Bonus pools are fine for a lockbox "whammy" prize. They come with Lobi first of all. Second, they're basically an alternative to getting nothing.
Bonus pools as something to spend ZEN on make no sense to me. They require effort to get benefit out of and money and generate probably the worst hedonic return of anything in the game.
That goes for pretty much all forms of boosters. XP, R&D, Duty Officer, Fleet Mark, etc.
I strongly advise re-evaluating them.
Personally, I think maybe XP boosters would be worthwhile either with a reworking away from the "bonus pool" mechanic or, if that's the approach, if you attached Lobi, rare prizes, and a grand prize to the various bonus pools, making them, in effect, very specialized and expensive lockboxes.
EDIT: OUCH! I thought I saw the boost was 20,000.. Since it's only 10,000 the math below is off but even if it was twice the XP it'd still be a raw deal. I'll leave my post as it was to show my inability to read correctly, and to point out if they gave us twice as much XP, we'd still be getting this:
I didn't read all the other posts but this seems like a great idea with poor execution...
If the Dil -> Zen rate was 160dil per zen, then the 800 zen needed is 128,000 dilithium...
So that's 16 days of refining to buy 20,000 R&D XP for 128,000 dil / 800 zen (Obviously the exchange rate fluctuates) with the new Zen store additions.
Or to achieve the same result I could just queue the daily bonus XP mission and finish it right away for 18,000 dil. If I did that 4 times I'd have at least 24,000 R&D XP for a total cost of 72,000 dil.
By my math that's almost 50% (43.75% for those nitpickers) less cost of dilithium for more overall R&D XP......
I really, really need to do some video game marketing courses just to see how they are shaping their students who later work in the VG industry.
Because that'd probably give me several fits of healthy laughter. I mean, are they using Kraang/Iconian technology to brainwash them into reality-disconnected greedy zombies or something?
All for the LOW LOW price of 3 installments of $179.99.
!!! YOU HEARD CORRECTLY !!!
you will be on your way to that golf course you always dreamed of!
Act now while supplies last!
:eek: BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! :eek:
Call in the next 20 minutes to receive a FREE** nylon pasta fork! (just pay S&H)
*(Jumbo sized Class - A grass seeds are not guaranteed to grow every time, quality and quantity may vary. Jumbo sized Class - A grass seeds are common grass seeds.)
**(after $15.99 surcharge.)
Load a full hopper of "What he said" into the DNS guns at Anonymouse..........
The Universe is a messy place, You are born a mess. Sustaining life usually involves cleaning up messes. You die and usually are a mess then too. All of these messes usually involve some blood- get over it.
You get 7000 per day for free..........................
Jellico....Engineer ground.....Da'val Romulan space Sci
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
Are you brain damaged ?! Remove this insulting ****. If ANYONE buys even one of this **** i am selling my pc and giving all my money to charity. Sigh.. Oh yeah server died, how about fixing that before insulting us with this horrible "boosts"
Are you brain damaged ?! Remove this insulting ****. If ANYONE buys even one of this **** i am selling my pc and giving all my money to charity. Sigh.. Oh yeah server died, how about fixing that before insulting us with this horrible "boosts"
Whats the point? Fixing the server wont fix the game... but at least they are willing to do that much. They have no problem taking our money.
Are you brain damaged ?! Remove this insulting ****. If ANYONE buys even one of this **** i am selling my pc and giving all my money to charity. Sigh.. Oh yeah server died, how about fixing that before insulting us with this horrible "boosts"
This is applying one small plus one large boost. Do you see why the numbers are too small now? Can you please get this communicated to the powers that be?
The same problem exists for all the boost items.
I will not be wasting my money on these new products. Nothing to see here, move along. Move along.
You can find/contact me in game as @PatricianVetinari. Playing STO since Feb 2010.
Uh, thanks for spending development time on this, I guess.
Try removing (or at least reducing) the upgrade costs and make the boost relative to the skill you're getting R&D XP towards. The climb from 15-20 is a lot different from 1-5.
Not really sure who asked for this to be added to the Zen store, so thanks Marketing?
