Just running off my stipend now. I used to pick up a 25 dollar PWE every payday when I first started playing. I stopped about a year ago, when I started suffering buyer's remorse with most of the ships I started collecting.
But that doesn't take into account that my proportional spending on this game has pretty much dropped with every "update" since the game went F2P.
I used to spend $100-$150+ each month.
Now it's never more than $80 or $90 dollars, and usually closer to $45-$50.
I've bought just about every Fed ship in the C-Store plus a couple of the Klingons ones and several of the Romulan ones.
I have all the vanity items and clothing in the C-Store and all the Fed Bridges.
I don't play my Klingon very often so I only have a couple of their bridges.
Mainly now I buy keys, because I like most of the goodies from the Lockboxes and I have a large collection of all of the different ones in my Fleet Bank.
I don't gamble or waste my money on anything but this game, it has become my one vice (well, except for sex but I never pay for that)
I'll open a mixture of the newest box along with at least three from each variation of the boxes a couple of times a month.
I just divvy-up the loot amount my alts and what I don't want or need, I sell what I can on the Exchange.
:cool:
STO Member since February 2009. I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born! Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
Starting to feel like a fool here. Specifically talking about spending real money to buy zen, then spending it on lockbox keys. Spent $200 on zen then poured most of it into opening only Xindi lockboxes. No Xindi Aquatic Dreadnought. Then I spent another $200 a few days later and this time used it ONLY to open Xindi lockboxes. STILL no ship!
So my question to you all is this: is it WORTH it??? I'm probably the reason why STO Gamepedia posts percentages next to the lockbox items. I waged a long and protracted war with the devs about the legal ramifications of taking REAL money from people and not telling us what our chances are of getting a certain items. Perhaps others did too.
The fight began because I was angry at how much I spent back in the day trying to unlock the Voth Bastion Cruiser. Now here I am again. So if I'm a fool spending real money on these guys, please tell me. I'm a big man and can take criticism.
That is the entire point OP, people like you who are willing to shell out huge sums of cash is what allows the huge proportion of free loaders to be able to play, while Cryptic can still be able to pay their bills, make a profit and so on.
This is how free to play works, it transfers the costs of doing business and profit from the entire WHOLE group, to a smaller group who pays MORE. It also changes the nature of the game from creating a quality experience to chasing the all mighty dollar.
The irony of this system is that the actual amount of people paying is much smaller then the total population, which interestingly should give them MORE financial power to effect changes in game, yet due to people's inability to restrain themselves, they are compelled to spend money.
Let me put it this way, if everyone who actually paid for this game stopped for say, a week or even a month, would put a huge dent in Cryptic/PWE's profit margin and essentially could "vote with their wallet" as people keep saying to do.
Notice though I said IF, problem is, they won't, it would be like asking a addict to quit using their fix, whatever that fix is. It's scary how people are addicted to spending money on this game, while at the same time hating themselves for supporting what they know is sub-standard in what quality game play should be like.
So, if you spend money on this game, you know what you are spending it on, people have shown this over and over, they plotted out the drop chance of drop box ships, shown how much MORE money people spend then they used to, converted all the in game currency that has a actual dollar value behind it into their real world currency amounts, all to illustrate the different ways that they create a grind to slow you down and show you how much money that slow down costs you.
and then of course the subsequent moderating and bans for pointing this stuff out. All of this has been right in front of you to see.
So "Caveat Emptor" is a very valid statement here, that and education of the product your purchasing into.
It's not Cryptic fault that you spend 400+ dollars on lockbox ships and still got nothing, it's yours.
Sure Cryptic setting up a system that can bilk a person for 400+ dollars and give them absolutely nothing in return is really messed up and blatantly unfair, but unless your willing to play that game, it CANNOT hurt you.
I tried lockboxes ONE time, realized how much of a rigged system it is, learned my lesson and then stopped doing them, and actually I do this for every game mechanic Cryptic "reinvents" that does the same thing, at this rate I probably will stop playing the game in a few expansions
This is a marked difference then before F2P, where I regularly bought out the C-store, I made it a point to collect everything in there. And I did this because the former Exec Producer said simply this
"When you purchase items from the C-store, it goes to help us do all those 'extra' things we want to do for you, the players."
In such a simple statement, we were told that buying these things helped the game, they were EXTRAS, and they HELPED the game.
