This bit of shenanigans deserves a Picard Double Face Palm. My goodness...
I've seen this kind of thing in other F2P games in the past. There gets to be a point where progression will greatly slow down, but you can speed things up by buying tokens or access to some special thing. In STO, I can see progression, i.e. rep and such, to greatly slow players by design on purpose to the point of a brick wall. But wait a minute! There's these tokens on sale that will remove those barriers that the developers have implemented, at least for this time!
Designing and implementing roadblocks and "allowing" players the opportunity to overcome these roadblocks by buying stuff all the time. As if timegating is bad enough.
if you thought gates and timers were long now. Wait and see, everything is going to take twice as long in the future.... but don't worry, just spend some zen and it will take half as long. This is all much cheaper and easier for them to nerf this then to make any quality content that players would be willing to pay for.
We are constantly being told that STO is doing amazing, that the player base is increasing year over year, and that 2013 was the best year yet. If that's the case, I can't fathom why they need to seek other avenues for monetization.
This is greed. It's incredibly transparent.
Did you honestly just say that? I can only assume you dont run a business with that mindset.
Businesses only grow by seeking new sources of revenue. No one goes, 'well we are earning enough money, no reason to try and earn more.' Microsoft or Apple did not become global giants by releasing one decent product and remain happy with it.
There is a massive difference between being greedy and being profitable. No one is forced to use these options. No one is forced to buy anything in this game. If the cooldown is doubled and we have to pay to get it back to what it was, that's being greedy. If cryptic used this money to buy themselves sports cars then they are being greedy. Giving people options in a game that they offer for free, and then put those profits back into expansions, star trek VO actors, free ships etc is not being greedy.
Personally I don't care about events or cooldowns. What I play depends on my mood and what I am planning to do. May it repeat an old mission, play a foundry mission or do some mining... if this connects to one of the events that's fine for me. If it doesn't it's fine to me as well.
I barely "earn" more than 3000 Dillithium during my usual playtime.
Congratz to Cryptic you are having great start of the year first you have fcked up anniversary and now you are bringing buying off the cooldowns of events, What is next ?
You are raising cooldowns on STF-s too ? to 3 hours ?
Cryptic motto for 2014 year....Monetize everything in the game!!! Suck them dry!!!
Guess this year i am walking around with my fly open on my pants.
Did you honestly just say that? I can only assume you dont run a business with that mindset.
Businesses only grow by seeking new sources of revenue. No one goes, 'well we are earning enough money, no reason to try and earn more.' Microsoft or Apple did not become global giants by releasing one decent product and remain happy with it.
There is a massive difference between being greedy and being profitable. No one is forced to use these options. No one is forced to buy anything in this game. If the cooldown is doubled and we have to pay to get it back to what it was, that's being greedy. If cryptic used this money to buy themselves sports cars then they are being greedy. Giving people options in a game that they offer for free, and then put those profits back into expansions, star trek VO actors, free ships etc is not being greedy.
True enough.
This is how life works people. If someone only plays a few hours per week because he has a demanding but profitable job, he might be willing to put extra bucks into cooldown reduction.
Don't get shocked because what's actually happening in real life suddenly gets thrown in a "free to play" game. You are free to believe in virtue but lights up, we live in a capitalism world.
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
"Starship captains are like children. They want everything right now and they want it their way. The secret is to give them what they need, not what they want."
- Scotty, to La Forge
As long as the current and future cool downs don't increase I don't have a problem with it.
The old models of MMOs was to cater to people who didn't work and could grind all day long. F2P model allows for people who want to play, but work 40+ hours a week the ability to be on the same level as the career grinder, so they can also enjoy the game when they play.
We already have P2P, P2W, P2Test and now introducing P2G pay to grind .
Just logon to Tribble and find they added new Daily reset marks with Zen sign attached.
Way to go PWE.
We already have P2P, P2W, P2Test and now introducing P2G pay to grind .
Just logon to Tribble and find they added new Daily reset marks with Zen sign attached.
Way to go PWE.
You're little late to the party. I suggest looking for a thread topic that fits what you have to say instead of smashing the "new thread" button everytime a thought enters your mind ! :P
Many will deny the statement I am about to make but, there is no P2P, P2W, or any of that stuff.
Nothing requires you to pay real money to do everything. If you needed real money to succeed, yea, it would be pay to win etc. You don't need real money though, so the terms are being in-accurately used.
This game is not a pay to win game the best consoles n boff are from the rep fleet base so its play to grind game if any thing if u wont C-store ships with there conspkes u can grind the dill n use the dil exchange
I have 2 options to get to work, I could take the regular highway that is moving at a crawl or I could take the less busy express toll highway and pay to get their faster. What is the difference for paying Zen to bypass the timers? Both are an option. As someone said earlier, this is more pay to hurry vs pay to win.
Many will deny the statement I am about to make but, there is no P2P, P2W, or any of that stuff.
Nothing requires you to pay real money to do everything. If you needed real money to succeed, yea, it would be pay to win etc. You don't need real money though, so the terms are being in-accurately used.
