I ran my 3 50s through the mirror event before work this morning and the ONLY queue that was under 30 seconds was Mirror Invasion Normal. The advanced had 2 people queued and no one in the STF. The only other ones under a minute were FA and Azure Nebula and the Only Advanced with any sort of population was CCA. A pretty telling tale. I didn't look at the private queues, but in public I doubt there were 150 in any events with the majority in Mirror normal.
I am almost finished with the DR missions with1 last patrol mission. The storyline missions are great, the patrols...yeah ...right. I'll finish that final one and then only set foot in Argala...thats it. Other than that, it'll be ground zones and Tau Dewa with maybe a few odd STFs. Oh this will be with 1 toon too, the other 2 will be hanging out at SFA running Lore and DoFF missions.
I won't say I was a whale but I probably averaged about 50-100 month. I even bought the DR Pack. At this point I probably won't spend any more money on anything until it gets sorted out. IMO they killed this game by taking alts out of the picture. I would rather spend $100 bucks to get my 3 toons DR ready than 100 for 1 toon.
I almost think they added the Mirror Event because the population is down and they're trying to pull people back with a big reward event.
I stopped paying as well. Last purchase was the DR package. I was looking forward to this expension. I did not mind the new level increase or the tier 6 ships.
It has gone far enough for me. I will fly my existing ships, canabalize my exisitng 10 toons and combine it in 2 toons that were furthest. The rest... meh.
For the people that say "you can play for free" and ESPECIALLY to the people making fun of whales: whales pay for your free game. No whales, no game in this case. Unless they sincerly start to think about a new model, where all people want to support the game.
You can add my name to the list of marine mammals cutting way way back on the game.
And another one here. I actually uninstalled last week but I still want to play STO so I reinstalled (lasted all of two days...). But, I deleted all but one character and that one's going to be upgraded using Dilithium I pick up in game, no more spending for me as I just don't feel that blowing masses of Dilithium to continue using the same gear I've used for the last year or so is something I'm overly happy about. And it's not like the new content is overly interesting anyway, I certainly don't want to do the 50-60 Delta stuff again as it was so tedious.
I can't handle six endgame alts anymore. The cost is way too high, the time way too long, the reward way too low, and the content way too non-existent. So I'm downsizing from whale to dolphin, and if things don't improve I'm beaching myself. I'm seriously regretting all the money I've paid into sto over the last year in particular, but I needed an escape from my horrible life and it kept my mind occupied. Staying continuously drunk would have been cheaper.
I don't even want to know what I've spent on Zen up to now, I daren't look at the purchase history. At least now it won't get any worse.
I have 2 main toons and 2 upcoming at level 50. I completly stopped using the upcoming ones due to the time and ressources needed. I liked to switch arround different sets and weapon types, now I need to decide which I upgrade and stick with. Lately I'm stuck in annoying ugly T6 ships trying to level them for a trait. I never visted Delta Sector again after level 60 what is there to get you back?
everyone is so quick to blame the EP and Cryptic... and totally forget they have a chinese/korean mmo grindfest corporate master that likely has had a lot to do with the progression we've been seeing for quite a while now.
Well who knows ... .
I mean we all remember when Bort was "quoted out of context" about Cryptic not being hurt if they loose income from a whole country .
Back then Cryptic was celebrating the new income from the Lockboxes , as they upped the income of the game by an order of a magnitude .
So who knows ... , maybe PWE asked Cryptic to do that again ... .
So, effectively, DR pushed all my stuff back to 'blue' gear (by comparison).
With the current HP in STF's , it's more like DR turned your gear into what would equal pre-DR Mk VII White .
After you upgrade , you end you with Mk XIV Purple / Epic , which barely = Mk IX White .
Cuz lei's be honest :
Pre DR , you could do ESTF's with Mk X or Mk XI and do fine .
Post DR , Mk XIV Purple / Epic still won't cut it for most players , and it sure as hell won't bring the fun back .
TL : DR You are FAR less powerful post DR in space endgame gear , then you were pre-DR with endgame gear .
So even all your effort , tears & money won't make you happy in this game as thing stand .
"You were willing to overspend on pixels because you could."
Um, yeah? My money, my prerogative.
"You could just stop playing, like you have helped others stop playing by shoveling over mounds of cash."
I'm confused. No wait, I think maybe you're confused. What I did was help keep this game going, with my money.
"To you it didn't matter you could purchase four other games on steam for the price of one ship here on STO."
No, it didn't.
You are right about having a choice, though. Which, ironically, is what this thread was all about, to begin with: letting the EP know I no longer want to spend money on his shenanigans. Apart from having bought an Intelligence costume, with some spare Dilithium converted to Zen, my wallet will stay closed until this game sees some serious change.
Kira giveth, Kira taketh away. Sometimes a relationship of the customer with their company is really that simple.
