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C-Store: Hypothetical Pricing
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Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
This thread is intended for people too suggest realistic pricing and how an item should be distributed, if it were to be seen on C-Store. This is NOT a thread to complain about C-Store or how certain items should not appear on C-Store, we have enough of them already.
New Ship Skins?
New Ship Classes?
Cosmetics?
Other?
New Ship Skins: $2, AKA 160 CP's, no more, and per-account.
New Ship Classes: $6.25 at -most- AKA 500 cryptic points. Per Account
Cosmetics: Free
New Ship Skins?
New Ship Classes?
Cosmetics?
Other?
New Ship Skins: $2, AKA 160 CP's, no more, and per-account.
New Ship Classes: $6.25 at -most- AKA 500 cryptic points. Per Account
Cosmetics: Free
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Comments
The prices Cryptic has been asking is fair as long as they keep the account wide sell purchase.
The per character is just a greedy gouge.
The Ships ... there's only two so it's hard to make a call right now. I think the Galaxy X is way overpriced. It's not a ship I want, so that might be a factor. I think the TOS Constitution is well priced. It looks great. It's about 10 bucks. That fits. I'll know more once I see the Nebula and Excelsior prices.
Uniforms are well priced.
Targs, Tribbles, Emotes ... I don't even have any interest in these products.
Per character extra ship slots? Eh, 400 isn't that bad a price. I wouldn't argue with people suggesting 200 though, since it is per character.
Per character extra bridge officers? I'm disqualified. I bought one set for 400. Obviously the pricing was low enough to entice me, lol. I was almost OCD about having 2 extra people on my bridge that had no names. I think I'd have paid quite a lot to remove them in favor of my customized guys.
Extra costume slots? I have too many of them for free to want to buy any more. Maybe if this was for my bridge officers, I'd think about it.
Extra character slots? Great pricing. The bundle for 4 new slots, sneaky deal, I like.
I think I'm missing some stuff.
I've used the C-Store. And will continue to do so if they offer stuff I want at a price I can afford.
25 bucks is way overboard for a ship. I'd rather give Cryptic 25 bucks for an adventure pack/expansion.
Thanks,
Stormshade
I have to agree with you mostly. Although 400 CP for additional BO slots and such per character is a bit much. It may be convenient for some players (certainly not me) but in relation to iconic uniforms that cost less and are account-wide it´s a bad joke.
Like I said, I disqualify myself from giving feedback on that price. You are probably way better equipped to give the feedback than I am. I totally fell for the price. And I know why. I wanted to get rid of those two no-names on my bridge.
The funniest thing about it? I travel my interiors on my ship on Tribble and they're everywhere! I even get no-names coming into my captain's quarters.
Joke was on me.
The few things i'd happily pay for in the game would be
1. a house.....errrr space base. players could have their own bases that you could upgrade and outfit. The bases for players could allow for fleets to have a very practical in game use other than a social group. different fleets could declair war on each other. if the fleets are of the same faction it could be declaired a trainning senerio. the base can inflict damage on the enemy fleet and works independantly of the owner based on the owners defences. All the ships you own can be stationed there and use the current load out you have on the ship. this will encourage you to keep the ships armmed and equipted. have it on a points system . allow the invaders to beam aboard if they get the shields down and fight the owners extra bridge officers and some generic npc characters on the station. This would encourage you to make your extra bridge officers as good as possible and as well armed as possible. if your base is well supported enough your reward can be a mk12 super rare item. the asttackers can get a prize in a simmilar mannor to how instances work, your damage contributed gets you a better prize, but make the prize worth it. there could be vendors on the station to sell your stuff via the exchange, but display your stuff more prominantly. You could have mini quests to recruit npc's for your station. getting the station equipted correctly can open up labs and trainning rooms for your captian or bridge officers to use where you can upgrade your ship or train new skills to bridge officers. Allow other factions to just attack as they please. they will need a fleet or large group to do anything....hopefully. the trainning rooms on the ship could be a way to spar with the bridge officers or allow them to work to improve their skills. make it a slow progression that you need to be involved in to speed it up. allow friends to board the station and have their bridge officers train with you and yours train with them. for example, my main toon is an engineer. my friend is a tac officer. I can take his engineers and run small "holodeck" senerios with them to demonstrait better engineering principals. after a number of runs their race modifiers could have something like "basic warp core expertise" after a bunch more it can become "advanced warp core expertise" and eventually an expert level that is only obtained through you, the bridge officers owner, and the officer completeing a mission together. the tac. officer friend while i'm doing this can take any of my officers to make them better in a ground fight or take my tactical officers and make them better in space through the same method "basic starship weapon expertise" Science officers could teach an improvement to healing. have this power boost learning be similar to the efficientcy trait by the expert level, but just to the specific trait. i'd pay as much for this as i did for the galaxy x
2. iconic stuff packs. kirks communicator, or ripped shirt, or his pattened kung fu move with the double fist over the head power blow. crushers lab coat or archers dog/data's cat to hang out in my now cavernous captians quarters. the seat belts from the end of nemisis. little inside trek things to be both funny and make the game more customizable. i'd pay like 5 dollars for this
3. bridge officer emotes. if they were actually spoken out loud like small character taunts were in video games like marvel ultimate alliance. If my science officer could stand over a dead bridge officer and say "he's dead captian" or when you try to activate an emergency power to whatever power to hear the engineer say "I'm giving her all I got" or a redshirt in the tutorial say something like i'm not going to live long enough in this episode to have a name. might be priceless....or 7 bucks.
