Hi all,
Let me preface this with I like STO and I hope to see it succeed. My main is a Klingon and I am personally disappointed in their lack of content and the continual widening of the content gap. However, I am going to try and approach this situation from an objective perspective.
Let's not forgot that the primary goal of Cryptic and Atari is to make money. Of course! I work hard and I expect to be paid, and they should as well. Let us also not forget that the plan is to make the most money as possible.
Cyrptic makes money on us by:
1. Bringing new people in the game
2. Keeping old players playing and paying for their subscriptions
3. Selling items on the C-Store
New updates should be delivered ONLY to reach these goals, obviously. I personally don't like seeing all the Fed updates on the C-Store when Klingons barely get any. I don't like it one bit. BUT if there are way more people playing Feds now, that is a bigger market. So to make the most money, offer stuff for the Feds.
However, I believe this strategy may be short-sighted. When it comes to who will buy content updates TODAY, then sure, make most of them for Feds. But, if you give Feds more of a reason to level a Klingon to max level, that increases the population that is willing to buy Klingon AND Fed updates, which means more money.
And even though, in general, more people are reaching max level, MANY Klingons already at max level are quitting or have quit. I lost a good chunk of my Klingon fleet. That is a lot of lost subscriptions. Is it our fault for rolling Klingons and expecting more? Perhaps. Sure, some of the quitters were already life-time subscribers who Cryptic has already made a good deal of money on. But wouldn't it be nice to keep them around, buying C-Store updates and future expansion packs?
What will make more money? Releasing a playable Caitian race for the Feds (which I know a lot of people actually are clamoring for) or making Memory Alpha available to Klingons? Sure, you can make a quick $5 from the Feds that are willing to pay for access to that race, but what bout the Klingons cancelling their $15/month subscriptions? Wouldn't it make more sense to keep them around?
I know I am biased, and perhaps from an economic standpoint Klingons should continue to be mostly ignored. And others may say, "Just re-roll Fed if you like this game so much." I'm not a big alt fan and I'm sure I speak for many Klingon players when I say I don't want to have to re-roll simply because Klingons are being ignored.
What do you guys think? Will releasing Catians (just an example) and other Fed content actually make more money than fully fleshing out the Klingons? I think ignoring the Klingons is smart business in the short run, but bad business in the long run.
I'm sure any new factions (Romulans) made available will have to be bought through an expansion pack. But if Cryptic can't show that they can fix the Klingons, why would anyone pay extra to play a Romulan if it will be an equally weak experience?
I know I'm not the first to complain about Klingons, but sound off here from an ECONOMIC point of view. Of course, if a dev gave a response, that would be cool too. Or maybe the Z man himself can sound off...
0