So I made a point to buy things because I WANTED to help the game, I believed the Star Trek experience that was being built and mostly, because Stahl simply asked us to.
Now we have Lockboxes, and per character unlocks and Fleet ships and so on, a system that sets us up to buy the same ships over and over again at 25-50 dollars a pop.
It's a shame that the game has devolved into this. But the blame lies with those that continue to support this system. As long as it remains economically viable to do so, it will remain this way and in fact get worse as times goes on.
it's up to you and people like you to change, if you want to see things like this go away and be changed to become a fairer system.
Ive spent nothing since a mth or 2 after LOR when they started bring in there nerf campain i did by 2k zen a mth before that.
I all so got 4kzen once a new season started but each one now is more about nerf then the last one. I will not be putting any more money in to STO when all dev do is nerf the things i like.
When ya really stop to think about it, NONE of the stuff we purchase in STO is really ours anyway.
If and when the game goes belly-up, we don't get to keep ANY of what we have bought.
You either have to think of it as an Investment, to keep the game going or a Rental, in which you live with no option to own, but enjoy it while you can afford it.
Either way, it's totally up to each person to decide what value their money gets them when they give it to PWE.
I suspect that many, like myself, are so enamored with Star Trek that dolling out our hard-earned cash, is worth the momentary enjoyment value of being our own Captain of a Starship.
:cool:
STO Member since February 2009. I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born! Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
Ya know. What really irks me is that when someone spends money on a game and a lot of it, it's like a taboo. To me spending money on any MMO is no different than people spending money on: movies, books, theater tickets, sports events, or any of a hundred things people spend money on.
Spend 50 bucks buying an Xbox game, nobody bats an eyelash. Spend 25 bucks on an MMO and everybody loses their damn mind.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
Ya know. What really irks me is that when someone spends money on a game and a lot of it, it's like a taboo. To me spending money on any MMO is no different than people spending money on: movies, books, theater tickets, sports events, or any of a hundred things people spend money on.
Spend 50 bucks buying an Xbox game, nobody bats an eyelash. Spend 25 bucks on an MMO and everybody loses their damn mind.
i agree 100%. i spend thousands a year on entertainment from premium tv channels to vacations. gaming's the only entertainment i've ever seen where someone spending 50 cents a day for a sub is something to complain about. it shows how immature some gamers really are, and why they deserve the stereotypes they get.
You either have to think of it as an Investment, to keep the game going or a Rental, in which you live with no option to own, but enjoy it while you can afford it.
An investment is something you buy for the purpose of storing value, so that you can sell it later and get at least some (and hopefully more) of the cash back when you need it. Gaming is not an investment, its an entertainment expense, like books, movies, whatever. Value is relative to other types of entertainment expenses. Do you like golf? Spend your money there... I like flying space ships and shooting at other players, so STO had something to keep me entertained for a while, that's all.
Fallacies... Just because an MMO is cheaper than cable TV doesnt mean its better value--cable TV can have a lot of value when major events come around or you want to watch a favorite show without waiting. And just because you can waste a lot of time in an MMO doesnt mean it is good value either--if gameplay sucks it is waste of money, and I would rather buy a good game for $50 than a bad game for $5. I enjoyed PVP here so I was willing to spend $10-20 a month building ships and feeding the habit, because that was about the value I got out of it. With DR changes, PVP is dead to me and Cryptic shows no hope of learning anything about basic balance or fundamental gameplay. Its worth $0 to me. Previous money spent means nothing to present entertainment value--Sunk-cost fallacy applies to gaming too.
Spent more than i can remember, or care to....................I get slayted by friends for spending cash on this game, but to me its no different than some spending £500 on a season ticket to watch 22 players kick a dead cows hide round the field.
Well, counting the Delta Ops pack purchase, to date I have spent over $3,200 USD :eek: on this game. That includes Lifetime, Zen, Starter Pack, Steam Pack, and a few months of Sub after Beta. I took a couple of years away from the game due to work (Working on Oil Rigs, no internet) and came back Oct. 2012. Most of that money was spent since then. Been disappointed a few times with purchases, but overall, no regrets.
Ya know. What really irks me is that when someone spends money on a game and a lot of it, it's like a taboo. To me spending money on any MMO is no different than people spending money on: movies, books, theater tickets, sports events, or any of a hundred things people spend money on.