And that is how they get away with it. They make it available under limited, difficult circumstances, but AVAILABLE nonetheless. Paying money speeds the progression and makes the game easier. The grind, while targeted to both paying and non-paying players, is designed TRIBBLE incentive to shell out money for said progression.
This game IS pay-to-win. It's just done covertly and semi-subtly.
My Old Blog about things that could and should have been added when I wrote it. Not sure what I want to do with it now. I'll just keep it available now that most of it is outdated.
I have 2 options to get to work, I could take the regular highway that is moving at a crawl or I could take the less busy express toll highway and pay to get their faster. What is the difference for paying Zen to bypass the timers? Both are an option. As someone said earlier, this is more pay to hurry vs pay to win.
Sooo .... playing STO is work :P ?
Patch Notes : Resolved an Issue, where people would accidently experience Fun.
And that is how they get away with it. They make it available under limited, difficult circumstances, but AVAILABLE nonetheless. Paying money speeds the progression and makes the game easier. The grind, while targeted to both paying and non-paying players, is designed TRIBBLE incentive to shell out money for said progression.
This game IS pay-to-win. It's just done covertly and semi-subtly.
You realise that the grinds you refer to are all optional right?
And what exactly would you do in the game outside the grind ? Naughty RP on Drozana ?
Ugh I've seen that only once, it was enough to convince me to never ever do such a thing myself.
As for endgame I find that tangling in Ker'rat keeps my attention most, on top of foundry and doing little bits of this and that. Sure I'd do the odd mission for fleet marks to help it along but I'd never grind them out.
And that is how they get away with it. They make it available under limited, difficult circumstances, but AVAILABLE nonetheless. Paying money speeds the progression and makes the game easier. The grind, while targeted to both paying and non-paying players, is designed TRIBBLE incentive to shell out money for said progression.
This game IS pay-to-win. It's just done covertly and semi-subtly.
Pay-to-win is having to actually spend money to get something. No other choice. There is nothing like that here.
So their answer to the grind is to pay $ or grind even more for Dil to exchange whats next? donating Dil to a Dil mine to get a discount on Dil? oh yeah they already did that
I don't particularly mind it as long as it remains a nice option on the side. I've played other F2P games that do this but they make a mistake in the implementation. The majority of their content then comes largely in the form of dailies to sell more tokens. They also restrict dungeons to dailies as well.
If STO avoids doing that then it should be fine. If not, then it might be a problem.
Quite honestly? I don't mind this token as long as Cryptic doesn't change current (and future) mission rewards and timers.
I guess in the long run this change is mostly going to affect people with more time to spare, who up until now were willing to adjust their daily/game schedule to the event calendar.
In my case, as long as no other changes will be made then I really don't care that much. I'll still be playing certain missions whenever I want to, and at least with such daily I will be able to run it on all my alts any time I want, instead of logging in during particular hour just to run a few missions on as many characters as I can for the bonus.
And considering I barely play the game anymore anyway... Yeah, no biggie.
Plus, they've promissed they'll be holding weekend events, so it's not like they're cutting us off from bonus rewards completely.
I don't particularly mind it as long as it remains a nice option on the side. I've played other F2P games that do this but they make a mistake in the implementation. The majority of their content then comes largely in the form of dailies to sell more tokens. They also restrict dungeons to dailies as well.
If STO avoids doing that then it should be fine. If not, then it might be a problem.
Another area we looked at was the hourly event calendar. Our data showed that few of these events were being played often, and so we are re-envisioning the hourly events as weekend-long events with better rewards. You can expect the hourly calendar to disappear with Season 8.5, with the new events showing up on the main calendar. Additionally, a small selection of the existing hourly events are being turned into Daily missions ? we?ll provide more information on this soon.
You get the picture ?
Patch Notes : Resolved an Issue, where people would accidently experience Fun.
I think we need details on the implementation of this before we all retreat to the "DOOM!!!" thread.
Right now, the 3-hour bonus marks event, for example, provides extra marks for things like STFs. The STFs themselves still have a 60-minute cooldown. You can run them whenever you like, but you only get bonus marks during the active event. If this instead becomes a daily wrapper with a 20- or 24-hour cooldown, with the option to buy a token to remove this cooldown, I don't mind at all - as long as we can still run the STFs for standard marks with the normal 60-minute cooldown. That's the ticket. You want to put extra marks quicker behind a paywall? Fine. Just don't restrict my ability to get normal marks.
If we can only run STFs or other endgame content during that bonus time? That's UNSAT.
At the moment we only know of the Tour the Galaxy being turned into a daily, and possibly BONUS Mark event as well. For me personally it's not a big deal, really. We'll still be able to access all PvE queues any time we want, how many times we want, with the added benefit of running certain other missions without having to rely on the hourly event system.
If we can only run STFs or other endgame content during that bonus time? That's UNSAT.
I doubt that even the greediest company would implement this, considering it would strongly harm the community and their ability to play together. Certain missions would die off completely, and that's not something Cryptic wants at the moment.
