I already corrected defined it as You Pay So I Can Win. The Payee doesn't automatically become the Winner, but there will always be a Winner due to the Payee.
I'm trying to formulate this in a way it doesn't sound insulting. I mean no disrespect by this, but I think you are looking at this from a singular dimension while it is multi-dimensional. Consider the P2Winner's dimension for moment -- he also gets what he wants. What is really happening behind all the technicalities is that he is buying your time and you are working for his money. And when you factor PWE into the equation and look at the flow of rewards, the flow all seems to go to the P2Winner; meaning that if at any time the majority of the P2W players decides he doesn't want what you're selling, well, you'll find yourself up that famous creek.
Now, when you break this down into what it simply is, sure you benefit from someone paying to win, but they are ultimately paying to win, while they also pay you to win as well if they find what you're selling to be valuable. However the more lobi items added to the game, the more cstore ships, etc, the less valuable your labor becomes. It is simply supply and demand where the P2W player holds the power of both.
Keep in mind from that model that the free player and p2w player can be the same person effectively doubling their assets.
Said NO to Arc. Gets punished by not being given a free outfit, free lobi, and free shuttle. Now forced to use Arc's site when trying to get to STO site. Still not rewards for beta testing the Arc website by force. Bravo Cryptic.
I played this game for most of a year before I figured this out. Luckily I didn't lose much. 'cause I don't spend time earning large wads of EC. I kept wondering how I ended up with exactly 10 million EC. The first time I thought, "Wow, what a coincidence, kinda like spending exactly $100 at the grocery store." Then when it happened again I started digging and found the EC cap.
So yeah, I can somewhat empathize - it isn't exactly marked out in neon letters or anything.
Hang on, if you're a gold subscriber don't you keep the unlocks like the EC cap when your sub lapses to silver?
No, the EC cap does not remain unlocked when you downgrade your subscription status. You must purchase the EC cap removal separately. However, the Einsteins at Cryptic decided to block the player from making that purchase while the account status is Gold. You can't pre-purchase the cap unlock while your account is Gold so that it will already be in-place if you ever switch to Silver.
I know, it seems to be a double edged sword. From sheer observation it would seem, however, that most of the players in STO are "bling" oriented regardless whether that bling has stats or not. The mere fact that you would see a vesta running around with all 3 consoles or an oddesy running around with all three consoles seems to indicate that this observation may have some sustenance to it.
My suggestion would be to PWE is to move toward marketing the bling with no/little/gimmick stats while phasing out and purging the game of pay-to-win.
The problem with most F2P models isn't that it's free, its that the game has to be really gooood to compel a player to pay. STO has had how many awards (pure curiosity as I can't find any with a quick search)? This would seem that players are not playing because the game is awesome, they're playing for other reasons, and being that player that is likely playing for the very reason, I can state with certainty it is a love of Star Trek itself and being able to make my own Star Trek story to a degree.
Back to the problem -- these F2P MMO's seem to get the wrong idea that somehow not investing in doubling the content of the game and improving existing will not somehow incite more free players to pay, they instead resort to pay-to-win which has a dire effect: while some players participate and are content, other players are emotionally and adversely effected (they are defiant to a unsportsman-like model of equal and fair playing fields). This leads to "quits", while we pick on them and go "can I have your gear", the sad thing is, that's another inch of the tale this serpent just consumed. Look at CoH again -- from what I remember, and its been a while, they were already on that rocky road of people doing the "I quits!". The wiki article here really hits the nail on the head, the same nail I'm driving right now -- and that is, everyone has different sized wallets, while pay-2-winners can pay to win, they will be happy, but as new pay-to-win items are added and they feel they can no longer to pay-to-win on their budget, they will quit statistically speaking.
This goes back to the serpent analogy again -- for every inch the serpent consumes, sure, it feeds itself, it sustains itself, but there is a point in the very near future, where there is no more the serpent can consume or the heart of the serpent becomes consumed causing sudden death. It is this point, same that happened to CoH people sit back and go "WTH just happened!?!" -- the serpent ran out of his own self to consume -- that's what happened.
They should have never given me (for free or a 8 hour time investment) a flying ice-dragon/drake to ride as a paladin :P Just say'n -- I have no reason to ever buy another mount in that game lol.
Id say what hurt CoH wasn't the f2p model per say, theirs was one of the best going in ones around, unlike champions. You kept what you already had, and free players got access to tons of the content right out of the box. However some power sets, and tons of new costume parts were being made pay only items.
