test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
If I were a Vet, I don't think I'd be too happy.
woody898
Member Posts: 25 Arc User
A Z store ship will cost me 25 US dollars to buy and it is available to all of my characters.
A fleet variant of that same ship will cost me 20 US dollars and only available to one character.
If I take advantage of the 75% ship module reduction price by first purchasing the Z-Store version, the fleet variant will only cost me another 5 US dollars for a grand total of 30 US dollars.
That being said, why does it cost me a total of 40 US dollars if I do it the other way aound? Fleet variant then Z-Store version?
Was it your intent to drive people to the Z-Store prior to purchasing a fleet variant? And what about those players that received a free Z-Store ship as a veteran reward? Do they have to buy the same ship again to take advantage of the 75% fleet module discount?
Doesnt sound like much of a "reward" to me.
"Thank you for supporting the game with your monthly subscription for the past 600 days. You have spent a total of $299.80.
As a thank you we are giving you a free ship, a $25 dollar value! BTW, if you want the fleet variant of that ship it will cost you another $20, the same price we are charging the guy that started playing yesterday. Enjoy, and once again... thank you for your patronage!"
A fleet variant of that same ship will cost me 20 US dollars and only available to one character.
If I take advantage of the 75% ship module reduction price by first purchasing the Z-Store version, the fleet variant will only cost me another 5 US dollars for a grand total of 30 US dollars.
That being said, why does it cost me a total of 40 US dollars if I do it the other way aound? Fleet variant then Z-Store version?
Was it your intent to drive people to the Z-Store prior to purchasing a fleet variant? And what about those players that received a free Z-Store ship as a veteran reward? Do they have to buy the same ship again to take advantage of the 75% fleet module discount?
Doesnt sound like much of a "reward" to me.
"Thank you for supporting the game with your monthly subscription for the past 600 days. You have spent a total of $299.80.
As a thank you we are giving you a free ship, a $25 dollar value! BTW, if you want the fleet variant of that ship it will cost you another $20, the same price we are charging the guy that started playing yesterday. Enjoy, and once again... thank you for your patronage!"
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
~ I don't want the world... I just want your half!
~ I don't want the world... I just want your half!
Post edited by woody898 on
0
Comments
$1 = 80cp
$25 = 2000cp
=====
It's $25 + $5(per character) per character to buy and convert a Z-store ship.
Versus $20 to get a single character version.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] "I weary of the chase. Wait for me. I shall be merciful and quick."
Thanks for catching that, I adjusted my original post to reflect the actual prices.
~ I don't want the world... I just want your half!
I realize that, and I know that without money this game would fold. And I am OK with paying for items in game.
But my point is, I think they really screwed the Vets here with their pricing model. After all, you guys ponied up a big chunk of change already.
~ I don't want the world... I just want your half!
And I've been kicking myself for the past 2 years because of it friend.
Amen brother.
Sometimes, if you want to bury the hatchet with a Klingon, it has to be in his skull. - Captain K'Tar of the USS Danu about J'mpok.
Plato
I'm curious to know what you've been spending your c-store and zen on.
There were no stipends for subscribers until this past December.
Who got 12,000 Zen? We started getting our stipend maybe one month before free to play started.
Edit: Ninja'd
Sometimes, if you want to bury the hatchet with a Klingon, it has to be in his skull. - Captain K'Tar of the USS Danu about J'mpok.
I personally have not purchased a CP in 6 months and currently have 15,000 Zen. And that includes owning every Fed ship released to date - I even broke down an bought the Odyssey Pack.
Making Zen isn't exactly difficult in this game. The 8k a day limit gives you close to 1,000 Zen in a month, and that's just assuming you only play 1 alt per day. So you can play for a month and get a 2,000 Zen ship for half price, or for free if you're a power-gamer like me. If you also get the 500 Zen Stipend it gets even cheaper.
So, what have you been spending your 4,000 Zen on? Since you're getting 500 Zen a month, this is essentially a free Fleet Module (if you chose to spend it on it) for any ship you already have a c-store variant of.
That was 2 years, a publisher, and a viable business model ago. Things change in the MMO biz. :rolleyes:
And I'm sorry to tell you this, but nobody in the board room at Atari/Infogrames ever expected people with a LTS to give a damn about "value" after two years. If they even believed the game would survive that long. (Selling Cryptic is a pretty good sign they didn't.) "Lifetime" is just pretty marketing speak for "until you get bored". It is fiscally impossible to sustain a MMO on the number of people willing to pay up front for unlimited access. No, it was a great way to get All Teh Monies up front, but you cannot seriously expect to keep stretching that cord for 5 years and consider yourself a customer. After "month X" you are a free rider, from an accounting point of view.
The possibility of a F2P conversion probably didn't pass anyone's lips. Back in 2008 when these meetings were taking place, monthly sub fees were still the land of milk and honey. Look how long City of Heroes survived on a subscription model. And that game hasn't changed at all since 2004. I was blown away to load it up again last year and it looks, sounds, and plays exactly the same as I remembered, like a time capsule to pre-WoW MMOs. I uninstalled it after respawning in a hospital for the fifth time, 2 miles away from my instance. That's more cruel than the 20 second music loops.