Please, walls of text are a no-go. Be good and never do it again and i might forgive you.
:eek:I understand now ty
But I have not and will not pay 400 cp for extra boff slots on a single character. I really want the boff slots, and to a lesser extent the ship slots (right now I'd just get rid of a Miranda to get a new ship if I needed one) but with 11 characters that I actually play there is simply no way. I wont pay over $100 for those slots for all my characters, and I think Cryptic was wrong to try to get me. Now come up with a reasonable price for account wide extra boff slots, and I'll buy them. Say 600cp for the whole account and I'd do it.
The only other thing I think are ridiculously priced are the emotes. 3 emotes for a real money price....let me think....not even close. Come up with as package of a dozen or more, I'll think about it, but not close to the price of buying all the emote packs separately.
I also think that when you buy a race you should get the racial features added to your alien character or boff tailor so I can make custom trait characters of that race. But they're not overpriced.
The price seems fair. Both for ships and for humanoid "parts", I guess.
New Ships
TThe Galaxy-X is way overpriced. It doesn't help that I don't like the ship anyway, but I don't think I would buy an Excelsior or Nebula for that price. And certainly not any ship that's not end-game-playable. The Constitution is already to expensive for that in my opinion, but that's a price I can work with for a new tier 5 ship (less so for a tier 1 ship).
I guess the Constitution price (800 Points) is okay. Unlike with the costume, this doesn't "just" require artwork creation, but also game balancing and more QA testing probably.
Emotes
I really have a hard time justifying to pay for emotes at any price. They would have to be really cool for me to do that. I guess I don't roleplay enough to make them worth something to me.
I figure if Cryptic would have some "social mini-game"-Dailies, I might feel differently.
Bridge Packs
The price seems fair.
Races
Seem okay. Not every race interests me.
Per Character Services
I think I'd rather have them account-wide at that price. That also applies to the Retrain-Token. It seems excessively expensive considering that I can use it only with a single character. Of course I can see that not everyone might have 4 characters like me, so for those a per-character service might be more attractive.
I guess I've been spoiled rotten by Champions Online and the way they do things there.
I'll never buy something that only adds something to one character.
In CO they add them too all.
I've not bought any of the emotes yet, but then none of them particularly grabbed me. If there was something specific in a future pack that I thought "Oh, that's cool" then I'd probably buy it though.
I did buy the original Enterprise, although it was probably pushing the upper limit for me. It is a really nice, signature ship. The Galaxy X was too pricey for me, however I agree with the point made above that as a referral reward there was a reason to make it more expensive. Plus it was more than just a ship skin so I can understand it costing a bit more, but it was just too much for me.
As for the much controversial per-character stuff, I thought 400 CP was a bit pricey. I'd pay that happily if they were account-wide. I've got no particular issue with them being per-character though, its just I'd probably expect to pay less for them in that case. If the 400CP came down, then I'd probably pick up a couple of each for my main.
The USS Enterprise is overpriced, it should be no more than 400 Cryptic Points since it's only a Tier1 ship. Having it set at $10 is simply just exploiting people who enjoy TOS and would like to have this ship.
Having emotes on the C-Store is a total joke. These should all be removed and added to the core game.