I'm not confused in the least. STO has a near-monopoly on Star Trek gaming right now. There is no competition to keep prices reasonable. Space-gaming as a whole is weak atm. We shall see about coming new releases, but I've struggled to replace STO in this genre. I'm playing fantasy games instead.
What will keep STO's pricing reasonable? There are two possibilities: Moral, responsible business decisions (hysterical laughing) or you and I, the customer, not paying 20x the value for an item. The latter being much more likely. You're just late getting here.
For some like myself, we stopped purchasing long before we were unable to afford any more items. We stopped because it was ridiculous from the outset.
They would love us to believe "whales" are keeping the game running, but we all know the game would run for a while yet with more reasonable pricing. Their profit-margin is bigger, no doubt, under the current whale-hunting regime. This doesn't mean it's the only method for success.
Analogy: If I choose to tip my barber $100 dollars for a $15 hair cut, how long before he raises his normal fee. Won't you think he'll believe he's living in an affluent area and can get more? You say you are helping him pay his mortgage and thereby keeping the barbershop open for everyone, I say you are raising my fee.
tldr: any extended periods of unreasonable costs in time and money are totally on the heads of the customers for being doormats.
It amazing that the CTO and me started programming in Windows Gaming around the same time. But again he's in a business that promotes online gaming. His COO, and CEO both have to answer to the Home Office CEO where the final word comes from. So what you see is what it is. Doesn't seem to be changing backwards to the prior game model. So this is the way they're pushing forward.
To me it is just the way everything online gaming is. Sure they'll do things to make your happy but they can't do much more. Just have to let this go and just make do with what you got going in your (FED, ROM, KDF) user player game data. Report technical problems to them.
Life is already too short to worry who said what to whom!
The game doesn't run of wishes and smiles. Someone has to spend money otherwise there is no STO.
These games are designed for people to spend what they feel comfortable spending. I get that people feel pressured, but they feel pressured because they want it "now" if they just you know went slowly and had fun and saved up (like one does in other games) they would not need to spend more money then they are comfortable with. This is the upside of f2p models or more accurately "freemium".
Just spend what your willing to lack of a better word for it not care about "disposable income" meant for entertainment purposes then you should be fine. Never ever spend more then your willing to do without and get rid of permanently on this game or any other game. Exercise a bit of self control as one has to do with regard to spending money here and anywhere and just play the game and save up ingame. Buy zen or whatevers on the dilithium exchange or grind dilithium for your upgrades and save it up and have fun.
There is no reason to rush the game is not time limited and will remain there for as long as the company decided to run it which hopefully will be for a few more years yet. At the end any money you give them to rent pixels is about the same as watching a movie in a cinema "here one day and gone the next".
tldr: any extended periods of unreasonable costs in time and money are totally on the heads of the customers for being doormats.
this is also true these games look at sale numbers. They dont care how much people complain about the prices because its common knowledge that people will complain but still purchase. (ask anyone in marketting about price points and customer complaints about cost.. lol). The prices are the way they are and costs are the way they are because people are willing to pay the price. The prices go down when people stop paying the price. So they only will do something about pricing when the stuff stops selling. People complaining about cost but still forking over their money are the ones they dont listen to. They listen when people dont fork over their money any longer
To be honest, another by-product of this new system is that I am less willing to grind for rep gear.
I won't lie and pretend that I've ignored the new Delta Rep gear - but grinding for said gear was VERY unrewarding, since you know the end product is a MkXII item. Not technically a problem in itself, but it does mean that, if you are so inclined, you wind up with yet ANOTHER item that requires upgrading.
I *used* to like that with a commendation a new character could be up to speed in 20 days.
Now with reps rewarding only mk XII and the Delta rep requiring queue only currencies (and only rewarding mk XII) there have been quite a few layoffs in my roster of captains.
And now, while Zen T5 ships may work perfectly well, without that -U, you're wasting ship mastery points. If the consoles and unique items from the Zen T5 ships could be used on any ship it'd be a bit better, like T1-T4 ships, but my Vesta's [Aux] cannons are stuck on an end-of-life ship, as are my Kumari wing cannons, and Oddy worker bees.
This is my Risian Corvette. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I feel the same way. As a Lifer I was interested in why people started to laughingly in the test forums call this expansion Dilithium Rising and on launch day I discovered why. Dilitium PER upgrade is the most ridiculous thing I've seen in a long time especially in a title in which things are always changing causing us to have to spend dilithium AND we have huge dilithium sinks built into the ever expanding Fleet Starbase system as it is.
This is also far far from canon where the hell is all this dilithium going when we upgrade technology? Seriously, it's cute to use it as a currency but it's absolutely NOT the only currency in the game. They could have done this with any other currency that we're setting on piles of like the fleet marks or fleet credits giving them a reason to be used again considering how poorly the fleet currency system was done making being a fleet mean something again.
