1. Friend #1 : Loves the overhaul of the R&D projects, burns all his dilithium crafting. Gets mad he has not dilithium left. Loves the upgrade options, burns all his dilithium upgrading. Gets pissed he is out of dilithium, gets mad the devs b/c he can't farm or refine fast enough.
2. Friend #2: Loves the overhaul of the R&D projects, spends hours in tribble testing it out. Makes a list of items to craft and what to skip. Waits until level 15 (without pressing finish now) before crafting. Stockpiles R&D stuff. Loves the upgrade options. Makes a list of weapons to upgrade, priority upgrade lists. Tests it out on tribble, decides to wait until Delta Rising drops and bugs are found and fixed before upgrading. He has 22 million dilithium over 5 toons.
Remember, 143.3 million USD. That was their net profit last year. Seeing as they pay, most probably, around $150,000 - $200,000 annually for space, equipment and programmers salaries, and most programmers work on multiple games (how many games does Cryptic manage alone?) it is easy to see that our complaints are meaningless to them.
You seriously think PWE's business expenses are $150k - $200k annually?
Have you ever looked at a financial report before? Those numbers are in thousands.
FACEDESK
504,247 times 1,000 = 504,247,000 million dollars. I linked an annual statement.
If you are reviewing other companies' financial statements, you may often come across financial statements in which the numbers are written in the thousands. A company will denote that the numbers are in the thousands on the top of each financial statement. Companies do this to make the statements more readable. It eliminates the zeros at the end of numbers, so the numbers appear smaller. For example, $5,000,000 becomes $5,000 when written in thousands.
$146M - R&D costs
$172M - Admin costs (Payroll, equipment, real estate, etc)
$ 13M - Other costs
= $331M Operational costs
Which is a yearly profit of about $56M with an additional income of $34M via some other accounting trickery. So on a total revenue of $504M, PWE made about $90M in 2013.
Let that sink in, they made $90M but spent $146M on R&D. They put more money into game development than they bank.
$146M - R&D costs
$172M - Admin costs (Payroll, equipment, real estate, etc)
$ 13M - Other costs
= $331M Operational costs
Which is a yearly profit of about $56M with an additional income of $34M via some other accounting trickery. So on a total revenue of $504M, PWE made about $90M in 2013.
Let that sink in, they made $90M but spent $146M on R&D. They put more money into game development than they bank.
Among all the whine posts and anti-whine posts, someone has finally taken off the rose tinted glasses to see things as they really are.
how can someone have a "true" unbiased view on something when this persons vision on the entire thing has been blocked by pwe? im writing about behind the scenes rather then what they state in public. there are a number of pieces missing from this puzzle and unfortunately the OP is attempting to force pieces together to try make it look right.
while the op may of attempted to do good, the one thing that everyone keeps saying which seems to be the standard morandis for cryptic is that they need money however they can get it, however we dont know if there are other reasons on the line behind the scenes that could be driving that.
and now the issues with what everyone "thinks" are the real numbers may not be accurate at all because there are no multiple sources confirming or denying.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
I'll have to agree with some of you.
I'm not a very happy camper right now.
I've was a F2P player for about 2 years before subbing 100 days ago. (just got that "accolade") Had a little extra cash left over and decided to sub on both F2P accounts. I basically have to smoke 2 packs less each week to pay for the sub. Not a bad deal, I'm healthier, I get a little more for subbing...works out great right?
In game, I'm not rich. I don't have a lot of EC, nor a lot of dilithium. I'm not in a fleet for various reasons (don't want drama is one of them). So I've made due with the rear admiral ships for the most part. I've taken them about as far as I can, There's still more I could have done to eek out a bit more, but that would have taken a bit more time. But all in all, I usually do fairly well.
Then Delta Rising comes along and...
Between 7 characters and about 30 ships, only 2 are even upgradable. But then I'd have to buy zen, but then I'd have to farm dilith to buy the zen, but then I'm basically not gonna be able to do any of the DR content until I get everything else done first. That will take months. And that's just for each character to have 1 ship to play with. I try to have some mirror ships so I can change up when I feel a little burnt out with one play style. So, to get every back to where I was before DR came out, it's another year...basically starting all over again from scratch.
I dunno, I'm just fed up.