This is were I think the backlash kicked in, not the power sets per say, but the costumes. thats what many people played for, and when suddenly the new ones weren't free, and some were locked behind time paid gates, well, it ruffled a lot of feathers.
I played this game for most of a year before I figured this out. Luckily I didn't lose much. 'cause I don't spend time earning large wads of EC. I kept wondering how I ended up with exactly 10 million EC. The first time I thought, "Wow, what a coincidence, kinda like spending exactly $100 at the grocery store." Then when it happened again I started digging and found the EC cap.
So yeah, I can somewhat empathize - it isn't exactly marked out in neon letters or anything.
We have an account bank for EC? Wow, wish I'd known about *that* trick before I paid for the zen upgrade.
Yeah, don't let that poster fool you, you still wouldn't be able to buy anything higher than 10mil ec anyways which is basically anything that would be worth buying from the exchange :P
Said NO to Arc. Gets punished by not being given a free outfit, free lobi, and free shuttle. Now forced to use Arc's site when trying to get to STO site. Still not rewards for beta testing the Arc website by force. Bravo Cryptic.
Id say what hurt CoH wasn't the f2p model per say, theirs was one of the best going in ones around, unlike champions. You kept what you already had, and free players got access to tons of the content right out of the box. However some power sets, and tons of new costume parts were being made pay only items.
This is were I think the backlash kicked in, not the power sets per say, but the costumes. thats what many people played for, and when suddenly the new ones weren't free, and some were locked behind time paid gates, well, it ruffled a lot of feathers.
Yeah, there is no surprise there, they took something that was normally earned and made it paid.
Said NO to Arc. Gets punished by not being given a free outfit, free lobi, and free shuttle. Now forced to use Arc's site when trying to get to STO site. Still not rewards for beta testing the Arc website by force. Bravo Cryptic.
Yeah, don't let that poster fool you, you still wouldn't be able to buy anything higher than 10mil ec anyways which is basically anything that would be worth buying from the exchange :P
I forgot to mention that, but yhea your still locked to 10 mill that you can spend in any one shot, but it does give you a way to protect, or gain over 10 mill.
its really handy if your transitioning from pay to free and have over 10 mill on chars.
What, there are Vestas running around with all three of their 3 pack consoles AND an AMS console! No...never.....not over here.....
Yeah, Im JUST here for the Star Trek. Not to be a big shot in an MMO. This is my first and still only MMO. When STO went F2P, giving me the chance to play for free as I wait years and months for actual story content, I just laughed and said Ok. I kept subbing for a little while longer, but when it became clear story content was on their backburner all the time, I stopped subsidizing their laziness. They could have had much more money out of me being a subscriber all this time playing story content no longer than 2 months drought.
Yes, and that's my point. Those items could grant more survivability by adding non-TRIBBLE consoles such as shield emitter consoles, RCS or Neutronium consoles and tactical consoles for weapons (I know its up for debate, but just saying what the guides are stating).
With that said, and while its not really your fault for paying to win, but for every transaction you and everyone else makes, the more you fuel justification for PWE to expand on and continue this model. As gstamo01 said, it would be like you volunteering to rub your grandmother's feet to stop at this point which is the harsh reality of the situation which is why I believe this is in an uncontrolled chain reaction.
Said NO to Arc. Gets punished by not being given a free outfit, free lobi, and free shuttle. Now forced to use Arc's site when trying to get to STO site. Still not rewards for beta testing the Arc website by force. Bravo Cryptic.
You only have gold perks as long as you sub, the minute you revert to silver all the limitations kick in.. My suggestion.. Don't Sub.. buy LTS instead.. Bigger drop in the bucket, but you won't have to worry about reverting to silver.. ever.
That's simply wrong, The only thing that gets removed is the EC cap. Everything else (ship, slots, boff slots, bank space, inventory slots, respec tokens, account bank etc...) you get to keep when returning to silver.
Ontopic:
While the OPs problem could have been prevented, they way Cryptic is handling it simply sucks. Almost every mmo out there with a ingame currency cap has some sort of failsafe in place. Weather it'd be a warning pop-up, getting the credits via the mail-system and not able to pick it up if it overcaps, or some sort of overflow bag/account.
If not, then most of the time they're at least customer-friendly enough to reimburse players who made a mistake after they purchased the credit cap increase, if the money was eaten by the system.
But it seems that Cryptic/PWE customer support is just as ****ty as a large part of it's community as can be seen again and again in responses to threads like this.
