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Cryptic/PWE, Urgent Plea: Fleet Owners Selling Access to their Starbases

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  • ludikroludikro Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    valoreah wrote: »
    You can very easily ignore fleets like this. There are many, many, many fleets out there who don't charge a fee to join or have minimum contribution requirements etc. Find one of them and enjoy your game time.

    Do you know of a fleet that will provide people with elite Yellowstone pets free of charge?
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
  • voxinvictusvoxinvictus Member Posts: 261
    edited April 2013
    A fleet which charges a fee to join is not a fleet you should want to be a part of.

    A fleet which charges you a fee to access their starbase to buy high tier goods or which has some minimum membership period or fleet contribution level before high tier goods can be accessed is just exercising common sense.

    Otherwise, you have what you see right now: self centered players who think that they should be welcomed into a high tier fleet after contributing nothing, and reaping all of the rewards.

    If you're some one who doesn't want to be in a fleet, that's fine. 10m or even 25m to access high tier items is a BARGAIN compared to what the average member in such a fleet has probably contributed over time, especially since you didn't have to contribute anything until the project was done.

    I appreciate fleets like Spectre that have opened up their stores for a fee, because it gives the solo or small fleet players a chance at this gear. At the same time, they'd be stupid to give up for free, and it would be extremely disrespectful to their long time members.

    If you think this is a "scam" or a "ripoff" then don't buy it. Go spend that 10m or 25m on your own starbase, and let us know how much progress that bought you. Your sense of entitlement is just a sense, it's not reality.
  • voxinvictusvoxinvictus Member Posts: 261
    edited April 2013
    tpalelena wrote: »
    10 million EC is a lot of money.

    How do you make it into pocket change? If you got a magical EC making machine, please tell the rest of us :)

    10m is a week's worth of earnings on one character, if that's your main goal. It's not sitting in the couch cushions, but it's not unobtainable. You'll spend a lot more than that on the Dilithium you use just to buy T5 gear and/or the FCs to buy that gear.

    I just dropped 75m the other day to buy a Recluse Carrier. Think I'm going to complain about 10m or even 25m to get access to the elite Mesh Weaver hangars? Give me a break. Yea, that's a week or two worth of grinding on a single character, but so what? That tier 5 fleet took a lot longer than a week or two of grinding.
  • voxinvictusvoxinvictus Member Posts: 261
    edited April 2013
    squishkin wrote: »
    But all those resources have already been spent. People seem to have a huge issue with the idea of sunk versus marginal costs here.

    There is no cost (other than your time, very marginal indeed) to invite a billion people to your starbase map to buy stuff. No cost at all.

    The actual "cost" is entirely front-loaded and has already been paid for. What resources it took to get there are economically irrelevant.

    First of all, "time" is not a "very marginal" cost. Time is the main resource that human beings trade in. Money itself is just a commodity that measures time spent/human labor. I guess you can say that time is a marginal cost in the pure economic sense, but in the pure economic sense, any cost is marginal. "Marginal" doesn't mean "without value" it just means that it is measurable in discrete units.

    Second, the principle of "sunk cost" is that you shouldn't use past costs when calculating the marginal return on future investment. However, if you're advocating a completely rational system for pricing, then the correct price for fleet access will never be "free" since the best marginal returns will be according to supply and demand. Right now, T5 fleets have near monopoly pricing power. The fact that they "only" charge 10m or so for shopping access is probably too low since the market will bear more and they can always go after the lower echelons of the market once the early adopters have paid a premium.

    You seem aware of certain economic principles, but either unwilling or unable to apply economics more broadly to the situation.

    P.S.-- I apologize for the multiple posts. There was a lot to respond to. I wish there was some way to consolidate posts after the fact.
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  • leviathan99#2867 leviathan99 Member Posts: 7,747 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    tpalelena wrote: »
    10 million EC is a lot of money.

    How do you make it into pocket change? If you got a magical EC making machine, please tell the rest of us :)

    It takes less than a month of grinding if you just play challenging content and blindly vendor stuff. And much less if you spend dilithium to get EC or spend dilithium on Zen to get master keys to sell for EC.

    Going that last route, that's 108k dilithium. Or 14ish days of refinement. Assuming you don't count item drops, which should be around 125k-500k a day unless you get a purple or a lot of engines, in which case it should be higher.

