Biggest problem is that the avg player can blow throw content faster than any game company can come up with new stuff - hence the endless grind.
The best solution: For ever 1 min you spend in game per day you must spend 5 min having sex - so max game time per day would be about 30 min - even for 18 year olds!
Did I miss something or did you guys not sit through the whole video? The guy is not talking about The importance of avoiding Pay 2 Win. Rather he justifies why pay 2 win aka selling small advantages is recommended, and even goes on to point out that his customers did not, in fact, mind other people buying advantages. The whole point of the video can be surmised as -
1. They need to make money to survive, and being very good at f2p is not the way to do it.
2. Forum users are not representative of their userbase as a whole, and there is no need to be alarmed just because there is some **** storm raging in the forum. Guys will write mean/strongly worded emails, threaten to quit, and yet these same guys will not only stay in the game, but also end up spending sooner or later.
3. Draws comparison of f2p model with other games/sports such as cycling, golfing, racing, etc where buying small advantages in the form of better equipment is perfectly acceptable.
Honestly I can see some logic in his line of reasoning and if u deny his reasoning, u r either being naive, or u simply don't care about truth.
The only thing that really comes close to P2W is those gosh darn fleet ships. After all, I was able to defeat a well built Bugship (widely considered to be the most powerful ship ingame) with my mediocritly built Galaxy-X (widely considered to be one of the least). But then again, I was able to kill an Ambassador with a Peregrine that same day so......:rolleyes:
The only thing that really comes close to P2W is those gosh darn fleet ships. After all, I was able to defeat a well built Bugship (widely considered to be the most powerful ship ingame) with my mediocritly built Galaxy-X (widely considered to be one of the least). But then again, I was able to kill an Ambassador with a Peregrine that same day so......:rolleyes:
In all respects I don't believe that STO is truely Pay To Win, there isn't really anyting on the C-Store that will give you a significant advantage, two captains with the same everything, the win will probably come out at luck or pilot skills.
I think in most cases its more "Fleet 2 Win" if you're in a very well managed fleet, you have access to the Fleet skill bonus items, even then doesn't really mean you're going to win.
In actual reply to the post, I think EAsy managed the situation badly, if you're going to increase prices on all the items or, incude new items to be purchased, the items before should remain the same, paying for items is quite literally the norm these days I don't have too much of a problem with it.
* I lie... I feel quite sick "metephorically speaking" when I login on after a patch and a new shiny ship and see a system space like ESD/DS9 full of the same ship*
The Community Forum/Game are suprisingly very awesome, the feedback that the majority of them relay to cryptic or in-game about ships/players build/items is very good, not nasty.
From a player perspective, this is the best F2P model I've come across.
DDO (and I take it by extension LOTRO) sound more like the "if I want to dump way more money, I should be able to" games you describe yourself as looking for.
I don't mind paying for a few basic services, or spending $20-30 on a new ship every few months, but I'd really hate to see the game subjected to the whims of someone who seems to expect extra attention because they'll spend $200-300 each month; that's your own prerogative, but it's unhealthy for the game to treat you any different than the person who spends $15 each month.
And I'd really hope the developer would TRIBBLE you for as much money as you can be suckered out of; $20 to bypass the 36-50 day rep grind? I'm sure you'd happily pay $100.
Oh please have you ever played DDO or LOTRO?
You pay for adventure packs in DDO and they are worth every penny, that's it you can easily still play the game without spending a penny.
Biggest problem is that the avg player can blow throw content faster than any game company can come up with new stuff - hence the endless grind.
The best solution: For ever 1 min you spend in game per day you must spend 5 min having sex - so max game time per day would be about 30 min - even for 18 year olds!
I play 2-3 hours a day ......hmmmm.....calculating.....yeah, sounds about right
To be fair, if you were to grind a full 8,000 Dilithium up every day, you could afford any C-Store ship in about a month (given current Dil-Zen exchange rates).