Spend 50 bucks buying an Xbox game, nobody bats an eyelash. Spend 25 bucks on an MMO and everybody loses their damn mind.
Yup, I know people that will say i'm wasting money on MMO's but yet thinks it perfectly ok to spend 100's of dollars on weekend booze and drug binges.
Well excuse me for having enormous flaws that I don't work on.
Ya know. What really irks me is that when someone spends money on a game and a lot of it, it's like a taboo. To me spending money on any MMO is no different than people spending money on: movies, books, theater tickets, sports events, or any of a hundred things people spend money on.
Spend 50 bucks buying an Xbox game, nobody bats an eyelash. Spend 25 bucks on an MMO and everybody loses their damn mind.
$25 I don't really care too much. I start questioning them when they're spending hundreds a week on the game just to open gamble boxes.
and at least when you buy a game for $50, you get the keep the game no matter what happens, save for the disk or hard drive breaking. It could be 10 years from now, and as long as your Xbox is working you could play it and get entertainment value from it.
If STO's servers were shut down tomorrow, you have NOTHING. What's the entertainment cost in dollars for a game that's no longer running?
Yeah, yeah..."but my money keeps it running so that won't happen!". No game lasts forever unless it's WoW, just because you bought a ship on the C-store doesn't make you a stock holder.
An investment is something you buy for the purpose of storing value, so that you can sell it later and get at least some (and hopefully more) of the cash back when you need it. Gaming is not an investment, its an entertainment expense, like books, movies, whatever. Value is relative to other types of entertainment expenses. Do you like golf? Spend your money there... I like flying space ships and shooting at other players, so STO had something to keep me entertained for a while, that's all.
Fallacies... Just because an MMO is cheaper than cable TV doesnt mean its better value--cable TV can have a lot of value when major events come around or you want to watch a favorite show without waiting. And just because you can waste a lot of time in an MMO doesnt mean it is good value either--if gameplay sucks it is waste of money, and I would rather buy a good game for $50 than a bad game for $5. I enjoyed PVP here so I was willing to spend $10-20 a month building ships and feeding the habit, because that was about the value I got out of it. With DR changes, PVP is dead to me and Cryptic shows no hope of learning anything about basic balance or fundamental gameplay. Its worth $0 to me. Previous money spent means nothing to present entertainment value--Sunk-cost fallacy applies to gaming too.
The only fallacy here is you thinking value only equals cash.
and at least when you buy a game for $50, you get the keep the game no matter what happens, save for the disk or hard drive breaking. If STO's servers were shut down tomorrow, you have NOTHING. What's the entertainment cost in dollars for a game no longer running?
meaningless statement. when you play you're investing in the moment. you're not worried about longterm. what happens to that 50 buck game when your ps4 is broken and sony has moved onto ps9, and you can't get another ps4 to play it? same difference. almost all advancement is based on obsolecense. betamax, vhs, dvd, blueray, and onward.
meaningless statement. when you play you're investing in the moment. you're not worried about longterm. what happens to that 50 buck game when your ps4 is broken and sony has moved onto ps9, and you can't get another ps4 to play it? same difference. almost all advancement is based on obsolecense. betamax, vhs, dvd, blueray, and onward.
If you know where to look you can still find NES systems, Sony moving on to another console doesn't render yours completely unplayable.
STO goes down for ANY reason, you don't have STO anymore unless someone comes along and makes a private server, which is highly unlikely cuz even if the game doesn't exist anymore CBS/Paramount still own Star Trek and would C&D that **** so fast.
$25 I don't really care too much. I start questioning them when they're spending hundreds a week on the game just to open gamble boxes.
and at least when you buy a game for $50, you get the keep the game no matter what happens, save for the disk or hard drive breaking. It could be 10 years from now, and as long as your Xbox is working you could play it and get entertainment value from it.
If STO's servers were shut down tomorrow, you have NOTHING. What's the entertainment cost in dollars for a game that's no longer running?
Nothing. BUt it could be worse.
Imagine you purchased a cake. And you decide to eat it. Now it's gone. Forever. No more value.
And worse, you think you're smart and decide to not eat it so you have it longer - it goes bad and it's worth nothing. Heck, if you eat it anyway, you may even get sick!