Ship costumes are fairly priced I suppose, though I wish they were added to the Core game. But why are some cheaper than others? Shouldn't they all be the same price, say, 200 CP?
I think the Bridges are somewhat overpriced, though some are cheap because they only offer 2 bridges. Combine some of them so they all offer at least four, and reduce the price to 150CP.
I also believe the character costumes are a tad overpriced. 200 CP should be more accurate to keep them in line with ship costumes.
Two addition Bridge Officer slots and Ship slots are a total joke at 400 CP a piece, especially with them being per character. They should be slashed to 100 CP if they're going to be character-only, or 200 CP if they're going to be account wide. I also think the respec token is a bit pricy as well.
If things are to be done on a per toon bases then I think 100 points should be the top end price wise. This is especially so when if the particular toon is deleted the extra service is also deleted. On a per account bases I can see 500 to 1000 points easily for average services.
If you 'feel' it's overpriced - Don't buy it - They will get the 'hint'
As far as per toon pricing - I am NOT going to get in to my reasoning and start a flame war - However - I feel for the best interest of both the player base and for Cryptic, pricing should be 'Per toon'
Ship costumes seem fair. I know i'd pay that much to make my defiant a little bigger (as long as it's still a cool design) since I love how that ship handles, it's a given I'm switching back to it in season 2. But this means I won't be buying the Fleet Escort skin now, which I was about to do.
Costumes seem fair. I'm probably going to get Khan's, because, well, it looks cool.
I'd pay for a cat-apult installed at earth space dock that we can load with stunned caitlans... (
The original enterprise is very cool, BUT I'm not paying 700 for a ship that realistically you can only use at tier1. Yes, I know the phasers auto-scale... to odd-number plain weapons. So.. nope! However, if the ship could be made to be a viable fun alternative to a Lt. Cmdr cruiser...
Galaxy-X: Very cheap and very expensive at the same time. Far more than I would pay, but I like the fact that it's being kept rare, and making it cheaper would make it a huge slap in the face to the people that got it with referrals I think. So while at 1000 I'm sure it would sell more, I'm not sure that'd be a good thing. Also, I think it's a bit under-powered if it's meant to compete with tier5 ships to be honest, which doesn't help the value point in my mind...
Stuff I'd buy:
- Tier5 Defiant costume that made it big enough to be distinguishable from a runabout
- Mail an Exchange terminals in my ship's interior so I don't have to go to starbase.
- Autopilot so I can just select the system I'm going to and have the guy take me there across maps, while I go get a coffee, ideally doing a reasonable attempt to avoid enemy ships.
- Holodeck for 1 vs 1 or 3 vs 2 or whateverteam vs whateverteam mock battles. (Hrm, maybe this should be included in the season 2 interiors to be honest, but if no plans exist for it, then I suppose I'd pay for it if it's not too expensive - it'd be a good excuse to invite friends unto my ship to use the holodeck..)
- Pet dog. Have him eat Caitlans.
Per-character has to go away ! Any cosmetic, skin, or item should be account -wide..... it wouldsave Cryptic a lot of time in "restoring" deleted characters in order to get the purchased slots back for people (as stated by devs a few days ago)....seems a waste of precious resources to me, it just comes across as backpeddling to me.
High prices are putting really bad tastes in peoples mouths. There is a lot of talk about shelling out $25 for a skin.... You would get a lot more positive responses if you'd just tone down the prices a bit Cryptic. If the 2000cp ship was offered at say 400-500cp, the negative feedback would be diminished a lot..... $25 is a LOT of money nowadays to a lot of us... we play MMO's because that's what entertainment is affordable these days (it really IS about that for a lot of us).... dont take our outlet away by sucking our budgeted entertainment monies faster than we can fit them in.
offer alternatives: Instead of the high price and uproar about per-character for BO's and Ship slots, etc... Offer two options if you absolutely HAVE to have a per-character option. for example: per-character for 150CP and per-account for the 400cp. I don't think that is unreasonable at all. Players can then choose which option is best for their particular play style.
emotes: I will never buy an emote pack.... that kind of stuff should be in-game, and free... or by quest, even, vetran or even loot only. Thats how I feel about emotes.... Never gonna buy em.
Character Costumes and species: I have no problem with them in the store, per-account. They should be obtainable somehow ingame as well..through quest, event, vet, rare drop, etc as well as C-store.