If a C-store ship takes a month, add another week for the Fleet version. And how much did upgrading that Fleet base cost? Besides, even if you aren't paying for that Zen, someone is. Bringing a Jem Hadar Attack Ship into the game costs somewhere between 250 and 300 dollars. I don't think winning is worth that much.
You can get a Fleet B'rel for 2000 ZEN (22.5 days of grinding dilithium) and 6 million EC versus the JHAS' 300+ million EC.
You lose 0.22 shield mod, 10k hull, 1 ensign BO, and 20 crew. You gain 1 turnrate. You trade 2 Tac consoles for 2 Sci consoles. You get a totally universal BO loadout and battle cloak that you can fire torpedos from.
I see your point. The Fleet B'rel sucks, the attack ship is awesome. As for the Vor'cha versus C-Store Galaxy, not only is the Galaxy one of the worst cruisers in the game, Battle Cruisers > Fed Cruisers.
Thats one way of looking at it, and for some games which are light on content but have a franchise that is very much milk-able will be able to peddle a poor quality offering and ride the name until money stops flowing like SWTOR I guess.
SWTOR was a failure as a subscription based game, but EA really knows how to run a free-to-play game efficiently. All their f2p games are run like explained in Ben Cousin's video (and many more are coming from what I understand). EA's f2p implementation is very aggressive: it roots out all the freeloaders, leaving only the people who are too stupid to realise they are being taken, and the people who enjoy paying to win.
Three years on and I feel like I've been a bit naive. The game has become somewhat of a glorified shopping mall... Cryptic use new toys to try and distract people from the games "lack of development."
If I had to point out one fault with STO, this is it. STO is here for everyone to enjoy, even if you don't spend any money, there just isn't a whole lot to enjoy. The ships are nice, but they are like those useless gadgets that end up in the back of your closet after a week or two. Being driven by consumerism isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I like spending my money on something with a little more substance.
Nah. LOTRO sets it up so you can buy any and everything off of its cash shop from currency you earn in game. And there's even been a few player guides on how to do it. It's time consuming. Mindless grinding. But you can not pay a single penny to the game and enjoy it all.
You can play the entire game that way, but I doubt you would enjoy it.
Did I miss something or did you guys not sit through the whole video? The guy is not talking about The importance of avoiding Pay 2 Win. Rather he justifies why pay 2 win aka selling small advantages is recommended, and even goes on to point out that his customers did not, in fact, mind other people buying advantages.
The video simply shows us the other side: how the industry (EA specifically) sees pay-to-win. Ben Cousins, in all his deviousness, explains that pay-to-win is good strategy for free-to-play games, and that players not only take it, but they like it. The biggest whiners are actually their biggest customers. He's proven that there are a lot of stupid people, and EA is targeting them.
Still, aside from moral and ethical considerations, I see absolutely no reason for a free-to-play publisher not to introduce pay-to-win in their games.
Pay-to-win: bad for gamers, good for faceless evil corporations.
This is making the rounds in the industry again, although it's a couple of years old so I'm sure PWE is aware, but it couldn't hurt to bring it up again:
Figured you guys would enjoy a nice discussion of applying the lessons to STO, and maybe the devs will get something from your discussion as well.
AAAARRRGGGHHH ... , now we're being trolled by the Mods !!!
Just kidding ! :P
(well a little !)
Ahem , so while I fear this will turn into a wall of text , I'll present 2 PoV's :
1) I think that the Dev's are not only aware of the Battlefield Heroes example -- but they went through some of the very same hoops BH went through :
BH's initial offering was not sufficient .
BH got a cash boost that allowed it to grow sufficiently (hello PW) .
BH has a playerbase that complains a lot but spends a lot . Them's the passionate forum folks .
According to Capt. Gecko , the "special ships" (lockbox/Fleet) represent an "up to 10% better preformance" -- exactly like the example from the EAsy guy .
There are a few differences too :
What BH went through in months (up to 1 year) , STO took 3 years .
What the EAsy representative allows himself to say about the Forums of BH is something that the STO Devs (most of them) keep to themeselfs . (hi again Gecko)
All in all I found the EAsy BH example to be eerily and somewhat uncomfortably reminiscent to STO's history (almost to a point of a mini-me likeness) .