That's simply wrong, The only thing that gets removed is the EC cap. Everything else (ship, slots, boff slots, bank space, inventory slots, respec tokens, account bank etc...) you get to keep when returning to silver.
Ontopic:
While the OPs problem could have been prevented, they way Cryptic is handling it simply sucks. Almost every mmo out there with a ingame currency cap has some sort of failsafe in place. Weather it'd be a warning pop-up, getting the credits via the mail-system and not able to pick it up if it overcaps, or some sort of overflow bag/account.
If not, then most of the time they're at least customer-friendly enough to reimburse players who made a mistake after they purchased the credit cap increase, if the money was eaten by the system.
But it seems that Cryptic/PWE customer support is just as ****ty as a large part of it's community as can be seen again and again in responses to threads like this.
well some of us are nicer then others about it, but ultimately this is a buyer beware style scenario.
the OP could have done a little research, used methods to get their full amount. so its on them that they lost the money.
But yes, its not a good system, there should be a over flow, escrow, it should get dumped to account bank, something should happen, but it doesn't, and building a better more player friendly/forgiving system is something we can pin on cryptic
I think that in this case STO should copy what DCUO does with their money cap. Well, to an extent anyway.
What they do is that when a F2P player hits the money cap on their character, any money over the limit gets placed into an "escrow account". The money in the escrow account cannot be accessed or used until the player either pays for access to it or subs.
For STO though, they can just have the EC be placed into the escrow account until they either sub or buy the account cap expansion. That way the money can't be used past the cap, but isn't lost when you go over it.
Oh and you do lose the EC cap if you drop from Gold to Silver. I dropped my sub when the game went F2P for a while and my cap went down to the 10 mil. It wasn't until I got my LTS that the cap was set back to the 1 bil.
I asked this EXACT QUESTION last week in the "Come here if you have a Q" thread before I sold them because I was actually aware of the 10M EC limit... It was answered affirmatively... I kept 5 keys, sold 5, made just a hair over 9Mil EC... And I can either use the other keys for lockboxes or sell the when "the goin' gets tough"...
"Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure science." - Edwin Hubble
I rarely saw anyone complain about the costumes being for sale because we almost always paid for new costumes. Only on rare occasions was a new costume set added for free.
However I did see lots of nerdrage over
The price of the non combat pets
The gamble packs which had a lot better odds of getting the rare stuff than our lockboxes
The vet rewards being put up for sale. The irony being that the losers complaining about having to pay for the vet rewards were the same losers that spent years complaining that they couldn't buy the vet rewards and had to wait for them to unlock.
That the temp travel powers deactivated all other powers and couldn't be used in combat
No super vehicles
oh and the always popular "merge da servers!"
might just be when I was on and the sever but most of the complaints I saw, and I did see some of those about things like vet rewards, were how all the new costume stuff was pay to get, and some complaints about at's and paying for them, but then virtue was the "unofficial" rp server
I have to say, I'm with the OP here. Yes, research would have kept him from going over the cap, but if there is going to be an in-game cap, there should be a mechanism in place to stop you from going over - a hard cap, to keep you from wasting real $$$.
__________________________________
STO Forum member since before February 2010. STO Academy's excellent skill planner here: Link I actually avoid success entirely. It doesn't get me what I want, and the consequences for failure are slim. -- markhawman
The biggest complaint I saw in the game was from the gaggle of leechers that would gather around Ms. Liberty and spam for team invites when there was nearly always enough of them standing there to form 2-3 full 8 man teams. :P
Oh and Virtue and Freedom were the two servers most likely to get new players who were unfamiliar with the games history because the new people flocked to the most populated servers.
nobody ever wants to make a team, only join, its a not wanting leadership and responsibility thing
So the extra cash you earn past the 10 million cap are simply gone, even if you unlock that currency cap? If that's the case, I find it more depressing than most of the replies in this topic.
That's simply wrong, The only thing that gets removed is the EC cap. Everything else (ship, slots, boff slots, bank space, inventory slots, respec tokens, account bank etc...) you get to keep when returning to silver.
.....
Almost correct. You also lose a empty character slot. ('Gold' accounts start with 3, 'Silver' accounts have 2) Now as long as you don't have a empty character slot, you won't notice this, but the moment you do....
Almost correct. You also lose a empty character slot. ('Gold' accounts start with 3, 'Silver' accounts have 2) Now as long as you don't have a empty character slot, you won't notice this, but the moment you do....