Bridge Packs: I am a bit torn on this one.... Bridge packs should be included in the ship you acquire. I have bought them.... but I am not happy. Are you going to start charging to get nacelles on your ship next? I just see separating the bridge for profit, a money grab. Do Starfleet ships leave the dock without bridges in this time-line now. ?? Not a fan of this.... but I did buy 2 packs...but I feel forced because the generic bridges are Very sub-par.
Ship costumes: I'm OK with this players like to customize, and the price or 160cp seems reasonable. again Id like to see the ability to "Earn" these in game as well.... there should ALWAYS be the in-game alternative.
exclusive ships like the Connie and GalX: should be SCALED per your Rank..... If you buy this expensive thing for that ridiculous price.... I'd better be able to use it from ensign thru Admiral effectively... I have not and will not buy any of these as they stand now, especially at the extremely high prices.
Services: Im OK with the re-spec, rename, etc stuff in c-store...again.... an option to earn through quest, event, vet reward, etc would be a great thing..and appreciated by a lot of players as a "thanks Cryptic !" kind of moment.
C-Store itself: I have absolutely NO problem wit the c-store. I DO have a problem with the extremely high prices for some things. and VERY against the per-character decision fiasco. I would like to see nearly everything acquirable somehow in-game as well as I mentioned above.
finally ... throw some bones to your fans.....a little effort towards customer satisfaction can go a long way.
I hope you find this thread informative and constructive devs.... we as players aren't being unreasonable.... we just HATE the feeling of being ignored and/or taken advantage of.
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This... to the letter.
Saith
Fairly priced... Except the Assault Cruiser... Why is the Imperial so much more expensive than all the other ships' upgrades? I bought that (240CP) and then saw all the others come out so much cheaper (160CP). I'm disappointed by that and get all GRRR everytime I think about it. :mad:
Bridge Packs
Since there was never anything to do on the Bridge, I never bothered to go on mine (I did like once or twice), so never even considered these... Come S2.0 we get Ship Interiors, I took a look at these and they seem ok in price. (But where is the Assault Cruiser Bridge Pack?) I'll likely "invest" in all the Bridge packs the next time there's a Cryptic Sale (so maybe I'm saying they should be 20% cheaper in general)... If I'm not still boycotting (see below).
Ships
I bought the TOS Connie cause I really liked it and envied my Dad's (he got his Collector's Ed game at Game Stop), so price wasn't really an issue on this one (grumble grumble you sneaky Cryptic people there :rolleyes:). $10 and done. Me = "Sucker" Yeah, I think it was a bit much, but one must have one's Enterprise... it is Star Trek, after all.
The GalX? Way too expensive. $25? As Superchum suggested, I'd rather give Cryptic that kind of money for some sort of Expansion Pack.
The Nebula and Excelsior should be less than $10, maybe $6-8. If $10, I'll feel abused, but won't complain about it. Not sure if I want those ships or not anyway. No way should they be more than the Connie. That would just be disrespectful.
Uniforms and Races
Well priced, though I think these should be universal parts that are unlocked when purchsed as I talk about here. And while you have the WoK uni listed as Free, you want to charge for the TOS uni (which is free if one knows where to look). Seems you should point that out to people. :cool:
Emotes
Over priced. Should have made a single pack of a dozen or so (what you have now plus maybe a couple of more) for a buck.
Targ/Tribble
I don't have a Klingy so I can't speak about the Targ. The Tribble is a good price.
Borg Bridge Officers
Well priced. Having an Efficient Officer is a nice in-game perk, and she's cool. Though when I think that the Collector's Ed of the game I purchased for each Dad and I (his, as mentioned, from GS, and mine from Amazon), cost the same ~$80. He got the Connie, I got the BO (for both Fed/Kling). When those pre-buy items came to the C-Store, and I bought the Connie it cost me 800CP, only cost him 580CP to get my pre-buy perk (though he only bought the Fed side (so far), so even cheaper!). Just further example that the Connie is a bit much.
I think the Borg BO costume should be unlocked for general use, or at lease specific use (if one has the Liberate Borg character, for example).
Ship Registry
Overpriced. It would be a better item if it stood out more. Since it's such a background pixel, I'd say it's overpriced (should be cheaper than the emotes, which can be more noticeable).
Captain Rename Token
I haven't renamed, don't really know anything about it, and I don't know what's techinically involved, so I dunno on this one... However, it "feels" a bit much.