2) Having said that , I look at my spending behavior and I'm left to wonder how much do my spending habits reflect those of the BH forumites , or my fellow STO forumites .
Since I don't actually know what any of you are spending , I'll just give a small recap of my spendings :
First 2 Years :
Lifetime Sub , most boxed "versions" of STO , over 50% of the total ships in the C-Store , over 50% of the costumes in the C-Store .
F2P :
Purchases of LB Keys (about 60-120) most spent on the Bug/Galor (didn't win either) , purchased the Ferasan race when Cryptic gave us the free Chel Garrett ship as my small ty for that offering .
Several ships + extended bank+Doff space purchased via the in-game market .
So , on one hand I can see a severe decrease in spending from me (while a major increase in vocal displeasure) , on the other hand if I go by the example given in the Battlefield Heroes example , some PW executive may be looking at my example and saying : this game allows much to many things to be purchased by it's in-game economy .
And who knows , he may be right ... -- so if we ever get another major revamp in the game's economy , it may very well go the way of the "purchase from the store/lockbox , or don't purchase at all" .
It does raise a question. What if this game did sell advantages only available for cash? What would you, could you, win by paying for them? PVP queues would simply be more deserted than they already are wouldn't they? As far as STFs, those are pure co-op and we all like them over fast so the guy who pays would be paying for the privilege of doing everyone else a favor. It's still very much an impulse economy, so there would definitely be players paying for it, and only those that PvP would encounter the 'unfair' aspect of it. Let's face it, after over 3 years of the same PvP maps; if you see me in PvP I'm in the weakest ship I have just getting the daily done, so again that does me a favor if everyone else in there pays for the zomg-my-ship-is-2%-better-than-yours upgrade as it gets it over faster.
I'll sell you some weapons from New Romulus. Never fired, only dropped once.
I can't believe more than one person has cited LOTRO as a superior F2P model to STO.
Since there is only a limited number of points any single character can earn, to acquire each expansion zone in the game you would have to create a new toon and grind for at least a month to get enough points to purchase that zone for free. Enjoy your time in the starter zone...over and over and over.
Sure STO has its issues....but calling it pay to win is just way way out of bounds compared to the competition.
IMO, we're already in P2W territory. You can buy just about anything that matters in this game, and if you don't have enough in-game 'currency' just bust out your CC or Paypal and it's all yours. Not enough DIL? Not enough EC? Not enough ZEN? There's cold hard cash for that. Cryptic/PWE is the ultimate gold seller.
The other problem with it is that items like ships, Borg/OMEGA/MACO/Romulan/Fleet gear, and the stuff that comes in lock boxes doesn't drop anywhere else and is not available through any other means in the game other than paying for them with currency of some kind. I might be 'old school' but I don't have a problem with lock boxes or lottery or what have you as long as the things that are winnable are also available through other means in the game, maybe as 'random drops' somewhere albeit at very low drops rate. This way it's not confined to a lottery system or 'buying' it in some way. It feels cheap. People are upset with NCSoft right now for a similar thing.
The more I played the game in it's current state since about the time S7 started and I came back it's felt more and more like Star Trek Vending Machine Online than a game I play to have a good time and enjoy myself with space combat and Star Trek lore. Everything is tied into a 'system' of some kind and just when I find something I like to do they TRIBBLE it up somehow and make a boneheaded change to fix a boneheaded decision they made a couple months ago. Hey, people make mistakes....but Cryptic isn't learning from theirs it seems.
I can't believe more than one person has cited LOTRO as a superior F2P model to STO.
Since there is only a limited number of points any single character can earn, to acquire each expansion zone in the game you would have to create a new toon and grind for at least a month to get enough points to purchase that zone for free. Enjoy your time in the starter zone...over and over and over.
Sure STO has its issues....but calling it pay to win is just way way out of bounds compared to the competition.
You're conveniently leaving out the fact that once you buy a piece of content from the LOTRO store, you're never further gated by any kind of cash shop currency related mechanic for that content.