With this price, I will not buy it in a million years. My feedback: Keep the price, but raise the pool for more reasonable amounts. How about something in the range of 50k-100k?
Edit: BTW. If these are fixed to give a more reasonable amount of Crafting XP, I will probably expend all my zen and dilithium on those things *hint* *hint*
Pre-forum change name: Captain Wilhelm Join Date: March 2009
Thanks Cryptic for introducing the Kelvin Timeline. It remembered why I decided to never more put any money on this game.
I can't speak for any other player, but I have banned myself from spending any more money on this game until Cryptic starts treating it like an actual commercial product and performs proper software lifecycle maintenance on it as any other professional IT/software company does. For 5 years now Cryptic has been selling a beta test version of a future commercial release (as evidenced by immortal bugs in the core programming of the game), then making further profit by selling Alpha test versions of future commercial expansions (Delta Rising was in Alpha development stages when they forced it down our throats at 160$ a shot). If STO was a tangible, physical product or service instead of a nebulous MMO the company would be facing charges for fraud and lawsuits for breach of contract.
I concede that in the software world ALL programs and projects will have unforseen bugs and issues, but *REAL* software companies don't have major issues with commercial releases for at least a month... DR's first major bug/issue was what, 45 seconds after it went live?
We as players need to finally wake up and realize that Cryptic will continue to force feed us substandard, unprofessional content as long as we're still spending money. If you want this garbage to stop, quit buying zen, expansions, or lifetime subscriptions until there is a noticeable decrease in bugs and flaws as well as a corresponding improvement in customer support and bug/support ticket resolution. Withhold your money until Cryptic addresses the bugs and flaws that never die. Don't give them a dime until they (through adequate, professional programming and debugging) EARN it with a quality product, not the half assed meth lab they're currently selling us.
These are ridiculous. You can get 6-7k free daily just by clicking a button.
The reason why most people are not doing R&D/crafting is that:
1.) It costs dilithium.
You can argue only the application of tech costs dilithium (the Omega upgrade being an attempt to say - hey - try this for free), but every step in the development process has this dilithium time gate that says 'HA HA, YOU NEED TO SPEND DIL. It was very poorly marketed
2.) You've priced the process out of the range of the casual player.
The amount of dil a player has to commit over the life of ONE ALT is ridiculously high. For many of us with dedicated player styles and MULTIPLES of alts, it's cost prohibitive. I've spent over $500 and I'm still not done upgrading (multiple alts).
Anyone with basic math skills can figure out that crafting early (before you reach lvl 15) is RIDICULOUSLY OVERPRICED. It's cheaper to buy someone elses drops than make your own stuff..
Worse still, you've made everything harder making upgrades a necessity, and you've had the balls to put the best stuff out of the reach of the average casual player. Reason #264 why the queues are empty.
At the end of the day you've created a bigger problem than you intended. Offering us another way to pay to make it 'more acceptable' isn't the solution.
ive gotten to level 15 and thought OK FINALLY, I'll start upgrading! So I need a bazillion of these upgrades to get something to XIV. Oh wait. It takes very rare materials I can only get by playing certain missions or spending way too much EC on. So I can grind missions I was sick of a long time ago and don't enjoy or put up with FAILING because there is some "optional" that either is unclear or has a .000005% margin of error.
Also not to mention that there is time gate so I need to wait around for these upgrades to process
I can't speak for any other player, but I have banned myself from spending any more money on this game until Cryptic starts treating it like an actual commercial product and performs proper software lifecycle maintenance on it as any other professional IT/software company does. For 5 years now Cryptic has been selling a beta test version of a future commercial release (as evidenced by immortal bugs in the core programming of the game), then making further profit by selling Alpha test versions of future commercial expansions (Delta Rising was in Alpha development stages when they forced it down our throats at 160$ a shot). If STO was a tangible, physical product or service instead of a nebulous MMO the company would be facing charges for fraud and lawsuits for breach of contract.
I concede that in the software world ALL programs and projects will have unforseen bugs and issues, but *REAL* software companies don't have major issues with commercial releases for at least a month... DR's first major bug/issue was what, 45 seconds after it went live?