Comments
I've seen this kind of thing in other F2P games in the past. There gets to be a point where progression will greatly slow down, but you can speed things up by buying tokens or access to some special thing. In STO, I can see progression, i.e. rep and such, to greatly slow players by design on purpose to the point of a brick wall. But wait a minute! There's these tokens on sale that will remove those barriers that the developers have implemented, at least for this time!
Designing and implementing roadblocks and "allowing" players the opportunity to overcome these roadblocks by buying stuff all the time. As if timegating is bad enough.
Yeah, I can see this getting ugly real quick.
I have only asked for people's thoughts on this, but since the option is already partly coded on tribble - cryptic is way ahead of me.
Well the "new" EP said he fancies the grind...
Did you honestly just say that? I can only assume you dont run a business with that mindset.
Businesses only grow by seeking new sources of revenue. No one goes, 'well we are earning enough money, no reason to try and earn more.' Microsoft or Apple did not become global giants by releasing one decent product and remain happy with it.
There is a massive difference between being greedy and being profitable. No one is forced to use these options. No one is forced to buy anything in this game. If the cooldown is doubled and we have to pay to get it back to what it was, that's being greedy. If cryptic used this money to buy themselves sports cars then they are being greedy. Giving people options in a game that they offer for free, and then put those profits back into expansions, star trek VO actors, free ships etc is not being greedy.
I barely "earn" more than 3000 Dillithium during my usual playtime.
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
You are raising cooldowns on STF-s too ? to 3 hours ?
Cryptic motto for 2014 year....Monetize everything in the game!!! Suck them dry!!!
Guess this year i am walking around with my fly open on my pants.
True enough.
This is how life works people. If someone only plays a few hours per week because he has a demanding but profitable job, he might be willing to put extra bucks into cooldown reduction.
Don't get shocked because what's actually happening in real life suddenly gets thrown in a "free to play" game. You are free to believe in virtue but lights up, we live in a capitalism world.
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
- Scotty, to La Forge
The old models of MMOs was to cater to people who didn't work and could grind all day long. F2P model allows for people who want to play, but work 40+ hours a week the ability to be on the same level as the career grinder, so they can also enjoy the game when they play.
Just logon to Tribble and find they added new Daily reset marks with Zen sign attached.
Way to go PWE.
You're little late to the party. I suggest looking for a thread topic that fits what you have to say instead of smashing the "new thread" button everytime a thought enters your mind ! :P
Nothing requires you to pay real money to do everything. If you needed real money to succeed, yea, it would be pay to win etc. You don't need real money though, so the terms are being in-accurately used.
And that is how they get away with it. They make it available under limited, difficult circumstances, but AVAILABLE nonetheless. Paying money speeds the progression and makes the game easier. The grind, while targeted to both paying and non-paying players, is designed TRIBBLE incentive to shell out money for said progression.
This game IS pay-to-win. It's just done covertly and semi-subtly.
Welcome back Stephan D'Angelo ... ... ... ... ...
Sooo .... playing STO is work :P ?
You realise that the grinds you refer to are all optional right?
And what exactly would you do in the game outside the grind ? Naughty RP on Drozana ?
Ugh I've seen that only once, it was enough to convince me to never ever do such a thing myself.
As for endgame I find that tangling in Ker'rat keeps my attention most, on top of foundry and doing little bits of this and that. Sure I'd do the odd mission for fleet marks to help it along but I'd never grind them out.
Is this a rhetorical question??
Pay-to-win is having to actually spend money to get something. No other choice. There is nothing like that here.
If STO avoids doing that then it should be fine. If not, then it might be a problem.
Mine Trap Supporter
I guess in the long run this change is mostly going to affect people with more time to spare, who up until now were willing to adjust their daily/game schedule to the event calendar.
In my case, as long as no other changes will be made then I really don't care that much. I'll still be playing certain missions whenever I want to, and at least with such daily I will be able to run it on all my alts any time I want, instead of logging in during particular hour just to run a few missions on as many characters as I can for the bonus.
And considering I barely play the game anymore anyway... Yeah, no biggie.
Plus, they've promissed they'll be holding weekend events, so it's not like they're cutting us off from bonus rewards completely.
You get the picture ?
Right now, the 3-hour bonus marks event, for example, provides extra marks for things like STFs. The STFs themselves still have a 60-minute cooldown. You can run them whenever you like, but you only get bonus marks during the active event. If this instead becomes a daily wrapper with a 20- or 24-hour cooldown, with the option to buy a token to remove this cooldown, I don't mind at all - as long as we can still run the STFs for standard marks with the normal 60-minute cooldown. That's the ticket. You want to put extra marks quicker behind a paywall? Fine. Just don't restrict my ability to get normal marks.
If we can only run STFs or other endgame content during that bonus time? That's UNSAT.
I doubt that even the greediest company would implement this, considering it would strongly harm the community and their ability to play together. Certain missions would die off completely, and that's not something Cryptic wants at the moment.