I'm not asking for nor do I need to be in the top level ship with top level gear. With the rear admiral ships, it was basically I was in position to be competitive, definitely not in top level stuff and on par with the lock box, lobi or fleet ships...but I could compete. The margin was small enough that how I played, often made the difference. But now, I have no chance at all. Either I sit there and farm for months to get new ships, that I don't like the look of at all or for zen ships that frankly, don't have the Boff setups I prefer and currently have on my RA ships, or I just don't get to do any of the expansion at all.
The sad reality is this, I've come to realize that Cryptic doesn't care at all for us, they only want more $$$. If we don't pay up, and right NOW, then the hell with us. That's the take I get from this entire expansion. And that's NOT how I felt when I decided to sub on 2 accounts in July. Spending a little extra money and getting those 2 Zen ships was because I actually felt like going to the next level in performance. But now, meh. It feels like it's no longer F2P and Pay for Perks, to feeling like Pay to win and Pay to play at all.
Oh well I guess. Time to move on. While this expansion might net you some money Cryptic, I'm sure your decisions have also driven off some people who would have spent some real world money if you had done things differently.
OP wants balance, doesnt define what they mean by that. nebulous.
OP links a bunch of financial info non-seqs into advocating subscription model that saw sto fail already.
We really don't know if the sub model failed for STO. Atari sucked up all the profits and left Cryptic with a skeleton crew until the finally sold the company. Perhaps if Atari knew how to run an MMO and reinvested at adequate levels we might not have all these damned Chinese "innovations" gutting this game.
$146M - R&D costs
$172M - Admin costs (Payroll, equipment, real estate, etc)
$ 13M - Other costs
= $331M Operational costs
Which is a yearly profit of about $56M with an additional income of $34M via some other accounting trickery. So on a total revenue of $504M, PWE made about $90M in 2013.
Let that sink in, they made $90M but spent $146M on R&D. They put more money into game development than they bank.
Or you can say they invested a lot in R&D and still made a profit. Not that I really care. Their operating expenses rose from 2011 and their income took a big hit. Their SG&A also rose almost 50m in two years. Wow.
My question is that "discontinued operations". Wonder what that is?
Because he showed two sides of a coin in his thread ours and theirs, read carefully.
Showing two sides isn't unbiased. In fact it is a fantastic tool for propaganda. Especially when misrepresenting one side, or innocently misunderstanding them. Or when there are three or four sides and only two are included.
Unbiased means prese nting al i formation as if a neutral witness. It helps younot being invested (financially, emotionally, ideologically, politically, etc) in any side or outcome, but that's not always possible. For example talking about the finances of one's own country or city.
Yes, I know all in-game content can be achieves through hard work and for free as easily I can climb Mt Everest from my couch in Australia with no training and being completely out of shape. After all, nothing is impossible.
how can someone have a "true" unbiased view on something when this persons vision on the entire thing has been blocked by pwe? im writing about behind the scenes rather then what they state in public. there are a number of pieces missing from this puzzle and unfortunately the OP is attempting to force pieces together to try make it look right.
while the op may of attempted to do good, the one thing that everyone keeps saying which seems to be the standard morandis for cryptic is that they need money however they can get it, however we dont know if there are other reasons on the line behind the scenes that could be driving that.
and now the issues with what everyone "thinks" are the real numbers may not be accurate at all because there are no multiple sources confirming or denying.
I'm not saying I agree with everything in the OP, or even a majority of it... just that he actually looked at STO for what it is, a cash grab players keep feeding.
I'm not saying I agree with everything in the OP, or even a majority of it... just that he actually looked at STO for what it is, a cash grab players keep feeding.
*points at sig*
Not the HAIL HYDRA! part...
Or the Visitor text....
or the link to my explanation of how to make joysticks work....
Um yeah... that part at the bottom. MMOs are a for-profit venture, AKA a business. Acquiring the money of your customers is the core purpose of a business.
make profit over all else. This is the curse of F2P games.
This is the curse of all humans: thinking that not everyone is in it for the money.
I'm a pretty hippy-dippy, my-space-shippy, on a course so true kind of person: I still need to buy food and stuff.
If this game wasn't f2p, it would still exist to make money out of players by the very nature of it being dev'd by a private company. However much I agree with you on your thoughts about private corporate speculation etc etc (whatever they are, and I may not agree), the reality is your using summat someone else made.