They could have also given us the ability to use dual currencies thus ofsetting the dilithium costs by oh I dunno being max crafters something some of us already had prior to the change in crafting in which they seriously didn't do what they said they'd do which is give those of us who were maxed a better change of maxing again so we didn't have to work for months.
It's the other reason why I called for his resignation after this previous "exploit" insult because he seriously has no concept of math or of customer service one simply does not do these things to one's customers and expect them to stay or be happy about one's performance and in any other industry he would have been fired for incompetence. They seriously need someone else in the drivers seat because this is out of hand at this point.
This is not the Korean model... This is the MMO model. Every theme-park-oriented MMO I have ever played has rendered everything at endgame useless with each subsequent expansion. And guess where this model originated? Right in the good ol' US of A.
And you know what? For the suits running the show, it works perfectly, because you are not their target audience. They count on the many mindless lemmings who keep throwing money at a game for every little thing, and going through the mind-numbingly boring repetition, somehow convince that it's fun and engaging. As if real life isn't already a big enough grind as it is.
Anyway, they don't care that you are fed up. They don't care if ANY of us get fed up. As long as there are lemming to shell out money all the time, then they are happy.
Clearly you are not one of these lemmings. The only thing I bought since the game went free to play was enough Zen to get the Jupiter uniform. Since then I have spent NOTHING. It's very liberating, I can tell you.
The aspect of rendering gear obsolete is a typical mmo model in the west yes, however, the grind and the cost per tech upgrade is absolutely korean.
It requires grind to make them, it requires grind to get the parts, it requires either grind or real money conversion to dilithium to completely upgrade all of your gear. Last korean game I played that was exactly the case. Being forced to spend real money to progress competatively is absolutely an Eastern system.
This is not the Korean model... This is the MMO model. Every theme-park-oriented MMO I have ever played has rendered everything at endgame useless with each subsequent expansion. And guess where this model originated? Right in the good ol' US of A.
And you know what? For the suits running the show, it works perfectly, because you are not their target audience. They count on the many mindless lemmings who keep throwing money at a game for every little thing, and going through the mind-numbingly boring repetition, somehow convince that it's fun and engaging. As if real life isn't already a big enough grind as it is.
Anyway, they don't care that you are fed up. They don't care if ANY of us get fed up. As long as there are lemming to shell out money all the time, then they are happy.
Clearly you are not one of these lemmings. The only thing I bought since the game went free to play was enough Zen to get the Jupiter uniform. Since then I have spent NOTHING. It's very liberating, I can tell you.
SWG - Themepark Sandbox MMO. Gear didn't change a whole lot from NGE to become Obsolete, you could customize it for the stats you wanted. Subscription based, TCG/Cash Shop centered around shinies
SWTOR - Themepark "linear/Rails" MMO. All Endgame gear is obtainable via raids and flashpoints with no monetarily linked currency tied to upgrades. Cash Store centered around nice to haves and shinies. FTP w/ benefits around subscription.
WoW - No Clue as this is the original train wreck linear MMO and never played it.
STO - Used to be alt friendly, excellent FTP model that has been infected with the Asian grinder disease. Using monetarily linked currency for everything. Ships and nice to haves weren't enough for Beijing; Xp totals suck/per kill after 50 no matter what you do. Destroys the alt experience.
Is mute to complain after you bought in, no offense!
What's more, the next thing they come up with is going to be worse; they took the lessons they learned on milking from people in upgrading and crafting and going to take it to a whole new level now
Anyone spent money on that, everything that follows now is YOUR fault
I have a ton of alt characters and while I don't spend much time playing most of them, I invested a ton of time and effort into ships and gear for several of them. Not to mention all that space monopoly money.
I guess if you want to get technical about it, those characters are still endgame-capable. But they feel sub-par, and I can't afford all these upgrade kits and dil, so I don't use them to play anymore. I use them to doff. I like doffing as a side activity, but it's a depressing use of characters with 100-200m EC ships.
So, I don't play them anymore. I'll play them again when I can straight-up buy Mk XIV gear from the fleet and reputation stores. I don't mind buying that gear at all, that's not the problem. The upgrade system that is designed to be annoying is the problem.
Maybe Mr. Deangelo doesn't care that I don't play those characters anymore. Maybe that was the goal of all this, somehow. But I'm no longer going to reward the people who open lockboxes buy buying their ships off the exchange for the alts I cannot play. I'm no longer going to reward the people who buy Zen to sell on that exchange by trading them dil, since I won't buy C-Store ships or Fleet ships for alts I cannot play.
I don't know what PWE/Cryptic's overall goal with Delta Rising was. Is this Mission Accomplished?
I don't mind spending one- or two hundred bucks a month, !
see this is the real problem. Spending $100-200 a month on a video game is INSANE. It doesn't really matter if you have that disposable income, its still INSANE.
