run an elite stf with the last free ship f2p players can get...with 4 others in the same boat as you, no pay consoles...let me know how that goes. QoL...yah, no one needs those t5, t5u, t6, or lockbox ships right?
/snip
Until your conditions are met and no one is buying zen to pour into the dill-zen economy, your arguement is bunk.
at the current moment sto is still viable to the f2p player.
It might happen they way you said it, but its just plain untrue in the present.
And jeez man you need another game to tide you over judging by the sheer leeeength of that angst ridden post.
There really is no P2W. If someone like me can take the time to work towards something like the Vesta Bundle or even the Delta Pack (Which I am working on BTW)... You just need to play the Dilithium Exchange. Knowing how it will fluctuate based on in game events, knowing good sources of Dilithium, and maybe even having alts, can all help speed up the process.
For example, whenever we have the Crystaline Event or Mirror Event, one of the rewards is 50,000 Dilithium Ore. Per Character. That is a good boost to that character. However these events usually tend to flood the Dilithium market, driving the conversion rate of DL>Zen up for a bit because of excess supply. Same thing happens when new C-Store ships are introduced. Increased Demand drives the exchange rate of DL>Zen up for a time.
The last couple months the exchange has been high because of several factors.
Extended Dilithium Weekend because of a miscommunication.
Command Cruisers released during Extended Dilithium Weekend
Crystaline Event
Usually at some point after a major event or C-Store release the exchange rates drop back down to a steady level, which I believe right now, due to lack of a real demand for Dilithium outside of upgrading gear, is about 145-150 range. If we have a new Fleet Holding, Dilithium would be in more demand, driving the Zen prices down a bit.
So you see... as a F2P player, learning how events affect the Exchange rates can help get just about anything you want in the C-Store.
You want P2W... look at TOR. Can't even EQUIP items above a certain rarity as F2P without an "Authorization something or other". And guess where you can get those the easiest.
Answers like this need to be ignored.
STO is 100% P2W, to get the best stuff someone had to pay for it. You can grind a crazy amount to get your stuff for "free" but someone paid cryptic, then you paid them with your time/grinding. Kids don't value their time, adults that make real money do.
There are some items and powers in the game you need to grind for to get no matter what. Then there are things like ships and lockbox gear you either need to grind more than the normal grind or just pay for.
SWTOR is annoying if you aren't a subscriber. If you sub there aren't things you can buy in the store that are more powerful than others, its all just cosmetic. If you are F2P you basically need to grind credits to unlock caps, so you can grind more credits to unlock good equipment and countless other locked content. Its a sub game badly disgused as F2P.
STO is 100% P2W, to get the best stuff someone had to pay for it. You can grind a crazy amount to get your stuff for "free" but someone paid cryptic, then you paid them with your time/grinding. Kids don't value their time, adults that make real money do.
And it's not 100% P2W because you don't have to pay yourself.
The biggest problem of Pay To Win is that it was creating two player classes. The people that spend money on the game had access to stuff the others just couldn't possibly get. If you didn't pay, you were a second-class citizen. You could work as hard as you wanted, you couldn't get the best stuff, and that meant you had a disadvantage for all times.
STO doesn't have that. Grind, and you can have it.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
I haven't paid a cent into this game. I'm a lousy freeloader. And I can play all the way to the level cap, all the way through the storyline of the game (which for me is the only reason to play anyway), with the ships and drops I get for free.
Heck, my main just dropped back from the T6 Samsar cruiser we got from this year's Aniversary event to the T5 Odyssey prototype from a couple of years back, because the Samsar's not that big an improvement and I like the aesthetics of the Odyssey better.
So yeah, if your e-peen isn't that big a deal to you, this game is entirely F2P. As has been amply pointed out already, there isn't really anything to "win", unless you like pointless stress.
@OP Yes if you join a large fleet (reddit) and do 1-2 months of reputation projects, than you can buy all the best stuff. The only items you cant buy are special event ships/gear.
@Others: You need to give your definition of P2W first, since no its not some general accepted definition. So each person may have a different definition of P2W.
Here is mine: If you can spend real world cash to reach your win conditions considerably faster, than the game is P2W to you, but not necessary to someone else.
Examples:
1) Your goal is to get the best gear in STO, than its P2W, since you can buy it.
2) Your goal is to have the rarest ships in STO, than cash will only get you half way, since the rarest ships are the event ships, which cant be sold. (ignoring account selling)
3) Your goal is to play all available content in STO, than its not P2W since no content is gated behind a paywall.
So if STO is P2W depends on your own personal "win" condition and playstyle. One person may find STO extremely P2W, while a other person has different frame of reference. This means one player may have spend 100-700$, while the other may have spend 10$.
yes, someone has to pay for zen. But the price is significantly less than people think because a lot of the zen is from lifetime members who paid once. By now, the price of that zen for many of them is fractions of what it costs to go buy zen online directly right now.
All that aside, you get out what you put in playing for free.
I got a t6 ship immediately after DR launched with their dil event (what was it, the space station one?). Running that daily on my many alts (scroll back up to see where I recommended alts for free players) bought the ship.
The idea that people are "stuck" in their level 45 junker at 60 forever is laughable. Since then I have earned a second t6 cstore ship. If I had done all the alts on the current crystal event, I would have yet another (I have been busy this month and only able to run 3 alts this go) ship's worth of dil.