I'll happily settle for a slightly more restrictive cash shop than deal with double-dipping, which Cryptic is turning into an art form.
i don't find sto is a p2w game as you can exchange dil to c-points. such things are not possibe in many f2p games. i can spent money and i do occasionally (there wouldn't be sto without some payments). I like the system cryptic implemented and i find it very fair-minded. of course you could argue about exchange rates, but they are better now than ever before, right?
The video was very enlightening. The fact that we are just 2% of the entire game population and no matter what whining we read we are still the biggest spenders is a real eye opener. It suggests that threads about anything other than specific bugs are pointless and I move that the only two forums left here should be Ten Forward and Bugs, the rest is utterly inconsequential from a DEV standpoint as they know we are not in the slightest bit representative of 98% of the game population.
And with that I will convert to a browser than a contributor lol.
I'd take that factlet with a grain of salt. If I am to be counted among the biggest spenders simply for being on the forums and objecting to some of the larger cash gimmicks then STO is in real trouble. I haven't spent a cent here since f2p.
I agree with everything in the post below this one.
I'll sell you some weapons from New Romulus. Never fired, only dropped once.
If slightly out dated . (2009)
There were many-many gamers at the time who would not have tried out a F2P title back then even if you payed them , considering them sub-par out of the gate .
The fact that we are just 2% of the entire game population
That is (again) a non relevant info regarding STO .
We could be a larger or smaller percent .
and no matter what whining we read we are still the biggest spenders is a real eye opener.
Again not relevant to STO , unless you have data that points to a different conclusion .
We are not the biggest spenders unless you can prove otherwise .
It suggests that threads about anything other than specific bugs are pointless and I move that the only two forums left here should be Ten Forward and Bugs, the rest is utterly inconsequential from a DEV standpoint as they know we are not in the slightest bit representative of 98% of the game population.
Some STO Devs seem to have a different approach to the community , both in a positive and negative sense .
Some are more inclined to interact , while others don't even use us as the canarie bird in the mine as EAsy does (see the ton of ignored feedback from Tribble over the years) .
So for better and for worse , that EA bit again fails to apply .
Honestly, if nothing you sell provides any advantage over free stuff, I doubt sales would be that great. There are collectors and then there are people who buy things based on functionality. You kinda want a little of both.
That being said, there is an exchange so even if we are a p2w game, you can work hard and get someone else to pay it for you. :P
Some STO Devs seem to have a different approach to the community , both in a positive and negative sense .
Some are more inclined to interact , while others don't even use us as the canarie bird in the mine as EAsy does (see the ton of ignored feedback from Tribble over the years) .
So for better and for worse , that EA bit again fails to apply .
Keep in mind, the fact that you haven't seen a post from a certain dev does NOT mean he doesn't use these forums for feedback on his work. There are devs who read and never post, and the Community Managers take feedback from these forums into meetings with the devs, so even those who NEVER read the forums still get feedback from here.
And sometimes when a dev posts a question, he might not have originated that question; it might have come from the guy in the next desk, who doesn't post, having brought it up in conversation.
Former moderator of these forums. Lifetime sub since before launch. Been here since before public betas. Foundry author of "Franklin Drake Must Die".
Name an item that will make me "win" and the only way to purchase it is with real money
This is so easy: Jem Hadar Attack ship...Best ship ever on STO and YES it's a ship box....Temp Sci vessel (another ship box)....lately...Jem Hadars Carriers...Now ground...STATIC GUNs....guaranteed to give you a small advantage in PvPs...honestly do you want us to stop...or keep on going....RECLUSE...best carrier ever with lots of base hull.....enough?
Of course you don't need to buy directly the boxes but somewhere someone would have to spend REAL CASH to get it....
The logic is there and if you have been long enough in this game...you would KNOW...we did not have these items above 3 years ago...its the start to P2W...although still subtle and hopefully it will be stable with introducing new ships for free that could compete or offset what the boxes bring into STO.
