So, you're charging 30$ for a T6 ship. You're setting the price of entry to T6 at 30$.
Lockbox ships have a less than 1% chance of dropping, and buying Lobi ships with crystals from boxes will also take over a hundred boxes worth of crystals. What does it cost to open the statistically predicted hundred lockboxes? Well, ten rounds of key 10-packs comes to 11,250 zen. That's a lot more than the 3000 you want for a new ship, if your math is weak.
In other words, a lockbox or lobi ship will probably cost a player several times more than your new T6 ships and yet is significantly less powerful, being denied access to entire gameplay systems.
These ships need to be T6. Real T6. With traits, intel officers, and everything else. The "free upgrade" to T5-Mediocrity is frankly insulting for people who have invested in the rarest and most expensive ships you've made.
Ok guys lets be realistic here. STO is a completely free game. It's probably the least limited content F2P game on the market, it's more of your greed speaking than Cryptics/PWI. You want everything latest and fanciest but you don't want to play the game to earn it. Play the game, earn EC and buy your T6 ships for 120 mil from market like everyone else. If you are opening boxes with shaking hands and gambling hoping to get a ship and ignoring everything else - wel you are doing it WRONG. Everything in boxes is useful either for your own use or for trade if you get duplicates triplicates etc.
I own JHDC, and it can't be upgraded to T6 AT ALL. Is it fair? Not really since I've invested buttload into this ship of time mostly and some green of course too since nothing good happens in STO without green. But honestly I am kinda tired a bit of JHDC even though I quite like it. I'll fly it until I can beat NPCs on advanced without them killing me on every way. After that I'll start thinking about T6. T5 ships are dead, long live T6. That's live. Old stuff gets old you sell it on eBay. Since everything is bound to character in game, well, burn it, kick it and forget about it. T6 ships are worth spending some extra time and/or money on.
Honestly speaking I don't understand the argument of my quoter. Why then spend hundred of bucks on boxes and get worse ship? Like someone else said boxes give you a LOT of other stuff too. And most of those things are tradable unless you open the sub-boxes of course. A lot of those things can be used on your own characters, on upgrades etc.
Eventually people are going to have to face up to the fact that their MMO has had an expansion & level cap increase. And just like in every other MMO that's ever done that.... your old gear is just that. Old.
Don't forget their old game which let them easily switch to different weapon sets without dumping large amounts of Q is gone now.
I liked, note the tense, having a transphasic loadout for when plasmas weren't the best idea on my torpedo boat.
Looking at upgrading all those tac consoles, all those rapid reloads and breen clusters, ahuh, no.
Want to switch DHC types on my Kumari? Nope. Fly my favorite Kumari? Nope, the upgrade doesn't upgrade the whole pack and while my (former) favorite captain flies the Kumari Escort (with tac over kill) they are the only captain that does so spending $7 for the pleasure of sinking hundreds of thousands of Q into to get everything to mk XIII alone isn't something I want to reward cryptic for.
This is my Risian Corvette. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I don't do gambling. I just buy em with EC. Usually sell a bunch of keys to get the EC. Most real life money I spent on a lockbox ship (2 actually) was the Temporal Destoyer and the Science ship, plus full temporal warfare set. About 300 RL Euros. I usually find about 100 Euros acceptable for a lockbox ship.
thanks for the quick answer. Im not in a position to ever spend 100 on a ship (even when i do have extra money Ive got kids and just cant see myself spending a 100 on a digital item) so I just wanted to make sure I wasnt missing a way to get lockbox ships that i didnt know about.. I guess ill stick with my 30 dollar eclipse:) Im also saving contraband from my two KDF alts so maybe eventually ill have enough of those to sell for a lockbox ship.
If you're going to come in and say this idea is silly, tell us how many lockbox or lobi ships you own. And no, "mirror universe" ships don't count.
You seem to be missing something; some people get such ships "cheap" with good rolls, and other people have to invest a lot more due to bad rolls. Don't act like the randomness only benefits players.
There are two that I don't own from the lock boxes. There is one Lobi ship I don't own.
If they were made full T6 it would be ridiculous. You can't reasonably give them all unique Mastery, never-mind Level 5 unlocks...that's just a little kooky. Can you imagine the outcry when a small group of people gain access to such a private club power pool? Not so cool.
Gaining Hybrid seating for Intel? Again, there's the same issue.
Gain another Boff ability? I dunno, maybe. Really don't have an opinion on that.
Just my two cents but I think they should retire the old pre DR lockboxes and put those ships in the lobi store now. And going forward new ships are T6.