We as players need to finally wake up and realize that Cryptic will continue to force feed us substandard, unprofessional content as long as we're still spending money. If you want this garbage to stop, quit buying zen, expansions, or lifetime subscriptions until there is a noticeable decrease in bugs and flaws as well as a corresponding improvement in customer support and bug/support ticket resolution. Withhold your money until Cryptic addresses the bugs and flaws that never die. Don't give them a dime until they (through adequate, professional programming and debugging) EARN it with a quality product, not the half assed meth lab they're currently selling us.
the problem is its like booze. I forget the exact statistics but 5% of drinkers buy like 60% of the booze. IE seruious alcoholics.
This is the Cryptic model. They make their money off a handful of users.
This latest offer demonstrates precisely what's wrong with STO right now.
Blatant endless, lazy money grabbing, above all other considerations.
Why lazy?
Because of instead of actually spending the time and resources developing something we might actually want to spend money on, something, I don't know, ... FUN.
We are offered this ...., To boost an arduous R&D system grind that was set up that way purposely, to gouge us.
And yet STILL the lingering "quality of life" issues like the messed up power tray bug and severe server lag persist.
Thanks but no thanks for the boosts, and I'll be avoiding that fustercluck that is R&D for as long as I possibly can, and still play the game.
It's painfully obvious that we're being pushed to play the game in a way to simply maximize profits to the detriment of any entertainment value.
I believe that this is one of the real reasons the exploration missions were removed from the game, to focus us on the content "some" want us to play, without competition or distractions to that agenda.
This is price gouging. God forbid you put a boost in the store that's actually worth what you're charging for it.
-edit- To be clear, I'm not opposed to the concept of the various point/skill/xp boosters in the store (I like the idea), but as with most f2p games that nickel and dime you, the price per point on them is ludicrous due to the vast number of points needed to fill up the associated buckets to advance the systems in question. 10k is a drop in the bucket when the bucket need hundreds of thousands to millions of points to make any significant advance.
Nitpicking is a time-honored tradition of science fiction. Asking your readers not to worry about the "little things" is like asking a dog not to sniff at people's crotches. If there's something that appears to violate natural laws, then you can expect someone's going to point it out. That's just the way things are.
800 Zen? this would only make sense for a pack of ten 10k boosters!
Who did the math with the boosters? (...ALL boosters)
Beta, LTA, CE, Multiple preorder Versions, all Addon Packs except AoY, nearly all KDF/Rom and ~50% of all Fedships, over 25 LockboxShips, Endurer of Atari's "Year of Hell", but...
Pricing to benefit of these boosts is as pathetic as those on the XP boosts.
What kind of total fool with no grasp of even basic primary school level arithmetic comes up with this ****?!
To get to Level 20 in ONE school requires 2,070,000 R&D XP.
Therefore the total XP required to max all schools is 14,490,000.
A large boost is 10,000.
These boost give an extra 20% XP , you would therefore need over 240 of the larger boosts just to increase your progress by a measly 1/5. This costs approaching $2,000.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAH.
NO.
Drop a zero off the price (20/80 zen) AND add a zero to the value of the boost (20,000 and 100,000) then you are approaching fair value ($20 total cost to increase your R&D progress by a factor of 20%).
Best part about this is these stupid things are now dropping in lockboxes, and if you think this is their fair value then it is rather worrying. They are total garbage, greatly decreasing the expected value from the lockbox, so you are effectively ****ing up that revenue stream as well...
Is It a Joke? Tell me It's a joke, because if not it's insulting.
I play STO since a little before F2P, and I was so entusiastic to buy a recurrent subscription for about one year and then buy a LT subscription. I had build several toons both fed and kdf to play pvp and pve... each toon had it's own ship, gears and specific build for a different play style... It was really fun until you start adding content that forced us to grind: reputations (not 1-2, but 5-6), star bases and holdings, specializations, level cap increase, gear's upgrading... All of them are good idea, but you abused of them requiring us to start grinding huge amount of resources and exp...
