All I've seen in the last year, is farmville-inspired grinding and a couple of missions that would probably have been done BETTER in Foundry.
Fundamental problem here: this is a captive audience (an IP based Monopoly market-there aren't any other Star Trek games out there), and unfortunately, PWE and Cryptic KNOW THIS.
If this game, in it's present condition released tomorrow without the Star Trek IP, it would flop hard.
Without the "STAR TREK" label, this game would make BSGO look profitable and active.
get it?
there is a whole lot of "Unfinished' in this game-it's barely-beta after three years, useability wise.
the fact that the content released is "grindy" doesn't mean it isn't time consuming to make it...if you ignore everything added to STO under PWE and in the last 2 years, i'm sure nothing i can say will change your opinion.
however, saying there is no worthwhile content is YOUR subjective view, not fact.
fyi: romulans, ofcourse that never happend for you too...
ALSO, the fact that the Star Trek franchise IS, and cannot be denied, the strongest argument for this game...however it is not the only one.
if cryptic had stayed with ATARI, we wouldn't be having this discussion right now, because STO would have shut down their servers already.
lets see take as long now to get content out as it did the year this game came out about 6 or so months back in the old day we got featured episode series and not one maybe 2 featured episode a year like we been getting
All I've seen in the last year, is farmville-inspired grinding and a couple of missions that would probably have been done BETTER in Foundry.
Fundamental problem here: this is a captive audience (an IP based Monopoly market-there aren't any other Star Trek games out there), and unfortunately, PWE and Cryptic KNOW THIS.
If this game, in it's present condition released tomorrow without the Star Trek IP, it would flop hard.
Without the "STAR TREK" label, this game would make BSGO look profitable and active.
get it?
there is a whole lot of "Unfinished' in this game-it's barely-beta after three years, useability wise.
Except that Atari-ran STO stop putting out content by Season 4. Besides the rep and event grinds (Which are content no matter what you think the term should actually mean), we got a lot of content from the PWE show. Personally, I do hate how the Dev's will outright lie at times (lied about f2p and LOR), pull content without any forewarnings, nearly zero story content, and the reluctance to touch other areas of the game that needs development (crafting, pvp, foundry, elder game content).
It is the only MMO that I actually enjoy coming back to on a daily basis, so they must be doing something right to keep my interest.
Like it or not, but Atari was killing the game. PWE saved it.
You can blame PWE for milking their customers, and that's true. But without them, we wouldn't be playing STO at all.
Honestly, I would actually rather see STO shut down and the license go to a company that would truly respect the IP and the Fans and above all deliver a quality game.
Or better yet, open up the playing field again for traditional Star Trek games like Bridge Commander, Elite Force, Armada, Starfleet Command etc.
To be honest, I'd take Atari over PWE any day.
Sure, Atari were bad, but at least they didn't try to milk the game any way they could.
It was not until PWE took over that the microtransaction fueled power creep began.
Prior to that, C-Store ships had always been balanced against normal in-game ships.
what?
atari actively tried to bankrupt cryptic, are you crazy?
PWE, as bad as they are, were the best thing that could have possibly happened to cryptic.
He doesn't care. STO isn't the type of game he likes. He said as much here. So in his mind Atari bankrupting Cryptic would have been a good thing.
its funny because, we would not get a new ST game like he wants(at least not one set in TNG/post-TNG era), if STO had flopped, it would probably cause CBS to give up on making games based on it for quite sometime(legacy was a flop too, no way they would take a third risk).
Notice how the ONLY way he could find a way for the game to flop if it was launched in its present condition was by removing the IP.
That's because he knows that the trekkies would have been deliriously happy if STO had launched in it's current condition as opposed to what we actually got back in 2010.
However, I can't blame people for feeling like they are being taken for granted with these insane prices. If F2P is profitable without the ships, then what is it now? Seems most of the content is being focused on new lockbox and C-store ships than actual playable content. Even if you took away the Dyson Sphere, how much of the endgame isn't the same content we had for years?
This is pretty much why people are so frustrated, there isn't really something to sink our teeth into and lasts for months or years.
What exactly is an insane price? A ship costing $25.00 is not an insane price. The ship is your character in space. Go to other MMOs and you will pay $20-$40.00 for a horse/mount - and all it does is allow you to travel faster. Even $50.00 for a 3-pack is not an insane price. This is especially true when you factor in that few people are actually paying the full retail price. Most people are using Dilithium and getting C-Store items at a discount. So the average player could be paying anywhere from 5,000 to 0 Zen for the 3-pack.