And lets say you are rolling in the $$$$, Do you think this game in run in such a way that your $200 a month is getting you what should be top quality entertainment.
This is not the Korean model... This is the MMO model. Every theme-park-oriented MMO I have ever played has rendered everything at endgame useless with each subsequent expansion. And guess where this model originated? Right in the good ol' US of A.
Nothing wrong with having made Mk XII useless per se. The difference, however is, that going from Mk XII to Mk XIV (only Ultra Rare; forget Epic even) comes with a cost several orders of magnitude higher than going from, say, Mk X to Mk XII.
And the MMO model?! What does that even mean? STO has been a MMO for years: only with DR did the growth in cost become explosive.
They count on the many mindless lemmings who keep throwing money at a game for every little thing, and going through the mind-numbingly boring repetition, somehow convince that it's fun and engaging..
They'd do well to take a cue from their queues. The lemmings are getting restless, not just me.
And, like i told the EP, it simply turns my stomach, every time I realize I'll have to shell out big time again, just to get my sets/ships back to endgame level.
I guess this is the part that I do not get. You spent weeks, if not months, getting your endgame gear the first time around, to earn rep and dil and marks and all to be able to get them.
Now you spend ... weeks, if not months, to upgrade them.
So let me ask.... if all that old gear could NOT be upgraded, and instead you had had to earn 1-2 more tiers of rep in each faction then buy from the stores a new set of gear for dil and marks and all, would that have been "better" ? End result is gonna be the same ... time and dil spent = endgame gear setups.
I totally get that the price is steep. But if you look at the price of your old gear, --- I mean really look at it --- compare that to a XIV upgrade cost, its not *that* far out. I think the problem is mostly the "want it now" problem of being able to upgrade it all right now today (no time gate of waiting for rep or other "I can't do any faster" delay) but unable to afford it all today. The old method, you saw what you wanted, and you knew what it would cost, but you had weeks of rep and mark grinding while you piled up dil and such so after the time gated part was done you could afford the new stuff. It felt better that way. Now the time gate is tied to your ability to earn dil .... which is pretty low unless you have a lot of alts set up to manufacture it, which some do but most don't have. Oddly the game punishes the one character player that way -- even if having to gear out all those alts is going to be pricy, the ability to gear out one char at a time fairly rapidly is nice. Mirror is going to net me over 300k dil, for example. The guy with one character is not going to have that luxury. And all of it will go to my "main". Kinda lame to tie progress to one's ability to farm, but there you have it.
see this is the real problem. Spending $100-200 a month on a video game is INSANE. It doesn't really matter if you have that disposable income, its still INSANE.
And lets say you are rolling in the $$$$, Do you think this game in run in such a way that your $200 a month is getting you what should be top quality entertainment.
'Quality entertainment' is in the eye of the beholder. For me, spending money on something new and fun was worth it. Whether it be entire new sets of Vulnerability Locators, new rep gear, latest lockbox ship, it's all good. Spending $100-200 on having to 'buy back' my old gear, as it were, to get it to endgame level again, just leaves me feeling swindled and empty-handed.
There's no regret having spent money on this game; but no longer willing to spend said $100-200 on upgrading just a single set I already had. The buck stops here.
The only things i hate about upgrading my stuff is its cost its to much with all the other costs in the game.
Other things i hate loot gone from my favorite missions xp nerf across the bored. The new borg missions cut seens when ur in middle of a fight they are really PISSING ME OFF.
For me LoR was a better realse ohh before i forget DR keeps crashing my comp i did not have a single crash for the previous 9 mths :mad:
Is mute to complain after you bought in, no offense!
Yeah, no. The whole point of this thread was to say I'm no longer buying into it.
What's more, the next thing they come up with is going to be worse; they took the lessons they learned on milking from people in upgrading and crafting and going to take it to a whole new level now
If anything, the lesson they should take from the debacle they call DR, is that milking people works a lot less linear than they thought.
Anyone spent money on that, everything that follows now is YOUR fault
P2W can work at whatever rates they choose. They can do it, pre-DR style, and have a working model; or go DR-style, and try and milk people for 10x as much as before. The former is reasonable for an MMO, the latter is not. Don't put anything on me, just because I was willing to support pre-DR.
Yeah, no. The whole point of this thread was to say I'm no longer buying into it.
If anything, the lesson they should take from the debable they call DR, is that milking people works a lot less linear than they thought.
P2W can work at whatever rates they choose. They can do it, pre-DR style, and have a working model; or go DR-style, and try and milk people for 10x as much as before. The former is reasonable for an MMO, the latter is not. Don't put anything on me, just because I was willing to support pre-DR.
Why do you defend the choices of your life? You liked the game and paid for that. Some people were leeching your contributions and were able to play for free. That is how it worked. You, me and many other whales kept the game afloat. Now we are watching it sink...
If fleet time-gates had been rejected we'd have no reputation system.