Captain Retrain (Respec) Token
Overpriced. I have to admit I've used this one once. I used free CP I got from the purchase of my game before I really realized the value of a CP vs real $$$. Should be half this price.
Additional Character Slots
In 2 or (even cheaper/bulk rate) 4 character bundles? The best bargain in the store!
Additional Costume Slots
Overpriced. Even for full account (thanks for the fix on that, BTW). 200-300 would be better. I can get a whole new character for ~213CP (850/4).
Additional Per Character Ship/BO Slots
Overpriced and Unfair. I will not purchase these as Per Character items, and will likely continue to boycott the C-Store in general until this is fixed. Even if/when they go full account, 200-300 would be a better price. I can get a whole new character for ~213CP (850/4).
There is no reason for the ship skins to cost what they do and if you halve the price and sell twice as many you still make the same profit. It isn't as though you have a factory out there cranking out these things, it is the exact same bits and bytes used to make it in the first place.
Uncommon or rare items, sure, all the traffic will bear! I bought the Galaxy X and the TOS Constitution because I wanted them and had the excess CP to do so. Those should be expensive as all hell since they are unique items that can be achieved in other ways. I could have gone to Gamestop and purchased the TOS Connie or I could have gained the emnity of my friends and family by recruiting five of the poor sods to play the game with me. I chose the less expensive route (friendships are hard to fix).
Economics of scale would permit you to sell the exact same items for a pittance of what you are selling them for now and since they already exist and you have a warehouse full of an infinite number of everything, you could actually sell them for 200cp and make probably 90% profit or more on each sale. Sure there was the initial outlay of the programming and such but if you are selling thousands of character slots or uniform slots for 100cp or so, it no longer matters.
Your marketing droids should be fully aware of economics of scale, I asked my wife who has a business degree about it. She said "they are selling them for how much?". Using this model instead of some strange mathematical method known only in the delta quadrant or microsoft should yield much higher profits than gouging the customers at every possible opportunity. The only reason these things are priced as they are industry wide is because of Free to Play games, not Pay for play or hybrid. You can't really charge the same high price as Allods for example (not that anyone should) because you also have a subscription plan that ostensibly covers operating costs and profit. The CStore is supposedly extra profit which I have no problem with.
As far as items go, slots, uniforms, etc . . . are fine in the CStore though I would like to see the iconic items achievable ingame rather than CStore purchasable. Anything from the CStore should really be unique in appearance and should probably not be "iconic" items with the exceptions of the pre-order stuff and the Galaxy X ship since those were used for specific promotional reasons and are already achievable through other means.
This for me as well, almost. 100 is far more reasonable.
For account-wide, I have no problem with 400 considering the number of characters we can play. But I will not pay 400 for two slots on one character.
Nothing more for me to say than that.
The only thing that was overpriced was the Galaxy-X.
Ships should be in the 10-15 dollar range at max level and 5-8 if its a leveling ship. You want 25 you need to have some kind of leveling system in the ship so it grows with you and you can use it all the way up. Maybe have it have console and equipment slots that are grayed out till you reach the rank to use them and stats that scale to the tier you would be in. THAT I would pay 25 bucks for (account wide, not per).
Thing about the Galaxy X is that it was a prize for annoying the most friends and family or for pumping out five additional accounts yourself. The pricing for that was, if anything, a bit low. Even though you got your shiny new ship, you would have to find someone else to bail you out of jail
Simple re-cap:
You only give two character slots.
Limited ship slots.
Services are priced to high.
Services are restricted per character.
I think I could add even more to this but I think you get the idea. The c store items you are proposing now is making more and more players jaded towards you. And I can understand why.
Since C-Points are only good for buying things in the C-Store and are basically an exchange of money for money, I'd like to do away with them entirely and just see my local currency next to what I'm buying so I know how much of my real life money I'm about to invest.
I feel that this may be an intentional way to separate us from our cash, since we are separating the purchases for the monetary exchange: Turning cash into points and then going back into the game to use the points. I feel that it is a way to make us disassociate what we are using as currency with the real world value of said currency so we don't realise how much we are actually spending.
I look forward to looking in the C-Store and seeing "Two additional BO slots: $2.50 - Account Wide"
I'd like to see things like the Red Matter Capacitor, and the TR-116a Tactical Sniper Rifle sold in the C Store.
yeah, i forgot about them. more varried weapons would be cool too