    We are talking about a ship here. The highest tier of ship. The only alternative of equal caliber to is a lockbox ship.
  • sunfranckssunfrancks Member Posts: 3,925 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    abaddon653 wrote: »
    Quick tip, if you guys are not selling access to your fleet, don't show what you have done in your signature. :D

    Oh, because we are not selling access. I am not allowed to promote my fleet, by stating that I am a founder, and what level it is?

    Good one. Might want to take note of your own signature ;)
    Fed: Eng Lib Borg (Five) Tac Andorian (Shen) Sci Alien/Klingon (Maelrock) KDF:Tac Romulan KDF (Sasha) Tac Klingon (K'dopis)
    Founder, member and former leader to Pride Of The Federation Fleet.
    What I feel after I hear about every decision made since Andre "Mobile Games Generalisimo" Emerson arrived...
    3oz8xC9gn8Fh4DK9Q4.gif





  • aelfwin1aelfwin1 Member Posts: 2,896 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    This isn't a scam it's charging for services provided.

    You and the Dental dude have some sort of irrefutable proof on this ?
    Can you say with 100% certainty that no scam has occurred (like ever) ?

    I'm just asking because like 2 days ago I've seen someone complain in a fairly decent chat channel that he has joined a KDF fleet (no admin fee there) , has so far donated about half a mill of fleet credits and they still don't give him access to the fleet stores .
    Some have told him he was getting scammed .
    I can't tell you about that , but I do think that the 'deals' that this thread is being vocal about are not above the possibility of a scam .

    Having said that , I can see the flip side -- which (to me) seems to be that some ppl see T5 Starbases of 'mega fleets' as nothing more then a shopping mall .
    And considering how much work , and at times 'drama' those Starbases cost ... , well I'm not sure that just EC is compensation enough (on a monetary level) .

    Guess I'm glad that when my fleet came to this question we came to what to me seems like a good enough deal : help those who ask on anything but ships .
    For ships , you have to join , contribute and show a willingness to stay for the long haul .
  • leviathan99#2867 leviathan99 Member Posts: 7,747 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    f2pdrakron wrote: »
    No Fleet ship is free, they cost modules with a few exceptions, at T4 the only exception is the Aquarius that I happen to have brought one, it costs 200k FCs .

    Now I would not mind paying the Basic Provisioning cost, it costs EXACTLY 200k Dilithium that happens to translate into 200k FCs, the cost of a non-Module Fleet ship ... except it only eats one provision and the project gives 5 of those.

    So if I offer to pay for the provision what exactly is going to cost your fleet outside 30 minutes?

    It's not immoral to charge for something that you spent prior resources on.

    If I buy 1,000 pounds of chocolate and have them in a warehouse, why should I give them away? Because the cost is only 30 minutes for us to drive over there? Heck. The 30 minutes spent doing that alone is probably around 1960 dilithium to an STFer, which is 16 Cryptic points at the current rate which s about 214k EC, plus probably another 150k EC in drops.

    There's over 360k in lost EC without factoring in the idea of a profit or prior expenditures, which are NOT sunk costs if people have a means of recouping them. A sunk cost is only a cost that's unrecoverable and starbase expenses are not unrecoverable if there's a market for charging people to visit your starbase.

    Now, beyond this, the economy does funny things because currency leaves the economy through game sinks so time not spent earning game currency increases the value of that currency. So the opportunity cost is also higher for this reason by an amount players are not really in a position to calculate.
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  • ludikroludikro Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    aelfwin1 wrote: »
    You and the Dental dude have some sort of irrefutable proof on this ?
    Can you say with 100% certainty that no scam has occurred (like ever) ?

    I'm just asking because like 2 days ago I've seen someone complain in a fairly decent chat channel that he has joined a KDF fleet (no admin fee there) , has so far donated about half a mill of fleet credits and they still don't give him access to the fleet stores .
    Some have told him he was getting scammed .
    I can't tell you about that , but I do think that the 'deals' that this thread is being vocal about are not above the possibility of a scam .

    Having said that , I can see the flip side -- which (to me) seems to be that some ppl see T5 Starbases of 'mega fleets' as nothing more then a shopping mall .
    And considering how much work , and at times 'drama' those Starbases cost ... , well I'm not sure that just EC is compensation enough (on a monetary level) .