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
I haven't spent a penny since f2p. Not enough kdf stuff to buy.
They executed a Klingon transporter officer for incompetence, perhaps it is time they executed some Klingon ship designers as well. Not enough designs reach PWE.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
Actually, that I am so enamored with Star Trek is why I have no longer dole out any of my hard-earned cash. This game is NOT star trek. It is a collection of monetized grindfests with a Star Trek skin stretched over it.
You're right. This isn't Star Trek. You want a game that feels like Star Trek play Bridge Commander, not this. There's almost nothing about this game that feels Trek. It looks and sounds Trek but that's it, and even looks lately are barely.
And it's quickly becoming an asian pay-to-grind MMO. I stay away far far away from those games, and STO is becoming exactly that. That's not good.
Great logic there kiddo, anything you don't pay for with cash has no value
Oh you spend $0 and think that it is actually worth more than $0 ... I see. We are talking about entertainment value as measured in real adult $$ not your imaginary time value. Go try to get cable tv by grinding it kid. Your freeplay grinder time in this game is worth $0 to everybody.
Comments
Admittedly, most stuff was bought in sale.
Not touching DR. I've taken to buying tons of other games on steam, than spending a penny on STO.
But that doesn't take into account that my proportional spending on this game has pretty much dropped with every "update" since the game went F2P.
I used to spend $100-$150+ each month.
Now it's never more than $80 or $90 dollars, and usually closer to $45-$50.
I've bought just about every Fed ship in the C-Store plus a couple of the Klingons ones and several of the Romulan ones.
I have all the vanity items and clothing in the C-Store and all the Fed Bridges.
I don't play my Klingon very often so I only have a couple of their bridges.
Mainly now I buy keys, because I like most of the goodies from the Lockboxes and I have a large collection of all of the different ones in my Fleet Bank.
I don't gamble or waste my money on anything but this game, it has become my one vice (well, except for sex but I never pay for that)
I'll open a mixture of the newest box along with at least three from each variation of the boxes a couple of times a month.
I just divvy-up the loot amount my alts and what I don't want or need, I sell what I can on the Exchange.
:cool:
I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born!
Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
That is the entire point OP, people like you who are willing to shell out huge sums of cash is what allows the huge proportion of free loaders to be able to play, while Cryptic can still be able to pay their bills, make a profit and so on.
This is how free to play works, it transfers the costs of doing business and profit from the entire WHOLE group, to a smaller group who pays MORE. It also changes the nature of the game from creating a quality experience to chasing the all mighty dollar.
The irony of this system is that the actual amount of people paying is much smaller then the total population, which interestingly should give them MORE financial power to effect changes in game, yet due to people's inability to restrain themselves, they are compelled to spend money.
Let me put it this way, if everyone who actually paid for this game stopped for say, a week or even a month, would put a huge dent in Cryptic/PWE's profit margin and essentially could "vote with their wallet" as people keep saying to do.
Notice though I said IF, problem is, they won't, it would be like asking a addict to quit using their fix, whatever that fix is. It's scary how people are addicted to spending money on this game, while at the same time hating themselves for supporting what they know is sub-standard in what quality game play should be like.
So, if you spend money on this game, you know what you are spending it on, people have shown this over and over, they plotted out the drop chance of drop box ships, shown how much MORE money people spend then they used to, converted all the in game currency that has a actual dollar value behind it into their real world currency amounts, all to illustrate the different ways that they create a grind to slow you down and show you how much money that slow down costs you.
and then of course the subsequent moderating and bans for pointing this stuff out. All of this has been right in front of you to see.
So "Caveat Emptor" is a very valid statement here, that and education of the product your purchasing into.
It's not Cryptic fault that you spend 400+ dollars on lockbox ships and still got nothing, it's yours.
Sure Cryptic setting up a system that can bilk a person for 400+ dollars and give them absolutely nothing in return is really messed up and blatantly unfair, but unless your willing to play that game, it CANNOT hurt you.
I tried lockboxes ONE time, realized how much of a rigged system it is, learned my lesson and then stopped doing them, and actually I do this for every game mechanic Cryptic "reinvents" that does the same thing, at this rate I probably will stop playing the game in a few expansions
This is a marked difference then before F2P, where I regularly bought out the C-store, I made it a point to collect everything in there. And I did this because the former Exec Producer said simply this
"When you purchase items from the C-store, it goes to help us do all those 'extra' things we want to do for you, the players."