That aside, the level 45 ships may not be the best but MULTIPLE INEXPENSIVE consolation prize ships are MORE than capable of doing level 60 content. The robot ship from the current box is an engineer ship and tank, a little low for dps but better than the level 45 free engineer ship. The kazon raider is *excellent* and quite capable at 60. That does not even include the event ships which are also quite capable ... the breen family, all 3 are playable at 60, for example, and we just wrapped up earning those. Anyone still using a level 45 ship at 60 is not trying very hard to improve their lot.
And it's not 100% P2W because you don't have to pay yourself.
The biggest problem of Pay To Win is that it was creating two player classes. The people that spend money on the game had access to stuff the others just couldn't possibly get. If you didn't pay, you were a second-class citizen. You could work as hard as you wanted, you couldn't get the best stuff, and that meant you had a disadvantage for all times.
STO doesn't have that. Grind, and you can have it.
Oh no, don't pretend you aren't paying. You either put in cash or time so others put in cash. Its P2W period.
I have no desire to grind on boring low quality stuff, I'd rather work overtime and pay, if the stuff isn't worth paying for, I don't play. If a person thinks that wasting endless hours grinding isn't paying, they are a fool. Minimum wage laws don't apply here, get someone to grind for dozens of hours for mere dollars worth other store items.
The W in P2W needs to be understood better. Its not about winning a mission, PvP or any content, its the dumb idea that you've won because you have (what you think) is the best stuff. So when someone asks if a game is P2W and then a bunch of people run in white knighting and saying you get grind for 400 hours or get decent gear for free anyway, thats not what they are asking.
In STO a large part of the games best gear must be bought with real money. Its the very definition of P2W. There is no asteriks, "ya, but"s or any other qualifier to that statement.
What i noticed most with all PWE titles is the amount of cash you could sink into the game, which would still give you a gain of some sort. If i compare this to TSW/GW2/PoE or other f2p titles this is the most striking difference. Ofc games like Vindictus or other so called "grinders" often shares this, but to me PWE games are "tier 2" F2P games, which means there gameplay and cash shop is extremely well set-up to give you incentives to pay real cash in larger amounts.
Take the JSS as example, i don't want to know how many players spend 70-150$ to get one of those. This amount of "gambling" with real cash is often not available in other f2p games.
If you consider the plenty of options to spend real cash as good or bad again depends on your frame of reference. As example i could hardly find any item in GW2/PoE i wanted to buy with real cash, while in STO i have to constantly hold back, so i don't spend yet a other 20$ on dil. or C-Store ships.
PS: In all fairness we also have to keep in mind that STO in its current form needs P2W for power items and ship rarity or otherwise we wont see and updates.
I dont believe in not paying the company for their entertainment but you can buy fluff like clothing or something if you like. But technically its possible to play this game by not spending a dime using the dilithium exchange and converting dilithium to zen and using the energy exchange for things like lockbox keys etc
However again I dont believe in not paying a company for a game you play a lot it seems unfair to not pay them something you can afford on a monthly basis, but you can always buy fluff with that or a few zen for later or something
Like if i throw enough Money at it can i buy all the best stuff riht out of the Exchange. Or are there still items stuff that have to be grind that are bind on pickup or somthing similar?
What exactly are we paying to win?
A lockbox ship? I suppose but, you don't actually need be the payee!
A C-store goodie? Not really, because you aren't actually winning it!
About the only thing you can pay to win, seems to come from lockboxes, R&D packs, Doff packs, the usual but, there again you do not actually need be the payee.
So, not really seeing any real P2W, outside of having to ability to pay for a chance to win some goodies is all!
In one word to answer the OP NO! There is no shortcut here like other games that truly are P2W meaning the deepest wallet always gets the good gear and wins every time. Sure cash may help but is not a absolute necessity in this game. Skill and learning how to play on the other hand is an absolute necessity this isn't a pew pew boom game for the most part yes there is some of that hey its fun blowing s--t up but to get to that point you need to know what you are doing. Thinking you can buy your way into being top dog in STO is an illusion. But hey if you think it'll get you there go ahead spend away.
a lot of people are still looking at this from 'if i don't have to pay it isn't pay to win'
guess what? if those other people who DO pay didn't...YOU'D still be stuck on that last free ship.
you'd have nothing from lockboxes
no fleet ships
no t6's
no t5u's
no t5's
no lockbox ships
no consoles from lockboxes or cash ships
no rare crafting doffs...just the whites for those top tier items
if there's no zen to exchange there's no way for a free player to get anything other than pay themselves.
if no ones selling keys, t5u upgrades, fleet modules...get the picture?
think about that instead of just blindly defending...rationalizing. it's obvious what this game is and how it was designed to be.
Dr. Patricia Tanis ~ "Bacon is for sycophants and products of incest."
Donate Brains, zombies in Washington DC are starving.
T5 ships are free. You get one for reaching level 40.
During the summer event, you can get a T5U ship for running a brief mission once a day, for 25 days, on your main toon; the others only have to run that mission once each. (I've got both the Risian corvette and the luxury liner, which is surprisingly capable for its rather silly appearance). (Okay, technically they're still T5, but they come with a free upgrade.) I understand the same is true of the winter event - haven't done that myself, because I just plain don't like Breen ship designs.
