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I wonder if Geko can actually defend his statement
johhanne
Member Posts: 41 Arc User
I wonder if Geko can still defend his statement that the fleet ships would be significantly cheaper than c store when they are 2000c per TOON rather than 2500 per ACCOUNT. (if you don't have the c store version already)
Care to justify/clarify that Geko?
Jo
Care to justify/clarify that Geko?
Jo
Post edited by johhanne on
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Don't forget that in order to get a Fleet Ship you and your fleet also have to invest a tonne of Dilithium into your Starbase, and Dilithium has a real money value thanks to it being exchangeable with Zen. Thus the actual price tag of Fleet Ships is even higher than just that attached to the FSMs.
Hey, even if you're not paying those Dilithium fees someone has to.
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Which doesn't speak to what was said.
The suggestion was that Fleet Ships would be much cheaper to account for the investment made into Starbases to make them available (not to mention the one-time, per-character unlock status of these vessels). The suggestion wasn't that some fleet ships would be cheaper if you've already bought stuff from the Store (which ultimately means you're paying $25-$30 total for a ship anyway... so that's still not much cheaper, and doesn't float regardless).
AFAIK, you can still get another copy of an account-wide C-store (2500z) ship.
It won't be the fleet version (3000z) -- to get another "fleet" version you'll have to pay another 500z and the appropriate amount of fleet credits.
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Which assumes EC has no value. While that's almost true, it's not actually true, or people wouldn't put FSMs up there (nor lockbox ships). It is almost true because though EC has some value it's very, very little. Hence the prices (in the millions per FSM and tens or hundreds of millions per box ship) you see those items listed for.
Plato
Was he just ill-informed, or was the design re-done last minute, or was the initial design overruled?
OP *is* the new balance, whether you know it or not! Gecko says so.
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I had a very strong suspicion that there would be an unprecedented level of monitization with this season's release unlike anything we'd seen previously. Unfortunately, I appear to have been correct in my suspicion.
As in did you need 20k FC and 4 FSM on Tibble or was it different and how so ?
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he even mentions in every interview, sometimes 2 or 3 times that things are subject to change at any moment. i dont think there is anything he needs to defend and we already know what the pricing structure is as its been officially said and in game.
what is said in development is pretty much irrelevant. take everything with a pinch of salt until its live. its not like you can pre-order these modules weeks in advance.
I believe that statement was reaffirmed within the last couple of ask cryptics.
at the very start of the test on tribble, it never listed it as 4 required, just said it needed a fleet module
So you may have all your Tier 5 Refits on different Characters, but you will still have to fork over 2000 Zen instead of 500.
It makes more sense in the end to buy the C-Store ship and then pay the additional 500 Zen for one token if you ever want to have that ship on another Char.
double dipping at it's finest.
and of course that is a big middle finger to the 600 day vet's who had to FIGHT for that token or it would have gone aways with F2P completely. So now they just make it obsolete because you will have to pay the same price either way.
First, there is no requirement that Dilithium contributed to the base come from Dilithium converted from Zen, making the point that Dilithium might be converted to Zen and that Zen might have been purchased with real money completely and utterly irrelevant. Unless someone actually buys Zen and converts it to Dilithium and then contributes it to the base, no actual money changes hands so no there is no change in the "actual price tag" of the fleet Starbases because someone might foolishly choose to purchase Zen to convert to Dilithium to contribute to a Starbase.
That makes your point that others are contributing Dilithium equally moot. Even if someone else has more money than sense and contributes every ounce of Dilithium the Starbase uses by purchasing Zen and converting it to Dilithium, how much money that person wasted means nothing in regard to the cost of your ship. Not only could every ounce of Dilithium contributed have been earned in game without spending any real cash at all, Fleet ships are not purchased using Dilithium. They are purchased using Fleet Credits and FSMs. Fleet Credits are earned through a variety of means, only one of which involves contributing Dilithium. For instance, a person could earn every Fleet Credit they need to purchase a ship by turning in Fleet Marks earned solely through doing Fleet events. How the Dilithium contributed to get the base was acquired has no bearing on the real cost of the ship to the person buying it unless that person himself bought said Dilithium with Zen purchased with real money.
Either way, your very point negates your very argument. Dilithium can be converted to Zen. Therefore, even the FSMs can be purchased without spending any acutal money. That means that a person can actually spend $0 in the process of acquiring a Fleet Ship. That means that every step of the process can be done, including building the Starbase itself, without spending any money. And that means your suggestion that the "actual price tag" is greater is simply wrong.
I cannot speak to the start of the test because I only got in on the last week or so. However, I specifically recall seeing the 20K Fleet Credit price tag plus 4 of some other currency. At the time, no one I talked to knew what that currency was, which turned out to be the Fleet Modules. So it may have said only one at the beginning, but this was not always the case.
I doubt the people who set the price are reading the forums.
Posts like this just encourage the developers of the game to be less open with the players.
I'm not even saying it's his fault, or that he was in the wrong. But he (or anyone) most certainly owes the customer an explanation when he makes a promise to the customer that turns out to be completely false.
He does not owe the customers any explanation as he was talking about an unreleased product that nobody was able to preorder.
All threads like this do is to create a climate where developers no longer wish to discuss unreleased features with players as they do not want endless threads devoted to the differences between the product as it was envisioned at the time to how it was finally released.
Is that really what you want?
When I first started playing this game, developers were more open about what they were working on and what they were planning. Now, two years later they are less open, because they learned that they get endless grief whenever a feature changed or failed to be released.
We are lucky that the developers communicate as much as they do. Please do not discourage them because they talk about something they are working on and reveal details that they believe in good faith to be true which is changed before release.