    Guess I'm glad that when my fleet came to this question we came to what to me seems like a good enough deal : help those who ask on anything but ships .
    For ships , you have to join , contribute and show a willingness to stay for the long haul .

    We aren't talking about people actually getting scammed, we are arguing against the idea that selling access to a fleet starbase's resources is immoral and a scam. A lot of people seem to think the topic is about actually paying to be a member of a fleet, this isn't the subject at hand.

    The idea is simple, a player decides he wants some elite pets, Yellowstones for example. He has two choices, he can either wait for his own fleet to grind the required Starbase, or he can pay a modest fee (say 10M) and acquire those pets off another fleet's starbase.

    It's a win win for both parties, the player gets his pets without having to wait the for enormous grind, and the fleet who sold access gets a nice bit of money in the bank to offset their enormous expenditure from getting to that point.

    Some overly entitled spongers in this thread seem to think this shouldn't be allowed, and do not comprehend the concept of supply and demand. Right now fleets that charge high fees for access can do so because they have a near monopoly on availability. Once more fleets reach that level the price will come down because supply will increase in relation to demand.

    Now obviously if people are getting scammed out of their money with nothing to show for it, then that is wrong. However, the big fleets selling access (Task Force Spectre and 1st Aquarius Division) haven't been scamming anyone, because as some people have pointed out there is nothing for these fleets to lose by doing so, and scamming people would only cost them more customers and a lot of EC.
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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  • canisanubiscanisanubis Member Posts: 187 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    What's immoral about it? It's a resource that has value, and they're charging strangers money to make use of it. Really, if you want some high fleet unlock but don't care about the rest of the Starbase or Fleet grind, I see nothing wrong with coming up with an agreement with a high level fleet so that you both get what you want.
  • squishkinsquishkin Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    ludikro wrote: »
    Some overly entitled spongers in this thread seem to think this shouldn't be allowed, and do not comprehend the concept of supply and demand.

    These are two very separate concepts, though. The law is often used to create enforced scarcity, or to prevent it, especially in areas with front-loaded costs and no, or insignificant, marginal costs. That's what patents and copyrights are for.

    Whether or not it "should be allowed" has nothing to do with the idea of "supply and demand".
  • monshmonsh Member Posts: 114 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    The long grind aside, lets not forget the fact that many fleet projects require provisioning missions to make them possible. Fleet ships, and other items, cost more than just the cost of purchasing them. When you buy a car, are you just paying the materials cost? No, you're paying for labor, overhead, R&D, and adminsitrative costs. This is fundamentally no different.

    Why would someone think that they are entitled to join a fleet, buy up items that someone else has made possible through their own hard work, and then leave? It sounds like the scam is not happening on the part of the fleet, but rather on the part of the person who wants to take advantage of the fleet resources without an equitable exchange.
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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  • knuhteb5knuhteb5 Member Posts: 1,831 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    monsh wrote: »
    The long grind aside, lets not forget the fact that many fleet projects require provisioning missions to make them possible. Fleet ships, and other items, cost more than just the cost of purchasing them. When you buy a car, are you just paying the materials cost? No, you're paying for labor, overhead, R&D, and adminsitrative costs. This is fundamentally no different.

    Why would someone think that they are entitled to join a fleet, buy up items that someone else has made possible through their own hard work, and then leave? It sounds like the scam is not happening on the part of the fleet, but rather on the part of the person who wants to take advantage of the fleet resources without an equitable exchange.

    Fully agree. The scamming goes both ways. Fleets that rather not build up a good community are just peddling out tier 5 access while lazy players join fleets only to gain access to tier 5 ships and the provisioning thereof. TBH, fleet leaders are entitled to do whatever they want with their fleet, regardless of the opinions of people against selling fleet access at high prices. As long as the fleet isn't breaking the terms of service, meaning no hacking, cheating, Cryptic can't interfere in the internal politics of a fleet. And sorry to say, that is sound policy. If Cryptic started taking sides and making arbitrary decisions with respect to individual fleets, where would the line be drawn? It's too slippery a slope, and Cryptic has done well to steer clear of it, regardless of how much people have pleaded for them to intervene. Get over it and move on people.
    aGHGQIKr41KNi.gif
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  • knuhteb5knuhteb5 Member Posts: 1,831 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    f2pdrakron wrote: »
    Its not a question of morality but rather intent, Fleets were not designed as shopping malls and you dont even own anything, you are "renting it" from Cryptic.

