no in-game monetary value. They do through the conversions of trade.
Basically I don't see the point you're trying to make having the least bit of grounding. Ships sold on their own that have sold well include the Hydra, Gagarin, and Lexington (presumably). Everything in the lobi store is also sold individually. Costumes are sold individually and frequently in the lobi store. They're expensive, restricted in use, mostly non-FED, and still get development effort even when it's not being used to populate enemy NPC's (see most recently the Majalan set.) If it wasn't earning Cryptic cash, they wouldn't be continually invested in the product. But even in the worst-case scenario for what should foster demand mechanically, players still go for it. They climb mountains for the least content to support the tailor.
And the product here is a canon FED uniform. Won't sell? That's bull. Cryptic has NEVER said that they stopped selling costumes in the c-store because of demand (unlike they have for other content). What they have said is that costumes are very expensive to make. Ie. they needed to move the price up a bit and lobi's been doing that just fine (and representing one of the VERY few items in the game that's still popular enough that it can justify non-FED content being sold.) There's furthermore no argument to be made that the act of making an item exclusive necessarily generates more interest. See. all standard c-store ships. From the latest bundle Cryptic could have taken one ship and made it exclusive. Say the Justiciar. But they didn't, and the answer that just flashed in your mind for why it'd be a terrible idea needs to be more thoroughly applied to the bundle's content. Space gets the consideration, as it's the economic pillar of the game. But ground doesn't, because the team can literally afford to get the release model wrong without bricking their income. Recognizing when a situation is deleterious none-the-less is the issue here. The status quo is perfectly capable of hiding a lot of dysfunction.
The 1500 lobi each year is mutually exclusive to the other event campaign choices (not that those matter much to ground folks but it's not entirely a freebie. You put in the work for it through event campaign completion.)
No let's give them ideas, because selling TNG cosmetics for 400 lobi a pop is STILL better than selling single costumes through timed-discount mega-bundles. Because it's something that can actually be obtained reasonably over time for interested players (even at insane price tags, they are marginally less insane than the current cost-benefit and are more amenable to long-term grinding). What we have with exclusive costumes is the dysfunctional nadir of system possibilities beyond a dead game and is directly contributing to my fellow community members falling out of STO (who are incredibly constructive when not lamenting the state of STO monetization and its careless use of exclusives). DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT. Doesn't matter what it is, through experimentation and iteration you'll get somewhere better.
Be careful with what you settle for because odds are it's not as good as you think it is (especially for other people, and especially those you don't hear from all the time).
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That is actually an advantage if one wants to get the most out of the Nadeon Bomb console which leaves a Phaser Cloud in space boosted by EPG.
The problem concerns role-play and continuity more than roll-play. Namely, the original Patrol Escort wasn't a science ship, it was a tactical-engineering ship, so the new science version does not work well with the original setup, nor is it a good fit roleplaying/theme wise for the characters who flew the original. In other words, it is a totally different ship, with a completely different role, that just happens to have a bit of visual resemblance to the original instead of being a T6 upgrade of the original.
And yes, a science ship can make slightly better use of the Nadeon Bomb if you happen to have the Tempest already, but the Cyclone is not a Legendary so it does not include all the previous consoles so the number of people using it with the Cyclone would probably be rather small.
It is a different niche, but that was already true when it became an intel ship with battle cloak.
But it is indeed difficult to transfer the build from a patrol escort to the Cyclone.
Personally i hope the ship restriction for the old Nadeon Bomb console is lifted and i can use it on some real EPG heavy ships.
Going back to discussing the pack, i have not yet convinced myself to use a coupon for the Augur.
Doubt regarding the Cyclone has not lessened either. It would be a nice role play option, but the cyclone is IMO not unique enough with a myriad of escorts in my inventory already.
A lobi costume at full price is as high as 5k zen once you run the numbers (opening packs, full price for keys, not factoring in value of other gear). You can repeat this line all you like but it's not supportable by any quantifiable argument. Folks are paying *more* for character bound mostly non-FED gear, showing a level of dedication to expanding costume options (against both the practical hurdles of engagement and the fact this is working against the Starfleet bias of the IP) that should be treated better than making FED costumes mere bundle exclusives, sacrificed at the altar of marginal ship sales (without net considerations of effects, ex. how this bottlenecks ecosystems). No thanks to your suppositions.
You're conflating single ship skins with all other cosmetics, rather than looking at direct equivalents being sold now. I don't take that as constructive reasoning that needs any more consideration. It's faulty to say the least and you've already stated it. If you want to discuss stuff, I'm more than happy. But as is, best to leave it be.
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It should be lifted soon, most likely a simple bug (unlike the rest of the Cyclone's problems...) The science side does theoretically line up better for a bombardment ship since you can use anomaly spam *as* a form of bombardment or a supporting facet through grav well. I'll be trying it out when the Nadeon console is available, but for now I'm my cyclone as a DEW-EPG-Torp platform with scary results (all but two boff seats are triggering Spore Infused Anomalies, could get that to 100% if I really wanted to, and using polaron provides a lot of synergy to all three build pillars without forcing heavy compromises.)
The flanking side is a bit of a wash though, as without raider flanking and with only a 15% bonus damage buff from its battlecloak (ie. the standard amount for a stock cloak) the Cyclone is not the ship you want to use with this build. Adamant or Eagle are a lot better to throw the Cyclone's console and a flanking build on. That's fine (the Cyclone is a great ship by itself) but I'd call this a technical miss from the systems team on how they chose to approach this build type. Improving the battle cloak and/or giving raider flanking to the Cyclone would make it a more appealing choice for its own intended build.