And yet despite the dozens of threads a day just like this one, the devs seem to be on podcasts more than ever lately.
Seriously?
Did those trying to hold the devs to any such thing also expect pots of gold with every new account too?
They expected they would be cheaper 1: Because there is a ton of grinding involved first. 2: Because its a single character purchase, not account unlock. 3: Because they come with no console. 4: Most importantly, because Gecko flat out said they would be, and I quote 'significantly cheaper'
1) People keep confusing the effort they need to grind with somehow earning pay for Devs. This may seem like a strange concept to players, but achieving a reasonable level of grind actually costs PWE more in labor costs than simply handing ships out for free.
2) This is only an issue for anyone who does want the ship for all their characters. And if they have already gotten the ship hull via the c store, then the additional costs needed to upgrade it to a new and better ship are indeed 'significantly cheaper' than buying a whole new ship.
3) This one might be an issue, but in exchange they are getting additional console slots, hull, etc. Since the consoles are only sold as a package deal it is unclear what any given console is worth.
4) What Geko said may have been referring to my point in (2) or may have been mis-spoken. Since there were no advance sales, it is really hard to claim false advertising.
Regardless, the fact that they are still for profit and still have to make money remains. Undercutting their existing ship prices does not make particularly good business sense (as I pointed out in (1).
Frankly this is coming across as a 'gotcha.' A Dev said something that is likely not sustainable or even sane as a business model, and some players are trying to hold the company to that, regardless of the fact said players have no stake other than in a game.
1. How many players are going to just straight grind? How many over the coming months are going to get tired of grinding and buy that dilithium / doff pack / keys to sell for EC / whatever along the way to help build the starbase? I'd wager quite a few.
2. There are only 5 ships that I'm aware of that receive the discount at all, and they are all fed side. The Defiant, Intrepid, Galaxy, Amitage, and Nebula. There are none KDF side that receive any kind of discount. Correct me if I missed one.
3. Gecko himself answers that in the podcast. He's said that essentially all along all we were really paying for was the new artwork and the consoles themselves.
4. He didn't mispeak, he said it very clearly, twice, in the same interview. Fewer people are going to buy $20 per character ships than they would $5 per character ships. Combine quantity of sales with the inevitable monitization along the way and they still make money.
Since it can be converted to zen that Dilithium you earn in-game has real money value (which fluctuates based on the Exchange). Thus they are asking for people to sacrifice for more than just the Fleet Modules when it comes to real world currency. Maybe you're a cheap drain on your fleet and you don't spend Dilithium on your Fleet Projects (and that's the kind of behaviour people can probably expect to get them ejected)... but someone in your fleet does. There is precisely zero possibility to get Fleet Ships without people wasting Dilithium on Fleet Assignments that could have gone to purchasing Zen to offset CStore costs.
Suggesting otherwise is simply wilful ignorance. It's similar to the argument that the Dilithium Exchange offers "free" Zen, which it doesn't.
Ultimately every point of Dilithium that is spent on Fleet Base construction means that someone is losing real money purchasing power within the CStore. That's simple fact. That Dilithium can no longer be used to offset real money costs for zen, something you recognize it can be used to do. It's a loss because Zen has real money value and everytime you tinkle away your Dilithium you flush that value down the toilet.
This isn't debatable, it's simple fact.
And there's that other false argument.
Someone pays for that Zen. Money is spent. Either directly for the Zen, or on a subscription for a stipend, or through some type of advert deal. Someone else picking up the cheque doesn't magical make the dollar amount on it any smaller.
If you go to a nice dinner with someone and the check comes and it's sixty bucks and someone else picks up the tab that meal isn't free; it's still a sixty dollar meal that someone had to pay sixty dollars for. Someone is always out of pocket.
The fact though that you acknowledge here that Dilithium can be converted to Zen entirely undercuts the idea that Zen doesn't have real value. Thus, no, my argument isn't self-defeating... in fact you fully acknowledge the value to everything involved, thus confirming exactly what I've put forward. Or in other words, you've confirmed I'm right and proverbially shot yourself in the foot.
No clue, but that seems a pretty big gamble considering that these are fleet projects, and a lot of manpower can be tossed into gathering dilithium.
I do agree there should be something done for ships that have no c store base. In such cases they should introduce some way to make get them cross character... perhaps only require one additional fleet module if one of your other characters has a completed fleet ship?
That concern does not toss out the entire system though.
But was that when these were going to be T5? Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't they end up T6 instead? Not to mention, the ships are better for their tier than the free ships at that tier, regardless of console, so regardless of what he said, people were paying for something besides the console.
So then why didn't they simply reduce the cost of c store ships to $5? Even more would buy them if they were $1. This is also true of pretty much everything. That doesn't mean a 75% discount is a good thing unless it is a going out of business sale.
These ships are T5.5, and they were always slated to be better than current ships. Gecko is the guy that makes those stats up after all, if anyone would know that it would be him. This is why the Odyssey doesn't have a fleet version, it already T5.5.
You're still comparing account unlock ships to per character purchases. I can get the C-Store ships on every character I have, as many times as I want, from now until the game shuts down. Fleet ships are per character, and if for some reason I dismiss it, either by accident or otherwise, I have to grind AND pay again. By its very nature and common sense, they shouldn't cost as much as a C-Store ship.
What most people seem to be forgetting, or ignoring here is that F2P is supposed to be grind OR pay, not both. The game is designed in such a way to encourage you to pay or go through relentless grinding. This fleet system is relentless grinding that still has the full price tag at the end. One or the other I'm ok with, both is over the top.
Then I am betting someone at head office with better business sense gave him a thwack to the back of the head.