Don't think the OP is whining but cautioning all of us not go into a cliff....:D
You supply no evidence to discredit the EA study and then cite your own unsupported argument as proof that the whole EA study is irrelevant LOL
This wasn't a 'study', but even if it were, EA hasn't provided any raw data to allow others to verify their conclusions. That doesn't make their statistics irrelevant, but it reasonable to assume they are biased.
This is so easy: Jem Hadar Attack ship...Best ship ever on STO and YES it's a ship box....Temp Sci vessel (another ship box)....lately...Jem Hadars Carriers...Now ground...STATIC GUNs....guaranteed to give you a small advantage in PvPs...honestly do you want us to stop...or keep on going....RECLUSE...best carrier ever with lots of base hull.....enough?
Of course you don't need to buy directly the boxes but somewhere someone would have to spend REAL CASH to get it....
The logic is there and if you have been long enough in this game...you would KNOW...we did not have these items above 3 years ago...its the start to P2W...although still subtle and hopefully it will be stable with introducing new ships for free that could compete or offset what the boxes bring into STO.
Don't think the OP is whining but cautioning all of us not go into a cliff....:D
Again, I have defeated every single one of those ships with a Dreadnought. :cool:
This is so easy: Jem Hadar Attack ship...Best ship ever on STO and YES it's a ship box....Temp Sci vessel (another ship box)....lately...Jem Hadars Carriers...Now ground...STATIC GUNs....guaranteed to give you a small advantage in PvPs...honestly do you want us to stop...or keep on going....RECLUSE...best carrier ever with lots of base hull.....enough?
Of course you don't need to buy directly the boxes but somewhere someone would have to spend REAL CASH to get it....
The logic is there and if you have been long enough in this game...you would KNOW...we did not have these items above 3 years ago...its the start to P2W...although still subtle and hopefully it will be stable with introducing new ships for free that could compete or offset what the boxes bring into STO.
Don't think the OP is whining but cautioning all of us not go into a cliff....:D
That's patently false, the c store odyssey/vesta/andorian ships are some of the best ships in the game. They are $25 and you dont even have to spend a single penny to get those. Like others have said, all it takes is grinding out 8000k dilithium for a month to get one of those ships. I have been critical of crytic in the past, but calling STO a p2w game is a simply not true.
The best cruiser in the game is the sci odyssey, it's better than every fleet cruiser and it's even better than the lockbox galor ship. In pvp 1v1 a jammy can't even kill a sci odyssey, in fact, it has to run away lest be killed. That's right, the best cruiser in the game is a $25 c store ship.
Now, on the subject with the jammy. While good, it's hardly indestructable, it's also outgunned by the $25 c store andorian kumari ship. Regarding pvp, unless you are playing with a very experience pvp squad a jammy is a liability, as everyone will be gunning for you. In fact, I prefer to use my fleet valiant/defiant over the bug in pvp as I can pick and choose my engagements while cloaked. The fleet defiant is also $25, $20 c store and $5 for the ship module. These two $25 ships are easily in the class as the jammy, the bug is hardly p2w. Because of it's 20 turn rate the bug is slightly better overall, nothing gamebreaking and certainly not p2w.
Lastly, The $25 vesta are more than equal, if not slightly better than the stock temporal sci. I don't use carriers, and don't know much about ground pvp so I wont comment on those, though, I am very sceptical of your claim.
It's ok to be cynical but you ought to have something relevant to back up your cynicism otherwise your assertations are far more baseless than the ones you are being cynical about.
Maybe PWE and Cryptic should stop releasing things like ships with 5 fore weapons (and 5 tact slot escorts for that matter) to only one faction, that is a definite pay2win for one faction of the game and is totally unacceptable. When dealing with factional items there should be a equivalent equal for ALL the factions not just one.
Sadly though it is painfully obvious which faction the devs care for and which they do not in STO. Time and time again KDF ships have been nerfed and been denied access to on paper superior vessels to appease the Feds.
If you only want to give ships to one side because the KDF doesn't make you enough money (try releasing some ships worth buying, see the forum posts about this ) thats fine but don't offer the Fed ones with such obvious and huge advantages.
