You are paying exactly what you would be paying for the c-store version now. You are only paying the $5 extra for the characters you want the fleet version on.
In short, you are essentially complaining about the cost of the existing c store ships, which didn't seem to be this level of issue til now. Before now, if you wanted a then 'top of the line' c-store ship on only one character, you didn't get a discount simply because you only wanted it for one character.
The problem with your theory here is that I switch ships every few weeks. It gets dull doing the same content over and over as it is, at least I can fly something different. With this, I'm betting we can't decommission that ship. So that's one ship slot I can't juggle anymore, meaning I'll either have to drop one of my dilithium ships, or buy a ship slot (again, per character only) just to permanently house this one ship. And if I decide I want to use that ship on my engineer instead of my sci captain? Another 5 or 20. My tac? Another 5 or 20. My borg sci/eng/tac? Another 5 or 20. We're paying full price on top of months of grinding as a fleet for a single ship unlock. Per character ship unlocks are something they said they wouldn't do. Sure I suppose they can use the technicality of we're not buying the ship directly, but anyone that thinks about it should know better.
My biggest problem, is that once again, Cryptic straight up lied. I'm tired of it being put down as things change, blah blah. It was just over a week ago that Al told us these ships would cost significantly less than C-Store ships. There is no rational reason I can come up with that he wouldn't have had an inkling it wasn't true when he said it.
I own a business. I work my tail off every day running things. I kiss more customer tail than I care to think about, and if I were to lie to / treat my customers the way Cryptic treats us, I'd rapidly be put out of business. Maybe I'm just jealous I can't get away with the things they do and still keep a shirt on my back.
this has pretty much become the sentiment at PWE, i no longer refer to it as Cryptic because they are now become apart of the PWE collective and all the promises of PWE "making life better with more money" promise has essentially been revealed as just another lie.
the interesting fact is that PWE sounds alot like another company namely EA.
no money, no time, and no mercy, towards both the developers and the customers.
Just open your wallet and let us suck out all your money.
i bet this is why gozer and some of the other devs have been jumping ship because they see the game being turned intoi a big money grab by pwe
What are you talking about?! Gozer is an imcopetant boob, and this game isn't being TURNED INTO a big money grab, it ALWAYS WAS a big money grab, why do you think Atari funded to begin with? This game was made using what ever was made using perpetual's assets and dumped on the market as quick as possible, and Cryptic did it to try and prove the versatility of the Cryptic Engine and Code, because Cryptic was marketing itself as a "MMO Mill", a company that could create anything and everything by plugging it into "their" engine and technology.
All this came to pass with Champions (their version of COH) and Star Trek Online, which they had like 4 months to finish before the license expired. The C-store has been in this game since it's inception, the whole idea behind it has been a case of incrementalism, the proverbial frog in a pot of hot water. First it was sold to us as an, "cosmetic extras" store, then it became a "way to fund all those extra goodies that we like." a quote from dan stahl, and look at it now, the C-store and D-store, with one time consumables, and per character unlocks. Jeez, i mean they actually made it worse when they decided not to sell Dilithium packs in the C-store, that would of at least created a hard and fast conversion rate that was locked. With a Stock Market style D-Exchange, it allows the market prices to be manipulated, and I wouldn't put it past Cryptic or PWE (with or without Cryptic's knowledge.) to manipulate the D-exchange with rates that are in their favor.
Do not misunderstand me. I still like the game and I have nothing but respect for the people who develop it. However, as far as the pecuniary aspects of the game, I really feel like Cryptic/PWE does not value me as a customer.
Back when the game was owned by Atari, I felt like Cryptic actually respected its customers. Until the first Jem'Hadar lockbox promotion, I felt like Cryptic respected and rewarded customers for their loyalty. When you bought some piece of endgame equipment, you could expect that it would be on par with anything else they might come out with in the future.
I understood and refrained from complaining about most of the changes they made when they converted to F2P, like making many things character-bound. I understood a F2P game needed a different pecuniary strategy.
The first time I really started being critical was when they started selling lottery tickets for the overpowered Jem'Hadar escort without revealing the odds.
This really seems to be the first real sure sign that Cryptic really does not respect me enough as a customer to make sure I get a good value for the money I spend. I could understand them giving out a +1 version of the c-store ships I spent several hundred dollars on as a fleet reward, but making me pay $5 to upgrade the ship I bought is a real slap in the face.
I love Star Trek and I still love this game. However, if their idea of how to make cash is to devalue customers' purchases rather than add something new to the game (like a new ship, expansion pack, or uniform), I cannot support them financially.
This was my first MMO. I recently started playing Lord of the Rings Online. I have not run out of the free content yet, but when I do, I will spend money on the additional quests because they are actually giving me something new for my money. I am not going to buy something new in STO simply because Cryptic devalued the purchases I already made.