Satisfies new level cap and generates new funds without massively hurting players that want older style ships.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
Eventually people are going to have to face up to the fact that their MMO has had an expansion & level cap increase. And just like in every other MMO that's ever done that.... your old gear is just that. Old.
It's a basic fact of the genre. /shrug
(And yes - those ships of your may have directly cost you money. Or they may have cost you time. Just like that Legendary Raid Gear in another game might have cost someone six+ months of running a multi-hour dungeon with 20-40 other people to get their rare drops. And is still.... old.)
It is a "basic fact of the genre" that MMOs have less players playing than when it first launched.
It is a fact that this game's first expansion bucked that trend.
It is a fact that this game's first expansion didn't obsolete every single piece of gear you had like every other MMO.
A level cap increase is NOT healthy for MMOs. It is the hidden downfall of the genre. It makes a player's assets worthless. It allows players to be "free" to move on to greener pastures(other games) as they have nothing that holds them on to the game anymore (the exception being lifetime subscribers). People have warned Cryptic about raising the level cap before, so Cryptic can't use the "hindsight" excuse.
exactly that was the problem what i have seen comming.
i have asked bevor the patch was comming what i get if i opend a lockbox after patch a T5 or T6 version of the same ship.
i have aske also if all lobi and lockbox ship will be still T5 nobody wil buy this boxes anymore, but players haved sayed T6 will be zen store only items.
now if i open a box to get the xindi carrier i get a T5 ship with 1% droprate,
if i open a delta box i have a droprate of 1% for a T6 ship.
for what type of reason not all lobi or lockbox ships have exact same lvl if they are all cost me the same realmoney!!!!!!
the new ship in lobistore ist marked T6, the old lobi ships cost near the same but have no LVL info about themselve!!!!!
you paying the same price for a low lvl ship and dont get any info about that!!!
from my side that all a big bunch of TRIBBLE whit that not logical system what they are now doing mixing all.
If you don't think intelligence BOFF abilities are omgbbqrainbowponies good then you aren't looking close enough. Surgical strikes obsoletes pretty much every other weapon ability (except loltorps). Ionic turbulence is basically another APB to stack with bonus crowd control. Override subsystem safeties boosts weapons levels above the actual cap - not just theoretical cap I watched multiple systems over 140 and my weapons power at 160ish in the little window. And int team adds crazy good survival like the other teams do. Stealth, threat drop, and defense.
Those all stack with everything else that already exists with the exception of surgical strikes - which is crazy good if you use critdx2 or x3 weapons.
That alone is enough for t6 ships to outclass everything else. Add in that the int ships also have expose vulnerability, baked in cloak, passive stealth similar to the hirogen hunter - and there is no comparing.
Once fleet versions come out t5 will be fully obsolete.
I can almost hit 300k lance nukes in my phantom. Can't do that without Intel ship.
I'd go so far as to say the ships with commander int seat are the best potential Dps in the game bar none- even over the t6 lockbox ships. They are just t6 fleet equivalent but don't get commander int.
Lock Box ships will be T6 because Key sales account for most of STO's revenue...
NEW lockbox ships will be. We're talking about the old ones.
But, I don't see any incentive to spend that much for a single character-bound ship if it isn't an investment. Come back in a year, if the game lives that long there will be T7 you can just get one of those for a lot less than a "special" T6 lockbox ship.
It is a "basic fact of the genre" that MMOs have less players playing than when it first launched.
It is a fact that this game's first expansion bucked that trend.
It is a fact that this game's first expansion didn't obsolete every single piece of gear you had like every other MMO.
A level cap increase is NOT healthy for MMOs. It is the hidden downfall of the genre. It makes a player's assets worthless. It allows players to be "free" to move on to greener pastures(other games) as they have nothing that holds them on to the game anymore (the exception being lifetime subscribers). People have warned Cryptic about raising the level cap before, so Cryptic can't use the "hindsight" excuse.
This is a very insightful thing. Moving the goal posts away from players is one of the most demoralizing things ever.
Just to chip in my little bit, I own all but the newest lobi ship; the jem attack ship, jem hec, hirogen hunter, voth bastion, elachi s'golth, galor and the suliban cell ship, almost all of which I bought with real money (through many, many, many keys) rather than ec and even I don't think it would be a good idea to make them all T6.
Make them all account wide unlocks... now that would make sense.