I generally agree with the post, at the end of the day f2p is a short term boost for games, but designing around f2p kills gameplay and immersion in the long run.
STO used to be a virtual world, now not so much.
We all have different tolerances for this sort of thing. I haven't yet approached my jump-off point, I still like the game more than I dislike it, on the whole; but the frequency of things I don't like happening is getting higher and higher in relation to the things I do like, and I can see me ditching the game in a year or two (even as a casual month-on, couple-months-off type thing) if things keep going the way they are.
Even wanting an occasional Star Trek jag isn't going to be enough motivation to play a game that's gradually, insensibly becoming a meaningless Asian grinder.
The kicker for me is that the developers seem to be liking it that way.
or the link to my explanation of how to make joysticks work....
Um yeah... that part at the bottom. MMOs are a for-profit venture, AKA a business. Acquiring the money of your customers is the core purpose of a business.
Well yeah, there's making money, and then there's this.
Precognition doesn't exist, not even as a power in CO. Nobody can see the future; at best we are "looking through a glass, darkly," as the poet put it. And any attempts to analyze the situation to predict the future are inherently biased, as there has not yet been enough time with truly F2P games like this competing with more-classical sub-only and heavily-gimped "F2P" games (think Dark Orbit or SWTOR - technically you can play them for free, but if you want to advance, you'd best open your wallet).
As Spock would say, there is insufficient data for a meaningful conclusion.
or the link to my explanation of how to make joysticks work....
Um yeah... that part at the bottom. MMOs are a for-profit venture, AKA a business. Acquiring the money of your customers is the core purpose of a business.
Great line if you're a PWE/Cryptic employee/executive/stockholder, otherwise, you sound like a total shill arguing for the profitability of others.
And it doesn't even have the benefit of one of the most popular and well supported Intellectual Properties EVER created.
In a way, the IP may actually be a big part of the problem - or at least, a blessing and a curse at the same time. Surely PWE knows as well as any of us that as long as STO has the Star Trek IP, it can count on a big chunk of the fanbase of said IP to keep on playing, and keep on paying, no matter what. Granted, the diehards are probably not enough to keep STO going on their own, but they just might be enough to give PWE a big enough cushion that they can afford considerable churn among the rest of the player base.
The first problem with STO is that it IS a combat game. Star Trek has never been about combat. It's about PEOPLE. Combat happens, but it's a means to an end. Here, it IS the end (and that's an ironically appropriate phrase).
First of all, Star Trek did become considerably more combat-oriented in the post-TNG years, especially DS9 (with the Dominion War) and Voyager (where hardly an episode went by when they weren't getting into a tussle with someone).
In any case, had Cryptic really set out to develop STO as something other than all combat all the time, a big chunk of its content would be nothing more than glorified clickies and puzzles. Not only would that get old just as fast as the combat content, if not faster (at least combat doesn't always go the same way twice), but it would seriously devalue shipbuilding and skill training. Why waste time, effort and currency (in-game or real-world) building the perfect beast of a starship if you're just going to be flying it around on a bunch of clickie missions?
If crafting had been what they said it would be and even how they wanted it to be - deep with mods of your choice and items you can break down, you have 1 easy feature to rival combat right there...
They just victims of their poor decisions exactly like we are.
There isn't any external force or magic compounded reason things are where we are at, that removes the responsibility.
It's your job, get it done. If you can't perform you job find a new one and that's all there is to say
Comments
1. Friend #1 : Loves the overhaul of the R&D projects, burns all his dilithium crafting. Gets mad he has not dilithium left. Loves the upgrade options, burns all his dilithium upgrading. Gets pissed he is out of dilithium, gets mad the devs b/c he can't farm or refine fast enough.
2. Friend #2: Loves the overhaul of the R&D projects, spends hours in tribble testing it out. Makes a list of items to craft and what to skip. Waits until level 15 (without pressing finish now) before crafting. Stockpiles R&D stuff. Loves the upgrade options. Makes a list of weapons to upgrade, priority upgrade lists. Tests it out on tribble, decides to wait until Delta Rising drops and bugs are found and fixed before upgrading. He has 22 million dilithium over 5 toons.
Which one do you think I unfriended?
You seriously think PWE's business expenses are $150k - $200k annually?
https://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=PWRD+Income+Statement&annual
Here are some numbers.