The fact that they devalued the purchases I already made so they could sell me something new does not make me want to spend more money. It makes me not want to spend any money.
Do not misunderstand me. I still like the game and I have nothing but respect for the people who develop it. However, as far as the pecuniary aspects of the game, I really feel like Cryptic/PWE does not value me as a customer.
You really shouldn't and they don't, is the answer to that paragraph.
I understood and refrained from complaining about most of the changes they made when they converted to F2P, like making many things character-bound. I understood a F2P game needed a different pecuniary strategy.
You really shouldn't of been silent, but honestly, going F2P was their first mistake, and the manner in which they were doing it by TRIBBLE over the paying customers with dealing with the "BS" of their "new" system is just wrong.
There were many other ways this could of gone down that was abit more fair, and to be honest Cryptic explored none of them.
The first time I really started being critical was when they started selling lottery tickets for the overpowered Jem'Hadar escort without revealing the odds.
This really seems to be the first real sure sign that Cryptic really does not respect me enough as a customer to make sure I get a good value for the money I spend. I could understand them giving out a +1 version of the c-store ships I spent several hundred dollars on as a fleet reward, but making me pay $5 to upgrade the ship I bought is a real slap in the face.
No Offense, but if that was your "First" sign, then you haven't been paying attention, the community itself was noticing it long before, and even farther back there was a small group who was attacked for pointing out how bad it seemed to be getting and subsequently disregarded as "Tin foil hat conspiracy theorist nut jobs."
Who BTW, were correct, so maybe they aren't as "nutty" as everyone thought.
I love Star Trek and I still love this game. However, if their idea of how to make cash is to devalue customers' purchases rather than add something new to the game (like a new ship, expansion pack, or uniform), I cannot support them financially.
This was my first MMO. I recently started playing Lord of the Rings Online. I have not run out of the free content yet, but when I do, I will spend money on the additional quests because they are actually giving me something new for my money. I am not going to buy something new in STO simply because Cryptic devalued the purchases I already made.
The fact that they devalued the purchases I already made so they could sell me something new does not make me want to spend more money. It makes me not want to spend any money.
Their intention is to make money, by any means necessary, they will pinch, squeeze, drain, and/or shoot any kind of value to get you to pay them money.
the business model of the "Eastern" flavor F2P MMO, is to get as much money out of the player in the first 6 months, because the game being TRIBBLE has about that much content, and then leave you in the sticks, most people leave in that situation, but they don't care since they have your money already.
They make money by quantity NOT quality. They fool you just long enough to get that magic number of money out of you, the average time they can keep you paying. If your stupid enough to keep paying after that point, all the more money, but ultimately they don't care.
This is par for the course in Aisa, but here it's a "new" thing, and the consumers may not like it but the publishers do, and the consumer be damned, since the publishers see them as nothing more then fattened cows with wallets to be milked.
Notice I said publishers NOT developers, because another thing that has occurred in the game industry is that PUBLISHERS have taken over the industry FROM DEVELOPERS.
Publishers used to be "just the guys that printed up a whole bunch of copies from the gold master and marketed the game." And Developers used to be the boss, they used to set the schedules and budgets. But then one day, like a tyrannical lord taking over a fantasy kingdom, the publisher took over their respective developers and put them on schedules and budgets. Until you have what we have now, Publishers setting what will and won't be done, who are concerned with price points and how much can be done for as cheap as possible.
Games are viewed as products to be bought and sold, nothing more, and because of these much like cheap goods, these are cheap games they make. Quantity over Quality. Why do you think PWE has SO MANY GAMES in it's repertoire.
I along with many others saw what was coming, and we were cast down for it. However I should state that this isnt a "Asian" thing, EA does it as well. with PWE on the left and EA on the right, we my friends are heading for a dark day in the gaming world, when the industry itself collapses like it did back in 1983, except this time it will be an even bigger implosion.
"There were several reasons for the crash, but the main cause was supersaturation of the market with hundreds of mostly low-quality games which resulted in the loss of consumer confidence. The full effects of the industry crash would not be felt until 1984." - quoted from Wikipedia
If this kind of business attitude is retained, then this dark future will come to pass again. Fear it, for it is coming. Stop it, only YOU can if you force a change.
So if 340 Dil got you 1 Cryptic point, 425 Dil would be needed to make it a 1:1 conversion... with the price staying 340 Dil as an example, you're making more Zen than normal.
Nope.