If you think that's a grind, go try to get the top-end gear - hell, the halfway-useful gear - in WoW. They'll teach you what "grind" is. And if playing the game for, say, fifteen minutes a day for 25 out of 35 days is too much to ask you, perhaps playing games isn't your forte.
Like if i throw enough Money at it can i buy all the best stuff riht out of the Exchange. Or are there still items stuff that have to be grind that are bind on pickup or somthing similar?
You're not entirely wrong. By the Lootcritters estimates, a fully upgraded T5-U is $100 USD or 69 days of grinding, 4 hours per day. That's a part time job for 1 alt, and I hate to think about what it would be like for 8 alts.
Wait - I did. I've just finished upgrading 8 alts (equivalently). It took:
A years worth of saved resources.
700+ million EC
90 days of grinding Advanced and ELites
and about $300 USD in dil and R&D packs.
Now in all honesty, 500 mil ec came from selling the Sheshar. And I did get the T6 Bug, which I kept and purchased the other 2 Jem ships to make the set. And I now have 2 toons fully decked out with R&D doffs to make just about everything.
(Don't get me started on R&D lottery when trying to make EPIC gear)
My Point? Levels 1-50 are free. And fun. Containing hundreds of hours of FREE STUFF TO DO. Level 50 and up? Thats for the real dedicated fan, and unless you're living on someone elses dime, you're going to spend something at some point. Especially if you like collecting ships. Or Alts.
Oh - I forgot - they GIVE AWAY FREE SHIPS 2X A YEAR THAT ARE QUITE GOOD.
P2W used to mean that players who spent cash would always beat ones who did not, because the best gear was locked behind a (cash monies) pay wall.
By that definition STO is not P2W. You can grind to get the very best gear, with your time translating into zen if you want, or EC.
It's not even P2W by the looser definition of some Asian games where that grind is only possible with eleventy thousand hours of play time. Compared to them the time to grind EC /dil / zen is generouis in STO.
Yes, opening your wallet will save you some time in STO. For example you can spend $10 and get 10 days of R & D experience in 10 seconds. But the person who waited 10 days while doing other things has exactly the same R & D skill as the sucker who paid.
a lot of people are still looking at this from 'if i don't have to pay it isn't pay to win'
guess what? if those other people who DO pay didn't...YOU'D still be stuck on that last free ship.
you'd have nothing from lockboxes
no fleet ships
no t6's
no t5u's
no t5's
no lockbox ships
no consoles from lockboxes or cash ships
no rare crafting doffs...just the whites for those top tier items
if there's no zen to exchange there's no way for a free player to get anything other than pay themselves.
if no ones selling keys, t5u upgrades, fleet modules...get the picture?
think about that instead of just blindly defending...rationalizing. it's obvious what this game is and how it was designed to be.
The principle of pay to win is that one group has an advantage over another group if they pay money that is the definition of pay to win. That advantage does not exist in this game. Its more like "pay to get the stuff faster" which is not considered pay to win. People who pay 0.00 have the same access to gear as people who pay 100 bucks. There is no difference other then speed of acquisition.
I uh am a horribly stingy so and so.. i have one ship i paid money for the rest are in fact freebies lol like stuff from the christmas event etc. They also give away free ships from the store once or twice a year sure your not living in the lap of luxury and driving a hot rod but the stuff works and I do content better then some people who have the hot rods.
as for gear there is absolutely no reason to go near a cash shop.
you can try to stretch it and say ships are needed from the cash shop but if 100% of the people get 100% of their ships from a cash shop then its not pay to win because no one has a larger advantage over someone else because all the ships come from the same place.. that being said there is an exchange and it functions so regardless of your feeling on the issue even people who pay 0.00 can get access to the same gear people pay 100 bucks for.
P2W used to mean that players who spent cash would always beat ones who did not, because the best gear was locked behind a (cash monies) pay wall.
By that definition STO is not P2W. You can grind to get the very best gear, with your time translating into zen if you want, or EC.
It's not even P2W by the looser definition of some Asian games where that grind is only possible with eleventy thousand hours of play time. Compared to them the time to grind EC /dil / zen is generouis in STO.
Yes, opening your wallet will save you some time in STO. For example you can spend $10 and get 10 days of R & D experience in 10 seconds. But the person who waited 10 days while doing other things has exactly the same R & D skill as the sucker who paid.
well aware of what it means...problem being in this game if other players don't sell zen, don't sell or trade cash items, you cannot win as a free player. if they kept their ships to themselves, didn't use the exchange, yeah, where would you be?
why is that so difficult to grasp? everyone keeps trying to say just because you can BUY FROM OTHER PLAYERS it isn't pay to win...newsflash, they paid, and then you PAY THEM. with your grind, and time. if you DIDN'T pay those players who also PAID, you wouldn't get anything i listed in the last post.
ffs seems so freaking simple yet people still can't seem to grasp those basic facts. this is a pay to win/advance game.
Dr. Patricia Tanis ~ "Bacon is for sycophants and products of incest."
Donate Brains, zombies in Washington DC are starving.
One thing what i found pretty painfull - EC/Dil limitation for sub/non-sub accounts.