I will not disagree that all of the dozen MMOs I am currently playing need new content, but it is not as though we have not gotten new content over the last year. We have had 2 FEs. We got the Dyson Sphere and all its content. We got all the Romulan and Klingon missions, as well as new Tutorials for KDF and Feds - as well as the playable Federation content that came with LoR. When you look at just the last 365 days there has been a lot more content put into the game then you might like to give Cryptic credit for. And all of it has been free.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
What exactly is an insane price? A ship costing $25.00 is not an insane price. The ship is your character in space. Go to other MMOs and you will pay $20-$40.00 for a horse/mount - and all it does is allow you to travel faster. Even $50.00 for a 3-pack is not an insane price. This is especially true when you factor in that few people are actually paying the full retail price. Most people are using Dilithium and getting C-Store items at a discount. So the average player could be paying anywhere from 5,000 to 0 Zen for the 3-pack.
I will not disagree that all of the dozen MMOs I am currently playing need new content, but it is not as though we have not gotten new content over the last year. We have had 2 FEs. We got the Dyson Sphere and all its content. We got all the Romulan and Klingon missions, as well as new Tutorials for KDF and Feds - as well as the playable Federation content that came with LoR. When you look at just the last 365 days there has been a lot more content put into the game then you might like to give Cryptic credit for. And all of it has been free.
In some cases, the $25 mount doesn't let you go faster.
Content is something that takes a long time to produced and is consumed very quickly. Every MMO has to deal with this. One of things you do is add things to slow people down, and the question is what is the balance between extending content and making things take too long? (I would say that STO reps take too long.)
Plus people also tend to assume that if it's not content they are interested in, nothing has been added to the game.
I remember way back in the Beta how Atari didn't want to do squat for the Klingons, even after the game launched Klingons were what Romulans are now (I even will say worse than what Romulans are now).
I remember way back in the Beta how Atari didn't want to do squat for the Klingons, even after the game launched Klingons were what Romulans are now (I even will say worse than what Romulans are now).
I started playing back at the time you still needed to get a federation character to 25 if you wanted to start a klingon character. It was after story content was added they could do, so it wasn't just level via PvP. So Klingons are definitely in a better place than they were.
Restarted a klingon because I wanted to see the new story. Going to replay at some point for fun I think.
50.00 will buy a whole videogame! Yeah, it's a wee bit steep for a small part of a videogame, whether the fools who throw money away, believe it or not.
It is about perspective. You think you can buy a whole game for $50.00. Someone sees your post and thinks they can buy a week's worth of needed groceries rather then a new video game for $50.00. I blow $50.00 on a round of golf in the summer. It's all about individual perspective.
As I said, most games would require that expense for mundane items in their games. The prices you see in STO are industry-wide, not unique to Cryptic. At least STO gives you the ability to decrease your Zen costs via playing and using the Dilithium. People do not realize how cool and rare that is in most MMOs.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
It is about perspective. You think you can buy a whole game for $50.00. Someone sees your post and thinks they can buy a week's worth of needed groceries rather then a new video game for $50.00. I blow $50.00 on a round of golf in the summer. It's all about individual perspective.
As I said, most games would require that expense for mundane items in their games. The prices you see in STO are industry-wide, not unique to Cryptic. At least STO gives you the ability to decrease your Zen costs via playing and using the Dilithium. People do not realize how cool and rare that is in most MMOs.
I know you like to defend cryptic, but lets be honest here, $25.00 for a single virtual ship is a LOT, $50.00 is downright laughable, considering that is the price of an average game, perspective has nothing to do with it in the face of that, however it balances out on the fact you can get zen with dil, plus the fact, this game has enough whales due to being a star trek game, that the zen through the exchange is rather cheap, the dil exchange is pretty much what keeps the entire system from crashing.
and saying "most MMO don't do that" doesn't mean much, you can have most people doing something stupid, it doesn't keep it from being stupid, sturgeon's law is in full effect when it comes to MMO(it might arguably be rather optimistic considering), one would think trying to not be part of 90% would be least one should do right?
but anyway, i'm glad this game has enough whales to keep the game afloat and things cheap for average player.
I don't know what Cryptic was like under Atari, so I can't really comment on that, though lately I can't say that much has impressed me. Season 8 (as far as I'm concerned, and from what I have heard through game chat) is the least favoured season since launch. Whoever came up with the Season 8 idea needs to take a back seat to Season 9, cause frankly, the season didn't come through.