Average lobi from lockbox is 5 (closer to 4 really, but let's be generous) which means you need to open 160 lockboxes to get 1 lobi ship... that's 18,000 zen compared with the one off 2500 or 3000 zen for a c store ship (granted you get drops in lockboxes, but I found them to be roughly 1 in 200 (closer to 1 in 250 tbh, but I'm being generous) for ships and 1 in about 50 for any other half decent items, but most items you get are worthless, literally).
OP is spot on. Lobi/Lockbox ships cost obscene amounts of dollars for an single character unlock-more than the full price for many video games. Yet Cryptic just didn't have the time to update them?
Looking at the New Kazon raider, I'm noticing that it upgrades to T5u, not T6/T6fleet, despite beng a 'new ship'. It looks like Cryptic is dead set on cementing T5u/T5u Fleet as being lesser than their T6 equivalents- T5u ship=booby prize, T6/T6F= Grand Prize.
As for folks saying that Specialist Boffs aren't important, or that the extra console slot makes no different, running my Fleet D'deridex, I routinely run into situations where all of my Boff abilities are on cooldown, so an extra boff ability, even ensign-Intel or not, would noticeably help. And as has been pointed out before, many of these Intel abilities are insanely useful, the slots are hybrid slots that can handle either normal or intel abilities, and these T6 ships are getting that extra boff spot in areas decidedly not equivalent to a Ensign-level slot.
And of course there's the Trait issue. Right now there are three 'freebie' starship traits....that require you to max out specializations to get. So you can spend forever grinding to get three traits, or you can buy T6 ships, and It's obvious which one Cryptic wants us to do.
They could have made the T5 mastery traits generic and based on ship class, like they did for the mastery perks for the other levels, they could have given old ships an extra boff slot/specialist officer compatibility at the very least with universal seats. They did not, despite paying between 500-700 zen each ship, T5u and T5uF are obsolete on arrival, by Cryptic's design.
Comments
Ok guys lets be realistic here. STO is a completely free game. It's probably the least limited content F2P game on the market, it's more of your greed speaking than Cryptics/PWI. You want everything latest and fanciest but you don't want to play the game to earn it. Play the game, earn EC and buy your T6 ships for 120 mil from market like everyone else. If you are opening boxes with shaking hands and gambling hoping to get a ship and ignoring everything else - wel you are doing it WRONG. Everything in boxes is useful either for your own use or for trade if you get duplicates triplicates etc.
I own JHDC, and it can't be upgraded to T6 AT ALL. Is it fair? Not really since I've invested buttload into this ship of time mostly and some green of course too since nothing good happens in STO without green. But honestly I am kinda tired a bit of JHDC even though I quite like it. I'll fly it until I can beat NPCs on advanced without them killing me on every way. After that I'll start thinking about T6. T5 ships are dead, long live T6. That's live. Old stuff gets old you sell it on eBay. Since everything is bound to character in game, well, burn it, kick it and forget about it. T6 ships are worth spending some extra time and/or money on.
Honestly speaking I don't understand the argument of my quoter. Why then spend hundred of bucks on boxes and get worse ship? Like someone else said boxes give you a LOT of other stuff too. And most of those things are tradable unless you open the sub-boxes of course. A lot of those things can be used on your own characters, on upgrades etc.
Don't forget their old game which let them easily switch to different weapon sets without dumping large amounts of Q is gone now.
I liked, note the tense, having a transphasic loadout for when plasmas weren't the best idea on my torpedo boat.
Looking at upgrading all those tac consoles, all those rapid reloads and breen clusters, ahuh, no.
Want to switch DHC types on my Kumari? Nope. Fly my favorite Kumari? Nope, the upgrade doesn't upgrade the whole pack and while my (former) favorite captain flies the Kumari Escort (with tac over kill) they are the only captain that does so spending $7 for the pleasure of sinking hundreds of thousands of Q into to get everything to mk XIII alone isn't something I want to reward cryptic for.
thanks for the quick answer. Im not in a position to ever spend 100 on a ship (even when i do have extra money Ive got kids and just cant see myself spending a 100 on a digital item) so I just wanted to make sure I wasnt missing a way to get lockbox ships that i didnt know about.. I guess ill stick with my 30 dollar eclipse:) Im also saving contraband from my two KDF alts so maybe eventually ill have enough of those to sell for a lockbox ship.
There are two that I don't own from the lock boxes. There is one Lobi ship I don't own.
If they were made full T6 it would be ridiculous. You can't reasonably give them all unique Mastery, never-mind Level 5 unlocks...that's just a little kooky. Can you imagine the outcry when a small group of people gain access to such a private club power pool? Not so cool.