Moreover what first was specific to a faction is now shared and you stopped developing specific klingon contents, the result is that now there is no need to have a kdf toon and all of the huge amount of resources and time I spent to develope my kdf fleet is wasted.
And what you do now? trying to sell us items to reduce the "need to grind" you created. Moreover with crazy prices...
And what about all the bug and the lag we have?
This is insulting and a invite to leave the game...
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Playing STO spamming FAW is like playing chess using always the computer's suggested moves
Comments
Bonus pools are fine for a lockbox "whammy" prize. They come with Lobi first of all. Second, they're basically an alternative to getting nothing.
Bonus pools as something to spend ZEN on make no sense to me. They require effort to get benefit out of and money and generate probably the worst hedonic return of anything in the game.
That goes for pretty much all forms of boosters. XP, R&D, Duty Officer, Fleet Mark, etc.
I strongly advise re-evaluating them.
Personally, I think maybe XP boosters would be worthwhile either with a reworking away from the "bonus pool" mechanic or, if that's the approach, if you attached Lobi, rare prizes, and a grand prize to the various bonus pools, making them, in effect, very specialized and expensive lockboxes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gVQyfYuExA
I didn't read all the other posts but this seems like a great idea with poor execution...
If the Dil -> Zen rate was 160dil per zen, then the 800 zen needed is 128,000 dilithium...
So that's 16 days of refining to buy 20,000 R&D XP for 128,000 dil / 800 zen (Obviously the exchange rate fluctuates) with the new Zen store additions.
Or to achieve the same result I could just queue the daily bonus XP mission and finish it right away for 18,000 dil. If I did that 4 times I'd have at least 24,000 R&D XP for a total cost of 72,000 dil.
By my math that's almost 50% (43.75% for those nitpickers) less cost of dilithium for more overall R&D XP......
Soooo, who would buy these with the above info?
Load a full hopper of "What he said" into the DNS guns at Anonymouse..........
800 zen for 10,000 research points ?
Not even worth considering way overpriced
You get 7000 per day for free..........................
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
hmmmmmm....
*Cough* 3-year old cloaking bug *Cough*
Whats the point? Fixing the server wont fix the game... but at least they are willing to do that much. They have no problem taking our money.
I bought one in your honor.
I have two questions that need immediate answering:
Who's idea was this? And how soon and this person be fired?
Oh the humanity.... Oh the insanity.... Oh the Empty Queue bugs....
:rolleyes:
Gavinruneblade I think said it best:
I will not be wasting my money on these new products. Nothing to see here, move along. Move along.
You can find/contact me in game as @PatricianVetinari. Playing STO since Feb 2010.
wow...I will use this as a quote...nice one DUDE :cool:
Try removing (or at least reducing) the upgrade costs and make the boost relative to the skill you're getting R&D XP towards. The climb from 15-20 is a lot different from 1-5.
Not really sure who asked for this to be added to the Zen store, so thanks Marketing?
The numbers are horribly off. That XP boost needs to be at least 10x higher until it becomes even remotely viable.
compare
200 zen v 2000 crafting xp
interesting
Edit: BTW. If these are fixed to give a more reasonable amount of Crafting XP, I will probably expend all my zen and dilithium on those things *hint* *hint*
Join Date: March 2009
Thanks Cryptic for introducing the Kelvin Timeline. It remembered why I decided to never more put any money on this game.
I concede that in the software world ALL programs and projects will have unforseen bugs and issues, but *REAL* software companies don't have major issues with commercial releases for at least a month... DR's first major bug/issue was what, 45 seconds after it went live?
We as players need to finally wake up and realize that Cryptic will continue to force feed us substandard, unprofessional content as long as we're still spending money. If you want this garbage to stop, quit buying zen, expansions, or lifetime subscriptions until there is a noticeable decrease in bugs and flaws as well as a corresponding improvement in customer support and bug/support ticket resolution. Withhold your money until Cryptic addresses the bugs and flaws that never die. Don't give them a dime until they (through adequate, professional programming and debugging) EARN it with a quality product, not the half assed meth lab they're currently selling us.
ive gotten to level 15 and thought OK FINALLY, I'll start upgrading! So I need a bazillion of these upgrades to get something to XIV. Oh wait. It takes very rare materials I can only get by playing certain missions or spending way too much EC on. So I can grind missions I was sick of a long time ago and don't enjoy or put up with FAILING because there is some "optional" that either is unclear or has a .000005% margin of error.