I was checking price of Obelisk Carrier in exchange, found it for 90kk EC but... as free player i can have max 10kk EC and i will be not able to have more so basicaly, it's impossible for me to get this ship without paying sub - more like premium account.
I don't know yet how looks population in this game at this state, if it's highly populated or close to be dead (played only by trekkie who realy like it), most of good modules in exch cost more than 10kk, from other way - selling items on exch on low populated server where people who play are mostly already geared and don't need anything from there is pointless - gaining EC is lowered.
Dunno if this can be considered as p2w, cleary paying customers have advantage of posibility to use exchange via buying items which cost more than 10kk EC.
But there's alternatives. You can do just fine at end-game in a (free) Samsar or a (very easy to grind) T5U Excelsior Retrofit or Defiant Retrofit or whatever. You don't NEED a JHSS. A single T5U Zen ship takes what, about 40-50 character/days worth of dilithium? 3 (soon to be 4) char slots on a free acct... that's two weeks.
You ignore the fact that someone has to buy you dil. so you can get ZEN. So if no one would sell ZEN for dil. than you could not aquire any ZEN item/ship.
Think about it this way, if you are not absolutely against spending money in a so called F2P than PWE games create a environment with constant incentives. In-fact they are designed exactly to-be like this, to have many points in your "natural" progression where you could think "U'm i could spend real money on this."
The problem is that PWE already crossed multiple lines compared to other F2P business models, which always let me hesitate to recommend any PWE game. Those main marks are:
1) Outright able to buy max. power progression via cash, without limitations.
2) Able to not only speed-up, but skip crafting profession progression to the end.
3) Secondary currency that limits your power progression artificially, but can be bought for real cash (Dil.).
4) Putting "power" deliberately on items only available in the cash store. (traits, consoles)
5) Real cash money lottery as a main store sales driver. (lockbox + keys)
6) Sale of UI elements and gameplay usability functions, that where deliberately limited in the first place. (This pisses me of the most....)
Like someone already pointed out correctly, in STO you don't actually grind the items/ships, what you grind is in-game currencies, that you than use to buy those items someone else is willing to sell, who bought the items for real cash. So it does not matter if you can grind ingame currencies, but how those items/services are acquired in the first place.
As example lockbox ships come only from lockboxes and the keys needed can only be bought via real money, since they don't rarely drop from NPC or are mission rewards. Upgrade modules and all the special consoles/traits also only come from items/services you have to pay real cash for, since there is no other way acquiring them. This means for all those things someone has to pay cash or even the grinder could not get those. Similar in EvE someone has to buy a PLEX for real cash, you cant simply grind a PLEX directly.
The "i can grind xy" argument make sense in games where NPC's would sell those items/services for ingame currencies, since in this case no one has to actually spend real money.
you cannot buy spec points unless you buy someones account who already has them ground out
Spec points are very powerful and getting more so
So even if your a wallet warrior you wont be best of the best with a new account
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
P2W used to mean that players who spent cash would always beat ones who did not, because the best gear was locked behind a (cash monies) pay wall.
By that definition STO is not P2W. You can grind to get the very best gear, with your time translating into zen if you want, or EC.
Nope, you cant directly grind many of the "powerfull" ships/consoles/traits, someone has to pay hard cash for them in all cases, only because this person is willing to sell those items or ZEN, does not change the fact that some of the most powerfully items/ships/traits can only be acquired via real cash. That this gets confused so much, simply shows how clever those transactions system are set-up by F2P/PWE. So extra power was deliberately put in the cash store by PWE, since thats one of the most easy ways to get players to spend extra money.
If you don't fly a event ship, someone also always has to spend money for the T5-U upgrades. So real money was spend at some point to get "max." power. I mean how many 30k+ FAW builds run without a leech console in a basic T5 ship?
PS: There is and was never a general accepted definition of P2W, it always was kinda blurry and highly subjective.
I'm reading 3 distinct definitions of "Pay to Win" in here and I think a lot of disagreement could be avoided if we were to agree that some of the debate is simply about semantics: 1. I would define "pay to win" as that the player must pay real currency in order to have a toon who can hang with the big dogs; I don't think that's the case with STO (it hasn't been for me) 2. I've seen some people defining P2W as that *someone* must pay real money in order to get the (Zen or item or whatever) into the game, even if the end user trades virtual in-game currency for it and, effectively, gets it for "free" 3. Some are defining P2W as the idea that folks can skip over parts of the leveling process, etc. by paying real currency to the game company or that the "grind" is a form of payment because time is money or whatever
If we just agree on what the language means, we can start actually talking about what the problem is or is not. Til then, we're just stuck on who has the "right" idea about what F2P or P2W *really* means and all of the charged judgments that issue forth from where you stand on the definition of these terms.
What it comes down to for me, though, in the end, is that I haven't spent a dollar in this game I didn't think I already got the value out of. In fact, I've only bought Zen once and it was purely because I had enjoyed playing the game for a year and a half and realized that I should probably support these people. Now, I bought this Zen after DR (during the launch of which, us Mac users could barely log in for 3 weeks) with the full awareness that the game might get totally screwed up in the future (especially in light of the Cider wrapper issues for non-Windows machines)...
but I thought about it as paying for the good times *I'd already had.* That way, I couldn't feel bitter about paying and then getting screwed... no, I paid some money into the game as a sort of donation to the writers, artists, developers, liaisons, etc. who made those good times possible. Now, I'll be sad if the Mac client dies and never comes back tomorrow... but I won't feel robbed... because I already enjoyed my money's worth of the game. And I won't feel guilty about winning by paying...