In such a simple statement, we were told that buying these things helped the game, they were EXTRAS, and they HELPED the game.
So I made a point to buy things because I WANTED to help the game, I believed the Star Trek experience that was being built and mostly, because Stahl simply asked us to.
Now we have Lockboxes, and per character unlocks and Fleet ships and so on, a system that sets us up to buy the same ships over and over again at 25-50 dollars a pop.
It's a shame that the game has devolved into this. But the blame lies with those that continue to support this system. As long as it remains economically viable to do so, it will remain this way and in fact get worse as times goes on.
it's up to you and people like you to change, if you want to see things like this go away and be changed to become a fairer system.
Simple as that.
I all so got 4kzen once a new season started but each one now is more about nerf then the last one. I will not be putting any more money in to STO when all dev do is nerf the things i like.
If and when the game goes belly-up, we don't get to keep ANY of what we have bought.
You either have to think of it as an Investment, to keep the game going or a Rental, in which you live with no option to own, but enjoy it while you can afford it.
Either way, it's totally up to each person to decide what value their money gets them when they give it to PWE.
I suspect that many, like myself, are so enamored with Star Trek that dolling out our hard-earned cash, is worth the momentary enjoyment value of being our own Captain of a Starship.
:cool:
I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born!
Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
Spend 50 bucks buying an Xbox game, nobody bats an eyelash. Spend 25 bucks on an MMO and everybody loses their damn mind.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1
Fallacies... Just because an MMO is cheaper than cable TV doesnt mean its better value--cable TV can have a lot of value when major events come around or you want to watch a favorite show without waiting. And just because you can waste a lot of time in an MMO doesnt mean it is good value either--if gameplay sucks it is waste of money, and I would rather buy a good game for $50 than a bad game for $5. I enjoyed PVP here so I was willing to spend $10-20 a month building ships and feeding the habit, because that was about the value I got out of it. With DR changes, PVP is dead to me and Cryptic shows no hope of learning anything about basic balance or fundamental gameplay. Its worth $0 to me. Previous money spent means nothing to present entertainment value--Sunk-cost fallacy applies to gaming too.
Yup, I know people that will say i'm wasting money on MMO's but yet thinks it perfectly ok to spend 100's of dollars on weekend booze and drug binges.
$25 I don't really care too much. I start questioning them when they're spending hundreds a week on the game just to open gamble boxes.
and at least when you buy a game for $50, you get the keep the game no matter what happens, save for the disk or hard drive breaking. It could be 10 years from now, and as long as your Xbox is working you could play it and get entertainment value from it.
If STO's servers were shut down tomorrow, you have NOTHING. What's the entertainment cost in dollars for a game that's no longer running?
Yeah, yeah..."but my money keeps it running so that won't happen!". No game lasts forever unless it's WoW, just because you bought a ship on the C-store doesn't make you a stock holder.
The only fallacy here is you thinking value only equals cash.
If you know where to look you can still find NES systems, Sony moving on to another console doesn't render yours completely unplayable.
STO goes down for ANY reason, you don't have STO anymore unless someone comes along and makes a private server, which is highly unlikely cuz even if the game doesn't exist anymore CBS/Paramount still own Star Trek and would C&D that **** so fast.
as far as it going down, that's the risk you take when playing any of the hundreds of mmos out there.
Granted, but your scenario is a lot less likely than mine.
Great logic there kiddo, anything you don't pay for with cash has no value
Nothing. BUt it could be worse.
Imagine you purchased a cake. And you decide to eat it. Now it's gone. Forever. No more value.
And worse, you think you're smart and decide to not eat it so you have it longer - it goes bad and it's worth nothing. Heck, if you eat it anyway, you may even get sick!
They executed a Klingon transporter officer for incompetence, perhaps it is time they executed some Klingon ship designers as well. Not enough designs reach PWE.
You're right. This isn't Star Trek. You want a game that feels like Star Trek play Bridge Commander, not this. There's almost nothing about this game that feels Trek. It looks and sounds Trek but that's it, and even looks lately are barely.
And it's quickly becoming an asian pay-to-grind MMO. I stay away far far away from those games, and STO is becoming exactly that. That's not good.