80 c = 100 z
1c = 100z/80
1c = 1.25z
340dil = 1c
340d = 1.25z
340d/1.25 = 1z
272d = 1z
Sooo no, you're making less. 1 cryptic point worth 340 dilithium should be 1 zen point worth 280 dilly if the market price were to reflect the same value. Which it's not, before the emerg patch it was 305ish, so z points currently cost more dilly than before the conversion in terms of c-store (z-store?) store value.
Put another way... prepatch, buy a ship for 800 c points. At 340 dil per, thats 272,000 dil. Post patch, ship costs 1000 z points. That should mean, if the value of dil were the same, then a z point would be worth 272 dil on the market. But it's not, it's 305, so that ship is now 305,000 dilithium, a price inflation of 32,000 dil, or 4 days of real time conversion.
So, right now anyway, dil has lost value because it takes more to buy a z-point than it did an equivalent c-pont.
HHHHmmm does cryptic/PWE value its customers.... lets look at their history...
1) They have never payed any attention to PVP in the 2 and a half years the games been running.
2) Massively ignored the klingon faction.
3) Gave us the year of fail where we never got any new content for almost a year and constantly lied to us that content was just round the corner to keep members subscribed.
4) Removed one of our 500 day veteran rewards (the 500 emblems) and never gave us anything back as a substitute (the 600 day ship does not count as that was something we all got for free before F2P)
5) Gave us a very rubbish conversion from our old pre-dilithium currencys to dilithium (effectivly stealing from every single player).
6) Still not gave us the 700 day android veteran reward with all the functionality they promised us from the start.
7) Whenever they do something that massivly annoys the playerbase they never make a statement about it directly and let the people argue it out while being ignored.
8) Flat out lie to us whenever they can.
And these are just some of the things that i can be bothered writing... so to sum it up, cryptic (& PWE) don't give a hoot about their customers, loyalty means nothing to them and they will do anything they can to make a fast buck from their customers. They are one of the most greedy, dishonest, incompetant game companys i have ever had the misfortune to have dealings with.
And if anyone thinks im being a tad harsh, wake up and smell the coffee.... look at Cryptics past dealings with their customers and get a reality check.
All these are the reasons i have now pretty much given up with STO and cryptic and vow that they will never get a single penny from me ever again and i will never recommend them or any of their games to anyone i know. ( This last paragraph is largely in part due to season 6 and the Zstore fleet ships, or should i say "Greed ships") :mad:
Well I just came back after a hiatus of about 8 months and it looks like things are even worse than before. The general gist of most every thread I have read is, dissatisfaction. I haven't seen this in any MMO I've ever played.
Guess I'll stick around a week or 2 and see if it really is that bad and if it is, will delete it once again. Won't be back a third time however, if it is that bad. After 2 years you'd think someone that makes company decisions would pull their heads out of their backsides.
Customer Service note to PWE: You keep customers by filling a need and/or a want. If you do neither, you go out of business.
The simple answer is No. No they do not care about customer service, they are soley focussed upon profit, and will do anything within the law to increase that profit.
PWE is a multinational business and STO is just one small branch of that business. Gone are the days where a business would seek common ground with a customer, a fair price for a fair service, instead we have a 'take it or leave it' attitude, which would not be so bad if there was any other Star Trek MMO's around.
Answer : not lately......Pwe is the worst thing to hit star trek since cancellation. We have suffered for it once again.....f2p has represented our down Fall as PWE exploits that slippery slope at every turn, like big oil...... Welcome to Sto the mirror universe where everything is corrupt and exploited. The biggest victim is the star trek fan Pwe is furning life long fans away from the franchise in droves......
I would order my crew to abandon ship before I set the auto destruct, but with PWE running the universe they are better dead than assimilated by Pwe.......
Well I just came back after a hiatus of about 8 months and it looks like things are even worse than before. The general gist of most every thread I have read is, dissatisfaction. I haven't seen this in any MMO I've ever played.
Guess I'll stick around a week or 2 and see if it really is that bad and if it is, will delete it once again. Won't be back a third time however, if it is that bad. After 2 years you'd think someone that makes company decisions would pull their heads out of their backsides.
Customer Service note to PWE: You keep customers by filling a need and/or a want. If you do neither, you go out of business.
It's a pretty simple concept really.
If you're able to play that's a better spot than me...STO has been randomly crashing on me for a bit now and no help at all from Cryptic / PWE...just moved threads left to die in empty spots on these forums....
It's also dangerous being in the pittrap where you think you know how they act, when you really might not...
You think they like it, and that anything else is fairly impossible or wrong. That's not a good mindset, by possibly deluding yourself, along with possibly closing yourself off to the truth.
PWE probably acts a lot like you're saying. Cryptic though, does not, even if on the surface they do. That is my opinion, and has been, ever since Open Beta. Nothing has changed that.