Mostly because I bought my T6 ship with Dil and really have bought nothing with Zen that's actually effective in-game except for the EC cap increase. In fact, I used my cash-bought Zen to buy the 21st Century Formal Wear about a month before they just gave it away.
I would've maybe been mad, but for the 3 C-Store ships, TMP uniform, R&D pack, etc. that I also got for free... free, like my Red Matter Capacitor... Oh, and then there was the Samsar, the BOff, the Kobali space set, that uniform, etc. etc. etc.
If anything, they create a disincentive for paying cash because of how possible it is to create an efficacious build with just items that can be found in-game, on missions, gotten during giveaways/livesterams, etc. etc.
And then there are these brinksman who can show up to PUG an ASTF in a T3 ship and still outperform everyone else... proving that, to really win, what you need is to understand the game mechanics, have tight teamwork, and fly really well. A few of the things I need a lot of work on.
If anything, they create a disincentive for paying cash because of how possible it is to create an efficacious build with just items that can be found in-game, on missions, gotten during giveaways/livesterams, etc. etc.
We would need a analysis of how many players actually play the game with none ZEN related ships/items and without T5-U upgrades.
So all we can give at this point are anecdotal evidence of how often we see players in ZEN ships or they post ZEN/Lobi items in chat.
Since at least lockbox "wins" are public announced and we roughly know the chances, we could theoretically calculate the per minute real world money drain for lockboxes, since keys only can be acquired via ZEN.
Ofc some gamble on lockbox ships in a collector sense, which i personally would not count towards "P2W", since its more about rarity and status than acquiring power.
I'm reading 3 distinct definitions of "Pay to Win" in here and I think a lot of disagreement could be avoided if we were to agree that some of the debate is simply about semantics: 1. I would define "pay to win" as that the player must pay real currency in order to have a toon who can hang with the big dogs; I don't think that's the case with STO (it hasn't been for me) 2. I've seen some people defining P2W as that *someone* must pay real money in order to get the (Zen or item or whatever) into the game, even if the end user trades virtual in-game currency for it and, effectively, gets it for "free" 3. Some are defining P2W as the idea that folks can skip over parts of the leveling process, etc. by paying real currency to the game company or that the "grind" is a form of payment because time is money or whatever
Anything aside from the first definition is meaningless bull****.
Anyone who says STO is P2W is either ignorant or disingenuous. It utterly ignores what actual P2W games are like, where cash shop items are non-transferable, more powerful, and a player literally must pay money if they want to be at the same power level as someone who has spent money.
Hell, last time I looked at TOR, if you don't spend money (subscribe) then you can't even use the better gear. Anyone who does not pay (subscribe) is literally weaker than everyone who does pay, and there is no way around it.
In STO you can literally get everything in the game without ever opening your wallet. That's not P2W by any reasonable definition.
We would need a analysis of how many players actually play the game with none ZEN related ships/items and without T5-U upgrades.
What about free T5Us? Both of the Risian ships come with a free T5U upgrade.
Five'll get you ten that next summer's event will introduce a T6 Risian ship. (Some sort of carrier, maybe? So far there's been an escort (the corvette) and a cruiser (the luxury liner), but I can't figure out a plausible Risian science ship...)
Comments
Until your conditions are met and no one is buying zen to pour into the dill-zen economy, your arguement is bunk.
at the current moment sto is still viable to the f2p player.
It might happen they way you said it, but its just plain untrue in the present.
And jeez man you need another game to tide you over judging by the sheer leeeength of that angst ridden post.
Interested in Role Playing? Join the 12th Fleet Science division!
It would go fine, depending on the quality of the players.
Answers like this need to be ignored.
STO is 100% P2W, to get the best stuff someone had to pay for it. You can grind a crazy amount to get your stuff for "free" but someone paid cryptic, then you paid them with your time/grinding. Kids don't value their time, adults that make real money do.
There are some items and powers in the game you need to grind for to get no matter what. Then there are things like ships and lockbox gear you either need to grind more than the normal grind or just pay for.
SWTOR is annoying if you aren't a subscriber. If you sub there aren't things you can buy in the store that are more powerful than others, its all just cosmetic. If you are F2P you basically need to grind credits to unlock caps, so you can grind more credits to unlock good equipment and countless other locked content. Its a sub game badly disgused as F2P.
Completed Starbase, Embassy, Mine, Spire and No Win Scenario
Nothing to do anymore.
http://dtfleet.com/
Visit our Youtube channel
And it's not 100% P2W because you don't have to pay yourself.
The biggest problem of Pay To Win is that it was creating two player classes. The people that spend money on the game had access to stuff the others just couldn't possibly get. If you didn't pay, you were a second-class citizen. You could work as hard as you wanted, you couldn't get the best stuff, and that meant you had a disadvantage for all times.
STO doesn't have that. Grind, and you can have it.
I haven't paid a cent into this game. I'm a lousy freeloader. And I can play all the way to the level cap, all the way through the storyline of the game (which for me is the only reason to play anyway), with the ships and drops I get for free.