It doesn't affect every character per Kael's comment, so it's an inconsistent bug impacting the game in a novel way. They have a lead on the problem but this isn't likely to be fixed with an emergency patch the next day. 1-2 weeks is the more reasonable timeframe. It'll be a high priority, but keep the snark to a minimum here as the expectation displayed is not at all reasonable for the bug-bashing process. We want due diligence, not panicked duct-taping to mollify forum angst (likely not fixing any complex issue and potentially introducing new problems). The rule of thumb to apply here is that at 3 weeks we can reasonably start to poke them about progress.
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I would rather choose to make my pure science build ship, more tactical if I wanted to. But honestly the biggest issue is more that not only is it not really like the T5 ship, it has a setup exactly like another science ship released not that long ago.
Worst case scenario Cryptic devs will have to over the code line by line looking for things that are off or that are technically right but when pair with another system can cause issues.
I'd say 1-2 weeks is the bare minimum people should be expecting if Cryptic is given good info as to what seems to be causing the bug, but if they are given the typical "there's a problem fix it!" lines while desperately trying to avoid giving anything that could help fixing that issue we could looking at fixing time of months.
Things like this happen from time to time, is what it is.
But my problem is that cryptic has yet to take down the bundle or the offending ships that is causing the issue, but are continuing to sell it to the public. There's no warnings, no statements, no nothing. Just silence as more and more players are buying this thing and crushing their accounts. Even if they couldn't remove it, which makes no sense, they can remove them at will, they do so all the time, I would have rather they greyed it out, to where players could not purchase it, and would have to seek answers as to why they can't buy it. Yet, they are continuing to offer it... to the public.
Not sure what we are supposed to take from that course of action, but whatever it is, it's not good.
I would rather the forum be filled with complaints of not being able to buy it as opposed to cries of how their accounts are broken.
The longer this is taking, without any communication, the more i think roll back, and i hope that's not the case. But because they aren't being transparent, because they aren't communicating, because they are not sharing any status updates, then it's going to get worse. The longer this continues the more their are chances of players buying lock box ships and premiums, buying bundles, buying cstore ships, and they will lose them and their will be no recourse for them
read earlier in this thread Friday they are looking into it. I doubt they had some one working on the problem over the weekend. While agree this issue should have been found before release, and I too would like another update, we aren't likely till Tuesday. This is why I don't fall for Fomo any more and wait till issues are fixed to buy the things I want.
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline#/discussion/1264924/sto-short-news-updates/p2
Cryptic's stated that there's a bug with the Cyclone trait and cross posted that to these forums. And as noted the trait isn't bugged for all players. Taking the bundle down for all players would in that light be fairly silly (especially as "taking it down" would block access to the ship for players who bought it and aren't affected). It *only* happens with the Cyclone as well, so taking down the full bundle would be doubly-silly (sorry folks, the rest of the content including exclusives are unavailable just because of something with partial impacts).
And as someone affected by this bug on their main, I'm totally fine with the ship being available. It's going to get fixed, the issue is not fatal to characters (especially if they're fully developed. On my main it's totally irrelevant in the short term). You can potentially hit trouble but even then it's not fatal to playtime (bricked characters can be parked in the short term). Persistent server issues, when they've arisen, have much more impactful consequences to the game's playability than this bug, though severe. Perspective is useful to avoid hyperfixation-driven anxiety.
Knowledge is power. The sky is not falling, it's only been a few days, and the info given is plenty sufficient for where we are so far.
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Cryptic's really got to start communicating on more than just Twitter
> https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline#/discussion/1264924/sto-short-news-updates/p2
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>
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> Cryptic's stated that there's a bug with the Cyclone trait and cross posted that to these forums. And as noted the trait isn't bugged for all players. Taking the bundle down for all players would in that light be fairly silly (especially as "taking it down" would block access to the ship for players who bought it and aren't affected). It *only* happens with the Cyclone as well, so taking down the full bundle would be doubly-silly (sorry folks, the rest of the content including exclusives are unavailable just because of something with partial impacts).
>
> And as someone affected by this bug on their main, I'm totally fine with the ship being available. It's going to get fixed, the issue is not fatal to characters (especially if they're fully developed. On my main it's totally irrelevant in the short term). You can potentially hit trouble but even then it's not fatal to playtime (bricked characters can be parked in the short term). Persistent server issues, when they've arisen, have much more impactful consequences to the game's playability than this bug, though severe. Perspective is useful to avoid hyperfixation-driven anxiety.
>
> Knowledge is power. The sky is not falling, it's only been a few days, and the info given is plenty sufficient for where we are so far.
Lasonio said this not doctorstegi.
> Cryptic's really got to start communicating on more than just Twitter
Which they are doing by the cross-posting of their comments on these forums. The communication is getting better since the Gearbox acquisition. In General Discussion, there is an STO Short News Updates section, Kael communicated here, and @baddmoonrizin and others are helping as well sharing their posts.
Fixed, trimming quote chain went sideways it seems.
They cross posted it here on the forums in a dedicated thread for cross posting located in this very subforum. It's easier to note where those updates go rather than generally stating they need to cast a wider net (without putting skin in the game by suggesting *how*). Sometimes it's the user's job to find communication channels rather than passively assuming info will filter to them. Learning is an active process and it's not always someone else's fault that information isn't reaching you.
Also, patch notes:
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