And I've never spent a single C-Store/Zen point, so I know my way around the game, and it's money aspects. Not spending money allows plenty of time to understand how they work before losing money off them.
If you're able to play that's a better spot than me...STO has been randomly crashing on me for a bit now and no help at all from Cryptic / PWE...just moved threads left to die in empty spots on these forums....
Maybe one month I'll be able to play STO.
I would try reloading the client from the main homepage it should only download the files that need to be replaced after it run throught the process
Hope that helps
I'm not surprised that some people blame the company when they are feeling upset about not getting free handouts (upgrades) on old purchases they may have acquired using cash, dilithium, or ec.
I'm not surprised that some people blame the company when they are feeling upset about not getting free handouts (upgrades) on old purchases they may have acquired using cash, dilithium, or ec.
how politically correct of you-- especially considering that some people did get free upgrades to compete with fleet ships (i.e. lockbox ship owners).
Perhaps PWE felt sorry for those poor saps who probably spent twice as much on their ships via the lottery and master keys as someone who pays outright for a ship and therefore PWE spared them the extra charges...
Doesn't make it right.
I AM NOT A FAN OF PWE!!!!
MEMBER SINCE JANUARY 2010
how politically correct of you-- especially considering that some people did get free upgrades to compete with fleet ships (i.e. lockbox ship owners).
Perhaps PWE felt sorry for those poor saps who probably spent twice as much on their ships via the lottery and master keys as someone who pays outright for a ship and therefore PWE spared them the extra charges...
Doesn't make it right.
Yes, those who paid (on average) the equivalent of many times more than the cost of any conventional c store ship got free upgrades.
The lockboxes still exist if you want to go that route and consider it cheaper.
Edit: By the way, aren't lock box ships bound to character rather than account?
I'm not surprised that some people blame the company when they are feeling upset about not getting free handouts (upgrades) on old purchases they may have acquired using cash, dilithium, or ec.
I think a lot of people are upset because once again cryptic set up expectations that were not achieved, or were out of cryptics reach to keep.
They told us that the fleet ships would be a lot lower then the C-store ships, but that turned out to be false. Your paying the same amount for non C-store ships as C-store ships. ( and you get less for the money you paid. ) Cryptic set that expectation in their interviews, and posts but failed to keep it. It doesn't even matter if it was out of cryptic's control or not. If you set the wrong expectations then you upset your customers. They should have been more careful.
Also If I remember right. in one interview Al said something about if we had the C-store ships we would only have to pay for the fleet credits. but I could be wrong. I think I will go back and listen to that interview again.
Anyway. this is a clear sign that cryptic set the expectations to high again. so the player base is not happy about it... I think the clear lesson of this all is if we keep our expectations low about what is said. then we will rarely disappointed. ( works in a lot of places in life )
how politically correct of you-- especially considering that some people did get free upgrades to compete with fleet ships (i.e. lockbox ship owners).
Perhaps PWE felt sorry for those lockbox ship owners who probably spent twice as much on their ships via the lottery and master keys as someone who pays outright for a ship and therefore PWE spared them the extra charges...
Doesn't make it right.
I dunno if youre being ironic or just naive, pretty sure its the first.
PWE did not feel sorry for the players who probably spent twice as much getting the lockbox ships. They want people to still want the ships so that when they release them again later they cause as much of a frenzy of .. well, Zen purchases now, as they did before.
If all of the lockbox ships are worse than the best available, why would anyone want them? This is just another money-grab.
As for the OP's question?
Cryptic might, I dunno, my only experience with them so far has been while PWE is here. Some of the things Ive seen the devs do, like Heretic, lead me to believe they do, or did as that guy and others are now gone ... (coincidence?).
I can guarantee you though, PWE does *not* value its customers at all. In fact, they want them gone as soon as possible to make room for new ones. The entire idea behind this business model is flashy advertising to suck them in, get them to buy something and then send them packing. Its all about turnover rate, not retention.
Yes, those who paid (on average) the equivalent of many times more than the cost of any conventional c store ship got free upgrades.
The lockboxes still exist if you want to go that route and consider it cheaper.
Edit: By the way, aren't lock box ships bound to character rather than account?
But PWE is missing out on a great opportunity for more money!!! If those "poor saps" who would and did spend up to hundreds of dollars on all those master keys would surely jump at the chance to spend $5 more on an upgrade instead of getting them for free.
WOW PWE missed out on a great opportunity for extra cash.. especially since the ships are not account-wide and they could have racketed for better profit margins! Ha, I probably just gave them a good idea too of something they didn't think about..
oh well, too late to take back what they already gave. Perhaps they will find a way to upgrade purchased ships in the future again and make you pay for a piece of the same ship again (including the ones who got free upgrades)
I AM NOT A FAN OF PWE!!!!