The mods too seem to suffer this favourtism, time and time again KDF related discussion threads get moved out of STO discussion while Fed ones get to remain yeah because that's fair.
Comments
The best solution: For ever 1 min you spend in game per day you must spend 5 min having sex - so max game time per day would be about 30 min - even for 18 year olds!
1. They need to make money to survive, and being very good at f2p is not the way to do it.
2. Forum users are not representative of their userbase as a whole, and there is no need to be alarmed just because there is some **** storm raging in the forum. Guys will write mean/strongly worded emails, threaten to quit, and yet these same guys will not only stay in the game, but also end up spending sooner or later.
3. Draws comparison of f2p model with other games/sports such as cycling, golfing, racing, etc where buying small advantages in the form of better equipment is perfectly acceptable.
Honestly I can see some logic in his line of reasoning and if u deny his reasoning, u r either being naive, or u simply don't care about truth.
Elite Defense Stovokor
Hmm...
Two hours a day at least.... 120 minutes... times five... that's...
...brb talking to gf
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Nerf the Peregrine I say nerf it now!!:P
I think in most cases its more "Fleet 2 Win" if you're in a very well managed fleet, you have access to the Fleet skill bonus items, even then doesn't really mean you're going to win.
In actual reply to the post, I think EAsy managed the situation badly, if you're going to increase prices on all the items or, incude new items to be purchased, the items before should remain the same, paying for items is quite literally the norm these days I don't have too much of a problem with it.
* I lie... I feel quite sick "metephorically speaking" when I login on after a patch and a new shiny ship and see a system space like ESD/DS9 full of the same ship*
The Community Forum/Game are suprisingly very awesome, the feedback that the majority of them relay to cryptic or in-game about ships/players build/items is very good, not nasty.
RachelJ88
Oh please have you ever played DDO or LOTRO?
You pay for adventure packs in DDO and they are worth every penny, that's it you can easily still play the game without spending a penny.
#2311#2700#2316#2500
I play 2-3 hours a day ......hmmmm.....calculating.....yeah, sounds about right
If a C-store ship takes a month, add another week for the Fleet version. And how much did upgrading that Fleet base cost? Besides, even if you aren't paying for that Zen, someone is. Bringing a Jem Hadar Attack Ship into the game costs somewhere between 250 and 300 dollars. I don't think winning is worth that much.
Even if you pay to win, there is no guarantee you'll actually win, it just gives you an advantage. It's even explained in the video.
Even if you buy everything in the C-store, you still won't have a Red Matter Capacitor, nor any of those veteran buffs.
I see your point. The Fleet B'rel sucks, the attack ship is awesome. As for the Vor'cha versus C-Store Galaxy, not only is the Galaxy one of the worst cruisers in the game, Battle Cruisers > Fed Cruisers.
SWTOR was a failure as a subscription based game, but EA really knows how to run a free-to-play game efficiently. All their f2p games are run like explained in Ben Cousin's video (and many more are coming from what I understand). EA's f2p implementation is very aggressive: it roots out all the freeloaders, leaving only the people who are too stupid to realise they are being taken, and the people who enjoy paying to win.
If I had to point out one fault with STO, this is it. STO is here for everyone to enjoy, even if you don't spend any money, there just isn't a whole lot to enjoy. The ships are nice, but they are like those useless gadgets that end up in the back of your closet after a week or two. Being driven by consumerism isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I like spending my money on something with a little more substance.
You can play the entire game that way, but I doubt you would enjoy it.
The video simply shows us the other side: how the industry (EA specifically) sees pay-to-win. Ben Cousins, in all his deviousness, explains that pay-to-win is good strategy for free-to-play games, and that players not only take it, but they like it. The biggest whiners are actually their biggest customers. He's proven that there are a lot of stupid people, and EA is targeting them.
Still, aside from moral and ethical considerations, I see absolutely no reason for a free-to-play publisher not to introduce pay-to-win in their games.
Pay-to-win: bad for gamers, good for faceless evil corporations.
AAAARRRGGGHHH ... , now we're being trolled by the Mods !!!