As per these Dyson ships. I haven't had any interest in them from day one. This latest bundle holds no interest for me either, and the way they're set up, it's almost like someone is trying to make money off a bad investment. A free ship which you must grind for, then a three pack in the C-Store also of which costs a substantial amount.
What gets me is that you've releases like this that (for the most part it seems) nobody cares about, yet you've got countless people (and some rather large topics on it) that desire a Galaxy Pack / Revamp. It baffles me that the Devs would seemingly ignore a plea from gamers for a ship they want (and would pay for) instead to release something that by all accounts isn't that favorable.
I know you like to defend cryptic, but lets be honest here, $25.00 for a single virtual ship is a LOT, $50.00 is downright laughable, considering that is the price of an average game, perspective has nothing to do with it in the face of that, however it balances out on the fact you can get zen with dil, plus the fact, this game has enough whales due to being a star trek game, that the zen through the exchange is rather cheap, the dil exchange is pretty much what keeps the entire system from crashing.
My point is that the industry as a whole has items in their various Stores at those prices. You think $25.00 for a ship is a lot, yet a Celestial Steed in WOW would cost you $25.00. A Mount in LotRO would cost you $20.00+. A ship is a thousand times more important in STO then a Steed or Mount is in LotRO or WOW. The ship is your entire character for over half of the gameplay. You are not paying $25.00 for a new engine to go faster. You are paying that price for an entirely new Character.
Hobbies are expensive. It does not matter if you are stamp collecting, a golfer, a console gamer, a computer gamer, or an avid theater buff. A person will drop $20.00 for a movie ticket and some popcorn and a drink for 90 minutes of entertainment but consider a $25.00 ship that they will use for hundreds of hours over priced. The human mind makes little sense at all.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
I don't know what Cryptic was like under Atari, so I can't really comment on that, though lately I can't say that much has impressed me. Season 8 (as far as I'm concerned, and from what I have heard through game chat) is the least favoured season since launch. Whoever came up with the Season 8 idea needs to take a back seat to Season 9, cause frankly, the season didn't come through.
As per these Dyson ships. I haven't had any interest in them from day one. This latest bundle holds no interest for me either, and the way they're set up, it's almost like someone is trying to make money off a bad investment. A free ship which you must grind for, then a three pack in the C-Store also of which costs a substantial amount.
What gets me is that you've releases like this that (for the most part it seems) nobody cares about, yet you've got countless people (and some rather large topics on it) that desire a Galaxy Pack / Revamp. It baffles me that the Devs would seemingly ignore a plea from gamers for a ship they want (and would pay for) instead to release something that by all accounts isn't that favorable.
you can't make money out of a revamp, and some folks would be pissed if they released a galaxy pack instead of fixing the galaxy(which is so simple, all they need to do is give it a boff layout identical to the d'deridex and 3 tac consoles on the fleet version instead of 5 eng ones).
My point is that the industry as a whole has items in their various Stores at those prices. You think $25.00 for a ship is a lot, yet a Celestial Steed in WOW would cost you $25.00. A Mount in LotRO would cost you $20.00+. A ship is a thousand times more important in STO then a Steed or Mount is in LotRO or WOW. The ship is your entire character for over half of the gameplay. You are not paying $25.00 for a new engine to go faster. You are paying that price for an entirely new Character.
Hobbies are expensive. It does not matter if you are stamp collecting, a golfer, a console gamer, a computer gamer, or an avid theater buff. A person will drop $20.00 for a movie ticket and some popcorn and a drink for 90 minutes of entertainment but consider a $25.00 ship that they will use for hundreds of hours over prices. The human mind makes little sense at all.
I have the lion which was the cataclysm equivalent of the celestial steed on WoW, which also costed $25,00, the main difference of something like that, is that it will remain useful forever, it doesn't matter how many expansions WoW gets, it will function like any other mount, while still looking cool(its a freaking stone lion with its mane on fire), there is no such thing in STO, a ship you bought today can be utterly useless in a few months/a year.
the mount is purely cosmetic, and because of that, it will remain useful(for its purpose) as long as the game exists, and guess what it sold well, but when you sell ships which are part of the game, you need to keep pumping better ships to actually sell them, since this is kind of crowd cryptic attracted(look at the bastion, which cryptic felt the need to make a utterly superior version in every way, the bulwark, because it wasn't selling that well).
also no, hobbies aren't expensive, SOME are(mostly because of how addiction works), and they don't need to be for everyone, i play dota 2 and i haven't spend a dime, others are perfectly ok with spending $1,000 and upwards, but guess what, thats ok, because it doesn't affect the game per se, STO has no such excuse.
so yeah, when you sell ships that might useless out of nowhere, $25.00 is a steep price, $50.00 even more so, but thankfully, we have whales to maintain the game.
you can't make money out of a revamp, and some folks would be pissed if they released a galaxy pack instead of fixing the galaxy(which is so simple, all they need to do is give it a boff layout identical to the d'deridex and 3 tac consoles on the fleet version instead of 5 eng ones).