MEMBER SINCE JANUARY 2010
A perfectly valid question being asked. And my own thread on the topic, is far from the only one, so it's not like a small, isolated pocket of people would like an answer. There are quite a few that are wondering.
Yet, all we get from Cryptic is silence.
In some cases (on this particular topic) we have people BEGGING to throw money at Cryptic. Yet, they won't even reply to us on this.
Additionally, I would point out how "valued" customers are in Champions Online. Dev interaction with the community over in CO is pretty minimal. Requests get ignored. Questions get ignored. Feedback is ignored.
So we are basically told, by Cryptic's own actions, that we don't really matter. We are expendable, due in no small part to the F2P system, where Cryptic believes it doesn't matter if one customer leaves, because a new one will simply appear in their stead.
"You shoot him, I shoot you, I leave both your bodies here and go out for a late night snack.
I'm thinking maybe pancakes." ~ John Casey
I'm not surprised that some people blame the company when they are feeling upset about not getting free handouts (upgrades) on old purchases they may have acquired using cash, dilithium, or ec.
The difference here is that there was an expectation when Cryptic sold the old ships that they were endgame ships. Cryptic is not selling a spreadsheet application or a PC. The fleet ships are not upgrades in that sense. Rather, Cryptic is devaluing what they sold us before in order to get us to pay more to revalue it.
Before PWE bought Cryptic, endgame ships (be they c-store or EC store) were balanced and customers who bought them had the expectation that they would remain balanced. Cryptic introducing new ships that break that balance and encourage people to buy them to have the most powerful ship might not quite be enough evidence to prove breach of implied contract, but it certainly is enough evidence to make many of the people who spent a lot of money on end game ships to feel that Cryptic does not value us as customers.
Why should I pay any money for endgame equipment when I know that Cryptic will change the game (perhaps within weeks of my purchase) to devalue that endgame equipment in order to entice me to spend further money?
It would be different if these fleet upgrades were free to existing ship owners, but they are not.
If they were selling expansion packs I would gladly buy them but I am not going to spend money on (possibly illegal) gambling nor on endgame equipment that they will slowly force into obsolescence.
Comments
The problem with your theory here is that I switch ships every few weeks. It gets dull doing the same content over and over as it is, at least I can fly something different. With this, I'm betting we can't decommission that ship. So that's one ship slot I can't juggle anymore, meaning I'll either have to drop one of my dilithium ships, or buy a ship slot (again, per character only) just to permanently house this one ship. And if I decide I want to use that ship on my engineer instead of my sci captain? Another 5 or 20. My tac? Another 5 or 20. My borg sci/eng/tac? Another 5 or 20. We're paying full price on top of months of grinding as a fleet for a single ship unlock. Per character ship unlocks are something they said they wouldn't do. Sure I suppose they can use the technicality of we're not buying the ship directly, but anyone that thinks about it should know better.
My biggest problem, is that once again, Cryptic straight up lied. I'm tired of it being put down as things change, blah blah. It was just over a week ago that Al told us these ships would cost significantly less than C-Store ships. There is no rational reason I can come up with that he wouldn't have had an inkling it wasn't true when he said it.
I own a business. I work my tail off every day running things. I kiss more customer tail than I care to think about, and if I were to lie to / treat my customers the way Cryptic treats us, I'd rapidly be put out of business. Maybe I'm just jealous I can't get away with the things they do and still keep a shirt on my back.
In 6 words.....shut up and give us money.
this has pretty much become the sentiment at PWE, i no longer refer to it as Cryptic because they are now become apart of the PWE collective and all the promises of PWE "making life better with more money" promise has essentially been revealed as just another lie.
the interesting fact is that PWE sounds alot like another company namely EA.
no money, no time, and no mercy, towards both the developers and the customers.
Just open your wallet and let us suck out all your money.
What are you talking about?! Gozer is an imcopetant boob, and this game isn't being TURNED INTO a big money grab, it ALWAYS WAS a big money grab, why do you think Atari funded to begin with? This game was made using what ever was made using perpetual's assets and dumped on the market as quick as possible, and Cryptic did it to try and prove the versatility of the Cryptic Engine and Code, because Cryptic was marketing itself as a "MMO Mill", a company that could create anything and everything by plugging it into "their" engine and technology.
All this came to pass with Champions (their version of COH) and Star Trek Online, which they had like 4 months to finish before the license expired. The C-store has been in this game since it's inception, the whole idea behind it has been a case of incrementalism, the proverbial frog in a pot of hot water. First it was sold to us as an, "cosmetic extras" store, then it became a "way to fund all those extra goodies that we like." a quote from dan stahl, and look at it now, the C-store and D-store, with one time consumables, and per character unlocks. Jeez, i mean they actually made it worse when they decided not to sell Dilithium packs in the C-store, that would of at least created a hard and fast conversion rate that was locked. With a Stock Market style D-Exchange, it allows the market prices to be manipulated, and I wouldn't put it past Cryptic or PWE (with or without Cryptic's knowledge.) to manipulate the D-exchange with rates that are in their favor.