Heck, my main just dropped back from the T6 Samsar cruiser we got from this year's Aniversary event to the T5 Odyssey prototype from a couple of years back, because the Samsar's not that big an improvement and I like the aesthetics of the Odyssey better.
So yeah, if your e-peen isn't that big a deal to you, this game is entirely F2P. As has been amply pointed out already, there isn't really anything to "win", unless you like pointless stress.
@Others: You need to give your definition of P2W first, since no its not some general accepted definition. So each person may have a different definition of P2W.
Here is mine: If you can spend real world cash to reach your win conditions considerably faster, than the game is P2W to you, but not necessary to someone else.
Examples:
1) Your goal is to get the best gear in STO, than its P2W, since you can buy it.
2) Your goal is to have the rarest ships in STO, than cash will only get you half way, since the rarest ships are the event ships, which cant be sold. (ignoring account selling)
3) Your goal is to play all available content in STO, than its not P2W since no content is gated behind a paywall.
So if STO is P2W depends on your own personal "win" condition and playstyle. One person may find STO extremely P2W, while a other person has different frame of reference. This means one player may have spend 100-700$, while the other may have spend 10$.
All that aside, you get out what you put in playing for free.
I got a t6 ship immediately after DR launched with their dil event (what was it, the space station one?). Running that daily on my many alts (scroll back up to see where I recommended alts for free players) bought the ship.
The idea that people are "stuck" in their level 45 junker at 60 forever is laughable. Since then I have earned a second t6 cstore ship. If I had done all the alts on the current crystal event, I would have yet another (I have been busy this month and only able to run 3 alts this go) ship's worth of dil.
That aside, the level 45 ships may not be the best but MULTIPLE INEXPENSIVE consolation prize ships are MORE than capable of doing level 60 content. The robot ship from the current box is an engineer ship and tank, a little low for dps but better than the level 45 free engineer ship. The kazon raider is *excellent* and quite capable at 60. That does not even include the event ships which are also quite capable ... the breen family, all 3 are playable at 60, for example, and we just wrapped up earning those. Anyone still using a level 45 ship at 60 is not trying very hard to improve their lot.
Oh no, don't pretend you aren't paying. You either put in cash or time so others put in cash. Its P2W period.
I have no desire to grind on boring low quality stuff, I'd rather work overtime and pay, if the stuff isn't worth paying for, I don't play. If a person thinks that wasting endless hours grinding isn't paying, they are a fool. Minimum wage laws don't apply here, get someone to grind for dozens of hours for mere dollars worth other store items.
The W in P2W needs to be understood better. Its not about winning a mission, PvP or any content, its the dumb idea that you've won because you have (what you think) is the best stuff. So when someone asks if a game is P2W and then a bunch of people run in white knighting and saying you get grind for 400 hours or get decent gear for free anyway, thats not what they are asking.
In STO a large part of the games best gear must be bought with real money. Its the very definition of P2W. There is no asteriks, "ya, but"s or any other qualifier to that statement.
Completed Starbase, Embassy, Mine, Spire and No Win Scenario
Nothing to do anymore.
http://dtfleet.com/
Visit our Youtube channel
Take the JSS as example, i don't want to know how many players spend 70-150$ to get one of those. This amount of "gambling" with real cash is often not available in other f2p games.
If you consider the plenty of options to spend real cash as good or bad again depends on your frame of reference. As example i could hardly find any item in GW2/PoE i wanted to buy with real cash, while in STO i have to constantly hold back, so i don't spend yet a other 20$ on dil. or C-Store ships.
PS: In all fairness we also have to keep in mind that STO in its current form needs P2W for power items and ship rarity or otherwise we wont see and updates.
However again I dont believe in not paying a company for a game you play a lot it seems unfair to not pay them something you can afford on a monthly basis, but you can always buy fluff with that or a few zen for later or something
What exactly are we paying to win?
A lockbox ship? I suppose but, you don't actually need be the payee!
A C-store goodie? Not really, because you aren't actually winning it!
About the only thing you can pay to win, seems to come from lockboxes, R&D packs, Doff packs, the usual but, there again you do not actually need be the payee.
So, not really seeing any real P2W, outside of having to ability to pay for a chance to win some goodies is all!
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
guess what? if those other people who DO pay didn't...YOU'D still be stuck on that last free ship.
you'd have nothing from lockboxes
no fleet ships
no t6's
no t5u's
no t5's
no lockbox ships
no consoles from lockboxes or cash ships
no rare crafting doffs...just the whites for those top tier items
if there's no zen to exchange there's no way for a free player to get anything other than pay themselves.
if no ones selling keys, t5u upgrades, fleet modules...get the picture?
think about that instead of just blindly defending...rationalizing. it's obvious what this game is and how it was designed to be.
Donate Brains, zombies in Washington DC are starving.
During the summer event, you can get a T5U ship for running a brief mission once a day, for 25 days, on your main toon; the others only have to run that mission once each. (I've got both the Risian corvette and the luxury liner, which is surprisingly capable for its rather silly appearance). (Okay, technically they're still T5, but they come with a free upgrade.) I understand the same is true of the winter event - haven't done that myself, because I just plain don't like Breen ship designs.