Phew! Glad I could answer your question w/o having the read the Wall'o'Text... "No."
Have you ever looked at a financial report before? Those numbers are in thousands.
No. I think Cryptic's annual expenses, which are billable to PWE, are in the ballpark of $200K +/-
PWE being the parent company, has a much larger umbrella.
FACEDESK
504,247 times 1,000 = 504,247,000 million dollars. I linked an annual statement.
If you are reviewing other companies' financial statements, you may often come across financial statements in which the numbers are written in the thousands. A company will denote that the numbers are in the thousands on the top of each financial statement. Companies do this to make the statements more readable. It eliminates the zeros at the end of numbers, so the numbers appear smaller. For example, $5,000,000 becomes $5,000 when written in thousands.
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/read-financial-statements-thousands-10016.html
YOU MADE ME USE MY BRAIN
$504M - Revenue
$117M - Tax, Interest
= $387M Gross Income
$146M - R&D costs
$172M - Admin costs (Payroll, equipment, real estate, etc)
$ 13M - Other costs
= $331M Operational costs
Which is a yearly profit of about $56M with an additional income of $34M via some other accounting trickery. So on a total revenue of $504M, PWE made about $90M in 2013.
Let that sink in, they made $90M but spent $146M on R&D. They put more money into game development than they bank.
You just won this thread, my hat is off to you.
how can someone have a "true" unbiased view on something when this persons vision on the entire thing has been blocked by pwe? im writing about behind the scenes rather then what they state in public. there are a number of pieces missing from this puzzle and unfortunately the OP is attempting to force pieces together to try make it look right.
while the op may of attempted to do good, the one thing that everyone keeps saying which seems to be the standard morandis for cryptic is that they need money however they can get it, however we dont know if there are other reasons on the line behind the scenes that could be driving that.
and now the issues with what everyone "thinks" are the real numbers may not be accurate at all because there are no multiple sources confirming or denying.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
I'm not a very happy camper right now.
I've was a F2P player for about 2 years before subbing 100 days ago. (just got that "accolade") Had a little extra cash left over and decided to sub on both F2P accounts. I basically have to smoke 2 packs less each week to pay for the sub. Not a bad deal, I'm healthier, I get a little more for subbing...works out great right?
In game, I'm not rich. I don't have a lot of EC, nor a lot of dilithium. I'm not in a fleet for various reasons (don't want drama is one of them). So I've made due with the rear admiral ships for the most part. I've taken them about as far as I can, There's still more I could have done to eek out a bit more, but that would have taken a bit more time. But all in all, I usually do fairly well.
Then Delta Rising comes along and...
Between 7 characters and about 30 ships, only 2 are even upgradable. But then I'd have to buy zen, but then I'd have to farm dilith to buy the zen, but then I'm basically not gonna be able to do any of the DR content until I get everything else done first. That will take months. And that's just for each character to have 1 ship to play with. I try to have some mirror ships so I can change up when I feel a little burnt out with one play style. So, to get every back to where I was before DR came out, it's another year...basically starting all over again from scratch.
I dunno, I'm just fed up.
I'm not asking for nor do I need to be in the top level ship with top level gear. With the rear admiral ships, it was basically I was in position to be competitive, definitely not in top level stuff and on par with the lock box, lobi or fleet ships...but I could compete. The margin was small enough that how I played, often made the difference. But now, I have no chance at all. Either I sit there and farm for months to get new ships, that I don't like the look of at all or for zen ships that frankly, don't have the Boff setups I prefer and currently have on my RA ships, or I just don't get to do any of the expansion at all.
The sad reality is this, I've come to realize that Cryptic doesn't care at all for us, they only want more $$$. If we don't pay up, and right NOW, then the hell with us. That's the take I get from this entire expansion. And that's NOT how I felt when I decided to sub on 2 accounts in July. Spending a little extra money and getting those 2 Zen ships was because I actually felt like going to the next level in performance. But now, meh. It feels like it's no longer F2P and Pay for Perks, to feeling like Pay to win and Pay to play at all.
Oh well I guess. Time to move on. While this expansion might net you some money Cryptic, I'm sure your decisions have also driven off some people who would have spent some real world money if you had done things differently.