If people hadn't accepted crafting they wouldn't have built a dil lottery around upgrading.
You teach them how to treat you by giving them money.
And I am not out to flame anyone but coming on here after you gave them 400$ for 2 or 3 rear weapons it entirely mute.
Like I said if anything turn it up high, let's go for 1500$ for upgrading 1 console it would seem there is no limit to people's stupidity around here
To me it's a small miracle there is 1 single person in the entire game who was willing to re-buy all his old gear, stuff he already bought, with animations he already used 5 minutes copy-past job for MILLIONS of dil.
I almost become religious and start believing in the super-natural !
I gave them 0$, converted 0$ to 0 from 0, sold 0 contraband, have 0 items on the exchange and all my characters are in-active and I will be using 0 on upgrading and 0 on crafting
THAT is how you communicate the message
I already bought all my gear, re-buying what I already bought is worth exactly 0
Its worrying when you start hearing the whale song.
And yet Cryptic doesn't hear what we're asking for. Serious disconnect here. Or, speaking of whales, "It is difficult to answer, when one does not understand the question." :P
I had 10 level 50s I would keep geared and buy z-store ships for across all factions, now most of them are now just doffing alts and I am deciding whether to just focus on 1 or 2 of my KDF characters only. I used to buy Fed and Rom ships also but why bother when I don't have the time to upgrade all their stuff to make them competitive. I would have got the Delta Pack immediately if I knew I could still play all 10 of my characters.
No one is denying you can grind for years on end to obtain anything and everything in the store. Of course you can do it. Not everyone has the time or the inclination to do so. Some people do not live in their parents basement anymore and have actual lives outside of STO and would rather pay a few bucks here and there instead of spending months grinding.
People really need to stop telling others to just "slow down" and "have patience and just grind free Dil". If everyone does that, then there is no income for STO and therefore no game.
You missed the point people are complaining of the real world cost in dollars and cents so they pump hundreds of dollars into the system and still complain that the system doesn't change. If you want it to change just grind it dont pay them money when their bottom line changes they will change it. Until then your choice is "do i buy it for hundreds of dollars fast" or "do i buy it for 0.00 and do it slow".
the reason the game is in the present state is due to the purchasing history of the players. Past and present. I dont particularly mind grinding so this bothers me not. I refuse to pay more for a game then tis worth so I dont no matter how much they dangle the carrot in front of my nose and despite the "grind". I will not fork over money and complain at the same time. The choices are clear fork over money if you want it fast. Grind it if you either a: refuse to pay for it. b: like grinding.
those are the choices. Its possible to play this game and all freemium games for 0.00. The grind is there to entice you to pay them money to remove it. That is how it works.
I had 10 level 50s I would keep geared and buy z-store ships for across all factions, now most of them are now just doffing alts and I am deciding whether to just focus on 1 or 2 of my KDF characters only. I used to buy Fed and Rom ships also but why bother when I don't have the time to upgrade all their stuff to make them competitive. I would have got the Delta Pack immediately if I knew I could still play all 10 of my characters.
Yup. That's exactly one of my points! I think they thought spending would rise logarithmically (people having 5 ships, each with 5 weps, each needing 5 round of upgrades, etc). It's what I callled 'Pokemon Economics.' :P In reality, of course, the only thing that's really happening is, that peeps are ditching everything else they got (doffing aside) and just concentrate on one, or maybe two toons. Same for their gear. Which is, of course, detrimental to the game. Thing of it simply is, people don't just have 10x the amount of disposable income to spend on STO -- even if they wanted to. And I'm still baffled why Cryptic (PWE?) thought that we would.
I really hope they're gonna take a long and hard look at those infamous metrics, and see for themselves what's going on. And then maybe make a change or two. Yeah, I know, slim chance on that. But, as a favorite Captain of mine once said, "I've never known hope when it wasn't on a diet."
Comments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Yrd6caXygw&list=RD1Yrd6caXygw#t=0
Kill Feddie.
Waff
I am almost finished with the DR missions with1 last patrol mission. The storyline missions are great, the patrols...yeah ...right. I'll finish that final one and then only set foot in Argala...thats it. Other than that, it'll be ground zones and Tau Dewa with maybe a few odd STFs. Oh this will be with 1 toon too, the other 2 will be hanging out at SFA running Lore and DoFF missions.
I won't say I was a whale but I probably averaged about 50-100 month. I even bought the DR Pack. At this point I probably won't spend any more money on anything until it gets sorted out. IMO they killed this game by taking alts out of the picture. I would rather spend $100 bucks to get my 3 toons DR ready than 100 for 1 toon.
I almost think they added the Mirror Event because the population is down and they're trying to pull people back with a big reward event.
It has gone far enough for me. I will fly my existing ships, canabalize my exisitng 10 toons and combine it in 2 toons that were furthest. The rest... meh.