If you think that's a grind, go try to get the top-end gear - hell, the halfway-useful gear - in WoW. They'll teach you what "grind" is. And if playing the game for, say, fifteen minutes a day for 25 out of 35 days is too much to ask you, perhaps playing games isn't your forte.
You're not entirely wrong. By the Lootcritters estimates, a fully upgraded T5-U is $100 USD or 69 days of grinding, 4 hours per day. That's a part time job for 1 alt, and I hate to think about what it would be like for 8 alts.
Wait - I did. I've just finished upgrading 8 alts (equivalently). It took:
700+ million EC
90 days of grinding Advanced and ELites
and about $300 USD in dil and R&D packs.
Now in all honesty, 500 mil ec came from selling the Sheshar. And I did get the T6 Bug, which I kept and purchased the other 2 Jem ships to make the set. And I now have 2 toons fully decked out with R&D doffs to make just about everything.
(Don't get me started on R&D lottery when trying to make EPIC gear)
My Point? Levels 1-50 are free. And fun. Containing hundreds of hours of FREE STUFF TO DO. Level 50 and up? Thats for the real dedicated fan, and unless you're living on someone elses dime, you're going to spend something at some point. Especially if you like collecting ships. Or Alts.
Oh - I forgot - they GIVE AWAY FREE SHIPS 2X A YEAR THAT ARE QUITE GOOD.
Free to Play is a marketing term. Get used to it.
By that definition STO is not P2W. You can grind to get the very best gear, with your time translating into zen if you want, or EC.
It's not even P2W by the looser definition of some Asian games where that grind is only possible with eleventy thousand hours of play time. Compared to them the time to grind EC /dil / zen is generouis in STO.
Yes, opening your wallet will save you some time in STO. For example you can spend $10 and get 10 days of R & D experience in 10 seconds. But the person who waited 10 days while doing other things has exactly the same R & D skill as the sucker who paid.
The principle of pay to win is that one group has an advantage over another group if they pay money that is the definition of pay to win. That advantage does not exist in this game. Its more like "pay to get the stuff faster" which is not considered pay to win. People who pay 0.00 have the same access to gear as people who pay 100 bucks. There is no difference other then speed of acquisition.
I uh am a horribly stingy so and so.. i have one ship i paid money for the rest are in fact freebies lol like stuff from the christmas event etc. They also give away free ships from the store once or twice a year sure your not living in the lap of luxury and driving a hot rod but the stuff works and I do content better then some people who have the hot rods.
as for gear there is absolutely no reason to go near a cash shop.
you can try to stretch it and say ships are needed from the cash shop but if 100% of the people get 100% of their ships from a cash shop then its not pay to win because no one has a larger advantage over someone else because all the ships come from the same place.. that being said there is an exchange and it functions so regardless of your feeling on the issue even people who pay 0.00 can get access to the same gear people pay 100 bucks for.
well aware of what it means...problem being in this game if other players don't sell zen, don't sell or trade cash items, you cannot win as a free player. if they kept their ships to themselves, didn't use the exchange, yeah, where would you be?
why is that so difficult to grasp? everyone keeps trying to say just because you can BUY FROM OTHER PLAYERS it isn't pay to win...newsflash, they paid, and then you PAY THEM. with your grind, and time. if you DIDN'T pay those players who also PAID, you wouldn't get anything i listed in the last post.
ffs seems so freaking simple yet people still can't seem to grasp those basic facts. this is a pay to win/advance game.
Donate Brains, zombies in Washington DC are starving.
I was checking price of Obelisk Carrier in exchange, found it for 90kk EC but... as free player i can have max 10kk EC and i will be not able to have more so basicaly, it's impossible for me to get this ship without paying sub - more like premium account.
I don't know yet how looks population in this game at this state, if it's highly populated or close to be dead (played only by trekkie who realy like it), most of good modules in exch cost more than 10kk, from other way - selling items on exch on low populated server where people who play are mostly already geared and don't need anything from there is pointless - gaining EC is lowered.
Dunno if this can be considered as p2w, cleary paying customers have advantage of posibility to use exchange via buying items which cost more than 10kk EC.
You ignore the fact that someone has to buy you dil. so you can get ZEN. So if no one would sell ZEN for dil. than you could not aquire any ZEN item/ship.
Think about it this way, if you are not absolutely against spending money in a so called F2P than PWE games create a environment with constant incentives. In-fact they are designed exactly to-be like this, to have many points in your "natural" progression where you could think "U'm i could spend real money on this."
The problem is that PWE already crossed multiple lines compared to other F2P business models, which always let me hesitate to recommend any PWE game. Those main marks are:
1) Outright able to buy max. power progression via cash, without limitations.
2) Able to not only speed-up, but skip crafting profession progression to the end.
3) Secondary currency that limits your power progression artificially, but can be bought for real cash (Dil.).
4) Putting "power" deliberately on items only available in the cash store. (traits, consoles)
5) Real cash money lottery as a main store sales driver. (lockbox + keys)
6) Sale of UI elements and gameplay usability functions, that where deliberately limited in the first place. (This pisses me of the most....)
Like someone already pointed out correctly, in STO you don't actually grind the items/ships, what you grind is in-game currencies, that you than use to buy those items someone else is willing to sell, who bought the items for real cash. So it does not matter if you can grind ingame currencies, but how those items/services are acquired in the first place.