-AE
Back when the game was owned by Atari, I felt like Cryptic actually respected its customers. Until the first Jem'Hadar lockbox promotion, I felt like Cryptic respected and rewarded customers for their loyalty. When you bought some piece of endgame equipment, you could expect that it would be on par with anything else they might come out with in the future.
I understood and refrained from complaining about most of the changes they made when they converted to F2P, like making many things character-bound. I understood a F2P game needed a different pecuniary strategy.
The first time I really started being critical was when they started selling lottery tickets for the overpowered Jem'Hadar escort without revealing the odds.
This really seems to be the first real sure sign that Cryptic really does not respect me enough as a customer to make sure I get a good value for the money I spend. I could understand them giving out a +1 version of the c-store ships I spent several hundred dollars on as a fleet reward, but making me pay $5 to upgrade the ship I bought is a real slap in the face.
I love Star Trek and I still love this game. However, if their idea of how to make cash is to devalue customers' purchases rather than add something new to the game (like a new ship, expansion pack, or uniform), I cannot support them financially.
This was my first MMO. I recently started playing Lord of the Rings Online. I have not run out of the free content yet, but when I do, I will spend money on the additional quests because they are actually giving me something new for my money. I am not going to buy something new in STO simply because Cryptic devalued the purchases I already made.
The fact that they devalued the purchases I already made so they could sell me something new does not make me want to spend more money. It makes me not want to spend any money.
You really shouldn't and they don't, is the answer to that paragraph.
You really shouldn't of been silent, but honestly, going F2P was their first mistake, and the manner in which they were doing it by TRIBBLE over the paying customers with dealing with the "BS" of their "new" system is just wrong.
There were many other ways this could of gone down that was abit more fair, and to be honest Cryptic explored none of them.
No Offense, but if that was your "First" sign, then you haven't been paying attention, the community itself was noticing it long before, and even farther back there was a small group who was attacked for pointing out how bad it seemed to be getting and subsequently disregarded as "Tin foil hat conspiracy theorist nut jobs."
Who BTW, were correct, so maybe they aren't as "nutty" as everyone thought.
Their intention is to make money, by any means necessary, they will pinch, squeeze, drain, and/or shoot any kind of value to get you to pay them money.
the business model of the "Eastern" flavor F2P MMO, is to get as much money out of the player in the first 6 months, because the game being TRIBBLE has about that much content, and then leave you in the sticks, most people leave in that situation, but they don't care since they have your money already.
They make money by quantity NOT quality. They fool you just long enough to get that magic number of money out of you, the average time they can keep you paying. If your stupid enough to keep paying after that point, all the more money, but ultimately they don't care.
This is par for the course in Aisa, but here it's a "new" thing, and the consumers may not like it but the publishers do, and the consumer be damned, since the publishers see them as nothing more then fattened cows with wallets to be milked.
Notice I said publishers NOT developers, because another thing that has occurred in the game industry is that PUBLISHERS have taken over the industry FROM DEVELOPERS.
Publishers used to be "just the guys that printed up a whole bunch of copies from the gold master and marketed the game." And Developers used to be the boss, they used to set the schedules and budgets. But then one day, like a tyrannical lord taking over a fantasy kingdom, the publisher took over their respective developers and put them on schedules and budgets. Until you have what we have now, Publishers setting what will and won't be done, who are concerned with price points and how much can be done for as cheap as possible.
Games are viewed as products to be bought and sold, nothing more, and because of these much like cheap goods, these are cheap games they make. Quantity over Quality. Why do you think PWE has SO MANY GAMES in it's repertoire.
I along with many others saw what was coming, and we were cast down for it. However I should state that this isnt a "Asian" thing, EA does it as well. with PWE on the left and EA on the right, we my friends are heading for a dark day in the gaming world, when the industry itself collapses like it did back in 1983, except this time it will be an even bigger implosion.
"There were several reasons for the crash, but the main cause was supersaturation of the market with hundreds of mostly low-quality games which resulted in the loss of consumer confidence. The full effects of the industry crash would not be felt until 1984." - quoted from Wikipedia
If this kind of business attitude is retained, then this dark future will come to pass again. Fear it, for it is coming. Stop it, only YOU can if you force a change.
-AE
First it was horse armor, then it was a trip to a haunted castle.