    Its a sub-rental but there are no mechanics in place, all the Fleets that charge access are doing is exploiting existing mechanics into serving a purpose they were not designed to do, Fleet Bank was not designed as a payment service and neither is the Player Trading system.

    Because the Fleet system was not designed so they can "rent" or "sell" there are no defense mechanics in place to protect people being being scammed, the entire system current in use is based on the good faith of the people selling or renting, its certainly not what Cryptic intended.

    It makes those people no different that Gold Sellers.

    It's human nature to be greedy and exploit people. Did you expect STO to be anything different? Let's say there was a limit to how much money you could give somebody for fleet access. Would you then also limit how much money somebody can spend on a private trade? Would you also place limits on selling prices on the exchange? TBH, I'd rather Cryptic not put any rules in place because if anything, they'll make the current situation worse. Joining a fleet as a process would probably become too procedural, restrictive, and irritating.
    aGHGQIKr41KNi.gif
  • erraberrab Member Posts: 1,434 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    losobal wrote: »
    Not a fleet owner, but a fleet participant. I have to wonder tho, ESPECIALLY with fleets that have hit top tier bases, why they shouldn't charge for new people to join up. Was this new person involved at all in building that fleet base to its level? Probably not.

    Sure call it greed on the part of the fleet-holders, but it is ALSO greed on the new guy that purposefully wants to join a Tier 5 fleet. Oh you didn't know they were tier 5 and had a complete base with access to all the doffs and gear and shipyards and stuff? Right.

    They want to benefit from the timesink that the fleet participated in to get their resources to the level they're at. Wanting to skip the grind is entirely understandable, but its not more noble.

    It's funny because I was kind of thinking the same thing.

    If I was the leader of a Tier 5 Fleet I would likely stop actively recruiting new members (with exceptions made for really good prospects) and switch to charging players who request to join our fleet that were not recommended by current fleet members.

    It will be hard for T5 Fleets to find new members that truly want to join the fleet because they want to be there and not just for what they can get from the fleet so a membership fee can help protect the Fleet from the Hit it and Quit Players.

    I'd also request at least 2 million EC from members of other fleets if they requested access to our fleet to use our store even we did not need the EC.

    The EC charged to members of other Fleets would be more so to make sure that our Fleet Members would not be getting PM?d to death by other Fleets requesting to use our Store.

    Sometimes kindness can be its own punishment in MMO's and once it got out the your Fleet was allowing access to its T5 shop for nothing, everyone and their mothers would be looking to get access and see you has obligated to give it to them because you did it for someone else.

    On a Side Note:

    I'd love to see a Fleet Mark tab added to Fleets similar to the way we can store EC now.
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
  • feefyfeefy Member Posts: 34 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    f2pdrakron wrote: »
    Its not a question of morality but rather intent, Fleets were not designed as shopping malls and you dont even own anything, you are "renting it" from Cryptic.

    Its a sub-rental but there are no mechanics in place, all the Fleets that charge access are doing is exploiting existing mechanics into serving a purpose they were not designed to do, Fleet Bank was not designed as a payment service and neither is the Player Trading system.

    Because the Fleet system was not designed so they can "rent" or "sell" there are no defense mechanics in place to protect people being being scammed, the entire system current in use is based on the good faith of the people selling or renting, its certainly not what Cryptic intended.

    It makes those people no different that Gold Sellers.

    Using your analogy: All the work the fleet put in to build up our base to tier 5 was all for nothing because that base is not ours, it's Cryptic's; and only Cryptic has the right to sell access to that base. I didn't know that every time I go to buy something from my base's fleet store; I had to ask Cryptic very nicely if I could pretty please, with sugar on top, can I please get that elite fleet shield... Because if I dare to use the perks that myself and others in my fleet have earned slaving away at that base without Cryptic's permission; I'm must be stealing from Cryptic right? And selling those perks means I must be in the same league as a gold seller right?