For the people that say "you can play for free" and ESPECIALLY to the people making fun of whales: whales pay for your free game. No whales, no game in this case. Unless they sincerly start to think about a new model, where all people want to support the game.
And another one here. I actually uninstalled last week but I still want to play STO so I reinstalled (lasted all of two days...). But, I deleted all but one character and that one's going to be upgraded using Dilithium I pick up in game, no more spending for me as I just don't feel that blowing masses of Dilithium to continue using the same gear I've used for the last year or so is something I'm overly happy about. And it's not like the new content is overly interesting anyway, I certainly don't want to do the 50-60 Delta stuff again as it was so tedious.
I don't even want to know what I've spent on Zen up to now, I daren't look at the purchase history. At least now it won't get any worse.
I enjoyed the story tho.
Well who knows ... .
I mean we all remember when Bort was "quoted out of context" about Cryptic not being hurt if they loose income from a whole country .
Back then Cryptic was celebrating the new income from the Lockboxes , as they upped the income of the game by an order of a magnitude .
So who knows ... , maybe PWE asked Cryptic to do that again ... .
With the current HP in STF's , it's more like DR turned your gear into what would equal pre-DR Mk VII White .
After you upgrade , you end you with Mk XIV Purple / Epic , which barely = Mk IX White .
Cuz lei's be honest :
Pre DR , you could do ESTF's with Mk X or Mk XI and do fine .
Post DR , Mk XIV Purple / Epic still won't cut it for most players , and it sure as hell won't bring the fun back .
TL : DR You are FAR less powerful post DR in space endgame gear , then you were pre-DR with endgame gear .
So even all your effort , tears & money won't make you happy in this game as thing stand .
I'm not confused in the least. STO has a near-monopoly on Star Trek gaming right now. There is no competition to keep prices reasonable. Space-gaming as a whole is weak atm. We shall see about coming new releases, but I've struggled to replace STO in this genre. I'm playing fantasy games instead.
What will keep STO's pricing reasonable? There are two possibilities: Moral, responsible business decisions (hysterical laughing) or you and I, the customer, not paying 20x the value for an item. The latter being much more likely. You're just late getting here.
For some like myself, we stopped purchasing long before we were unable to afford any more items. We stopped because it was ridiculous from the outset.
They would love us to believe "whales" are keeping the game running, but we all know the game would run for a while yet with more reasonable pricing. Their profit-margin is bigger, no doubt, under the current whale-hunting regime. This doesn't mean it's the only method for success.
Analogy: If I choose to tip my barber $100 dollars for a $15 hair cut, how long before he raises his normal fee. Won't you think he'll believe he's living in an affluent area and can get more? You say you are helping him pay his mortgage and thereby keeping the barbershop open for everyone, I say you are raising my fee.
tldr: any extended periods of unreasonable costs in time and money are totally on the heads of the customers for being doormats.
To me it is just the way everything online gaming is. Sure they'll do things to make your happy but they can't do much more. Just have to let this go and just make do with what you got going in your (FED, ROM, KDF) user player game data. Report technical problems to them.
Life is already too short to worry who said what to whom!
Time will only tell!
These games are designed for people to spend what they feel comfortable spending. I get that people feel pressured, but they feel pressured because they want it "now" if they just you know went slowly and had fun and saved up (like one does in other games) they would not need to spend more money then they are comfortable with. This is the upside of f2p models or more accurately "freemium".
Just spend what your willing to lack of a better word for it not care about "disposable income" meant for entertainment purposes then you should be fine. Never ever spend more then your willing to do without and get rid of permanently on this game or any other game. Exercise a bit of self control as one has to do with regard to spending money here and anywhere and just play the game and save up ingame. Buy zen or whatevers on the dilithium exchange or grind dilithium for your upgrades and save it up and have fun.
There is no reason to rush the game is not time limited and will remain there for as long as the company decided to run it which hopefully will be for a few more years yet. At the end any money you give them to rent pixels is about the same as watching a movie in a cinema "here one day and gone the next".
this is also true these games look at sale numbers. They dont care how much people complain about the prices because its common knowledge that people will complain but still purchase. (ask anyone in marketting about price points and customer complaints about cost.. lol). The prices are the way they are and costs are the way they are because people are willing to pay the price. The prices go down when people stop paying the price. So they only will do something about pricing when the stuff stops selling. People complaining about cost but still forking over their money are the ones they dont listen to. They listen when people dont fork over their money any longer
I *used* to like that with a commendation a new character could be up to speed in 20 days.
Now with reps rewarding only mk XII and the Delta rep requiring queue only currencies (and only rewarding mk XII) there have been quite a few layoffs in my roster of captains.
And now, while Zen T5 ships may work perfectly well, without that -U, you're wasting ship mastery points. If the consoles and unique items from the Zen T5 ships could be used on any ship it'd be a bit better, like T1-T4 ships, but my Vesta's [Aux] cannons are stuck on an end-of-life ship, as are my Kumari wing cannons, and Oddy worker bees.