As example lockbox ships come only from lockboxes and the keys needed can only be bought via real money, since they don't rarely drop from NPC or are mission rewards. Upgrade modules and all the special consoles/traits also only come from items/services you have to pay real cash for, since there is no other way acquiring them. This means for all those things someone has to pay cash or even the grinder could not get those. Similar in EvE someone has to buy a PLEX for real cash, you cant simply grind a PLEX directly.
The "i can grind xy" argument make sense in games where NPC's would sell those items/services for ingame currencies, since in this case no one has to actually spend real money.
Spec points are very powerful and getting more so
So even if your a wallet warrior you wont be best of the best with a new account
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
Nope, you cant directly grind many of the "powerfull" ships/consoles/traits, someone has to pay hard cash for them in all cases, only because this person is willing to sell those items or ZEN, does not change the fact that some of the most powerfully items/ships/traits can only be acquired via real cash. That this gets confused so much, simply shows how clever those transactions system are set-up by F2P/PWE. So extra power was deliberately put in the cash store by PWE, since thats one of the most easy ways to get players to spend extra money.
If you don't fly a event ship, someone also always has to spend money for the T5-U upgrades. So real money was spend at some point to get "max." power. I mean how many 30k+ FAW builds run without a leech console in a basic T5 ship?
PS: There is and was never a general accepted definition of P2W, it always was kinda blurry and highly subjective.
1. I would define "pay to win" as that the player must pay real currency in order to have a toon who can hang with the big dogs; I don't think that's the case with STO (it hasn't been for me)
2. I've seen some people defining P2W as that *someone* must pay real money in order to get the (Zen or item or whatever) into the game, even if the end user trades virtual in-game currency for it and, effectively, gets it for "free"
3. Some are defining P2W as the idea that folks can skip over parts of the leveling process, etc. by paying real currency to the game company or that the "grind" is a form of payment because time is money or whatever
If we just agree on what the language means, we can start actually talking about what the problem is or is not. Til then, we're just stuck on who has the "right" idea about what F2P or P2W *really* means and all of the charged judgments that issue forth from where you stand on the definition of these terms.
What it comes down to for me, though, in the end, is that I haven't spent a dollar in this game I didn't think I already got the value out of. In fact, I've only bought Zen once and it was purely because I had enjoyed playing the game for a year and a half and realized that I should probably support these people. Now, I bought this Zen after DR (during the launch of which, us Mac users could barely log in for 3 weeks) with the full awareness that the game might get totally screwed up in the future (especially in light of the Cider wrapper issues for non-Windows machines)...
but I thought about it as paying for the good times *I'd already had.* That way, I couldn't feel bitter about paying and then getting screwed... no, I paid some money into the game as a sort of donation to the writers, artists, developers, liaisons, etc. who made those good times possible. Now, I'll be sad if the Mac client dies and never comes back tomorrow... but I won't feel robbed... because I already enjoyed my money's worth of the game. And I won't feel guilty about winning by paying...
Mostly because I bought my T6 ship with Dil and really have bought nothing with Zen that's actually effective in-game except for the EC cap increase. In fact, I used my cash-bought Zen to buy the 21st Century Formal Wear about a month before they just gave it away.
I would've maybe been mad, but for the 3 C-Store ships, TMP uniform, R&D pack, etc. that I also got for free... free, like my Red Matter Capacitor... Oh, and then there was the Samsar, the BOff, the Kobali space set, that uniform, etc. etc. etc.
If anything, they create a disincentive for paying cash because of how possible it is to create an efficacious build with just items that can be found in-game, on missions, gotten during giveaways/livesterams, etc. etc.
And then there are these brinksman who can show up to PUG an ASTF in a T3 ship and still outperform everyone else... proving that, to really win, what you need is to understand the game mechanics, have tight teamwork, and fly really well. A few of the things I need a lot of work on.
We would need a analysis of how many players actually play the game with none ZEN related ships/items and without T5-U upgrades.
So all we can give at this point are anecdotal evidence of how often we see players in ZEN ships or they post ZEN/Lobi items in chat.
Since at least lockbox "wins" are public announced and we roughly know the chances, we could theoretically calculate the per minute real world money drain for lockboxes, since keys only can be acquired via ZEN.
Ofc some gamble on lockbox ships in a collector sense, which i personally would not count towards "P2W", since its more about rarity and status than acquiring power.
Anything aside from the first definition is meaningless bull****.
Anyone who says STO is P2W is either ignorant or disingenuous. It utterly ignores what actual P2W games are like, where cash shop items are non-transferable, more powerful, and a player literally must pay money if they want to be at the same power level as someone who has spent money.
Hell, last time I looked at TOR, if you don't spend money (subscribe) then you can't even use the better gear. Anyone who does not pay (subscribe) is literally weaker than everyone who does pay, and there is no way around it.
In STO you can literally get everything in the game without ever opening your wallet. That's not P2W by any reasonable definition.
Five'll get you ten that next summer's event will introduce a T6 Risian ship. (Some sort of carrier, maybe? So far there's been an escort (the corvette) and a cruiser (the luxury liner), but I can't figure out a plausible Risian science ship...)