    You guys who think charging others to use a fleet base's store is unscrupulous are just coming off as being entitled twats who think that you should be able to enjoy the fruits of of others' labours without having to contribute anything in return. If you want the toys from a tier 5 base; make your own or pay for the privilege to do so; because that's what it is: a privilege which is being sold as a service.
  • tpalelenatpalelena Member Posts: 1 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    f2pdrakron wrote: »
    Its not a question of morality but rather intent, Fleets were not designed as shopping malls and you dont even own anything, you are "renting it" from Cryptic.

    Its a sub-rental but there are no mechanics in place, all the Fleets that charge access are doing is exploiting existing mechanics into serving a purpose they were not designed to do, Fleet Bank was not designed as a payment service and neither is the Player Trading system.

    Because the Fleet system was not designed so they can "rent" or "sell" there are no defense mechanics in place to protect people being being scammed, the entire system current in use is based on the good faith of the people selling or renting, its certainly not what Cryptic intended.

    It makes those people no different that Gold Sellers.

    That is right. Its really the best to join a friendly non profit fleet that simply promotes you after some time.
    Let us wear Swimsuits on Foundry maps or bridges please! I would pay zen for that.
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  • feefyfeefy Member Posts: 34 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    valoreah wrote: »
    That's true. If you feel otherwise, you may want to read the EULA again.

    Tsk, Tsk... Not going to get into the virtues of quoting one line of a response. But please, since you're bringing up the UELA; please tell what the rest of it says with respect to usage rights of ingame assets. Don't be shy now Mr. Lawyer; go ahead and enlighten us.
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  • feefyfeefy Member Posts: 34 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    f2pdrakron wrote: »
    You are not serious thinking you actually own anything in the game?

    You have a license to use those items, something that can be at any time be revoked and if you actually owned anything you would pay taxes of it, I think China does that because virtual goods can actually be owned and so taxed.

    This is why I said you dont own the Fleet holdings because you dont, I didnt want to say Cryptic renting it because thats not right either but thats the closest to it.

    Of course I don't think I own anything in the game; that is beyond ridiculous. But the suggestion being thrown around here is that because Cryptic owns everything in the game; selling access to a tier 5 fleet is akin to being a gold seller. That too is a ridiculous notion; as much as or even more so than thinking you actually own anything in the game.

    But let's go further and put this TRIBBLE to rest. So say I got a nice very rare mk xii console from the alien artifact doff mission or from placing 1st in a fleet action; some of which are going for around 40 million on the exchange last time I checked. Using this stupid notion that because Cryptic owns everything in the game; me selling that item on the exchange is also akin to being a gold seller. It would be the same for each and everything you would want to sell or trade to someone else in the game... because Cryptic owns it all of course.; and you somehow need their permission to do anything with it besides using it yourself.

    So really, stop trying to come up with silly notions on why you should just be able to walk into someone else's tier 5 fleet base and expect to just go to town on whatever you want in there; without having to contribute any of your EC, dilithium or time in that fleet. You want something for free because you think all it took was the 5 seconds to invite to the fleet map or to the fleet itself; ignoring all the prior work that it took to get that base to tier 5 in the first place. Entitled twats are what you are.
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  • feefyfeefy Member Posts: 34 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    f2pdrakron wrote: »
    I...
    f2pdrakron wrote: »
    ...am...
    f2pdrakron wrote: »
    ...an...
    f2pdrakron wrote: »
    ...e...
    f2pdrakron wrote: »
    nt...
    f2pdrakron wrote: »
    ...it...
    f2pdrakron wrote: »
    ...led...
    f2pdrakron wrote: »
    ...tw...
    f2pdrakron wrote: »
    ...at...

    See how that works? You wanna respond to something; don't take out one phrase or sentence.

    And you have a problem with real money in the game when people can buy zen for real money then buy keys or fleet ship modules and post them on the exchange; or outright sell their zen for dilithium. Are you serious?
  • feefyfeefy Member Posts: 34 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    valoreah wrote: »
    If I've already purchased everything I need from my fleet base, why not allow someone else to come and make use of it? What good are the provisions doing if no one uses them? If it helps someone else have fun, what do we care if they come and buy something? How does this make me or any of my fleetmates "entitled" exactly?

    Wow, how generous of you. Kindly post that you're offering access to your tier 5 fleet store for free in zone chat on ESD. Then come back here and tell us how long it took for your stockpile of provisions to get wiped out... If you're actually serious that is...
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