This is also far far from canon where the hell is all this dilithium going when we upgrade technology? Seriously, it's cute to use it as a currency but it's absolutely NOT the only currency in the game. They could have done this with any other currency that we're setting on piles of like the fleet marks or fleet credits giving them a reason to be used again considering how poorly the fleet currency system was done making being a fleet mean something again.
They could have also given us the ability to use dual currencies thus ofsetting the dilithium costs by oh I dunno being max crafters something some of us already had prior to the change in crafting in which they seriously didn't do what they said they'd do which is give those of us who were maxed a better change of maxing again so we didn't have to work for months.
It's the other reason why I called for his resignation after this previous "exploit" insult because he seriously has no concept of math or of customer service one simply does not do these things to one's customers and expect them to stay or be happy about one's performance and in any other industry he would have been fired for incompetence. They seriously need someone else in the drivers seat because this is out of hand at this point.
ELITE STF SPEED RECORDS (time on optional remaining):
S07: KASE: 12:54 | CSE: 13:20 | ISE: 12:38 All held personally, my POV
LOR: KASE: 13:19 | CSE: 13:47 | ISE: 13:34 None held personally, other player's POV
S08: coming soon
The aspect of rendering gear obsolete is a typical mmo model in the west yes, however, the grind and the cost per tech upgrade is absolutely korean.
It requires grind to make them, it requires grind to get the parts, it requires either grind or real money conversion to dilithium to completely upgrade all of your gear. Last korean game I played that was exactly the case. Being forced to spend real money to progress competatively is absolutely an Eastern system.
SWG - Themepark Sandbox MMO. Gear didn't change a whole lot from NGE to become Obsolete, you could customize it for the stats you wanted. Subscription based, TCG/Cash Shop centered around shinies
SWTOR - Themepark "linear/Rails" MMO. All Endgame gear is obtainable via raids and flashpoints with no monetarily linked currency tied to upgrades. Cash Store centered around nice to haves and shinies. FTP w/ benefits around subscription.
WoW - No Clue as this is the original train wreck linear MMO and never played it.
STO - Used to be alt friendly, excellent FTP model that has been infected with the Asian grinder disease. Using monetarily linked currency for everything. Ships and nice to haves weren't enough for Beijing; Xp totals suck/per kill after 50 no matter what you do. Destroys the alt experience.
What's more, the next thing they come up with is going to be worse; they took the lessons they learned on milking from people in upgrading and crafting and going to take it to a whole new level now
Anyone spent money on that, everything that follows now is YOUR fault
I guess if you want to get technical about it, those characters are still endgame-capable. But they feel sub-par, and I can't afford all these upgrade kits and dil, so I don't use them to play anymore. I use them to doff. I like doffing as a side activity, but it's a depressing use of characters with 100-200m EC ships.
So, I don't play them anymore. I'll play them again when I can straight-up buy Mk XIV gear from the fleet and reputation stores. I don't mind buying that gear at all, that's not the problem. The upgrade system that is designed to be annoying is the problem.
Maybe Mr. Deangelo doesn't care that I don't play those characters anymore. Maybe that was the goal of all this, somehow. But I'm no longer going to reward the people who open lockboxes buy buying their ships off the exchange for the alts I cannot play. I'm no longer going to reward the people who buy Zen to sell on that exchange by trading them dil, since I won't buy C-Store ships or Fleet ships for alts I cannot play.
I don't know what PWE/Cryptic's overall goal with Delta Rising was. Is this Mission Accomplished?
see this is the real problem. Spending $100-200 a month on a video game is INSANE. It doesn't really matter if you have that disposable income, its still INSANE.
And lets say you are rolling in the $$$$, Do you think this game in run in such a way that your $200 a month is getting you what should be top quality entertainment.
Nothing wrong with having made Mk XII useless per se. The difference, however is, that going from Mk XII to Mk XIV (only Ultra Rare; forget Epic even) comes with a cost several orders of magnitude higher than going from, say, Mk X to Mk XII.
And the MMO model?! What does that even mean? STO has been a MMO for years: only with DR did the growth in cost become explosive.
They'd do well to take a cue from their queues. The lemmings are getting restless, not just me.
I guess this is the part that I do not get. You spent weeks, if not months, getting your endgame gear the first time around, to earn rep and dil and marks and all to be able to get them.
Now you spend ... weeks, if not months, to upgrade them.
So let me ask.... if all that old gear could NOT be upgraded, and instead you had had to earn 1-2 more tiers of rep in each faction then buy from the stores a new set of gear for dil and marks and all, would that have been "better" ? End result is gonna be the same ... time and dil spent = endgame gear setups.