Golds start with 4, Silvers start with 3. +1 for LOR
Unlike a lot of the smug responders who would like to imply they were born knowing everything, I can easily imagine someone not catching the memo of something relatively obscure like the credit cap for a freebie account. As a lifer, I frankly had no idea because it wasn't pertinent to my own game experience so I can imagine a lot of people missing this too.
But then again, people on the internet love to be condescending and pretend they know everything.
First thing in a F2P MMO to check is money caps and how to remove the cap, second is storage limits and systems. First thing to take care of is money caps, second is storage issues. Thats how I deal with F2P, first thing I did on my account was get rid of the EC cap followed by the account bank.
If you are a silver player those 2 things should be taken care of right away so mistakes like that are avoided.
Join Date: Nobody cares.
"I'm drunk, whats your excuse for being an idiot?" - Unknown drunk man. :eek:
The zen you wasted would have bought you the EC cap
Yes, this is exactly what i did. Anyway, if OP took a bit time to move the cursor on the energy credit at their inventory that would have shown the limit...
They should have taught this in Starfleet academy before handing over the ship.
A popup something like:
"Congratulations cadet. You have graduated from academy and head to the places where many men have gone before you. Now, as you are a silver, do you understand and acknowledge that:
(checkbox) you are limited to x toons
(checkbox) you are limited to x EC
(checkbox) you are limited to x dil
If you comply the following then punch the trottle."
KDF doesn't need such instructions because it is simply encoded in our warrior DNA
Grinding for MkIV epic gear?
Ain't Nobody Got Time for That
Everyone makes mistakes. What's important is learning from them. You weren't paying attention and lost money as a result. Next time you'll know better. Blaming the game for not holding your hand through everything is not constructive.
I've never played a game that warned you about reaching the money cap. At least STO tells you what it is, usually you find out by hitting it or reading about it on the internet.
Altough from a sales point of view, it might be worth throwing a pop-up asking if you want to buy the upgrade when you hit the cap. But only the first time. Because it would get mighty annoying if you said no and it just kept bugging you all the time.
Comments
I'm trying to formulate this in a way it doesn't sound insulting. I mean no disrespect by this, but I think you are looking at this from a singular dimension while it is multi-dimensional. Consider the P2Winner's dimension for moment -- he also gets what he wants. What is really happening behind all the technicalities is that he is buying your time and you are working for his money. And when you factor PWE into the equation and look at the flow of rewards, the flow all seems to go to the P2Winner; meaning that if at any time the majority of the P2W players decides he doesn't want what you're selling, well, you'll find yourself up that famous creek.
Now, when you break this down into what it simply is, sure you benefit from someone paying to win, but they are ultimately paying to win, while they also pay you to win as well if they find what you're selling to be valuable. However the more lobi items added to the game, the more cstore ships, etc, the less valuable your labor becomes. It is simply supply and demand where the P2W player holds the power of both.
http://s17.postimg.org/e09ewdxzz/pay_to_win_model.jpg
Keep in mind from that model that the free player and p2w player can be the same person effectively doubling their assets.
So yeah, I can somewhat empathize - it isn't exactly marked out in neon letters or anything.
We have an account bank for EC? Wow, wish I'd known about *that* trick before I paid for the zen upgrade.
--Red Annorax
Id say what hurt CoH wasn't the f2p model per say, theirs was one of the best going in ones around, unlike champions. You kept what you already had, and free players got access to tons of the content right out of the box. However some power sets, and tons of new costume parts were being made pay only items.
This is were I think the backlash kicked in, not the power sets per say, but the costumes. thats what many people played for, and when suddenly the new ones weren't free, and some were locked behind time paid gates, well, it ruffled a lot of feathers.
Yeah, don't let that poster fool you, you still wouldn't be able to buy anything higher than 10mil ec anyways which is basically anything that would be worth buying from the exchange :P
Yeah, there is no surprise there, they took something that was normally earned and made it paid.
I forgot to mention that, but yhea your still locked to 10 mill that you can spend in any one shot, but it does give you a way to protect, or gain over 10 mill.
its really handy if your transitioning from pay to free and have over 10 mill on chars.
Yes, and that's my point. Those items could grant more survivability by adding non-TRIBBLE consoles such as shield emitter consoles, RCS or Neutronium consoles and tactical consoles for weapons (I know its up for debate, but just saying what the guides are stating).
With that said, and while its not really your fault for paying to win, but for every transaction you and everyone else makes, the more you fuel justification for PWE to expand on and continue this model. As gstamo01 said, it would be like you volunteering to rub your grandmother's feet to stop at this point which is the harsh reality of the situation which is why I believe this is in an uncontrolled chain reaction.
http://sto.perfectworld.com/about/freetoplay/features-matrix
I have canceled sub at times also but read that first and got the unlock.