We really don't know if the sub model failed for STO. Atari sucked up all the profits and left Cryptic with a skeleton crew until the finally sold the company. Perhaps if Atari knew how to run an MMO and reinvested at adequate levels we might not have all these damned Chinese "innovations" gutting this game.
Or you can say they invested a lot in R&D and still made a profit. Not that I really care. Their operating expenses rose from 2011 and their income took a big hit. Their SG&A also rose almost 50m in two years. Wow.
My question is that "discontinued operations". Wonder what that is?
Showing two sides isn't unbiased. In fact it is a fantastic tool for propaganda. Especially when misrepresenting one side, or innocently misunderstanding them. Or when there are three or four sides and only two are included.
Unbiased means prese nting al i formation as if a neutral witness. It helps younot being invested (financially, emotionally, ideologically, politically, etc) in any side or outcome, but that's not always possible. For example talking about the finances of one's own country or city.
Literary Gold
I'm not saying I agree with everything in the OP, or even a majority of it... just that he actually looked at STO for what it is, a cash grab players keep feeding.
Not the HAIL HYDRA! part...
Or the Visitor text....
or the link to my explanation of how to make joysticks work....
Um yeah... that part at the bottom. MMOs are a for-profit venture, AKA a business. Acquiring the money of your customers is the core purpose of a business.
My character Tsin'xing
This is the curse of all humans: thinking that not everyone is in it for the money.
I'm a pretty hippy-dippy, my-space-shippy, on a course so true kind of person: I still need to buy food and stuff.
If this game wasn't f2p, it would still exist to make money out of players by the very nature of it being dev'd by a private company. However much I agree with you on your thoughts about private corporate speculation etc etc (whatever they are, and I may not agree), the reality is your using summat someone else made.
Never was a truer word said mush.
Keep playing though. It is free, innit. ;-)
STO used to be a virtual world, now not so much.
We all have different tolerances for this sort of thing. I haven't yet approached my jump-off point, I still like the game more than I dislike it, on the whole; but the frequency of things I don't like happening is getting higher and higher in relation to the things I do like, and I can see me ditching the game in a year or two (even as a casual month-on, couple-months-off type thing) if things keep going the way they are.
Even wanting an occasional Star Trek jag isn't going to be enough motivation to play a game that's gradually, insensibly becoming a meaningless Asian grinder.
The kicker for me is that the developers seem to be liking it that way.
*shrugs*
Well yeah, there's making money, and then there's this.
Precognition doesn't exist, not even as a power in CO. Nobody can see the future; at best we are "looking through a glass, darkly," as the poet put it. And any attempts to analyze the situation to predict the future are inherently biased, as there has not yet been enough time with truly F2P games like this competing with more-classical sub-only and heavily-gimped "F2P" games (think Dark Orbit or SWTOR - technically you can play them for free, but if you want to advance, you'd best open your wallet).
As Spock would say, there is insufficient data for a meaningful conclusion.
Great line if you're a PWE/Cryptic employee/executive/stockholder, otherwise, you sound like a total shill arguing for the profitability of others.
In a way, the IP may actually be a big part of the problem - or at least, a blessing and a curse at the same time. Surely PWE knows as well as any of us that as long as STO has the Star Trek IP, it can count on a big chunk of the fanbase of said IP to keep on playing, and keep on paying, no matter what. Granted, the diehards are probably not enough to keep STO going on their own, but they just might be enough to give PWE a big enough cushion that they can afford considerable churn among the rest of the player base.
First of all, Star Trek did become considerably more combat-oriented in the post-TNG years, especially DS9 (with the Dominion War) and Voyager (where hardly an episode went by when they weren't getting into a tussle with someone).
In any case, had Cryptic really set out to develop STO as something other than all combat all the time, a big chunk of its content would be nothing more than glorified clickies and puzzles. Not only would that get old just as fast as the combat content, if not faster (at least combat doesn't always go the same way twice), but it would seriously devalue shipbuilding and skill training. Why waste time, effort and currency (in-game or real-world) building the perfect beast of a starship if you're just going to be flying it around on a bunch of clickie missions?
My Foundry missions | My STO Wiki page | My Twitter home page
They just victims of their poor decisions exactly like we are.
There isn't any external force or magic compounded reason things are where we are at, that removes the responsibility.
It's your job, get it done. If you can't perform you job find a new one and that's all there is to say