Just kidding ! :P
(well a little !)
Ahem , so while I fear this will turn into a wall of text , I'll present 2 PoV's :
1) I think that the Dev's are not only aware of the Battlefield Heroes example -- but they went through some of the very same hoops BH went through :
BH's initial offering was not sufficient .
BH got a cash boost that allowed it to grow sufficiently (hello PW) .
BH has a playerbase that complains a lot but spends a lot . Them's the passionate forum folks .
According to Capt. Gecko , the "special ships" (lockbox/Fleet) represent an "up to 10% better preformance" -- exactly like the example from the EAsy guy .
There are a few differences too :
What BH went through in months (up to 1 year) , STO took 3 years .
What the EAsy representative allows himself to say about the Forums of BH is something that the STO Devs (most of them) keep to themeselfs . (hi again Gecko)
All in all I found the EAsy BH example to be eerily and somewhat uncomfortably reminiscent to STO's history (almost to a point of a mini-me likeness) .
2) Having said that , I look at my spending behavior and I'm left to wonder how much do my spending habits reflect those of the BH forumites , or my fellow STO forumites .
Since I don't actually know what any of you are spending , I'll just give a small recap of my spendings :
First 2 Years :
Lifetime Sub , most boxed "versions" of STO , over 50% of the total ships in the C-Store , over 50% of the costumes in the C-Store .
F2P :
Purchases of LB Keys (about 60-120) most spent on the Bug/Galor (didn't win either) , purchased the Ferasan race when Cryptic gave us the free Chel Garrett ship as my small ty for that offering .
Several ships + extended bank+Doff space purchased via the in-game market .
So , on one hand I can see a severe decrease in spending from me (while a major increase in vocal displeasure) , on the other hand if I go by the example given in the Battlefield Heroes example , some PW executive may be looking at my example and saying : this game allows much to many things to be purchased by it's in-game economy .
And who knows , he may be right ... -- so if we ever get another major revamp in the game's economy , it may very well go the way of the "purchase from the store/lockbox , or don't purchase at all" .
Scary .
Since there is only a limited number of points any single character can earn, to acquire each expansion zone in the game you would have to create a new toon and grind for at least a month to get enough points to purchase that zone for free. Enjoy your time in the starter zone...over and over and over.
Sure STO has its issues....but calling it pay to win is just way way out of bounds compared to the competition.
The other problem with it is that items like ships, Borg/OMEGA/MACO/Romulan/Fleet gear, and the stuff that comes in lock boxes doesn't drop anywhere else and is not available through any other means in the game other than paying for them with currency of some kind. I might be 'old school' but I don't have a problem with lock boxes or lottery or what have you as long as the things that are winnable are also available through other means in the game, maybe as 'random drops' somewhere albeit at very low drops rate. This way it's not confined to a lottery system or 'buying' it in some way. It feels cheap. People are upset with NCSoft right now for a similar thing.
The more I played the game in it's current state since about the time S7 started and I came back it's felt more and more like Star Trek Vending Machine Online than a game I play to have a good time and enjoy myself with space combat and Star Trek lore. Everything is tied into a 'system' of some kind and just when I find something I like to do they TRIBBLE it up somehow and make a boneheaded change to fix a boneheaded decision they made a couple months ago. Hey, people make mistakes....but Cryptic isn't learning from theirs it seems.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
The o3 - Killed you good
You're conveniently leaving out the fact that once you buy a piece of content from the LOTRO store, you're never further gated by any kind of cash shop currency related mechanic for that content.
I'll happily settle for a slightly more restrictive cash shop than deal with double-dipping, which Cryptic is turning into an art form.
That was very well put.
I'd take that factlet with a grain of salt. If I am to be counted among the biggest spenders simply for being on the forums and objecting to some of the larger cash gimmicks then STO is in real trouble. I haven't spent a cent here since f2p.
I agree with everything in the post below this one.
If slightly out dated . (2009)
There were many-many gamers at the time who would not have tried out a F2P title back then even if you payed them , considering them sub-par out of the gate .