It's nothing personal, really. Wait until TOR goes F2P by their first anniversary, and they scramble to monitise things that were never designed (3-5 years ago) to be monetised. It'll be just as big of a gong show. I think Cryptic is doing as well as can be expected, the rules haven't been written yet.
If we knew then that this system was going to be in place, then perhaps people would have saved their zen. Hindsight is always 20/20. Do not confuse it with Foresight, which is blind as a bat.
It's not for any ship you have a C-Store variant of. I got the T5 Intrepid, Defiant, B'rel and Marauder ingame with a token when I reached vice admiral before f2p or now as a vet reward, there was no need to buy them (and so they don't count for the fleet module discount). I bought the T5 Excelsior, D'kyr and Galaxy-X which didn't get fleet retrofits so I can't buy them with one fleet module either. Each of my characters would need to buy a fleet retrofit with 4 modules = 2000 Zen. So my 4000 would have been enough for two ships. (I currently have 5 vice admirals and 2 lieutenant generals.)
Now when I got them there was no talk about fleet ship modules, so I invested them into two doff packs, two master keys, almost maxing the doff slots on my main character, an Exeter-class T2 ship and the klingon academy uniform pack. Oh, and I spent a few left-overs on dilithium to support the opening of my starbase's windows. Now I have 1000 left.
Sometimes, if you want to bury the hatchet with a Klingon, it has to be in his skull. - Captain K'Tar of the USS Danu about J'mpok.
If you are that determined to not spend any cash or exchange any dilithium, wait a month.
FYI, I always save my Zen points I don't use...just in case.
This is about relative value. Prior to F2P, 2000 zen would net you a top tier ship usable by all of your characters. Now the same amount will net you one ship, usable on one character only. Or, as you point out, 4 per-character ships if I already purchased it before.
Join Date: Sept 2008
"Holographic tissue paper for the holographic runny nose. Don't give them to patients." - The Doctor
You could claim one free C-Store ship (from a limited list), per character at Vice Admiral.
I never bought the Tactical Escort Retrofit because I claimed it for free on my alts.
Why should all of your characters benefit from the work of everyone else, when all that is needed is 20k Fleet Credits? That is an extremely easy number to achieve with hardly any effort on your part.
They could have easily have said that prior c-store purchases do not get any discount.
Or, they could sell these variants on the c-store and make all of Season 6 pointless.
Which of course is limited to only Tier 5 C-store ships. So you have to pay $20 for a Fleet Heavy Cruiser, Nova, Saber, Olympic, Ning'tao, Qin, and K'Tinga. This is per character and furthermore, Fleet ships are not permanently unlocked, so if you lose it, you have to spend another $20s for.
This to me is a major negative over C-store ships (which are account-wide and permanently unlocked) and really feels like we are really being taken advantage of.
It's a free ship. You didn't have to pay any money for it. It was a reward, probably a part of many, for being a paid subscriber.
It's not the 20k fleet credits that make people unhappy. It's the 500 Zen required to purchase the unlock. This isn't about effort, it's about real world cost. The problem isn't just this, but the general devaluation of the stipend.
The general reason why this is happening is because vets bought a lot of items when the game was under Atari. Those purchases mean nothing to PWE except lost opportunity. So re-releasing these as per character unlocks allows them to release these as fresh content and income.
Hypothetically, if these were C-store ships, and available account-wide, how much would they be worth? The answer is of course much more than the current price of existing C-store ships, which shows the rate of inflation for Zen and in-game items. New players won't notice this since they were here for the two years of Atari s-tore prices, but the vets will surely notice difference.
Join Date: Sept 2008
"Holographic tissue paper for the holographic runny nose. Don't give them to patients." - The Doctor
Exactly, we paid for them with our subscription fees when you got them for reaching level 50 and when they became veteran rewards.
Sometimes, if you want to bury the hatchet with a Klingon, it has to be in his skull. - Captain K'Tar of the USS Danu about J'mpok.
Back then everyone had the opportunity to pick from one of the refits when you hit RA. Not like now when your last free ship is the RA one before you have to use C-points. It only became a vet reward when it was announced that this would be taken away when F2P was launched.
It wasn't a reward, it was how the game worked. The idea was you get one VA ship free, and if are a collector and want additional ones you can pay $$$ for them.
Join Date: Sept 2008
"Holographic tissue paper for the holographic runny nose. Don't give them to patients." - The Doctor
I didn't say I should but, frankly, I do get people who thought it made the C-Store ship obsolete at the time.
I mean, the way I see it, it's not that bad. Because I may spend $20 on a ship but I saved $10 off having to buy the cloaking console since the Fleet Ship comes with everything else and I have the cloak.
Heck, funny thing there:
Someone who bought the Dreadnaught has the exact same cloak console. So there's no reason to even buy the T5 Defiant except to get a discount on your alts getting a fleet Defiant because you can buy a Dreadnaught to get the cloak console.
So the only reason I'd want to buy a C-Store Defiant would be to save on the Fleet upgrade if I planned to run a Fleet defiant on multiple alts.