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Skill respec open letter
dahminus
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
To all concerning 500 zen respecs
Hello, my name is Dahm, forum personality that tries to help the community and let's emotions tie in here and there. I am writing this letter to have the developers reduce the needlessly high price of "respecing" ones character.
500 zen=5 dollars=75000 dilithium(150 exchange rate)=about 9 days of farming, for a necessity service is borderline scalping. There are multiple forms of content, just scraping the service...we have pve and pvp; both having space and ground elements. If you optimize for one, your hurting yourself in another. We also have human error; where one completes a build but misses some key skills that one could not do without, that could cost you another 5 dollars. Silver players that do not know anything about the game will always need a respec at 50.
We used to be able to spend expertise to do skill respecs, this was amazing, but as much as I could wish for it to revert back to this system, it won't ever happen. I can understand that this is a huge cash cow for you but please hear me out.
So, what I am requesting is a reduction in the cost of a skill respec. It would be phenomenal to us, the players, 100 zen would be going above and beyond what we would expect. Cutting it in half would still be a fantastic case of good will.
And, to leave this on a high note
Thanks for reading and I hope the community backs me on this.
Edit: Some annoying autocorrect mistakes and general update.
Generally good traction, wish the lookie lous would +1/-1 the thread for additional bumping/post counts/support.
Additional point: devs went on record to say that this service is not a big seller, reducing the cost has the very high potential of more people buying in, thus, higher revenue...a week sale of reduced cost may see what it's capable of (would have to factor out the "sale" effect though)
Hello, my name is Dahm, forum personality that tries to help the community and let's emotions tie in here and there. I am writing this letter to have the developers reduce the needlessly high price of "respecing" ones character.
500 zen=5 dollars=75000 dilithium(150 exchange rate)=about 9 days of farming, for a necessity service is borderline scalping. There are multiple forms of content, just scraping the service...we have pve and pvp; both having space and ground elements. If you optimize for one, your hurting yourself in another. We also have human error; where one completes a build but misses some key skills that one could not do without, that could cost you another 5 dollars. Silver players that do not know anything about the game will always need a respec at 50.
We used to be able to spend expertise to do skill respecs, this was amazing, but as much as I could wish for it to revert back to this system, it won't ever happen. I can understand that this is a huge cash cow for you but please hear me out.
So, what I am requesting is a reduction in the cost of a skill respec. It would be phenomenal to us, the players, 100 zen would be going above and beyond what we would expect. Cutting it in half would still be a fantastic case of good will.
And, to leave this on a high note
Thanks for reading and I hope the community backs me on this.
Edit: Some annoying autocorrect mistakes and general update.
Generally good traction, wish the lookie lous would +1/-1 the thread for additional bumping/post counts/support.
Additional point: devs went on record to say that this service is not a big seller, reducing the cost has the very high potential of more people buying in, thus, higher revenue...a week sale of reduced cost may see what it's capable of (would have to factor out the "sale" effect though)
Post edited by dahminus on
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I can get 500 zen in a few days, maybe less. Do you only have 1 toon?
After that one, I think 100 Zen is still a little high, but I would start buying them. The thing about the skill tree is that there are so many combinations that you can use for different type builds. Max DPS, healer, tank, etc. If the cost was more reasonable, then more players will be buying them so that they can experiment with them.
I believe that if some players that have 5 characters could get the respec for 100 Zen, then they would be more likely to buy them, than buying one at 500 Zen. If they wouldn't buy one at 500, but they would buy 5 for 500, then the company has made money, not lost it.
I would prefer 50 Zen, and think it is more reasonable. However, I would be good with 100. So far, the only one I bought was when they were on sale, and even then it felt like I was being scalped for it.
Devs have already mentioned that they were surprised at how badly respec tokens sold, considering how useful the service is.
Perhaps it has to do with it being sold at a ripoff price? Charge what it's actually worth, and maybe it'll actually sell. And no, the consumer decides what it's worth, not supplier.:P
And it never occurred to them that maybe if the game wasn't so faceroll-easy that one's "build" is almost completely irrelevant to 99% of the playerbase... :eek:
If you can make ppl buy these tokens at ripoff prices by calling them lazy, they would have sold, now wouldn't they?:D
On another note, I've heard ppl wanting to buy a cstore ship, but held off on it, because they don't want to get a token on every character. Bummer there.:P
Obviously doesn't pvp or push the limits in pve...