That is (again) a non relevant info regarding STO .
We could be a larger or smaller percent .
Again not relevant to STO , unless you have data that points to a different conclusion .
We are not the biggest spenders unless you can prove otherwise .
Some STO Devs seem to have a different approach to the community , both in a positive and negative sense .
Some are more inclined to interact , while others don't even use us as the canarie bird in the mine as EAsy does (see the ton of ignored feedback from Tribble over the years) .
So for better and for worse , that EA bit again fails to apply .
That being said, there is an exchange so even if we are a p2w game, you can work hard and get someone else to pay it for you. :P
Keep in mind, the fact that you haven't seen a post from a certain dev does NOT mean he doesn't use these forums for feedback on his work. There are devs who read and never post, and the Community Managers take feedback from these forums into meetings with the devs, so even those who NEVER read the forums still get feedback from here.
And sometimes when a dev posts a question, he might not have originated that question; it might have come from the guy in the next desk, who doesn't post, having brought it up in conversation.
This is so easy: Jem Hadar Attack ship...Best ship ever on STO and YES it's a ship box....Temp Sci vessel (another ship box)....lately...Jem Hadars Carriers...Now ground...STATIC GUNs....guaranteed to give you a small advantage in PvPs...honestly do you want us to stop...or keep on going....RECLUSE...best carrier ever with lots of base hull.....enough?
Of course you don't need to buy directly the boxes but somewhere someone would have to spend REAL CASH to get it....
The logic is there and if you have been long enough in this game...you would KNOW...we did not have these items above 3 years ago...its the start to P2W...although still subtle and hopefully it will be stable with introducing new ships for free that could compete or offset what the boxes bring into STO.
Don't think the OP is whining but cautioning all of us not go into a cliff....:D
Again, I have defeated every single one of those ships with a Dreadnought. :cool:
That's patently false, the c store odyssey/vesta/andorian ships are some of the best ships in the game. They are $25 and you dont even have to spend a single penny to get those. Like others have said, all it takes is grinding out 8000k dilithium for a month to get one of those ships. I have been critical of crytic in the past, but calling STO a p2w game is a simply not true.
The best cruiser in the game is the sci odyssey, it's better than every fleet cruiser and it's even better than the lockbox galor ship. In pvp 1v1 a jammy can't even kill a sci odyssey, in fact, it has to run away lest be killed. That's right, the best cruiser in the game is a $25 c store ship.
Now, on the subject with the jammy. While good, it's hardly indestructable, it's also outgunned by the $25 c store andorian kumari ship. Regarding pvp, unless you are playing with a very experience pvp squad a jammy is a liability, as everyone will be gunning for you. In fact, I prefer to use my fleet valiant/defiant over the bug in pvp as I can pick and choose my engagements while cloaked. The fleet defiant is also $25, $20 c store and $5 for the ship module. These two $25 ships are easily in the class as the jammy, the bug is hardly p2w. Because of it's 20 turn rate the bug is slightly better overall, nothing gamebreaking and certainly not p2w.
Lastly, The $25 vesta are more than equal, if not slightly better than the stock temporal sci. I don't use carriers, and don't know much about ground pvp so I wont comment on those, though, I am very sceptical of your claim.
P2W alive and well in STO.
Sadly though it is painfully obvious which faction the devs care for and which they do not in STO. Time and time again KDF ships have been nerfed and been denied access to on paper superior vessels to appease the Feds.
If you only want to give ships to one side because the KDF doesn't make you enough money (try releasing some ships worth buying, see the forum posts about this ) thats fine but don't offer the Fed ones with such obvious and huge advantages.
The mods too seem to suffer this favourtism, time and time again KDF related discussion threads get moved out of STO discussion while Fed ones get to remain yeah because that's fair.
Also the JHAS. Doesn't really need explaining.
That's a month if you grind your measly 8000 a day, and you don't spend any dilithium on anything else.
Yea. Never gonna happen in today's grind infected version of the game. Maybe pre-season 6, but not now.
Better change that saying to 90 days. Maybe.