Also not to mention that there is time gate so I need to wait around for these upgrades to process
the problem is its like booze. I forget the exact statistics but 5% of drinkers buy like 60% of the booze. IE seruious alcoholics.
This is the Cryptic model. They make their money off a handful of users.
Way to expensive for the amount the boost gives, like the xp boost this is frankly a complete rip off.
800zen = 128k dil (1:160 ratio), which is 6-7 "finish now" on the daily R&D project.
I could conclude with some joke on Cryptic's maths, but that would be low, and I'll just let the numbers talk by themselves.
This latest offer demonstrates precisely what's wrong with STO right now.
Blatant endless, lazy money grabbing, above all other considerations.
Why lazy?
Because of instead of actually spending the time and resources developing something we might actually want to spend money on, something, I don't know, ... FUN.
We are offered this ...., To boost an arduous R&D system grind that was set up that way purposely, to gouge us.
And yet STILL the lingering "quality of life" issues like the messed up power tray bug and severe server lag persist.
Thanks but no thanks for the boosts, and I'll be avoiding that fustercluck that is R&D for as long as I possibly can, and still play the game.
It's painfully obvious that we're being pushed to play the game in a way to simply maximize profits to the detriment of any entertainment value.
I believe that this is one of the real reasons the exploration missions were removed from the game, to focus us on the content "some" want us to play, without competition or distractions to that agenda.
-edit- To be clear, I'm not opposed to the concept of the various point/skill/xp boosters in the store (I like the idea), but as with most f2p games that nickel and dime you, the price per point on them is ludicrous due to the vast number of points needed to fill up the associated buckets to advance the systems in question. 10k is a drop in the bucket when the bucket need hundreds of thousands to millions of points to make any significant advance.
Joined January 2009
Who did the math with the boosters? (...ALL boosters)
Omg.
Haha.
Pricing to benefit of these boosts is as pathetic as those on the XP boosts.
What kind of total fool with no grasp of even basic primary school level arithmetic comes up with this ****?!
To get to Level 20 in ONE school requires 2,070,000 R&D XP.
Therefore the total XP required to max all schools is 14,490,000.
A large boost is 10,000.
These boost give an extra 20% XP , you would therefore need over 240 of the larger boosts just to increase your progress by a measly 1/5. This costs approaching $2,000.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAH.
NO.
Drop a zero off the price (20/80 zen) AND add a zero to the value of the boost (20,000 and 100,000) then you are approaching fair value ($20 total cost to increase your R&D progress by a factor of 20%).
Best part about this is these stupid things are now dropping in lockboxes, and if you think this is their fair value then it is rather worrying. They are total garbage, greatly decreasing the expected value from the lockbox, so you are effectively ****ing up that revenue stream as well...
Good Job. You made me laugh alot.
...#LLAP...
I play STO since a little before F2P, and I was so entusiastic to buy a recurrent subscription for about one year and then buy a LT subscription. I had build several toons both fed and kdf to play pvp and pve... each toon had it's own ship, gears and specific build for a different play style... It was really fun until you start adding content that forced us to grind: reputations (not 1-2, but 5-6), star bases and holdings, specializations, level cap increase, gear's upgrading... All of them are good idea, but you abused of them requiring us to start grinding huge amount of resources and exp...
Moreover what first was specific to a faction is now shared and you stopped developing specific klingon contents, the result is that now there is no need to have a kdf toon and all of the huge amount of resources and time I spent to develope my kdf fleet is wasted.
And what you do now? trying to sell us items to reduce the "need to grind" you created. Moreover with crazy prices...
And what about all the bug and the lag we have?
This is insulting and a invite to leave the game...
Playing STO spamming FAW is like playing chess using always the computer's suggested moves