Damned lazy "eastern" companies stealing their monetization strategies from those evil "western" DLC imperialists.
Nope.
80 c = 100 z
1c = 100z/80
1c = 1.25z
340dil = 1c
340d = 1.25z
340d/1.25 = 1z
272d = 1z
Sooo no, you're making less. 1 cryptic point worth 340 dilithium should be 1 zen point worth 280 dilly if the market price were to reflect the same value. Which it's not, before the emerg patch it was 305ish, so z points currently cost more dilly than before the conversion in terms of c-store (z-store?) store value.
Put another way... prepatch, buy a ship for 800 c points. At 340 dil per, thats 272,000 dil. Post patch, ship costs 1000 z points. That should mean, if the value of dil were the same, then a z point would be worth 272 dil on the market. But it's not, it's 305, so that ship is now 305,000 dilithium, a price inflation of 32,000 dil, or 4 days of real time conversion.
So, right now anyway, dil has lost value because it takes more to buy a z-point than it did an equivalent c-pont.
The doors, Mister Scott!
1) They have never payed any attention to PVP in the 2 and a half years the games been running.
2) Massively ignored the klingon faction.
3) Gave us the year of fail where we never got any new content for almost a year and constantly lied to us that content was just round the corner to keep members subscribed.
4) Removed one of our 500 day veteran rewards (the 500 emblems) and never gave us anything back as a substitute (the 600 day ship does not count as that was something we all got for free before F2P)
5) Gave us a very rubbish conversion from our old pre-dilithium currencys to dilithium (effectivly stealing from every single player).
6) Still not gave us the 700 day android veteran reward with all the functionality they promised us from the start.
7) Whenever they do something that massivly annoys the playerbase they never make a statement about it directly and let the people argue it out while being ignored.
8) Flat out lie to us whenever they can.
And these are just some of the things that i can be bothered writing... so to sum it up, cryptic (& PWE) don't give a hoot about their customers, loyalty means nothing to them and they will do anything they can to make a fast buck from their customers. They are one of the most greedy, dishonest, incompetant game companys i have ever had the misfortune to have dealings with.
And if anyone thinks im being a tad harsh, wake up and smell the coffee.... look at Cryptics past dealings with their customers and get a reality check.
All these are the reasons i have now pretty much given up with STO and cryptic and vow that they will never get a single penny from me ever again and i will never recommend them or any of their games to anyone i know. ( This last paragraph is largely in part due to season 6 and the Zstore fleet ships, or should i say "Greed ships") :mad:
How many ship slots are you switching between? Why are you needing to decommission to switch what ship you are using?
Regardless, for that concern all the would have to do is make the character unlock for that ship 'legacy.'
Guess I'll stick around a week or 2 and see if it really is that bad and if it is, will delete it once again. Won't be back a third time however, if it is that bad. After 2 years you'd think someone that makes company decisions would pull their heads out of their backsides.
Customer Service note to PWE: You keep customers by filling a need and/or a want. If you do neither, you go out of business.
It's a pretty simple concept really.
PWE is a multinational business and STO is just one small branch of that business. Gone are the days where a business would seek common ground with a customer, a fair price for a fair service, instead we have a 'take it or leave it' attitude, which would not be so bad if there was any other Star Trek MMO's around.
Yup, exactly.. a larger company buys up a smaller company and then destroys it.
I AM NOT A FAN OF PWE!!!!
MEMBER SINCE JANUARY 2010
I would order my crew to abandon ship before I set the auto destruct, but with PWE running the universe they are better dead than assimilated by Pwe.......
If you're able to play that's a better spot than me...STO has been randomly crashing on me for a bit now and no help at all from Cryptic / PWE...just moved threads left to die in empty spots on these forums....
Maybe one month I'll be able to play STO.
I would try reloading the client from the main homepage it should only download the files that need to be replaced after it run throught the process
Hope that helps
how politically correct of you-- especially considering that some people did get free upgrades to compete with fleet ships (i.e. lockbox ship owners).
Perhaps PWE felt sorry for those poor saps who probably spent twice as much on their ships via the lottery and master keys as someone who pays outright for a ship and therefore PWE spared them the extra charges...
Doesn't make it right.
I AM NOT A FAN OF PWE!!!!
MEMBER SINCE JANUARY 2010
Yes, those who paid (on average) the equivalent of many times more than the cost of any conventional c store ship got free upgrades.
The lockboxes still exist if you want to go that route and consider it cheaper.
Edit: By the way, aren't lock box ships bound to character rather than account?
I think a lot of people are upset because once again cryptic set up expectations that were not achieved, or were out of cryptics reach to keep.