Without the desire to turn this into a Galaxy Thread.
Some people (granted, likely a very few) might like the Galaxy how it is, and thus Cryptic changing the existing one would annoy players. I support your suggestion, but I think they need a new pack rather than a complete revamp; saving people who like the current setup any aggro. The Galaxy is (one of the) classic designs of Trek, yet I see so few of them.
Cryptic would make money if they sorted this out, cause more people would pay toward a more functional Galaxy. I'm one of those people. I'd even fork out an additional sum for the Venture Skin. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be on their soon to do agenda.
also no, hobbies aren't expensive, SOME are(mostly because of how addiction works), and they don't need to be for everyone, i play dota 2 and i haven't spend a dime, others are perfectly ok with spending $1,000 and upwards, but guess what, thats ok, because it doesn't affect the game per se, STO has no such excuse.
And at the exact same time since STO has gone FTP I have purchased every C-Store item I have wanted, as well as every Lobi item I wanted from the Exchange, and have not spent a dime of my own money.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
I can't even begin to guess how many thousands of dollars I've spent on my hobbies over the years. I've got collections of books, RPG's, music cd's, dvd's, CCG's, Boxes of miniatures, board games, comics, etc and I don'y regret a single purchase.
It really is a failure on how most people rationalize where they spend their money. I purchase 3 comic books a week for my children and spend $40.00 to $50.00 a month. My wife likes the Theater and so we try to go once a month: $80.00 to $150.00 per month for two tickets. I dropped $350.00 on a PS4 right before Christmas for the family, and another $250.00 on games - games that my children are already sick of playing. I can go on an on, like taking my family to the Movies once per month. Taking the family to a museum at least once per month, golfing in the summer 2-4 times per month.
We all spend hundreds to thousands per year on recreational activities - even if it is just gas driving the children out to see unusual things like State Parks and the like. $50.00 on a ship pack is a drop in the bucket if you are enjoying the game you are playing - especially when you get get it at a great discount, or free, simply by playing.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
have to go with PWE saved this game from Ataris miss management. Atari rushed the game out WAY too early, collected their monies and then dumped the game - PWE and it's F2P model is the only reason why we ever got bug fixes, new content, and still have a game to play on today.
Prior to the release of SimCity, I would point to STO as the worst major launch in history since E.T. (again another Atari blunder).
I started playing back at the time you still needed to get a federation character to 25 if you wanted to start a klingon character. It was after story content was added they could do, so it wasn't just level via PvP. So Klingons are definitely in a better place than they were.
Restarted a klingon because I wanted to see the new story. Going to replay at some point for fun I think.
In Season 3, it was level 8 required. Which I did.... and promptly decided that playing Fed was more fun. I didn't go back to playing KDF until after FtP.
I don't know what Cryptic was like under Atari, so I can't really comment on that, though lately I can't say that much has impressed me. Season 8 (as far as I'm concerned, and from what I have heard through game chat) is the least favoured season since launch. Whoever came up with the Season 8 idea needs to take a back seat to Season 9, cause frankly, the season didn't come through.
The worst season ever is euphemistically referred to as the "content drought". This was the period shortly before FtP where the game was faltering badly... Oh and yeah, this was during Atari's tenure.....
Is there an official Cryptic/PWE source for this statement? Or is this just another WAG? Seems like the latter to me.
It does not matter if it is 50.1%, a majority, or some other number. The fact remains that the option is there for 100% of the player-base to use at any time.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
I have been on STO since very beginning and its been a while since logging on. Whats population like? I liked Cryptics games in the past, hell I bought the lifetime thinking it would be killer and I don't even watch Star Trek. Is Cryptic part of Perfect World now? Please excuse the ignorance but I don't have the time to keep up on this stuff anymore. What pissed me off is they say I can not create a new post until some time passes. Cant they tell how long an account has been active and history of user posts? Anyway sorry for the rant there. Population there? thanks much.