Gaining Hybrid seating for Intel? Again, there's the same issue.
Gain another Boff ability? I dunno, maybe. Really don't have an opinion on that.
Cheers
Cryptic/PWE wants your money.
Not some of your money.
All your money.
Satisfies new level cap and generates new funds without massively hurting players that want older style ships.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
You're sending mixed signals here.
It is a "basic fact of the genre" that MMOs have less players playing than when it first launched.
It is a fact that this game's first expansion bucked that trend.
It is a fact that this game's first expansion didn't obsolete every single piece of gear you had like every other MMO.
A level cap increase is NOT healthy for MMOs. It is the hidden downfall of the genre. It makes a player's assets worthless. It allows players to be "free" to move on to greener pastures(other games) as they have nothing that holds them on to the game anymore (the exception being lifetime subscribers). People have warned Cryptic about raising the level cap before, so Cryptic can't use the "hindsight" excuse.
i have asked bevor the patch was comming what i get if i opend a lockbox after patch a T5 or T6 version of the same ship.
i have aske also if all lobi and lockbox ship will be still T5 nobody wil buy this boxes anymore, but players haved sayed T6 will be zen store only items.
now if i open a box to get the xindi carrier i get a T5 ship with 1% droprate,
if i open a delta box i have a droprate of 1% for a T6 ship.
for what type of reason not all lobi or lockbox ships have exact same lvl if they are all cost me the same realmoney!!!!!!
the new ship in lobistore ist marked T6, the old lobi ships cost near the same but have no LVL info about themselve!!!!!
you paying the same price for a low lvl ship and dont get any info about that!!!
from my side that all a big bunch of TRIBBLE whit that not logical system what they are now doing mixing all.
Those all stack with everything else that already exists with the exception of surgical strikes - which is crazy good if you use critdx2 or x3 weapons.
That alone is enough for t6 ships to outclass everything else. Add in that the int ships also have expose vulnerability, baked in cloak, passive stealth similar to the hirogen hunter - and there is no comparing.
Once fleet versions come out t5 will be fully obsolete.
I can almost hit 300k lance nukes in my phantom. Can't do that without Intel ship.
I'd go so far as to say the ships with commander int seat are the best potential Dps in the game bar none- even over the t6 lockbox ships. They are just t6 fleet equivalent but don't get commander int.
NEW lockbox ships will be. We're talking about the old ones.
But, I don't see any incentive to spend that much for a single character-bound ship if it isn't an investment. Come back in a year, if the game lives that long there will be T7 you can just get one of those for a lot less than a "special" T6 lockbox ship.
This is a very insightful thing. Moving the goal posts away from players is one of the most demoralizing things ever.
Make them all account wide unlocks... now that would make sense.
Average lobi from lockbox is 5 (closer to 4 really, but let's be generous) which means you need to open 160 lockboxes to get 1 lobi ship... that's 18,000 zen compared with the one off 2500 or 3000 zen for a c store ship (granted you get drops in lockboxes, but I found them to be roughly 1 in 200 (closer to 1 in 250 tbh, but I'm being generous) for ships and 1 in about 50 for any other half decent items, but most items you get are worthless, literally).
Looking at the New Kazon raider, I'm noticing that it upgrades to T5u, not T6/T6fleet, despite beng a 'new ship'. It looks like Cryptic is dead set on cementing T5u/T5u Fleet as being lesser than their T6 equivalents- T5u ship=booby prize, T6/T6F= Grand Prize.
As for folks saying that Specialist Boffs aren't important, or that the extra console slot makes no different, running my Fleet D'deridex, I routinely run into situations where all of my Boff abilities are on cooldown, so an extra boff ability, even ensign-Intel or not, would noticeably help. And as has been pointed out before, many of these Intel abilities are insanely useful, the slots are hybrid slots that can handle either normal or intel abilities, and these T6 ships are getting that extra boff spot in areas decidedly not equivalent to a Ensign-level slot.
And of course there's the Trait issue. Right now there are three 'freebie' starship traits....that require you to max out specializations to get. So you can spend forever grinding to get three traits, or you can buy T6 ships, and It's obvious which one Cryptic wants us to do.
They could have made the T5 mastery traits generic and based on ship class, like they did for the mastery perks for the other levels, they could have given old ships an extra boff slot/specialist officer compatibility at the very least with universal seats. They did not, despite paying between 500-700 zen each ship, T5u and T5uF are obsolete on arrival, by Cryptic's design.