They told us that the fleet ships would be a lot lower then the C-store ships, but that turned out to be false. Your paying the same amount for non C-store ships as C-store ships. ( and you get less for the money you paid. ) Cryptic set that expectation in their interviews, and posts but failed to keep it. It doesn't even matter if it was out of cryptic's control or not. If you set the wrong expectations then you upset your customers. They should have been more careful.
Also If I remember right. in one interview Al said something about if we had the C-store ships we would only have to pay for the fleet credits. but I could be wrong. I think I will go back and listen to that interview again.
Anyway. this is a clear sign that cryptic set the expectations to high again. so the player base is not happy about it... I think the clear lesson of this all is if we keep our expectations low about what is said. then we will rarely disappointed. ( works in a lot of places in life )
I dunno if youre being ironic or just naive, pretty sure its the first.
PWE did not feel sorry for the players who probably spent twice as much getting the lockbox ships. They want people to still want the ships so that when they release them again later they cause as much of a frenzy of .. well, Zen purchases now, as they did before.
If all of the lockbox ships are worse than the best available, why would anyone want them? This is just another money-grab.
As for the OP's question?
Cryptic might, I dunno, my only experience with them so far has been while PWE is here. Some of the things Ive seen the devs do, like Heretic, lead me to believe they do, or did as that guy and others are now gone ... (coincidence?).
I can guarantee you though, PWE does *not* value its customers at all. In fact, they want them gone as soon as possible to make room for new ones. The entire idea behind this business model is flashy advertising to suck them in, get them to buy something and then send them packing. Its all about turnover rate, not retention.
But PWE is missing out on a great opportunity for more money!!! If those "poor saps" who would and did spend up to hundreds of dollars on all those master keys would surely jump at the chance to spend $5 more on an upgrade instead of getting them for free.
WOW PWE missed out on a great opportunity for extra cash.. especially since the ships are not account-wide and they could have racketed for better profit margins! Ha, I probably just gave them a good idea too of something they didn't think about..
oh well, too late to take back what they already gave. Perhaps they will find a way to upgrade purchased ships in the future again and make you pay for a piece of the same ship again (including the ones who got free upgrades)
I AM NOT A FAN OF PWE!!!!
MEMBER SINCE JANUARY 2010
Do you also stage protests outside Star Trek conventions over the cost to attend?
it shouldn't be a charity, but it also shouldn't be predatory because in the end, you just TRIBBLE people off ^^.
I don't go to conventions...
I AM NOT A FAN OF PWE!!!!
MEMBER SINCE JANUARY 2010
Its not a charity if you already pay to play the game, it is only a charity unless your f2p player
If you pay to play already (as in monthly or LTS), don't you get the equivalent of a free fleet module per month?
No. I do not think Cryptic values it's customers.
Why do I believe this?
Well, from my own personal experience this week:
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=303871
A perfectly valid question being asked. And my own thread on the topic, is far from the only one, so it's not like a small, isolated pocket of people would like an answer. There are quite a few that are wondering.
Yet, all we get from Cryptic is silence.
In some cases (on this particular topic) we have people BEGGING to throw money at Cryptic. Yet, they won't even reply to us on this.
Additionally, I would point out how "valued" customers are in Champions Online. Dev interaction with the community over in CO is pretty minimal. Requests get ignored. Questions get ignored. Feedback is ignored.
So we are basically told, by Cryptic's own actions, that we don't really matter. We are expendable, due in no small part to the F2P system, where Cryptic believes it doesn't matter if one customer leaves, because a new one will simply appear in their stead.
"You shoot him, I shoot you, I leave both your bodies here and go out for a late night snack.
I'm thinking maybe pancakes." ~ John Casey
500 zen stipend if they do not try to take that away or raise prices again that devalues the stipend
The difference here is that there was an expectation when Cryptic sold the old ships that they were endgame ships. Cryptic is not selling a spreadsheet application or a PC. The fleet ships are not upgrades in that sense. Rather, Cryptic is devaluing what they sold us before in order to get us to pay more to revalue it.
Before PWE bought Cryptic, endgame ships (be they c-store or EC store) were balanced and customers who bought them had the expectation that they would remain balanced. Cryptic introducing new ships that break that balance and encourage people to buy them to have the most powerful ship might not quite be enough evidence to prove breach of implied contract, but it certainly is enough evidence to make many of the people who spent a lot of money on end game ships to feel that Cryptic does not value us as customers.
Why should I pay any money for endgame equipment when I know that Cryptic will change the game (perhaps within weeks of my purchase) to devalue that endgame equipment in order to entice me to spend further money?
It would be different if these fleet upgrades were free to existing ship owners, but they are not.
If they were selling expansion packs I would gladly buy them but I am not going to spend money on (possibly illegal) gambling nor on endgame equipment that they will slowly force into obsolescence.