My PvE/PvP hybrid skill tree
...thus doesn't care about getting either little group (the PvPers or DPS-addicts) any discounts. Precisely.
Also, let us sell/trade respec tokens on the Exchange.
Don't be mean. Just because someone dug a hole and insist on entrenching themselves there, doesn't mean you're obligated to bury them in it.:P
Alternatively, an in-game way to buy respecs with dil at a fixed price, unconnected to the exchange, would be nice. 25k or 35k works for me.
Besides the 9ish refinements it takes to get there. The lose of 10~ million ecs or 2 pieces worth of dilithium for a rep ship equipment...zen services...list goes on
My PvE/PvP hybrid skill tree
Because Cryptic doesn't earn money on respecs that aren't selling, and ships that aren't selling because of respecs?:rolleyes:
Oh, I'm sure they find "But I don't waaaaaant toooooo" to be perfectly valid.
'Course walk in McDonalds, order a Big Mac, and see how far "But I don't waaaaaant tooooo pay for it" gets you.
Unless you light your cigars with 100 dollar notes, I don't see why you think that it's normal to spend 5 dollars on an imaginary item that is pretty much needed to everyone that creates their first character and reaches level 50 with the wrong stats.
Life is a harsh mistress. 5 bucks can be better spent elsewhere when you have kids
My PvE/PvP hybrid skill tree
As for the respec itself, there should be one free when you reach 50, no matter f2p or not. Then the price is fine.
How in the bloody hell could you afford to live on 9k a year? Supporting 3 other people...2k eye medicine is a fifth of the year...
I don't want to get into this, props for serving but damn...9k a year. I mean bills...are you American? do you have Obamacare?
Just dang...
My PvE/PvP hybrid skill tree
Totally understand where you are coming from. With current dilithium prices, 500 Z comes to about 76,500 refined dilithium right now. Almost 10 days worth of work. After playing lots and lots of other games over the years I personally believe this is too much and there are others who feel the same way, some posting in this thread. How much should a respec cost? It should vary by the players level with it costing a lvl 50 about 180,000 expertise. Just my 2 EC's.
Cryptic would make more $ if they reduced respecs to 250 Zen.
At 500 its just enough for me to mult spec my toons. By that I mean specing them so no matter what combo of weapons I use of if I jump from escort to sci to carrier and back... one spec is good enough.
At 250... I would min max a few more of my toons more often... 250 seems just cheap enough that I wouldn't sweet respecing more often. I would likely respec more then 2x more... and I think most people would play like I would. They would make more money.
so yeah atleast 1 free respec pls.
PS: but to be honest id like to see that we put skills in our ships instead of our captains.. graviton generators and such are no captain skills in my opinion...
How about providing 1 free token per month for gold members (and lifetime too) (either per account or per toon)?
As it is there is a very little incentive to subscribe monthly. But if you get a nice monthly perk (on top of zen) then it might start making sense. If they discounted the membership to $10 zen / month (3 month renewal) then you would get your money's worth from the free zen + respec. If you have several toons then it would be a super value. From Cryptic's perspective they aren't going to get the sales for the tokens anyways (mostly).
- Judge Aaron Satie
I was going to comment on this too. I am always shocked at how costly F2P games really are. I mean if you count up all the cool toys people buy ... ignoring lock-box. It is easily anywhere from 20 -> several hundred dollars over the lifetime of the player in game.
You can buy awesome / complete and relatively bug free games for 5-10 bucks. Charging someone 5 bucks to respec ... which btw could lead to other purchases ... is way too excessive. In the ideal case, I would like to see this cost eliminated completely and see it made into an EC cost. Every time you respec costs an escalating amount of EC. It is a nice sink too
That said, my previous proposal is a good compromise.
- Judge Aaron Satie
By this argument everything in this game is free. Free that is if your time isn't precious and you can devote hours to grinding dilithium ... instead of actually playing the game for fun. /Facepalm
- Judge Aaron Satie