I totally get that the price is steep. But if you look at the price of your old gear, --- I mean really look at it --- compare that to a XIV upgrade cost, its not *that* far out. I think the problem is mostly the "want it now" problem of being able to upgrade it all right now today (no time gate of waiting for rep or other "I can't do any faster" delay) but unable to afford it all today. The old method, you saw what you wanted, and you knew what it would cost, but you had weeks of rep and mark grinding while you piled up dil and such so after the time gated part was done you could afford the new stuff. It felt better that way. Now the time gate is tied to your ability to earn dil .... which is pretty low unless you have a lot of alts set up to manufacture it, which some do but most don't have. Oddly the game punishes the one character player that way -- even if having to gear out all those alts is going to be pricy, the ability to gear out one char at a time fairly rapidly is nice. Mirror is going to net me over 300k dil, for example. The guy with one character is not going to have that luxury. And all of it will go to my "main". Kinda lame to tie progress to one's ability to farm, but there you have it.
'Quality entertainment' is in the eye of the beholder. For me, spending money on something new and fun was worth it. Whether it be entire new sets of Vulnerability Locators, new rep gear, latest lockbox ship, it's all good. Spending $100-200 on having to 'buy back' my old gear, as it were, to get it to endgame level again, just leaves me feeling swindled and empty-handed.
There's no regret having spent money on this game; but no longer willing to spend said $100-200 on upgrading just a single set I already had. The buck stops here.
Other things i hate loot gone from my favorite missions xp nerf across the bored. The new borg missions cut seens when ur in middle of a fight they are really PISSING ME OFF.
For me LoR was a better realse ohh before i forget DR keeps crashing my comp i did not have a single crash for the previous 9 mths :mad:
Yeah, no. The whole point of this thread was to say I'm no longer buying into it.
If anything, the lesson they should take from the debacle they call DR, is that milking people works a lot less linear than they thought.
P2W can work at whatever rates they choose. They can do it, pre-DR style, and have a working model; or go DR-style, and try and milk people for 10x as much as before. The former is reasonable for an MMO, the latter is not. Don't put anything on me, just because I was willing to support pre-DR.
Why do you defend the choices of your life? You liked the game and paid for that. Some people were leeching your contributions and were able to play for free. That is how it worked. You, me and many other whales kept the game afloat. Now we are watching it sink...
If people hadn't accepted crafting they wouldn't have built a dil lottery around upgrading.
You teach them how to treat you by giving them money.
And I am not out to flame anyone but coming on here after you gave them 400$ for 2 or 3 rear weapons it entirely mute.
Like I said if anything turn it up high, let's go for 1500$ for upgrading 1 console it would seem there is no limit to people's stupidity around here
To me it's a small miracle there is 1 single person in the entire game who was willing to re-buy all his old gear, stuff he already bought, with animations he already used 5 minutes copy-past job for MILLIONS of dil.
I almost become religious and start believing in the super-natural !
I gave them 0$, converted 0$ to 0 from 0, sold 0 contraband, have 0 items on the exchange and all my characters are in-active and I will be using 0 on upgrading and 0 on crafting
THAT is how you communicate the message
I already bought all my gear, re-buying what I already bought is worth exactly 0
And yet Cryptic doesn't hear what we're asking for. Serious disconnect here. Or, speaking of whales, "It is difficult to answer, when one does not understand the question." :P
You missed the point people are complaining of the real world cost in dollars and cents so they pump hundreds of dollars into the system and still complain that the system doesn't change. If you want it to change just grind it dont pay them money when their bottom line changes they will change it. Until then your choice is "do i buy it for hundreds of dollars fast" or "do i buy it for 0.00 and do it slow".
the reason the game is in the present state is due to the purchasing history of the players. Past and present. I dont particularly mind grinding so this bothers me not. I refuse to pay more for a game then tis worth so I dont no matter how much they dangle the carrot in front of my nose and despite the "grind". I will not fork over money and complain at the same time. The choices are clear fork over money if you want it fast. Grind it if you either a: refuse to pay for it. b: like grinding.
those are the choices. Its possible to play this game and all freemium games for 0.00. The grind is there to entice you to pay them money to remove it. That is how it works.
Yup. That's exactly one of my points! I think they thought spending would rise logarithmically (people having 5 ships, each with 5 weps, each needing 5 round of upgrades, etc). It's what I callled 'Pokemon Economics.' :P In reality, of course, the only thing that's really happening is, that peeps are ditching everything else they got (doffing aside) and just concentrate on one, or maybe two toons. Same for their gear. Which is, of course, detrimental to the game. Thing of it simply is, people don't just have 10x the amount of disposable income to spend on STO -- even if they wanted to. And I'm still baffled why Cryptic (PWE?) thought that we would.
I really hope they're gonna take a long and hard look at those infamous metrics, and see for themselves what's going on. And then maybe make a change or two. Yeah, I know, slim chance on that. But, as a favorite Captain of mine once said, "I've never known hope when it wasn't on a diet."