The worst season ever is euphemistically referred to as the "content drought". This was the period shortly before FtP where the game was faltering badly... Oh and yeah, this was during Atari's tenure.....
Like I said, I wasn't around back then. I guess people forgot about the content drought, but then if the game model was undergoing a change, it's a valid reason for that drought.
As it stands, STO has a solid playerbase and Cryptic/PWE must have made a killing from people purchasing master keys for the lock boxes. Yet, it seems to be more and more not about what we would like but more about what they think is a good idea.
I could list a whole number of requests, by multiple people that have been asked for years, and these aren't simple impractical requests either, they're genuine practical ones, yet ignored for otherwise pointless material.
To be honest, I'd take Atari over PWE any day.
Sure, Atari were bad, but at least they didn't try to milk the game any way they could.
It was not until PWE took over that the microtransaction fueled power creep began.
Prior to that, C-Store ships had always been balanced against normal in-game ships.
I totally agree here. The money grabbing and all the grinding is PW's business model for all their games. But its even worse here because of the popular ip. It being the only game Star Trek fans have to play factors into it also. You can bet they will make a ton of money on the new Dyson ship bundles too. Don't be mad at the company be mad at the players willing to spend that kind of money here. They are the ones making it easy for PW to TRIBBLE us over.
Comments
the fact that the content released is "grindy" doesn't mean it isn't time consuming to make it...if you ignore everything added to STO under PWE and in the last 2 years, i'm sure nothing i can say will change your opinion.
however, saying there is no worthwhile content is YOUR subjective view, not fact.
fyi: romulans, ofcourse that never happend for you too...
ALSO, the fact that the Star Trek franchise IS, and cannot be denied, the strongest argument for this game...however it is not the only one.
if cryptic had stayed with ATARI, we wouldn't be having this discussion right now, because STO would have shut down their servers already.
system Lord Baal is dead
Except that Atari-ran STO stop putting out content by Season 4. Besides the rep and event grinds (Which are content no matter what you think the term should actually mean), we got a lot of content from the PWE show. Personally, I do hate how the Dev's will outright lie at times (lied about f2p and LOR), pull content without any forewarnings, nearly zero story content, and the reluctance to touch other areas of the game that needs development (crafting, pvp, foundry, elder game content).
It is the only MMO that I actually enjoy coming back to on a daily basis, so they must be doing something right to keep my interest.
Honestly, I would actually rather see STO shut down and the license go to a company that would truly respect the IP and the Fans and above all deliver a quality game.
Or better yet, open up the playing field again for traditional Star Trek games like Bridge Commander, Elite Force, Armada, Starfleet Command etc.
what?
atari actively tried to bankrupt cryptic, are you crazy?
PWE, as bad as they are, were the best thing that could have possibly happened to cryptic.
its funny because, we would not get a new ST game like he wants(at least not one set in TNG/post-TNG era), if STO had flopped, it would probably cause CBS to give up on making games based on it for quite sometime(legacy was a flop too, no way they would take a third risk).
That's not what he said.
I will not disagree that all of the dozen MMOs I am currently playing need new content, but it is not as though we have not gotten new content over the last year. We have had 2 FEs. We got the Dyson Sphere and all its content. We got all the Romulan and Klingon missions, as well as new Tutorials for KDF and Feds - as well as the playable Federation content that came with LoR. When you look at just the last 365 days there has been a lot more content put into the game then you might like to give Cryptic credit for. And all of it has been free.
Content is something that takes a long time to produced and is consumed very quickly. Every MMO has to deal with this. One of things you do is add things to slow people down, and the question is what is the balance between extending content and making things take too long? (I would say that STO reps take too long.)
Plus people also tend to assume that if it's not content they are interested in, nothing has been added to the game.
Restarted a klingon because I wanted to see the new story. Going to replay at some point for fun I think.
As I said, most games would require that expense for mundane items in their games. The prices you see in STO are industry-wide, not unique to Cryptic. At least STO gives you the ability to decrease your Zen costs via playing and using the Dilithium. People do not realize how cool and rare that is in most MMOs.