That's simply wrong, The only thing that gets removed is the EC cap. Everything else (ship, slots, boff slots, bank space, inventory slots, respec tokens, account bank etc...) you get to keep when returning to silver.
Ontopic:
While the OPs problem could have been prevented, they way Cryptic is handling it simply sucks. Almost every mmo out there with a ingame currency cap has some sort of failsafe in place. Weather it'd be a warning pop-up, getting the credits via the mail-system and not able to pick it up if it overcaps, or some sort of overflow bag/account.
If not, then most of the time they're at least customer-friendly enough to reimburse players who made a mistake after they purchased the credit cap increase, if the money was eaten by the system.
But it seems that Cryptic/PWE customer support is just as ****ty as a large part of it's community as can be seen again and again in responses to threads like this.
well some of us are nicer then others about it, but ultimately this is a buyer beware style scenario.
the OP could have done a little research, used methods to get their full amount. so its on them that they lost the money.
But yes, its not a good system, there should be a over flow, escrow, it should get dumped to account bank, something should happen, but it doesn't, and building a better more player friendly/forgiving system is something we can pin on cryptic
What they do is that when a F2P player hits the money cap on their character, any money over the limit gets placed into an "escrow account". The money in the escrow account cannot be accessed or used until the player either pays for access to it or subs.
For STO though, they can just have the EC be placed into the escrow account until they either sub or buy the account cap expansion. That way the money can't be used past the cap, but isn't lost when you go over it.
Oh and you do lose the EC cap if you drop from Gold to Silver. I dropped my sub when the game went F2P for a while and my cap went down to the 10 mil. It wasn't until I got my LTS that the cap was set back to the 1 bil.
Mine Trap Supporter
I asked this EXACT QUESTION last week in the "Come here if you have a Q" thread before I sold them because I was actually aware of the 10M EC limit... It was answered affirmatively... I kept 5 keys, sold 5, made just a hair over 9Mil EC... And I can either use the other keys for lockboxes or sell the when "the goin' gets tough"...
might just be when I was on and the sever but most of the complaints I saw, and I did see some of those about things like vet rewards, were how all the new costume stuff was pay to get, and some complaints about at's and paying for them, but then virtue was the "unofficial" rp server
STO Forum member since before February 2010.
STO Academy's excellent skill planner here: Link
I actually avoid success entirely. It doesn't get me what I want, and the consequences for failure are slim. -- markhawman
nobody ever wants to make a team, only join, its a not wanting leadership and responsibility thing
Almost correct. You also lose a empty character slot. ('Gold' accounts start with 3, 'Silver' accounts have 2) Now as long as you don't have a empty character slot, you won't notice this, but the moment you do....
Golds start with 4, Silvers start with 3. +1 for LOR
Unlike a lot of the smug responders who would like to imply they were born knowing everything, I can easily imagine someone not catching the memo of something relatively obscure like the credit cap for a freebie account. As a lifer, I frankly had no idea because it wasn't pertinent to my own game experience so I can imagine a lot of people missing this too.
But then again, people on the internet love to be condescending and pretend they know everything.
If you are a silver player those 2 things should be taken care of right away so mistakes like that are avoided.
"I'm drunk, whats your excuse for being an idiot?" - Unknown drunk man. :eek:
the irony!
http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/10052253
Why are you not rejoicing?
Yes, this is exactly what i did. Anyway, if OP took a bit time to move the cursor on the energy credit at their inventory that would have shown the limit...
THIS 100%. That and PWE. It is just common mmorpg community knowledge. YOu do not come here unless you open wallet and shut brain.
A popup something like:
"Congratulations cadet. You have graduated from academy and head to the places where many men have gone before you. Now, as you are a silver, do you understand and acknowledge that:
(checkbox) you are limited to x toons
(checkbox) you are limited to x EC
(checkbox) you are limited to x dil
If you comply the following then punch the trottle."
KDF doesn't need such instructions because it is simply encoded in our warrior DNA
Ain't Nobody Got Time for That
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
I've never played a game that warned you about reaching the money cap. At least STO tells you what it is, usually you find out by hitting it or reading about it on the internet.
Altough from a sales point of view, it might be worth throwing a pop-up asking if you want to buy the upgrade when you hit the cap. But only the first time. Because it would get mighty annoying if you said no and it just kept bugging you all the time.