I know you like to defend cryptic, but lets be honest here, $25.00 for a single virtual ship is a LOT, $50.00 is downright laughable, considering that is the price of an average game, perspective has nothing to do with it in the face of that, however it balances out on the fact you can get zen with dil, plus the fact, this game has enough whales due to being a star trek game, that the zen through the exchange is rather cheap, the dil exchange is pretty much what keeps the entire system from crashing.
and saying "most MMO don't do that" doesn't mean much, you can have most people doing something stupid, it doesn't keep it from being stupid, sturgeon's law is in full effect when it comes to MMO(it might arguably be rather optimistic considering), one would think trying to not be part of 90% would be least one should do right?
but anyway, i'm glad this game has enough whales to keep the game afloat and things cheap for average player.
As per these Dyson ships. I haven't had any interest in them from day one. This latest bundle holds no interest for me either, and the way they're set up, it's almost like someone is trying to make money off a bad investment. A free ship which you must grind for, then a three pack in the C-Store also of which costs a substantial amount.
What gets me is that you've releases like this that (for the most part it seems) nobody cares about, yet you've got countless people (and some rather large topics on it) that desire a Galaxy Pack / Revamp. It baffles me that the Devs would seemingly ignore a plea from gamers for a ship they want (and would pay for) instead to release something that by all accounts isn't that favorable.
Hobbies are expensive. It does not matter if you are stamp collecting, a golfer, a console gamer, a computer gamer, or an avid theater buff. A person will drop $20.00 for a movie ticket and some popcorn and a drink for 90 minutes of entertainment but consider a $25.00 ship that they will use for hundreds of hours over priced. The human mind makes little sense at all.
you can't make money out of a revamp, and some folks would be pissed if they released a galaxy pack instead of fixing the galaxy(which is so simple, all they need to do is give it a boff layout identical to the d'deridex and 3 tac consoles on the fleet version instead of 5 eng ones).
I have the lion which was the cataclysm equivalent of the celestial steed on WoW, which also costed $25,00, the main difference of something like that, is that it will remain useful forever, it doesn't matter how many expansions WoW gets, it will function like any other mount, while still looking cool(its a freaking stone lion with its mane on fire), there is no such thing in STO, a ship you bought today can be utterly useless in a few months/a year.
the mount is purely cosmetic, and because of that, it will remain useful(for its purpose) as long as the game exists, and guess what it sold well, but when you sell ships which are part of the game, you need to keep pumping better ships to actually sell them, since this is kind of crowd cryptic attracted(look at the bastion, which cryptic felt the need to make a utterly superior version in every way, the bulwark, because it wasn't selling that well).
also no, hobbies aren't expensive, SOME are(mostly because of how addiction works), and they don't need to be for everyone, i play dota 2 and i haven't spend a dime, others are perfectly ok with spending $1,000 and upwards, but guess what, thats ok, because it doesn't affect the game per se, STO has no such excuse.
so yeah, when you sell ships that might useless out of nowhere, $25.00 is a steep price, $50.00 even more so, but thankfully, we have whales to maintain the game.
Some people (granted, likely a very few) might like the Galaxy how it is, and thus Cryptic changing the existing one would annoy players. I support your suggestion, but I think they need a new pack rather than a complete revamp; saving people who like the current setup any aggro. The Galaxy is (one of the) classic designs of Trek, yet I see so few of them.
Cryptic would make money if they sorted this out, cause more people would pay toward a more functional Galaxy. I'm one of those people. I'd even fork out an additional sum for the Venture Skin. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be on their soon to do agenda.
We all spend hundreds to thousands per year on recreational activities - even if it is just gas driving the children out to see unusual things like State Parks and the like. $50.00 on a ship pack is a drop in the bucket if you are enjoying the game you are playing - especially when you get get it at a great discount, or free, simply by playing.
Prior to the release of SimCity, I would point to STO as the worst major launch in history since E.T. (again another Atari blunder).
Me playing UT2k4 (red guy) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz0DnP7wXnU
My character Tsin'xing
My character Tsin'xing
As it stands, STO has a solid playerbase and Cryptic/PWE must have made a killing from people purchasing master keys for the lock boxes. Yet, it seems to be more and more not about what we would like but more about what they think is a good idea.
I could list a whole number of requests, by multiple people that have been asked for years, and these aren't simple impractical requests either, they're genuine practical ones, yet ignored for otherwise pointless material.
I totally agree here. The money grabbing and all the grinding is PW's business model for all their games. But its even worse here because of the popular ip. It being the only game Star Trek fans have to play factors into it also. You can bet they will make a ton of money on the new Dyson ship bundles too. Don't be mad at the company be mad at the players willing to spend that kind of money here. They are the ones making it easy for PW to TRIBBLE us over.